Helsing Chronicles: The Bastard of Rosmarus; Chapter 4

Guide
Intro
First Chapter
Second Chapter
Third Chapter

    As the van left the keep, Daniel took another look at the supplies he’d been given. There were seven gweydra throwing knives with leather handles and sheaths, a small collection of potions and sealed spells, an enchanted compass, a set of binoculars that could see through simple illusions, a technomantic radio, and a small supply of food. From what he understood, gweydra was the metal that lent itself most to charms and enchantment, which was probably why the knives had been given to him. In the van with him there was Ephraim, Rachel, Troy, and a jaeger in her early twenties named Shelley Clerval. For armor, they each wore jackets with enchanted patches sewn onto the outside, a layer of isendur and keldenshtahl chainmail inside, and an interior lining of leather that Ephraim had hinted was made from manticore hides. There were also plenty of other clothing items--especially boots, belts, and gloves--designed and enchanted to benefit the wearers in some way that was in line with their talents and their role in the mission. To a Topsider, it mostly would have looked like one big fashion statement, but to anyone born and raised in the Netherworld it was the very image of sheer, militant power.

    Daniel muttered a few words of Avalonian as he directed his will to the first blade. It rose up about half a foot into the air in much the same way as the spoon Dante tested him with earlier except that this required very little effort. With another word, the wizard sent the knife slowly spinning in place. He gave it four spins before he reversed the direction, and then four more spins before he reversed it again. It took him less than a minute before the exercise stopped requiring his full attention and he was able to look around again. He glanced out the window and nearly jumped when he saw Vera, wings unfurled and rifle in taloned hands, gliding through the air about a yard away from the van.

    “What’s she there for?” asked Daniel after he regained control of the wildly spinning blade, which he had thankfully had the good sense to leave sheathed for the exercise.

   “Which one? Vera?” asked Rachel.

   “Who else?” asked Daniel.

    “Well I’m kind of new to field work, but most of the times I’ve gone there’s been all three of the sisters escorting us out of the city,” said the gnomish technomancer. “As far as I know they’ve never had to fight anyone on the way, but it’s a good safety policy.”

    “Safety?” the wizard asked. “You do realize your captain is sending teenagers into battle, right? I mean, how old are you anyway?”

    Rachel looked disdainfully at him and said, “A gentleman does not ask a lady her age.”

    “First off,” said Daniel. “That rule only applies to old people. And secondly, I’m a murderous taskmage, not a gentleman.”

    “If they join up early enough,” said Ephraim from the front. “Recruits are sent into the field at around eleven years of age. All they do is surveillance and other mostly safe jobs, of course, and there’s all kinds of wards to keep them out of actual conflict, but the point is that a teenaged zealot or knight is expected to be a lot more capable than most people their age. Besides, there’s a lot of work to do, and we young folk are actually getting the less dangerous assignments. There’s a reason you saw hardly anyone older than twenty-five at the keep.”

    Daniel digested that for a few moments as he casually added a second knife to his exercise. After a few moments of watching the harpy flying effortlessly through the fading rays of sunset, he said, “So what exactly is this not-that-dangerous mission we’re heading off to, anyway?”

    “Hobgoblin,” said Shelley. “His name is Fellbrook, he has a habit of building small crews of dark fey, he likes to terrorize small towns until he and his crew have had their fill, and according to Quintus he’s found a new feeding ground a little east of Reno.” She tossed Daniel a folder and added, “You can read the rest for yourself. I’m going to sleep.”

    Daniel opened the folder and skimmed the contents as the young woman shut herself down in the style of one trained to claim restfulness in the hours between gunfights. Apparently Fellbrook was supposed to have four goblins, a boggart, a kobold, a spriggan, and a red cap. As with most dark fey, the motivations for each member of the crew came down to either a natural drive to make mischief or else a hunger for the blood and spirit of their human prey. Daniel flicked a finger and another of the knives rose into the air. The casualties left in the wake of the crew included murders, suicides, deadly falls, outright insanity, and plenty of general mayhem. There were even a few car crashes in there.

    The wizard looked out the window again as they entered the freeway and said, “This is the safe job?”

