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

few extra minutes,” she said, allowing me to pull her up to sit behind me. “The Armageddon Sphere has almost reached capacity—you can tell by the pulsation. My Holy magic should give us enough time to get clear of the city.”

Without discussing anything further, I gave the dragon we were all sitting on the mental spurs.

With a lurching of titanic muscles, the Amber Dragon boosted into the air. Its tail was wrapped around the Armageddon Sphere and, as it rose, it brought the ticking time-bomb with us.

On a normal day, the power of the mythical creature might have astounded me, and the cold of the air might have taken my breath away. However, when you have the magical equivalent of a nuclear bomb in your trunk, there’s not much room left in your head for anything else.

We soared out of the courtyard and over the walls of the Castle of Ascendance. The dragon may have been an older model, but the old-timer still flew like a champion, its great wingbeats thumping through the air and propelling us on at a hell of a speed.

It was not long until we were out over the open country. Snow-covered fields spread out below us like a checkered blanket. Smoke rose from chimneys. Patches and swathes of woodland looked like smears of brown and green acrylic paint. All in all, it looked like a happy little accident that Bob Ross might have painted. It was a cozy scene. One that I was reticent to drop a magical bomb on.

“There!” Mallory cried from behind me, sticking her arm past my face and pointing ahead to a patch of dirtier white amongst all the white.

For a brief moment, I didn’t know what the hell she was indicating. Then I realized: a lake. A frozen lake.

“I see it!” I said, and relayed the order to the Amber Dragon.

The dragon tucked its legs into its body a little tighter and banked in hard to the left. Mallory, Leah, and I huddled in closer to the creature’s scaly hide and watched the frozen lake come closer and closer.

Then, we were over it.

The dragon opened its wings, applying the air-brakes, and uncoiled its tail.

The Armageddon Sphere dropped away from us. A pulsing blue globe, a cloud-wrapped weapon of mass destruction.

It hit the surface of the lake, punched through the ice, and disappeared.

“Bit anticlimactic, wouldn’t you—” Leah started to say.

The lake evaporated in a truly, truly cataclysmic reverse explosion.

The air around us seemed to vanish for a moment, and the dragon plummeted about a hundred feet before the void was filled. Below us, evergreen trees on the banks of the lake were sucked inwards and bent like straws until they snapped. The water and ice simply vanished. Poof. Gone. The noise was like a couple of drunken tornadoes yelling over one another in a busy bar. Ice and snow and dirt were thrown skywards as the atmosphere reeled.

And then…

Silence.

I looked down.

What had been a fully frozen expanse of freshwater only a few seconds before was now nothing more than a vast crater.

“Holy… Holy fuck,” I said.

“Yeah…” Leah said. “That about sums it up.”

“Demonic power,” Mallory said.

We sailed along in silence for a full minute, each of us lost in thoughts of how close to being turned to atoms we had come. Eventually, I cleared my throat and stirred.

“Do we head back to the Castle of Ascendance?” I asked. “We’ve left Thunder and Lightning at that stable, Leah. What if that guy does manage to sell them? When word gets out about what happened here, he’s going to assume that we’re either dead or on the run.”

From her position in front of me, Leah waved a casual hand. It never ceased to amaze me how unflappable the Chaosbane clan were. It had been one hell of a day, in anyone’s books, but even after all we had been through, Leah looked just as unfazed as she always did. Her eyes were closed as she enjoyed the sensation of flying, despite the frigid air that rushed over us.

“Nah, don’t worry about it, syrup-lips,” she said breezily. “I’ll get Chubbs to go and get them. If the guy has somehow managed to sell them, they’ll only end up giving their new owner the slip and heading back to the ranch.”

“We have the third relic,” I said thoughtfully, looking down at the Christmas card countryside that slipped by below us “but we left Gertrude back at the castle. I doubt we’re going to be able to sneak back in there after just unleashing a demon.”

“Now that she knows who you are and what you need,” Mallory said, “I should be able to have her meet with you again. But, for now, you should focus on the important things.” She reached around from behind me and gave me a squeeze. “Haven’t you heard? It’s Yuletide! I’m sure that tomorrow morning, when things have calmed a little, I can get word to her and make sure that she takes a nice, refreshing ride out into the countryside. She and Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock were close, after all. Perhaps she might come and visit the old grouch?”

I sighed as Mallory nibbled affectionately at my earlobe and rested her head on my shoulder. Things sounded like they were all coming together.

“Where to then?” I asked.

Leah leaned back into me and said in her snootiest voice, “Home please, driver!”

I laughed, relief flooding through me, replacing the adrenaline that had been powering me along for the past however many hours.

I willed the Amber Dragon to take us back to the Chaosbane Ranch, grinning as I imagined the faces of the rest of the clan as they saw us swoop in on dragonback.

I shook my head. What was I thinking? Enwyn might be vaguely surprised. As for the