Mastering Magic Collection: An Urban Fantasy Slice-of-life Omnibus by Kirk Mason

Author:Kirk Mason [Mason, Kirk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

"Ah shoot," Sophia said.

A glowing orange plasma wall blocked our way, framed by this odd golden barrier around it, seeming both gilded and forged and yet made of something alive too, like tree bark.

The air around it felt greasy, in an electric kind of way. Further evidence of this was how Sophia and Misty's hair stood on ends, giving them a mad scientist look.

"I could perform real order magic last time we were faced with one of these," I said, reaching out to prod it. We'd needed all three affinities to get through it—the powerful versions of it.

We were in the back room, holding our coffee and inspecting the strange wall blocking us from the magic caverns.

"We might not even need to get in there anyway," Misty said.

"I dunno. Charlotte told us to meet her down here. Odds are, something lies in there." I tapped my chin in thought and said, "I wonder if I could use deception to fool the door into thinking I'm an order mage—ugh, this wall is so stupid."

"It is stupid, but…it takes an extremely powerful magus of each affinity to open it, not just some low-level student."

"Slightly less stupid then," I said. "I think it's pretty safe to assume Miss Deathsticks is an order magus. Did you get a read on her, Soph?"

Sophie shook her head. "I'd have to touch her forehead for that."

"Ah, yeah."

I willed forth all the mana in me, feeling it surge up inside my body like a kind of pleasure, twirling around my navel to shoot up through my veins and then finally spill from my fingers. The odd color mix I really needed to think of a name for spiraled at my palm into a frail-looking tendril dagger. The blade was translucent. As I tried to hold it together, dizziness overcame me. It took all my mana to cause deception to Sophia, Misty, and the door.

The door. I was trying to deceive an inanimate object. Was it fruitless?

"Now!" I yelled. I stabbed the blade into the orange. It shook and trembled. The area around the wound bubbled like a river that'd had a stone thrown into it.

Misty thrust her flaming torch into the wall, and Sophia touched my arm, sending wisps of healing through me to boost my mana and emblaze the sword with it.

A hole was beginning to open up, getting bigger and bigger. Around the edge, the orange bunched up like plasma fabric as we pulled at the seams holding it together, pushing it apart.

Veins were beginning to bulge from my arm, which vibrated so fiercely I wondered if it would damage me.

I grunted and found myself getting dizzy.

Lines of tiredness were appearing under Sophia's eyes too.

"Pull back," I said, though I didn't hear myself. I thrust my arm back out of the thing, just in time for it to blast out backward, where we all fell onto the ground in a heap of ourselves.

"Ow," Misty said, pushing herself up. Her ebony hair fell over her face, making her look like the Grudge.

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