    “Keep your voice down,” said Ephraim. “Or Shelley will explain to you her policy on people who disturb her rest. Anyway, I said we got the less dangerous missions; I never said that a single one of them was safe.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and asked, “You understand your role in this?”

    The wizard shrugged. “I don’t know. Tracking spells, jinxes, evocation, counterspells, that kind of stuff?”

    “Tracking is for me and Ephraim,” said Rachel. “Making things go boom is also my department, and direct combat is for Ephraim, Shelley, and Troy. You’re working on the counterspells, making sure we don’t get hexed or tricked.”

    “What she said,” said Ephraim. “We might need you for the other stuff, but if we do we’ll ask you.”

    The wizard didn’t know if he should be more relieved or disappointed at that. He simply continued the exercise as he considered his role. It wasn’t glamorous, but when dealing with the fey it was certainly necessary to have someone magical countermeasures. If Fellbrook and his crew became aware of the team early on it would likely be a constant struggle to subvert their traps and supernatural attacks. Not to mention that all his skills tended towards that role rather than towards direct combat. Of course, if the fey did discover the Helsing and Daniel did wind up fighting back a constant bombardment of hexes, then the first thing they would do would be to come at him directly. After considering that possibility, the young wizard began to pay much more attention to his exercise. He had about five more hours of travel to properly acquaint himself with the throwing knives, and he would feel much better if he had established a firm telekinetic grip by the end of that time.

* * * * *

    “And here we are,” said Ephraim.

    Daniel looked up and turned his attention outside. The van had just left the freeway, and they were now surrounded by sidewalks, loosely spaced shops, and the struggle between the human desire for greenery and the dryness of the actual land. “Does that mean we can escape the van soon?” he asked.

    “It depends on your definition of ‘soon’,” said Ephraim. “There’s still about three hours to sunrise and we prefer not to get a motel until it’s light out. For now we’ll be driving around the town so Rachel and I can gather intelligence.” He grabbed at quarter from one of the cupholders and flicked it at Shelley. “Rise and shine, huntress. It’s your turn to drive.”

    Shelley made a few disgruntled noises, but she didn’t argue when Ephraim pulled into a parking lot and switched seats with her. Besides rubbing her eyes for a moment she showed no signs of drowsiness as she took over the van. At the same time that she settled into the driver’s seat, Ephraim and Rachel got out their gear, and Daniel leaned his head forward over the next seat to get a better look. Rachel had a thick laptop open and she was currently plugging in a small satellite dish, a camcorder with a flexible mount that ended in a suction cup, a handheld radio that hooked onto her belt, and something that looked like a cross between a seismograph and a music box, all of which were adorned with the typical technomantic runes. Ephraim, on the other hand, had only a notepad and a silver compass with three arrows and the seven mystical archetypes in the place of the usual directions.

    After watching the two murmuring and making notes for half a minute, Daniel lost interest and returned to his exercises. The seven knives were laid out in a row on the back seat with him, except for one that was spinning leisurely in the air. Every four minutes he would switch to another knife and a new pattern of movement, but that took up only a tiny fraction the wizard’s attention. Over the course of the drive he had also practiced divination on nearby drivers, conjured rodent-shaped illusions, transfigured a stale french fry he’d found on the floor, and summoned candle flames. He’d also made a pass at a packet questions on literature, history, math, and science that Dante had given him, but after flipping through and doing all the easy questions he’d found the remaining work too irking not to postpone. Now he was finishing up the fire exercise, and soon he had nine little lights dancing around his hand.

    After extinguishing the flames, Daniel decided he should probably get to his actual job. He opened his mind and whispered an incantation. He was divining for Fellbrook and his minions much like Rachel and Ephraim were, except that they were looking for any information they could find whereas Daniel was looking for something more specific. All he wanted to know was whether or not the hobgoblin’s crew had any malice focused directly on them.

