Daniel looked down at his hands in confusion as the rest of the squad took a breather in preparation for the next fight.
“Problem, wizard?” asked Shelley.
He looked up at her expecting mockery, but while he couldn’t exactly concern in her gaze, neither could he find any hint of a leer. She wasn’t making fun of him. Her comrade seemed troubled and she genuinely wanted to know why.
“It’s that fight just now,” said Daniel. “I know I’m not a knight or anything, but I’m good. Or at least I’m supposed to be. There’s been plenty of times before that I needed to think fast, and I’ve never cast a spell and just...just missed before. I don’t know what happened just now and it’s kind of scary.”
Shelley pondered that for a few seconds and said, “Isn’t there supposed to a law about you?”
“Pardon?”
“In the Code of Agrippa,” she clarified. “The laws the universities made up. Isn’t there something about wizards in there?”
“Thou shalt not strike the pillars, nor erect imitations in their place,” recited Daniel immediately. “But that’s not just about wizards, and it only counts if someone actually tries to kill us in such a way as to keep our power from being passed on to someone else. As long as there are still forty-two living souls carrying that heritage around with them tomorrow, the universities don’t care whether or not I happen to get killed today.”
Shelley’s brow wrinkled. “I thought it was thirty-six?”
“Trust me,” said Daniel. “It’s forty-two. I haven’t ever attended a meeting of the Wizengamot yet, but the only insider I know told me they prefer to keep outsiders from knowing too much about them. Plus the older ones tend to collect identities like bottle caps, so they don’t even have to try to keep everyone else guessing about our numbers. By the way, is there some point to your question?”
Shelley smiled and said, “The point is that you’re cute. In fact, you’re kind of adorable.”
Daniel blinked. “Uh,” he said tactfully. “Excuse me?”
“You can master spells in a few hours that most mages would need months to get their heads around,” she said. “The nations of the Netherworld talk about your kind the same way the US talks about oil, and there’s a law that lumps you together with the kings and queens of the faerie courts. And you’re barely in your teens and you’re dealing with all the same issues as anyone else your age plus at least a couple dozen more. Watching you fumble around is like watching a baby tyrannosaurus rex. I suppose for Rachel it makes you relatable, but for me it just makes you cute. And a little annoying.”
Daniel gritted his teeth and said, “I ask again: what is your point?”
“When a wolf pup growls,” said Shelley. “It only makes it more cute. As to your question, my point is that this is just one of those learning curves that come with being a teenager. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that while you were with Rosmarus you never worked any jobs that would have really cost something if you failed. I mean, you probably would have disappointed someone, but I doubt you or anyone you knew were likely to die, and the people on either side of the conflicts you got hired to interfere in were probably equally morally ambiguous. Or at least, they were as far as you knew. From your perspective, there was never anything at stake but your own pride.” She looked him in the eye and asked, “That about right?”
Daniel glanced to the side and said, “Pretty much, I guess.”
Shelley nodded. “You used magic in plenty of serious situations, but they were also impersonal. Never anything that got your adrenaline pumping. This was the first time anything got serious. It’s the first time you’ve had a real panic.”
Daniel didn’t say anything to that.
“When that happens,” said Shelley. “Your body is primed to either run away or start beating things senseless, but it’s not particularly helpful in any fight that depends on skill and sound thinking. Not unless you’ve been trained, that is.”
“How do you beat it?” he asked.
“Endless hours training,” said Shelley. “You drill the proper responses into yourself until they become part of that instinct. Keep drilling enough responses and eventually you can actually manage to fight with some modicum of strategy without having to take a breather to think about it.”
“Yeah...” said Daniel. “I don’t suppose there’s anything else? Anything that doesn’t take years?”
Shelley laughed. “You don’t need years of training just to be competent. I think a few months are good enough for grunt work if you’ve got the right training regiment. Anyway, there is another thing, but that’s just attitude. I mean, if you feel like you have no idea what you’re doing then you’re probably going to act like it too.”
“Wait a second?” said Daniel. “Are you telling me that the key to being a good fighter is positive thinking?”
“No,” said Shelley in a stern, curt tone. “I’m telling you that a large part of being a good fighter is resolve. You need to know what you’re doing and you have to believe in it. The point isn’t to say, ‘I can do it.’ It’s to say, ‘this must be done.’”
Daniel considered that for a moment. “That’s what you were trying to get Troy to understand, wasn’t it?” he said. “The thing he needed to be fixated on was the goal, the objective, but that’s too broad and abstract to factor into his individual actions. So you form the plan around the objective and then it makes the objective something specific that you can work with.” He paused, his mind still wrapping around the idea. “But it’s even more than that. The plan is where the training and the resolve meet. It’s the context and the mindset in which purpose, training, and tactics all come together. At least, that’s how it seems to me.”
