Creation Mage 6

in the last Mage Games trial.
Nigel saw what I was doing and said, “I notice that you haven’t practiced with that little bit of gear just yet.”
“No,” I said, running my fingers over the beautifully smooth wood.
“Why?” Nigel asked.
I weighed the question. “I guess because I’m unsure about it.  Sure, I’ve captured something as inherently cunning and lethal as a dragon, but is it really going to let me order it around?”
Nigel considered this. “Yeah,” he said slowly, “that’s a fair point.”
“I thought so. Plus, I didn’t want to bring the frat house down around our ears this close to Yuletide, you know. I’ve grown pretty fond of the old place.”
“Yeah,” Nigel said. “Me too.”
“What are you lovebirds chatting about?” Damien asked loudly, striding around the corner of the house and waving merrily at us.
“Just discussing whether or not it’s true that you were the reason that the middle finger was invented,” I said.
Damien laughed and came to stand in front of us.
As he knocked the snow off the bottom of his Doc Martens, I thought to myself that there were a couple of things that the passerby might notice about the young, black haired man.
The first thing that might have piqued a stranger’s interest was that Damien, despite looking quite human, was not at all dressed for the inclement weather. He was wearing a pair of scorched black jeans, boots, and no shirt—hardly usual for a day that would have been lucky to touch forty degrees thus far.
The second thing was that the falling snowflakes were melting as soon as they touched his naked torso. You would have, were you blessed with acute enough hearing, been able to hear the pretty little things sizzling as they touched the Fire Mage’s skin.
“Where have you been?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you all morning.”
“You missed waffles. Apparently,” said Nigel morosely.
Damien grinned and swept a few strands of black hair out of his face with a beringed hand.
“Oh, I ate some serious waffle this morning, boys, don’t you worry about that,” the L.A. native said. “I was munching on waffle like it was going out of fashion.”
“Judging by the stress that you’re putting on the word ‘waffle’ and the criminally dirty way that you’re waggling your eyebrows, I assume you’re alluding to vagina?” I asked.
Damien feigned shock. “Was it that obvious?”
“You could have possibly knocked together some sort of incantation that set fireworks off when you said the word ‘waffle’,” Nigel proposed.
“Food for thought,” said Damien, cradling his chin thoughtfully in his hand.
“You were out getting a last little bit of action before you head back to L.A.?” I asked. “Who was the unfortunate female or farm animal, then?”
Damien ignored the jibe. “You know that nymph who works in the apothecary on Haswa Lane?”
I thought I knew the girl that Damien alluded to; a pretty thing with sapphire blue skin and a smile that could stop a charging rhino in its tracks. I nodded in the affirmative.
“Body like a golem, face like the back end of a troll?” Nigel asked.
Damien flicked a tiny fireball at the Wind Mage, but Nigel deflected it with a gust of air and sent it into a snowdrift with a soft sizzle.
“Well, she and I had been exchanging flirty looks over the past few weeks,” Damien continued, “and I needed to go in there to get some burn-reverse for some of my clothes. I saw her, standing there dressed in these candy cane pants, which were so tight that if she’d farted it would have blown her boots off—”
“Charming,” Nigel said.
“—and I thought fuck it, it’s Yuletide,” Damien finished. “So I asked her out. Next thing you know, she and I are out the back engaging in what I can only describe as a full-blown pornographic coupling.”
“Beautiful,” said Nigel.
Damien shrugged and grinned. Then he said, “Are you ready to go, Nigel? We have to be at the Portal Station in half an hour. Our shit is already down there waiting for us.”
“Forty-one minutes,” the halfling corrected him.
“Whatever. Shall we make tracks?” Damien said.
“Sure,” Nigel said and got to his feet.
Just then, when it looked like I was going to be left all on my lonesome, yet another voice rang out of the growing whiteness.
“Off on your Earthbound foray, boys?” Janet Thunderstone said.
I glanced up and saw a quartet of my favorite people crunching down the garden path. Janet led the way, followed by Cecilia Chillgrave, Enwyn Emberskull, and Alura, Princess of the Gemstone Elementals. Alura, a being with a glittering diamond-like skin that was practically transparent, looked particularly dazzling and otherworldly as she walked toward us. With the eddying billows of snow and the diffused light, she was almost invisible.
“That we are,” Damien said. “And, if you’ll excuse us, fair maidens, we have to be stepping.”
Janet laughed and held her hand up for a crisp high-five as Nigel and Damien passed the girls on the path. “I think calling any of us a ‘maiden’ is a bit of a stretch,” she said, “but I appreciate the sentiment.”
“Catch you guys, later!” I called after Damien and Nigel’s retreating backs. “And remember, Nigel! Thinking positive is all very well and good, but in Los Angeles, you want to make sure that you’re testing negative too!”
“What the hell is he talking about, Damien?” I heard the halfling say to Damien, “and what is Figueroa Street?”
Then their voices were lost in the thickening blanket of snow.
“What are you ladies doing here?” I asked the four women as they stamped snow off their boots and came to stand on the decking of the porch.
“Just thought we’d walk Enwyn over here and say goodbye to you at the same time, darling,” Cecilia said.
I knew that Cecilia, Alura, and