    As soon as the incantation was finished Daniel was hit by a crawling tide of menace. It felt like a swarm of insects, their squirming bodies heated by the desert sun. He rocked back into his seat as a fit of vertigo came over him and the taste of blood filled his mouth. Then he closed his eyes, focused his breathing, and closed his mind off bit by bit until the sensation was intelligible. After a few more breaths, Daniel was sure that the power he sensed was random and ignorant of their presence. He also realized that he had a headache and there were dozens of pinpricks of phantom pain dancing across the rest of his body. He groaned as he took out a notebook of his own and started drawing protective symbols in sharpie.

    “Have you ever used divination in a situation like this before?” asked Ephraim without looking away from his compass.

    “No,” said Daniel. “Not like this.”

    “Well you’ll have to learn to tone the scrying down when you’re dealing with supernatural evil,” said Ephraim. “You probably didn’t realize it, but you screamed like a little girl for a few seconds.”

    “Stop lying,” said Rachel. “It was just a little shout, don’t worry about it.”

    Daniel blushed but he decided to pretend he hadn’t just taken a psychic beating. “As far as I can tell, Fellbrook doesn’t know about us,” he said. “Even if he does, there’s no tracking spells or anything else aimed at us in particular. I’m drawing some sigils to keep us safe and hidden, but I doubt they’ll hold when you start actively getting in his way.”

    “That’s fine,” said Ephraim. “Just do whatever you can for now.”

    Daniel took that as request for silence so he shut up and returned his attention to the notebook. Like most sigils, the design he was working on involved a combination of runes and geometry. First he drew a geometric figure--a star of David in this case--and then he scribbled a written incantation inside it. Instead of writing the incantation in full, he took each word individually and interposed its first, middle, and last letter into a single symbol; erased a few bits for the sake of elegance; added some dots and curved lines in the empty spaces in and around the symbol to indicate the missing sounds; and then combined the resulting symbols so that their shapes touched without overlapping. This incantation was three words long with the middle one being a word of power and the other two being in Atlantean, and the final arrangement looked vaguely like an ornate gateway. It would have taken an hour to work it all out if this were his first time making the sigil, but Daniel had this one memorized already so it only took him about eleven minutes for each copy.

    “Oh no,” said Rachel fearfully as Daniel started on the third sigil. She looked around at her comrades, her gaze lingering on Shelley. “I just got a message online. There’s...there’s been an attack on the Buchanan Estate. There’s not much information here, but it looks like the estate’s been lost.” She made a few sounds that suggested the beginnings of words and then she gave herself a few seconds to decide what to say next. “I’ll try to find out more.”

    The van was very quiet after that, but it had also been very quiet before that. Apart from the way Rachel had delivered the information, the only clues Daniel could detect about its significance were the furtive glances that his fellow passengers were now exchanging.

    “At the risk of being rude to the people who are forcing me to endanger myself for them,” said Daniel. “What does that mean?”

    “The Buchanan Estate is a base of operations for the Jaeger clans,” said Ephraim softly. “It’s a large property in Southwest Texas that handles finances, record statistics on paranormal activity, and provides lodging for jaegers in between hunts. The estate serves as a training camp, a safehouse, a storage facility, and whatever else they need from it. It’s also heavily involved in the expeditions to Latin America to support the Jaegers and knights down there.” He sighed. “The clans were among those who stood by us during the Purge. Many of the chronicles and artifacts that were recovered from our lost keeps are--or at least were--held at the estate. If it’s been lost then the clans and all their allies have just suffered a horrible tragedy as well as a critical tactical loss. There’ll be more.”

    “I’ve got something,” said Rachel. “Most of them were able to evacuate. Most of the paths through the Veil were blocked, but there were a few through Geverna and Underland that were safe. The vaults beneath the manor have been sealed and the people who didn’t escape or die in the attack are all holed up down there. I’ve...I’ve got a list of casualties here.” She looked up at Shelley. “Do you want me to...you know?”

    “I don’t want names,” said Shelley. “We’re on a hunt, and we need to focus on our prey. When Fellbrook is dead, then I can start worrying about my kin.”

