Creation Mage 6 by Dante King (detective books to read txt) 📕

She stepped back and made a gesture. The open side of the bronze capsule closed, leaving us in impenetrable, inky darkness.

“What did she mean by ‘try not to vom—” I said.

The capsule exploded upward like a cork leaving a prosecco bottle. My words were lost, crushed back down my throat by the G-forces suddenly pressing down on us. The world was utterly black. The only sound was the occasional scrape as the capsule made contact with the sides of the shaft.

It was the longest six seconds of my life.

With a stomach-lurching suddenness, the hellride came to a halt. There came a grating sound of stone, and the door slid open. Leah and I fell out, landing on a rough floor.

I rolled over, trying to get at least some of my breath back and saw the battered copper door of the capsule slide shut behind us. Then, a section of stone wall, out of which we had apparently just emerged, slid back into place and the capsule was gone. The masonry covering the secret entrance to the capsule shaft was so well hidden that even a second after it had closed, I could not be entirely sure where it was.

“Where-where are we?” I managed to ask. “The base… The basement of the Castle of Ascendance?”

Leah had gotten shakily to her feet and was leaning against the cool stone wall with forehead. Somehow, she was grinning.

“Yeah,” she said in a breathless whisper. “Gods, but isn’t that fun?”

I burped and winced. “Oh yeah, lots of fun,” I said acidly.

When we had recovered our poise and breath, Leah led the way up a spiral staircase. We paused at a heavy oaken door, and the female Chaosbane said, “You go ahead and lead the way.”

“Why me?” I asked. “I don’t know where the fuck I’m going.”

“Neither do I!” Leah said delightedly. “It’s only fair that we get to share responsibility for our fate, isn’t it?”

I couldn’t really argue with that—one lost person’s guess was as good as another’s, I supposed—so I pushed the door carefully open and we exited the basement.

We had taken perhaps four randomly selected turns, walking down the quiet marble corridors about as conspicuously as a couple of foxes in a chicken coop, when we ran into someone who was most assuredly not an Inscriber.

“Halt!” a voice cried.

We had entered a particularly ornate and luxuriously appointed corridor. There were busts and statues of important-looking men and women with their regal noses stuck high in the air. Many were adorned with vine leaves and little crowns.

At the end of the stretch of white marble corridor, a group of half a dozen tall, armored women, attired from head to foot in flashing mail and gleaming plate rounded the corner.

“Halt, in the name of Queen Hagatha!” one armored woman called once more.

There were two possible options. Flee in the opposite direction and proclaim your guilt with the very first step you took, or remain where you were and try to talk your way out of the pickle you had suddenly found yourself in.

We opted, on this occasion, for option two.

“Oh look,” Leah said in her tranquil voice, “Arcane Knights!”

“And they are…?” I asked.

“Mages who are very, very powerful and very much intent on protecting the Queen,” Leah said calmly.

“The Queen?” I asked in a low, urgent voice. “You don’t mean we’ve just walked smackdab into Queen Hagatha?”

“So it would appear,” Leah said. She made a little noise of recognition in her throat, and her eyebrows rose up into her pink hair. “Yep, there she is.”

It was the first time that I had ever laid eyes upon the most powerful being in the Avalonian Kingdom, Queen Hagatha. As far as queens went, she was nothing like the kindly, doddering old biddy who was running the Brits back on Earth.

She was incredibly beautiful, with bright red hair kept back from her finely boned, well-proportioned face by a golden crown. She was an elf of some kind, pointed ears poking out from the bright red tresses proclaimed that much.

While I noted the Queen’s beautiful attributes, Leah and I were neatly surrounded by the six Arcane Knights accompanying her.

“State your business!” commanded one of the Arcane Knights, while the Queen gazed at the two of us with a suitably imperious set of green eyes. “Speak clearly and speak quickly!”

The words started coming out of my mouth before I was even aware of what I was going to say. All I knew was that I needed to cut off Leah before she said something that got the pair of us evaporated, obliterated, or squashed into jelly.

“Uh, Your Majesty,” I said, directing my words at Queen Hagatha, “you’ll have to excuse us, but we’ve managed to get a little bit lost.”

“You dare to speak directly to the Queen?” spat the Arcane Knight, who was a handsome nymph woman with a brown bob, deep blue eyes, and skin the color of honey. “Your impudence is astounding!”

Before things could go properly pear-shaped, the Queen unexpectedly stepped in.

Her voice was as cool, clear, and light as a good rosé wine.

“That’s enough, Braya,” she said, and the Arcane Knight closed her mouth immediately. “Let them explain themselves. Then, if I am not impressed by their reasoning for being here, you can berate them until you’re sore in the throat. Besides, these are clearly two of my loyal subjects. If I cannot make time to hear them out, who should I make time for?”

“Thanks very much, Your Majesty,” I said.

The Queen ran those haughty, perceptive green eyes of hers over me again. “Do not thank me yet, stranger. And speak your piece fast. I am meant to be meeting some ambassador or other from some far-flung place and really should