Shelley stared at him hard. “I wouldn’t have described it all like that,” she said. “But you’ve got it about right.” Then she sighed and added, “Besides, there’s too much to do to argue about military philosophy. We’ve still got to find Fellbrook’s hidey hole and launch an assault. And we should probably call Quintus at some point.”
Daniel’s brow furrowed. “Who’s that?”
“Quintus?” asked Shelley. “He’s basically an agent for knights and hunters. He finds nasties, finds people (usually officials) willing to put bounties on them, and then he calls us. He also has people to collect the loot from the jobs and he gives us a percentage of whatever price he gets for it.”
That was a bit surprising but also kind of obvious. Based on everything he’d seen so far, Daniel had to suppose that monster hunting was expensive.
“I can help with finding Fellbrook,” he said with a gesture toward the bound goblin lying near the back left corner of the garage.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Shelley. “Goblins like him are cowards on their own, but they’re also paranoid and even the dumbest of them are very shrewd when it comes to deals.”
Daniel’s mouth was slightly ajar as he tried to make sense of that. “Oh!” he said after a quarter of a minute. “You thought I wanted to interrogate him. No, I meant a divination. I just scry for Fellbrook and then use the connection between him and the minion to slip by whatever enchantments he’s hiding behind.” He held up two fingers and added, “Second Principle of the Ethereal School; they both belong to the same narrative.”
The First and Second Principles were both about the flow of magical energy through the world. The First basically said that magic worked like gravity and that everything with a distinct form and character (especially living things) had a sort of gravitational pull that affected the flow of free floating magical energies. The Second was almost an addendum to the First and it stated that concepts also had their own metaphysical presence and consequent pull, which meant that things belonging to the same narrative had channels of magical energy directly connecting them.
“There’s still ways to dodge that, of course, but if I combine it with whatever Rachel and Ephraim found I can get him.”
Shelley shrugged and said, “If you say so.” She looked over at Troy and Rachel as they dragged the enormous corpse of the spriggan into the garage. “I guess I’ll call Quintus then. Go ask Rachel for her intel.”
As Shelley took out a cell phone and went out to check the address and get some privacy, Daniel went over to the zealots. They were still struggling with the spriggan corpse so he grabbed a leg and helped them maneuver it into the nearest the nearest empty space large enough for it. Mr. Oehlert’s garage was just as cluttered as most people’s, so that turned out to be a fairly tricky task. After a brief struggle, however, Rachel was finally free to go grab the map from earlier. While she went to the car Daniel knelt down at a spot near the door, pulled a piece of chalk and a ziplock bag of junk from his jacket, and started preparing the spell.
The first thing he did was draw a chalk circle about the size of his palm. Then he drew four triangles in the circle matching the points of a compass and a small sigil in the center. He placed a knot of moose fur in the northern triangle, a pebble from a Virginia beach in the eastern triangle, a cocoa bean in the southern triangle, and a shell from San Francisco in the western triangle. With that done, he drew another circle that slightly overlapped the earlier one. This time all he needed was an eye-shaped sigil that represented a sort of spotlight spell he knew. That took all of twenty seconds before he was ready for the third and final circle. This time Daniel drew a five pointed star, and he filled the points with an orc figurine representing his relation to the target (enemy), a few goblin hairs dipped in spriggan blood, a feather representing the element that would carry the spell, a sun-shaped pin representing the element that would power the spell, and a button washed in his blood with some of his hair tied through it that represented his will. When the three circles were finished the wizard placed his hand in the middle of them and spoke an abbreviated incantation, setting the spell into motion.
“All right,” the wizard said as Rachel came over with the map. “Now I just need an idea of where to look.”
“Sure,” said Rachel. She knelt down and unrolled the map. “I think we’re right here...and the motel is here,” she mumbled as they both tried to match the schematic up to their experience of the landscape. She groaned and put a hand up to her right ear. “Sorry. I’m just feeling sort of...”
Rachel’s eyes glazed over and her body went limp. Daniel reacted about a half second after she hit the floor, reaching out to grab the girl. He shouted a small knot of letters that were supposed to be “help” or something along those lines, and got down beside her. He reached out to touch her and then jerked his hands back in hesitation. Daniel hadn’t touched other people much except to shake hands or plant an enchantment. His ignorance and confusion met in a fear of making everything even worse, and set against that fear was an ancient human instinct that he must touch the girl. The tribal spirit shouted that contact is protection, unity, comfort, strength. Then something like reason managed to beat down the other two senses when his eyes wandered to the spot by Rachel’s ear that she had been rubbing right before she passed out. He brushed past the hair, felt the wet flesh underneath, and opened up his magical senses as he unveiled the wound.