    No one said anything after that. Daniel considered asking about the Buchanan Estate some more, but the silence grew more and more settled with each passing minute, and his inner debate was too slow to deliver a verdict while speaking still seemed vaguely possible. He resolved to return to his sigils, but first he peeked out the window. There in the dimness of early morning the wizard saw the outline of a single figure standing on the edge of a nearby overpass playing a violin. The sight sent a barely detectable tingling across his skin, and he quickly looked away.

* * * * *

    Most of the Helsing were asleep, leaving only Daniel and Rachel awake in the motel room. Daniel had just finished warding the room against the targets and now he watched curiously as Rachel analyzed the data from their tour of the city. She had a map laid out in front of her, and she was inscribing runes on it based on the notes she and Ephraim had taken. Daniel didn’t recognize the runes, so he figured they were probably developed and used specifically by the Helsing.

    Rachel looked up at him and asked, “Why aren’t you asleep? I’m pretty sure you didn’t even nap on the ride.”

    “I don’t need to,” said Daniel. “My savanos supplements my need for sleep just like all my other physical issues.”

    “Your what?” asked Rachel.

    The wizard tilted his head. “You really don’t know? It’s my aura, the extension of my spirit that mediates between my being and the arcane energies of the external world. In wizards it’s strong and subtle enough to compensate for injuries and other physical problems.”

    “Huh,” said Rachel. “Well I’ve only been with the knights for about a year. Plus, most of my training has been pretty specific so far.”

    Daniel grunted in understanding and asked, “So what’s the situation?”

    “Mostly minor mischief so far. There’s signs of strife and confusion all over the place, but no violence yet. Typically, things like Fellbrook will start by planting the seeds of violence and despair and then use a single bloody incident to set everything off. All the latent conflict is arranged in clusters of relationships with each cluster having a single tie to the catalyst, so if we can stop the catalyst we can at least delay the rest of the scheme.”

    “And you know this after one year of specialist education?” asked Daniel.

    “Well, yeah,” said Rachel. “But mostly I know it from reading the report Dante gave us.”

    “Oh,” said Daniel flatly. “I suppose I should have opened that.”

    The wizard blushed for a moment, sighed, and decided to find something else to do while Rachel continued to analyze the data. He grabbed the notebook again and tapped a pen against it while he considered what spells to ready. Eventually he settled on three and he started ripping out papers for each of them. The first was essentially a weaponized ward against goblins and other dark fey. For that he tore out four pages and began by inscribing the Japanese kanji for “iron” and “bee” on the first of them. He drew them out in pencil separately a few times, all the while muttering lines of Avalonian poetry, and then made them into a single character using pen. After spending seven minutes on that, Daniel repeated the process on the next two pages but with the words of power typically used for “noon” and “arrow” on the second page and a handful of minor runes traditionally used to repel the fey on the third page. As he prepared the three pages, he visualized each of the things being represented and drew on any memories he might have that corresponded to them, throwing anything he could into the casting. Then on the fourth page he slowly and methodically combined the work of the previous papers into a single sigil resembling a warhammer. Finally, he placed the fourth paper atop the other three and fused them with a binding spell so that whatever skill and power had gone into the earlier pages were taken up into the completed image. The whole process took around thirty-five minutes.

    “What’s that?” asked Rachel as he started on the second spell. She was getting a drink of water as he took out three more pages from the notebook.

    Daniel started folding the pages as he answered her. “It’s a sort aggressive binding spell. More like a strangling spell actually.” He folded the first page four times and then started on the second one. “Basically, what it does is draw in nearby currents of magic energy into a net that ensnares and strangles a target. A Topsider would only get a little nausea or vertigo from the spell, but for magical beings it’s a lot more damaging.”

    “Huh,” said Rachel. “Shouldn’t you be doing something to keep us hidden?”

    “There’s not really anything more to do,” said Daniel. He had folded the second page three times and now he was starting to draw the proper sigil again and again within the borders of the creases. “If I had some materials I might be able be able to add a bit to spells I’ve already cast, but as it is there’s nothing I can do for it except be ready in case something threatens them. If the wards are in danger of failing, I’ll feel it and then I can counter the problem.”

    “Okay,” said Rachel. she sat back down at the map.

    “Any new revelations?” asked Daniel.

   “Possibly,” said the changeling nervously. “Have you ever heard of a mooncalf?”

