Of course, Acantha didn’t want to hear any part of my plan even though it was really well thought out. I had the sneaky entrance, the clandestine goal, AND the clever getaway all ready to go and written down for easy presentation, but noooooo. Someone had to have a stick up their butt about ‘invasion of privacy’ and ‘boundaries’. The ‘discussion’ was loud, long, and a bit screechy. And it didn’t help when I waited for the inevitable deep breath for her to continue said rant to poke her in the head saying, “I’ll do it again.”

The subsequent eruption was spectacular. Flames dramatically flying everywhere without actually burning anything, wild epithets that would make a sailor blush and a long eloquent dissertation about a donkey somewhere in my family ancestry. Impressive, really. But the moment did come where I had had enough. Suddenly drawing on my power, I let the aura of my sorceries out as I encased Acantha in a personal pyramid of stone up to her neck. The stone creaked as runes of chains cracked across the surface, further sealing her in. Two conjured masses of water, one ice and the other liquid, appeared above her in the form of giant bladed spears while spear-form Gungnir was an inch away from her nose. With the backing of the Sunstone Castle’s deep mana reserves and my own considerable stores of power, it looked like I was the epicenter of a storm. The thin grass at my feet was blowing away from me in all directions as I very calmly smiled.

“Feel better yet?” I snapped as her eyes went cross-eyed trying to look at the point of my weapon. “I get needing to unload but I did what I did because I had to do it. It’s not your fault that Sybella sent me a suicidal fire witch with a complex, but I can’t have someone like that watching my back. I’m in charge here whether you like it or not, and technically, you’re my charge, my ward. So, I fixed you, or rather helped you fix yourself. At any time you could have said no or reversed it, but you didn’t. Shit, it was and still is your mind, which means you have all the power ALL the time in there. So unload your crap somewhere else.”

Taking a moment to reel my power back in, I cracked my neck and put Gungnir back into its pedestal. “Oh, and get yourself out. You have three days or I’m sending you back to Sybella.” Stalking away, I headed back to my house under the willow tree and kept reviewing my plans, making sure to keep a magical eye on Acantha. Kraken timidly knocked on our mental link.

[Maybe that was a bit harsh?] he questioned.

[Maybe,] I half-heartedly countered. [But maybe not. I might be misplacing my anger a bit here. Sybella sent me a broken witch, literally broken! What if I hadn’t known? What if I had a suicidal witch as my backup? Yes, she has a ton of potential, especially against freaking zombies but dude, come on. Nuclear reactors are great too if they run well but all hell breaks loose if they pop a screw. Besides, it was a huge red flag that I was able to slip into her mind as easy as I did. There should be some kind of resistance to get to the mindscape.]

[All I’m saying is that the actions you took against your own ally were possibly out of line, probably skirting the bounds of what you’re allowed to do to your own vassal,] Kraken explained. [It is justifiable however to administer corrective actions in light of being gifted a flawed minion, which is probably how you should frame this issue if it ever comes to light.]

[Sybella can kiss my skinny ass. Damaged goods! It’s all I ever get!] I ranted, mostly to myself. [Are the hot ones always crazy?]

Pulling my hoverboard and rifle out of Gungnir who was still on the pedestal, I tossed the hoverboard on the dry desert ground and hopped on, taking off towards the river. I spent the next two hours skating around, doing my best to get proficient at hoverskating at speeds over a hundred miles an hour. I’ll tell you what, misjudging sharp turns is painful without airbags, especially with the hot desert winds fiercely blowing out of nowhere. And since I had time to kill, I decided to go for a quick flight and get a good lay of the land. Putting my hoverboard away back at the castle, I dusted off SAW’s wings and took off.

Part of me wondered how Fernando and Remy were doing, if they’d made any headway in cleaning up their post-apocalyptic city. The paranoid side was in the midst of arguing if it would be better to harden my Sunstone Castle so no one would ever dream of attacking it but the other part didn’t like the idea of a potential hotspot anywhere near me. The memories about Phoenix that I’d taken from Fernando didn’t bode well for this part of the country. Demons, necromancers, vampiric zombies gone wild and power hungry wizards sounded like a recipe for disaster.

Noting the safety at which great height affords me, I clutched my rifle to my chest as I turned towards Phoenix and then turned right back around again. No way in hell I was going to go to a place like that without all of my weapons, especially my main one. Gungnir was serving as the power focus for Kraken who was making my golem army at the moment, and heading to a potential firefight without it was basically committing suicide. Putting Phoenix on my to-do list, I winged my way back home and then followed the course of the Colorado River up north. I remember Reeanth telling me that Vegas was bombed out by the Centauri a while ago and the river’s path where I’m at goes right near Vegas.

