Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey Read online

  Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey

  Ronald Long et al.

  Published by Retrovert Books, 2016.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  METAL AND MAGIC: A FANTASY JOURNEY

  First edition. May 3, 2016.

  Copyright © 2016 Ronald Long et al..

  ISBN: 978-1533774446

  Written by Ronald Long et al..

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey

  Dixxon - Teen Witch

  About Steve Windsor and Lise Carter

  A Thread of Time by J. Naomi Ay

  About J. Naomi Ay

  The Natural Order by R.J. Vickers

  About R.J. Vickers

  The Gaunlet of Feona by Kelechi E. Agu

  About Kelechi E. Agu

  Wayward by Ronald Long

  About Ronald Long

  The Hawk and His Boy by Christopher Bunn

  About Christopher Bunn

  Thanks for Reading

  Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey

  Thanks for picking up Metal and Magic! Each novel here will take you to a far off place for an exciting adventure! Take some time to explore the fantasy worlds of Gilia, Angweleth, Brimstone Hill, SpaceForce, Tormay, and...Canada?

  Adventures await you, reader!

  At the beginning and end of each story are links to subscribe to the author's email list and to show them some love by purchasing the next book in the series.

  Thanks again for picking up Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey.

  Happy reading!

  Dixxon - Teen Witch

  A FREE Gift From Authors

  Steve Windsor and Lise Carter!

  What did CAT just say? Why does Dixxon think she doesn’t have parents?

  Get the ANSWERS to those questions and much more in the BEHIND THE SCENES companion to the DIXXON series!

  Inside this series—Dixxon’s magical and mystical new world of Louisiana Bayou voodoo and hoodoo—there are many Cajun Creole euphemisms, sayings and sarcastic quips that the characters spout at each other when they’re annoyed, frustrated, or in a hurry. Many of them are in a mashup of French and Creole that we researched and loved for the tone and setting of the series.

  Yet all of those untranslated phrases left our readers slightly confused at times, so we created a vocabulary and translation quick reference guide to the new world of Brimstone Hill. And just to make things interesting we’ve thrown in some backstory secrets for you.

  You can get the BEHIND THE SCENES companion ebook by clicking HERE:

  Or visiting:

  https://authorbasics.com/dxxn-bts/

  We’re sure you’ll LOVE it!

  Steve and Lise

  MAGIC MAE-MAE

  — 1 —

  ROXXANNE LEVINE, LAST of the black witches of old Louisiana, was about as subtle as a Frasch Forest crocdog at a Blue Moon on Sunday. The fluorescent purple glow and black shadows of Bile Island lit up her face like the mischievous old conjurer she’d become.

  Near one hundred and ninety-two years old, Roxxanne was going on her twelfth run at sweet sixteen, the witch equivalent of queen. No one was allowed more than six terms, even the darkest of black witches knew that. Yet rules were for the flock, not the wolves, and Roxxanne . . . had a plan.

  Deep at the center of Bile Island, she stared into the flames of the Cauldron of Conjuring with all the empathy of a mansion cat.

  “We’re burning her.”

  Black and beautiful in a way that would make the night envious, it wasn’t so much that Roxxanne was heartless. Most of the old-world witches that survived the Great Purge, and all of the new white ones, were surprisingly kind and beautiful, but Roxxanne lived by one rule. A rule that had saved her kind from annihilation—magic and mystic, and morphing and mortals . . . don’t mix.

  The Purge. . . Catholics, conjurers and mythical creatures had all locked themselves in a battle to claim what was left of the so-called “humanity” of the old world. Any being—mystical or poor unfortunate soul for that matter, that the humans thought might be charmed in some way . . . got burned . . . just to be sure.

  You couldn’t blame them really—magic had inflicted its share of insult and injury on humanity—but so many non-magic folk got swept up and burned at the stake in The Purge. . .

  The growl in the darkness at the edge of the glow signaled his arrival. La was a grey-black lichen whose morphed-to-wolf ears were jagged and his fur had patches missing. Everything about him spoke of a hard-won wisdom from battling and dodging silver-tipped and sulphur-dipped crossbolts in The Purge. He loped into the purple light that flooded the clearing and took his place, sitting at the edge of the circle around the cauldron. “Burning her?” he growled more than spoke. Then he morphed himself to his more human form.

  Last of the pureblood lichens, Varg earned his place on the Cauldron Council the old-fashioned way—he’d killed his predecessor. This was an unspoken truth about how anyone got on the council in the first place. Because once you tasted the power of the council, there was no going back to being just another “dog in the pack.” But there wasn’t a crocdog howling in the cypress swamps of the Frasch Forest who didn’t fear Varg. His seat on the council wasn’t changing paws anytime soon.

  Varg pinned back his tattered ears and morphed himself halfway back to a hellhound, and then returned to his tall, dark and lonesome, human-looking form. Probably to let the rest of them know he still held his power over the moon. As if they’d forgotten.

  “I never consented to this.”

