Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2) by Aaron Schneider (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📕

hat and then the cracked and peeling buckskins. Milo stared at the hanging fringe for a second, his mind unwilling to come to grips with what he saw even as he squinted at gnarled hanks dangling along the small man’s arm.

“Oh, you like that, hoss.” The gunman chuckled, blasting Milo with his malignant breath as he flapped an arm to make the not-fringe dance. “Barked each one of them scalps, a collection of sorts. Every one dead at my hand.”

Milo gulped and fought back the bile rising in his throat as he realized the tassels were withered strips of scalp sporting the forelocks of their previous owners. A deep, abiding rage blossomed in his chest.

When a bellow like the bell of the Ares tore through the air, Milo realized he wasn’t the only one.

“YOU!” Beli howled as he sprang to his feet, twice the height of the pistol-armed scalp hunter, hands curled into claws that could have encompassed the small man’s neck. The fey’s usual glowing aura now seethed with fury, and his brass fingers rippled with heat. Milo didn’t doubt one touch could sear flesh to the bone.

“I still got one for you, big ’un,” the gunslinger spat, whipping another corroded pistol from his belt and leveling it at the approaching fey quicker than seemed humanly possible.

“Beli, no!” Rihyani shouted, throwing herself between the gun and her comrade as the huge fey tried to shoulder past her, his eyes fixed on the small man.

“Please, there’s no need for this,” a smooth, gentle voice called from amidst the trees. “This doesn’t have to end poorly.”

A stately man in a pinstripe suit and a matching fedora stepped out from the bole of a tree. He was everything the gunslinger was not: tall, older, impeccably groomed, and looking altogether uncomfortable. In one hand, he held what looked like a very dog-eared book with an unadorned leather binding, while the other fidgeted with something in the pocket of his vest. He stepped closer, eyeing Meinir, who had collapsed, her breathing growing softer and shallower every second. His expression cycled from disgust to amorously curious before settling on a sort of apologetic placidity.

“Damn it, Percy!” the cowboy growled, eyes rolling upward. “Chucklehead spoils everything.”

Milo’s hand tightened on the raptor cane, drawing on the essence within the polished stone haft.

“Please,” the well-dressed Percy implored, almost managing to sound sincere. “No one else has to die.”

“Only one more,” Beli bellowed and surged forward like a sudden storm.

The gunslinger swiveled both pistols to the charging fey, his movements viper-quick, but Milo, driven by the cane’s auxiliary powers, was faster. Both pistols barked into the canopy as Milo swept the cane upward into the gunslinger’s outstretched forearms. The smaller man barked a curse that was garbled by a broken-voiced giggle as the revolvers tumbled from his nerveless grip.

He twisted back toward Milo, a long, pitted knife appearing in his hand as his perpetual smile widened to maniacal proportions.

“Now this is a proper shindig!” he howled, lunging for Milo.

Mid-leap, Beli crashed into the man like a bronze battering ram. Smoking fingers clamped down with a hiss on ragged buckskin as momentum carried them both several strides into a broad trunk. The tree shuddered, and Milo was certain the cowboy was broken in two by the impact, but a wild, blood-chilling cry announced the opposite. The cowboy had somehow twisted his way out of Beli’s smoldering grip and was now astride the huge fey’s back, plunging the rusty blade into the broad bronze back he rode. Milo would have thought the metallic flesh of the giant proof against the dilapidated knife, but it punched through, leaving a ragged, corroded wound that wept black ash.

Milo sprang forward, thinking to swat the clinging cowboy off Beli’s back with one magically enhanced swipe of his cane.

“Milo!” Rihyani shouted behind him. He felt a sudden pressure at the back of his head, and the air filled with sparkling motes. His body pitched forward and hit the ground as the forest faded and the motes expanded into silvery clouds that hung in front of his eyes. The sounds of Beli’s and the cowboy's struggle became distant and forgettable. He thought about rolling over and seeing what had brought about this remarkable change, but at the moment, it all seemed incredibly uninteresting. Better to wait for things to sort themselves out.

He was enjoying watching the beautiful clouds, after all.

He heard Rihyani cry in outrage somewhere closer than the rest of the fighting, but then there was the distinctive mechanical click of a pistol cocking.

“Have no fear, dear lady,” he heard Percy saying. “The blow was learned from an ancient Tibetan scroll. The young man will be fine so long as you don’t do anything foolish. Just allow those two to settle their differences without interruption, and I will see your human servitor revives without any permanent damage.”

Milo felt something hot and sharp pressing in his mind, something that demanded to be noticed, but the mists were so beautiful and everything else was so far away.

“I’m going to pluck the eyes from your skull,” Rihyani snarled, her voice throaty and bestial. “Then I’ll whisper a charm so they can bear witness to the terrible things I will do to the rest of you.”

“Madame, not one step closer,” the fancy man warned in an admirably steady voice. “One more, and it won’t much matter what you do to me as far as this fellow is concerned. He’ll be dead, and then you will have to contend with my compatriot.”

As though in answer, the cowboy threw up a strained holler of triumph, and there was a tremendous crashing sound. The painful point in Milo’s mind, which he finally realized was his will, began to burn away the discombobulating clouds, his sight and soundness of mind returning by degrees.

Milo could make out the shape of Percy standing over him, a pistol held right above his face.

“Ha-ha, hot damn!” the cowboy crowed somewhere beyond the looming barrel that eclipsed Milo’s