Wizard Shod
The really nasty monsters always look sexy right before they try to eat your face.I had just enough time between the moment my wizard’s senses warned me to spin in my tracks, and lift my blasting rod before the undine was upon me. It looked like nothing more than a beautiful and voluptuous naked woman, until you noticed the sea-green slitted eyes, the sharp teeth, and the hands that ended in unnaturally long, glittering nails. It wasted no time in tackling me to the ground and slashing at me with those sharp nails—which bounced off the spelled leather of my duster, leaving nary a mark. That was its first mistake. I jammed the blasting rod into its ribs and screamed, “Fuego!”
The resulting firey blast ensured that undine wouldn’t be making mistakes ever again.
“That was sloppy, boss,” a voice complained from the inside pocket of the duster. “Way too much power and way too close to you. Less fire next time.”
“Make less with the comments and more with the Nevernever mapping!” I snapped, reaching into the coat and withdrawing a bleached human skull. Twin orange flames blazed in its eye sockets—proof that Bob, my air elemental lab assistant, magical dictionary, and general smartass was present within.
The skull’s eye flames rolled in its sockets as it looked around. “I got nothing, Harry. I was a spirit of Winter, and this is Summer territory. If nothing else you’re only taking us deeper in.”
“Thank that pack of undines,” I growled. “I got two of them but there’s twenty more where those came from and-“
I never had a chance to complete that sentence. Something hit my back in a cloud of water, hard as a fire hose, and sent me right on my face into what was suddenly muddy ground. I rolled onto my back and willed power into my shield bracelet just in time to block a stream of water thick as my thigh. Undines are also very capable hydromancers and that particular undine had obviously sunken some extra mojo in the spell, as the hissing it made when it hit the ground around the shield did not bode well for what it might do when it hit my flesh. Obviously, the remaining undines—huh, twenty-four, a double coven—had found me, and from the looks on their faces as they spread out to encircle us, they weren’t happy.
“Bob,” I hissed. “Options. I need options.”
The skull’s eyes had gotten bigger. “Death by sex is looking good right now.” He leered. “And how!”
I fed more power into the shield as the undines began to send more water magic at me. It wouldn’t hold long. “Quit staring and start thinking! Any clue what’s on the other side of the Nevernever?”
“Nope. Could be the middle of the ocean, could be a mountain, could be the moon for all I know. Harry, please don’t do something stupid.“
Maintaining two spells at once is tricky, but as I held up my shield I reached for more magic and sent it out into the world around me, concentrating on the fabric of the Nevernever. It took what seemed like ages to reach the tipping point, but there was a moment of perfection and I took a deep breath to shout, “Apartum!”
I’ve been told many times that I magically resemble not so much a bull in a china shop as a runaway semi truck in a pottery warehouse. The fabric of reality didn’t so much part as it did explode underneath us, and I had just enough time to shout a battlecry that sounded strangely similar to a grown man screaming like a little girl as we fell through.
The room on the other side of the portal was pitch-black and filled with something soft, I discovered, as we landed with a thump and a muffle crunch. Then three things happened almost simultaneously. There was a high-pitched, piercing scream, followed by a flash of brilliant white light as a giant hand picked me up and threw me against a wall. My bedazzled eyes took in the impossible image of a small purple unicorn, the white glow surrounding its horn, sitting up in bed and covered in the mud and water from my abrupt entrance—now turning to the slimey ectoplasm of the Nevernever.
The door next to me abruptly opened, and my dazed eyes registered the presence of a small, bipedal, purple and green dragon as it poked its head in. “Twilight? Twilight?” It said, in concerned tones, and then its eyes bulged as they fixed on me.
First kidnappers, then undines, now unicorns and dragons.
Stars and stones, some days it just doesn’t pay to get up in the morning.