  Roxxanne’s eyes glowed and glistened from the lapping purple flames of the cauldron. She rolled one of them toward Varg. The other remained fixed on the scene projecting from the center of the smoke rising from the pot. Then she cocked her head slightly and sniffed a little. A witch could smell “predator” on a lichen, and there was always a little whiff of it just before they leapt upon prey. But tonight, the sweet charcoaled stench of the cauldron was all there was. “He broke the bond,” she said. Then she pointed a long finger toward the flames. “So burn she will.”

  Varg grumbled and growled under his breath, but offered little more. He glanced around the edge of the clearing. Apparently, he was the last of the six to arrive.

  Roxxanne turned her back to him and stared back into the flames, almost daring Varg to protest her decision by attacking her. There were a few seconds of silence before she spoke again. “As I’m sure you’re aware, I need not convene the council to carry out this decision.” The statement was meant for more than Varg. She looked around the edges of the cauldron at the rest of them.

  The other four were easy enough to control. Pixies were. . . Well, pixies were pixies, weren’t they? Flitting and flighty, they were hard to pin down at the best of times. As for the undead, the giants and the suckers? They each had particular vices that made them susceptible to influence. However, Roxxanne normally only concerned herself with Varg —he was the one she had to worry about. . .

  Nervous eyes and restless grumbles told her that no one would protest tonight. They all knew the law.

  Roxxanne glanced back at Varg and smiled. “This meeting is mere courtesy, a reminder of the consequences of the failings of our past. And no one”—she turned her gaze back toward the scene, projecting itself out from inside the flames of the cauldron; her plan was playing itself out perfectly—“n
ot even a great white witch is immune from judgment.”

  But they all knew the real reason Roxxanne was burning one of her own.

  In the old world, Brimstone Hill, Louisiana was a boom town. Rich sulphur deposits, wealthy land barons and a seemingly sinless civility reigned supreme over its past. But the Great Purge turned the townspeople to sheep again and drove them right back into the waiting arms of religion and ruin.

  Frightened by the sorcery they had unwittingly coexisted with for centuries, magic and mysticism out in the open was all it took for them to clamp down. Now, children attended schools run by powerful priests, who used a combination of old-world Catholicism and new-world hoodoo-voodoo to do battle with their new sworn evil enemy—magic, in any form that it took.

  Light or dark magic, and every unexplained thing in between, was the subject of everyday schooling. In some ways, it was just like the Catholic schools of old. But in reality, it was more military boot camp for magic hunters than any establishment for traditional education.

  Religion had taken the new world back to when the church was most powerful—the age of horses and heathens, and steam power and grave consequences for sin. Gone was the technology and science that had dethroned religion from its perch of power, and gone was the instant access to facts and information that led to religion’s ruin. Any “truth” that remained after the Purge was what the clergy said it was. Everything else . . . was sin.

  And by giving up most of their independence and freedoms, it seemed the people had been delivered from the devils of magic and sin. Those were banished for good. Now, all the sin was safely expelled to the outer reaches. It seemed that dealing in hope and security was the one drug people would give up their souls to get.

  But beyond the cities and towns of the new Louisiana lie the lakes and the forests, and the swamps and the cauldrons of conjuring that still existed. Around Brimstone Hill, the crocdogs had been driven into the Frasch Forest back before anyone could remember.

  Oh sure, there was the occasional witch, real or invented, to be burned at the stake beneath those same moss-covered trees. And once in a while some livestock disappeared, and a stray cat or two might wander through town, causing a stir until it was hunted down and “dealt with.” But on most nights, the townspeople were content to huddle in their homes by a crackling fire, listening to faraway howling echo its way out of the Frasch Forest and across Prien Lake.

  Fifteen years ago was not one of those nights. . .

  No sane citizen ventured into the dark depths of the Frasch Forest . . . unless their priest told them there was a witch that needed burning.

  This night, just far enough inside the forest that any magical creature would know, a clearing was lit to a bright flaming and flickering orange glow. A black shadow cast from the burning logs beneath the woman. Her shrieking was terrible and every town citizen in the clearing—women, children and grown men alike—cupped their hands over their ears to shield themselves from the horror of it.

  The flames crept closer to the woman’s feet. “Please!” she shouted. But the pleading was not meant for anyone in the crowd. “Don’t do this! It was not as you believe. I am with—”

  “Hold your wicked tongue, witch!” the Father’s voice shouted over the crowd of townspeople. “Admitting it now will not serve you . . . in this world or the next.” He made sure he spoke loud enough to shake his flock of followers, now busy trying to look away. He held his torch high above his head. “Brothers and sisters, do not avert thine eyes from this witch! For she is a dangerous devil of the darkness and has consorted with the black spirits of old, seeking to steal into your homes at night and damn your children’s souls to the black.”

  At that, most of the smaller children screamed, and then buried their faces into the folds of the long black skirts each of their mothers wore. But fathers pulled the boys’ faces back out and made them watch the flames . . . and the witch. Better for them to learn this way than the other. Consorting with magic was forbidden, but boys were particularly susceptible to a witch’s wiles.

  Some of those in the crowd—hiding their own secrets—knew that first hand. They were the ones who shouted the loudest. “Burn the beast!” a voice yelled. “Lest she spread her sin among us.”