    “I think so,” said Daniel. “That’s someone under magical compulsion, right? A sort of servitor?”

    “Not quite,” said Rachel. “A mooncalf isn’t actually under a compulsion. Instead, they’re tormented by dreams and visions that lead them to behave in a certain way. At the very least, it’s a Netherworlder having fun at the expense of some poor victim; at the worst the process can be used to lead someone to terrible evil. In the latter case the victim is presented with a hyper realistic nightmare in which they have the option of ending the scenario by doing something they know to be wrong. The illusion repeats again and again until they choose the escape, whatever that may be, and then the tormentor continues to present yet more dreams and visions directing the victim to commit more and more sins until the victim’s resistance is almost completely worn away. Then they’re eased back into reality and sort of pushed toward some terrible path.”

  “Creepy,” said Daniel, trying to put as much unease as he could into the word. As someone whose work with Rosmarus had frequently involved illusion and mesmerism, he was finding it hard to conceal his professional curiosity about this unique method of mental mischief. “So you think that a mooncalf is part of Fellbrook’s design?”

    “I think they’re the catalyst,” said Rachel. “I just need to find him to confirm it.”

    “But isn’t that good?” asked Daniel. “If we know what the catalyst is, and whoever it is isn’t too hard to find, doesn’t that make things easier for us?”

    “Sure, it helps us stall things,” said Rachel slowly. “But the best answer to a mooncalf is a sin-eater and the process doesn’t leave them able to do much of anything  else for a while.”

    Daniel felt like he was beginning to understand the situation. “So basically,” he said. “Our fearless leader will be on the bench for the rest of the mission.”

    “Don’t forget ‘stunningly handsome’,” said Ephraim as he sat up from where he had been sleeping between the beds. “Why am I on the bench?”

    “Go back to sleep,” said Rachel. “I’ll tell you when I’ve sorted everything out and you’ve had enough rest.”

    “Screw that,” said Ephraim as he crawled toward the map. “What’s up?”

    Daniel decided to back out of the conversation. If they were going to be short one empath when facing the hobgoblin, it was probably best that he be ready for combat. After he finished up the strangling spell, he tore out four more pages with which to prepare the final working. The first page was focused on fire, the second on ice, and the third on the moon. He wrote out three words of power for each aspect of the working, inscribed two additional runes for each word of power, and sealed each aspect within a boundary shaped like a long, thin leaf. Finally, on the last page he combined all three aspects, the images arranged so that they converged in the center of the page and shot out from there as if seeking the corners of an invisible triangle. Then Daniel bound the four papers into a single page, crumpled it up, and put it inside a leather pouch he’d had the foresight to bring along, and then hung the pouch from his neck as the page’s sigil slowly etched itself onto the newly made talisman. This last working wasn’t designed for immediate, flashy use like the other two. Instead it was an enchantment that he could draw on to empower and accentuate other spells, particularly those of evocation.

    “Have I mentioned the need for materials?” asked Daniel. “I’m going to have to keep recharging this thing if I don’t have anything but a sigil to put in it.”

    “Then keep recharging it,” said Ephraim. “We can go shopping after the mooncalf is taken care of. Assuming that Fellbrook’s crew isn’t after our blood, which they probably will be.” Then he clapped his hands and shouted, “Everyone up! We’ve got a target, we’ve got a plan, and the sun is on our side.”

    As Shelley and Troy returned to wakefulness, Daniel considered what it meant for Ephraim to be out of the action. He hadn’t seen anyone in action yet, but Troy and Rachel were barely any older than he, and Rachel’s talents didn’t seem very combat-oriented. He had gotten the impression that the younger pair were mostly there for training while Shelley and Ephraim were sent to handle the real danger. Daniel had tagged along to a few less covert assassination jobs, and he knew from experience that no matter how strong someone was they still needed at least one other person to cover their back, especially when magic came into the equation. The wizard looked around at the faces of his new comrades as Ephraim explained the situation and the step on which they would soon be embarking. He thought of the trouble that would be coming for them soon and the vulnerability Ephraim’s absence would present.