Following a roughly northern path, a quick trip at two hundred miles an hour got me there pretty quick. What I had pictured in my mind way back when Reeanth told me that Vegas was bombed, was either one of two things. Either a giant crater that would be almost visible from space, or a landscape speckled with gutted hulks of burned down buildings.

[Hey! She’s out already!] Kraken wailed through our link. [The witch turned into a flame and then whooshed out?! Now she’s yelling at me and I don’t know what to do! I didn’t stick her in a stone cone, you did!]

[Is she attacking you?] I wondered.

[No . . . but her screaming is really loud!]

Sighing internally since I was going fast enough for the air to catch in my lungs, I hightailed it back to Sunstone Castle, my solar-powered wings allowing me to fly faster than I ever thought I would under my own power. Thank all the Scions in the sky that my base was not in shambles when I returned. The hour it had taken to get back had allowed Acantha to cool her jets even as I stuck a mediocre landing on one of the castle walls.

“I’m impressed you got out so quick!” I yelled from way up high. “I got a job for ya!” A glare that powerful from a woman that tiny was not easily missed. It was however, easily ignored. Taking my time, I let the inevitable tide of yelling that I knew was coming buildup as I slowly walked down the stairs, taking my time and stretching as I did so. Her face was almost purple from holding it in. “Before you say anything, I need to know. Can you fly?”

Disbelief flooded her features at the switch of what she wanted to yell at me for versus the seemingly random question perfectly designed to fluster a fountain of fire magic driven rage. “Can you fly?” Her mouth snapped shut as she looked at me like I was insane even as I snapped my fingers. “You know, flight? The ability to move through the air and defy the pull of gravity while moving at speeds faster than running would afford?”

Small fiery women always respond well to mocking, and thank goodness for my years of hard-earned skill. Each word she spoke sounded like she chewed them up and spit them out. “I don't know!”

“See? That wasn’t that hard?” Smiling like a lunatic just to bring her closer to a boil, I turned around and started conjuring and shaping a whole new-to-her contraption. Ten minutes of working and ignoring her later, I had a brand new hoverboard that I’d modified just for her. “Now you won’t need to fly! Behold! The FireRider 3000!”

My beautiful creation resembled a six-foot surfboard but the front nose of it curved up just a bit. The sides were adorned with sections of foot-long curved crystal batteries that were attached to the bottom, looking sort of like gleaming skids for it to rest on. The rune work allowing it to hover and direct the power was on the bottom of the hoverboard but covered up with a layer of thin steel with imprinted runes of durability. Pushing the board over to Gungnir, I set up a mana feed from my spear to the new board and started the charging process as I made a small memory crystal.

“Your task, my vassal, is to do something I don’t want to do nor do I have the time to do it. The memory crystal here,” I explained as I tossed it to her, “has the location and everything I know about Phoenix, Arizona. I need this place generally cleaned out. All demons, cannibals, evil necromancers, basically any kind of filth that needs to be purged from a good society, I want it gone. Burn it out. Maybe find some allies or make some friends while you’re there. This hoverboard will get you there in under three hours and can be charging in the sun. I’ll be doing sorcerer things and you be doing burny witchy things.”

Pulling out all of the experimental gear I had made for her from Gungnir, I laid them in front of her on a conjured stone table. “Different kinds of wands and staffs with sockets for different kinds of gems, take some or take’em all, just tell me what happens when you use them. This here is a suit of fire dragon armor made by yours truly. Don’t die on me, okay?”

“Yes master!” Her overbearing anger flipped way too quick to eager and obedient supplicant. Quickly stuffing herself into the armor and doing that pants dance women do, she grabbed all of the wands and shoved the gems into her pockets. Putting the memory crystal to her head, she absorbed the info and hopped on the hoverboard, blasting out of the castle.

[You know she’s going to burn the entire city down, right?] Kraken remarked. [That entire place is going to be one big ash heap.]

[Shouldn’t be that bad,] I replied, returning my focus to Gungnir and the state of my growing army. [Besides, I put all of the memories from Fernando in there, so there’s a solid chance she might seek him out as a starting point for cleaning up Phoenix. And, if that happens, we might establish another neutral city for when Earth becomes populated. Cleaning that place out will also help that lady get used to her abilities and test out my experiments which will be killing three birds with one stone in my book.]

I get it. Kicking Acantha out like that might be seen as irresponsible by some but I’ve been in her mind. I’ve seen her strengths and weaknesses. That woman is powerful. She has depths of magical power inside of her that I would be a fool to not be afraid of. She lacks experience and discernment though, Sybella’s coven has done a good job of making powerful witches but they do not test them well. The trials of life season a person in a way that nothing else ever truly does. It’s why young people run away from home, why explorers set out to seek their fortune, why men and women live and breathe at horse races and casinos, it’s more than just the rush of winning that gets them going, it’s the experience.