  The pile of logs beneath the woman and the huge timber cross she was bound to would normally be a small matter for a great white witch. Were she the all-powerful demon they thought her to be, she surely would’ve leapt from the post she was bound to and rained sulphur and sin down on the townspeople of Brimstone Hill, but the burlap spellsack that the priest had placed over her head and shoulders tightened as she struggled, and no magic, real or imagined, could be called on to save her.

  Slowly, the fire grew in height and anger around her feet. She’d been made to walk barefoot from town all the way to the forest. She shook her head violently as the first of her flesh—her bare toes—began to crackle and smoke. She gritted her teeth and tried to push back the pain as her great mother before her had taught her. The fluorescent green paisley stitching on her long black skirt swirled, mimicking the flames, just before it caught fire. And she couldn’t help but cry out, “Aaaah!”

  The treetops above the clearing lit up to a burning orange blaze, and the night air filled with ungodly screaming and screeching. The townspeople cringed and some even cowered, but steadied and spurred on by their Father, none turned away now.

  Just outside the glowing edges of the clearing, a shadowed woman, her face barely visible under the hood of her deep purple cloak, held a trembling young man against a moss-covered cypress tree. Her crooked stick, steady and forceful in her left hand, hovered near the artery along the man’s throat. She gripped his arm with her free hand and pressed her cheek into his, forcing his face toward the blaze in the clearing.

  “This wasn’t what I intended,” he said. “She was just supposed to be warned.”

  “We both know what she was supposed to be, don’t we?” said the woman. She touched her crooked stick to her once-ally’s neck and he froze in fear. “We know who she was supposed to be, too.” She turned her face toward the flames. Only her perfect white teeth could be seen when she smiled. They glistened and reflected the orange flames from the clearing. “But there are those who won’t suffer to have her be that, and you . . . were all the excuse they needed.”

  “Damn you”—the man turned his head away from the flames, and the screams—“and damn your evil sister.” Then he stared down at the swampy forest floor. “What . . . what have I done? . . . Forgive—”

  The dark figure turned her face back to him. She leaned in, as if to kiss him, but licked his cheek, lapping up a single tear that had rolled halfway down. “Mmmm,” she said. “The tainted taste of pain and sorrow. Nothing sweeter.”

  “You mock me?” he said. “Now?”

  “Don’t play the innocent fool!” she said. She pressed her cheek back next to his, more forceful this time, and turned him to face the fruits of his own desire. “You knew the consequences of it, even before I rooted the two of you out.” She pulled her head back slightly and looked up and down the man’s body. “You’re predictable creatures, aren’t you? Waddling about in your suits like penguins, pretending, pointing your little fingers everywhere at the sinners.” Then she leaned back in and pressed her waist against his, softly brushing her hand up his leg. “All the while we both know what you really want to point, don’t we?”

  Ignoring the disgusting witch, he stared at the amulet on the burning woman’s neck, its purple glow flickering now, toward the end. “You evil—you’ve tricked me. You never said it would. . . I didn’t believe it would come to this.”

  The smallest cackle escaped the dark figure’s lips. Then she shoved herself away from him and backed up quickly. “Reap what you’ve sown, sinner.” And with a whip of her stick—CRACK!—the man’s body flew backward several feet, smacked into a moss-covered cypress tree, and then flopped down to the swampy damp floor of the Frasch Forest.

 
At that same moment, a last scream sliced its way from the clearing just beyond them. The crowd of townspeople gasped. The dark witch smiled at the crackle and glow of the blazing inferno.

  And a slumped-over figure, charcoaled black and ablaze in orange and green flames, hung lifeless from the cross in the center of it all.

  After a few moments, the Father walked silently out of the clearing, and the townspeople slowly followed, single file, behind him. With torches casting shadows between the trees and reflecting off the floor of the forest, they made their way out of sight of the blackness and smoke filtering up through the treetops behind them. They followed the dark path that led back to their saintly sanctuary, Brimstone Hill.

  Their latest battle with sin was bound and left lifeless, still burning in the clearing. As they left, the rest of their own sins went with them. None knew what they had done to their future.

  The dark witch looked down at the man she’d seduced into doing her bidding. “That’s the trouble with your kind,” she said. “None of you believe anything . . . until it’s too late.”

  Fifteen years back into the future, in Brimstone Hill’s present-day delusion, magic should’ve learned to be . . . more careful. But history turns to rumor and rumor to legend . . . and legends. . . Well, who truly believes in an old black cat’s tale of great white witches?

  “Baxxter!” I wake up screaming for my carecasters—I’m exhausted, it’s been this way for almost a month. My eyes flit around the room, searching for the familiar—the fireplace, the tall wooden posts of my bed, tree limbs scratching the outside of my—it’s still dark. My room? But the forest . . . and that screaming was. . . “Baxxster!”

  When the heavy wooden door to my room finally creaks open, I know I’m fully awake. And Cat and Broom rush in, just like they have every day for the past three weeks. My carecaster mansion cat, Baxxster, is always in front, jet black and just as serious. “Again?” he says. Then he glances back at Broom. “This simply will not do. I’ve warned you for weeks.” He scampers to the fireplace, just like he always does.