Tongue Eater (Mage Errant, #6)

by John Bierce

“Alright then, good enough for me. I’m in.” Sabae spluttered. “Hold on, there’s so much more that we need to discuss before—” Godrick stood and clapped Hugh on the shoulder, probably hard enough to leave a bruise. “Ah’m in.” Mackerel clapped his covers together resolutely from Talia’s lap. Sabae sank her face into her hands. “This is insane; you’re all insane. I can’t believe any of this.” “Are you in?” Talia asked. “Of course I’m in!” Sabae replied. “Do you think I’d let you lot get killed without me? I’m just going to be complaining about how insane this all is the whole time.”

Sabae blamed Talia. Really, blaming Talia was always a decent strategy. You couldn’t have a more loyal friend than Talia, but if there were such a thing as a chaos affinity, Talia would have it.

Yolanda, of course, chose that moment to try and use Indris’s snout as a slide, which panicked everyone except the dragon queen, who seemed to find the situation hilarious. Well, and Mackerel, who also tried to slide down the dragon queen’s face.

Then she felt someone else wrap their arms around her, then another, and a moment later, her family all had their arms wrapped around her. Off in one corner of the room, Ranna sighed. “This would be heartwarming from any other family, but the fact you’re hugging over murder plans rather detracts from that.” Everyone ignored her.

The creature had a bald tail, a stout body, and a long, snaggle-toothed snout. Sabae stared at it awkwardly. “What is this, and why did you ignore it?” Hugh looked back at them. “It’s just a possum, we get them in Emblin sometimes. They’re harmless, just step around it.” Godrick and Sabae stared at the creature, which hissed at them. “It doesn’t look harmless,” Godrick said. “It’s one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen,” Sabae added. “My youngest cousin used to catch them in the woods, then bring them back home and dress them up to hold tea parties with them,” Hugh said. “There are plenty of them up in the Skyreach Range,” Talia added. The possum hissed at them again, and Godrick and Sabae gingerly stepped around it, giving it a wide berth. “There’s somethin’ seriously wrong with Emblin,” Sabae said. “And the Skyreach Range.” Godrick nodded vigorously at that. “I think they’re cute,” Talia said. The possum just hissed at them,

Despite the crowding, and despite the fact that several of their neighbors kept giving them curious looks, Hugh felt none of his usual anxiety in crowds. After days traveling the labyrinths, he was just happy to relax. Or, at least, he felt less of his usual anxiety than normal. Hugh was pretty sure that his calm, relaxed state would be an anxious, terrible one for a normal person.

A heartbeat later, a thick ray of dreamfire burst out of her mouth, slamming straight into the red paper armor’s helmet. She didn’t need to fire it from her mouth— it was pure showmanship— but if you weren’t going to think about dramatic presentation when casting battle magic, what was even the point? You might as well just become an accountant or bureaucrat.

Sabae stopped walking and pointed at something, looking bizarrely enraged, and the rest of them all turned to look. There, waddling past the base of one of the rare, non-mulberry trees in the forest— a pine of some sort— was a possum. “That,” Sabae said, “is utter kraken crap. You’ve all been hauling that one possum around with you just to mess with me, haven’t you? There’s no way those things live on Anastis and Apoptis and Kemetrias.” Laughing, the others denied any involvement, while the possum gave them a confused look and waddled away in a hurry. Well, as much of a hurry as a possum could move in. “I swear,” Sabae said, “if we find possums on Limnus, too, I’m going to declare war on the whole multiverse.”