It also doesn’t help that I might have made a less than great impression on the two residents of Phoenix that I actually knew. I straight up killed Fernando’s and Remy’s friend, even though she enslaved them, and I wrecked the zombie dino army they brought with them. But maybe the sudden intervention of a flaming heroine to save their city might be just what they need in order to say, ‘hm, maybe he ain’t that bad’.

While my vassal went off to save a city, I went on a much more important errand, to find my damn dog. Following my mental link, I flew about four hours east where a set of craggy hills overlooked a small lake. There, my faithful canine companion was playing on the shores of that lake with a pile of roly-poly puppies the size of grown warthogs. In hindsight, maybe landing right next to the happy family wasn’t such a good idea. A dark tan blur smashed into me like a runaway train, knocking me clear into the lake. I skipped a couple times there as my mind tried to catch up to my body.

Checking to make sure that I was still in one piece and saying thankful prayers that my shields kept me conscious and well, I used my water sorcery and stood on top of the water. Mama wolf was standing at the edge of the lake, her growling causing waves in the lake to come towards me. “Spot! Control your woman, dude! Tell her I’m just the absent uncle!” Walking slowly across the surface of the lake, my brain kept reminding me that I left Gungnir at Sunstone Castle. I didn’t think I’d need my weapons to see my own damn dog.

“Hey! Relax . . . mama wanna snack?” I called with my hands up to show I meant no harm to her or her pups. Something grabbed a hold of my leg while I wasn’t paying attention and dragged me under. The teeth couldn’t penetrate my shield or my armor but the thrashing kept me from getting a handle on whatever the fuck it was. Grabbing at all of the water surrounding me and it, I used water sorcery to hurl me and my attacker up on shore.

“Fuck me,” I gasped, staring in disbelief. That right there, if my eyes don’t deceive me, is a water dragon! The unlucky bastard probably came through a temporary portal that closed before it could realize that this was a lake surrounded by a desert. It was probably hoping for a much larger body of water to grow up in undisturbed. This is exactly what I need though to start working on upgrading my own body. I already have DNA for the giant sand lizards from a while ago and now the water dragon will give me the other base piece to get this next important step started.

“And fuck you too!” I roared, grasping outwardly with my hands. The earth responded to my call, enveloping the young dragon’s limbs in dirt that hardened into tons of stone. Wishing I had my flesh golem with me, I decided to improvise. Killing the creature was not required to get what I needed. All I needed was a bit of flesh, like maybe a scale with a bit of skin and blood on the end of it should be perfect. Exercising my power again, I erected a giant stone wall behind me to create an obstacle between me and the dragon. I didn’t want mama wolf to get in the way of this.

The long blue tail of my prisoner was lashing about, frantically slamming into the stone holding it down even as the dragon blasted high pressure water at me to keep me away. Multitasking my ass off, I diverted the water off the side just enough to keep it from actually hitting but not enough for the dragon to realize that it wasn’t affecting me, all the while I was forcing the stone to grow up and around the dragon’s prone body. Ten minutes of intense concentration and manipulation finally had the dragon still and in the position I wanted. Its head was canted off to the side and it’s tail was cemented down so it couldn’t lash out. The only exposed part of the animal was along the ridge of its belly on the right side.

“That’s a good girl,” I cooed, slowly walking forward, projecting calmness and the thought that I wanted us to be friends through my mind sorcery. The young creature was simply gorgeous, and I could tell she was female by her instinctive obsession with finding a good place to nest for eggs. I wish I could examine her without all of this stone to hold her down but she was half a step away from feral fear dictating her actions. With a bit of flesh sorcery, I was able to simultaneously numb the area of extraction while pulling out a scale with a bit of flesh and blood intact. Gently waving my hand over the wound, I sped up her natural healing so that she wouldn’t have a weak spot in her natural armor for any predators to take advantage of. “Good girl,” I soothed as I backed off towards the stone wall I’d made. “Go on now, get,” I commanded as I transmuted the stone covering her into simple dirt. In a blast of sand, she turned tail and shot towards the lake like a blue missile. Acting quickly to preserve my sample, I conjured a crystal box and put it in, making sure to seal it tight.

The deep menacing growl behind me told me however that the danger was not yet over. The six inch stone wall so far separated me from Mama wolf but that wasn’t much of a consolation, especially with her babies so close at hand. Clutching my prized sample close to my chest, I decided to leave Spot and his kids for now and come back maybe when they’re a bit more grown. There’s no arguing with protective mom instincts. Taking advantage of the fact that Mama Wolf couldn’t see me or get to me that quick, I took off in an excited sprint and spread SAW’s wings, taking off for Sunstone Castle.