Cursed wounds come in a handful of varieties. This one was like a parasite. It was a mass of necromantic energy that fed upon her life energy in much the same way a vampire might feed on blood or a ghoul upon flesh, though it was much slower than either. It’s tendrils were stretching through in a manifestation resembling a cancer, feeding upon the least essential bits of her being until it was strong enough to overcome the defenses of the rest. If it was left alone it would kill her in a matter of hours.
There were a few moments of stunned confusion as with the fight, but then Daniel closed his eyes, steadied his breathing, and called to mind everything he knew about about curses and their treatment. Then he drew one of the knives from his belt and encountered yet another moment of hesitation before he worked up the nerve to cut open his palm. He didn’t have time to construct a new sigil for the spell, so instead he drew on one he had already memorized and made a few minor alterations. The star was composed of three triangles and nearly a dozen runes and symbols, and it had originally been designed to focus and bind ordinary spells to a single person as enchantments; the kind of thing he would normally use to turn a simple, momentary illusion into a much more complicated and permanent bundle of psychic baggage. He switched a few symbols to shift the sigil to a more benevolent focus and used his ring finger (the finger of binding) to draw it on her forehead. Then he took a few more moments to compose the spell in his head before he allowed his savanos to close up his palm and pressed his hand over the sigil. It was one of the simplest spells he had ever cast, something like an even cruder version of the energy bolts he had used earlier. All he did was draw as much arcane energy as he could into his savanos and then channel an unusually large chunk of that savanos directly into the girl. As he did so, the wizard felt something he’d been trying very hard to ignore stir inside him. The magical afterimage of Ephraim’s “interrogation” became suddenly active in response to the movement of his savanos. It flowed out into his arm and shed a bit of itself into the power that he was pouring into the girl. Without even trying to open his magical senses, Daniel could see his own power stitching Rachel together the same way it would have done if he’d been so damaged while the silver power of the sin-eater sought out and devoured the infection.
“Dammit,” said Daniel. “I was really hoping that thing had shriveled up. There’s only so long I can go without sleep.”
“What happened?” shouted Troy as he rushed into the garage.
“Cursed wound,” said Shelley to Troy. Then she asked, “You were hoping the spell wouldn’t work?”
“No,” said Daniel. “Well, sort of. I really would much rather have to do extra work with the spell than have to deal with whatever Ephraim left in me.”
The Jaeger smiled with predatory sweetness. “Sorry,” she said. “But the only way I know to deal with a sin-eater’s backwash is to let it run its course.”
“Backwash?” asked Daniel. “Really?”
“It’s what he likes to call it,” said Shelley as she knelt down by Rachel. “It mostly happens when he feeds forcefully instead of through an act of repentance.”
The knight place a hand on Rachel and went still for a moment as she examined the girl much like Daniel had. Then she sighed, got up, and said, “All right, can you still finish the tracking spell?”
Daniel looked back at the working behind him, which was beginning to sputter as it ran incomplete and unattended. “Yeah,” he said. “It’ll be a bit harder if I can’t ask her about the map, but I’m pretty sure I can figure it out on my own.”
“Good,” said Shelley as she got back to her feet. “As soon as that’s done I’m going to help you warm up so you can watch my back while I take on Fellbrook and his remaining minions. Meanwhile, Troy will keep watch over the house.”
“Uh...what?” asked the wizard.
“That is a bad plan,” said Troy. “That is a very bad plan.”
Shelley took a step back so she could glare at them both simultaneously, somehow managed to make the action look natural instead of contrived, and announced, “Two members of our squad are now incapacitated. I’m not leaving them in the car right outside the hobgoblin’s hideout, and I’m not leaving them in the house without knowing there’s someone standing guard. I’m also not letting Fellbrook get away to play his games in some other town. Our intelligence says he’s perfectly capable in both magic and armed combat, and let’s not forget that he has at least one goblin and redcap left to fight for him. I’m not going into that without someone who can deal with faerie mischief.” She directed the full intensity of her glare at Troy. “Magic is your weakest suit, and you still don’t know how to fight in a group. I want someone to be thorn in Fellbrook’s side, not a toy batted between his paws.” Then she refocused that terrible gaze on Daniel. “Sure, you can throw up plenty of illusions and other enchantments to protect the house, but you can do that before we leave. Besides, the guard needs to be someone who can hold his own if the defenses around the house fail. I’m sorry, but you don’t fit the bill.”
Daniel was about to argue, but then he realized first that he didn’t actually have a response to that and second that he really needed to get back to the tracking spell. He grumbled under his breath, tried to think of some snide oneliner, failed to do so, and went back to the spell. After about forty minutes, Daniel had managed to find Fellbrook’s hideout. It was a spot under an overpass where the mortal world and Underland (one of the major regions of the Veil) touched.
“Are you sure he’ll still be there?” asked Daniel when he told this to Shelley. “If he’s really going to run, why not just leave through the Veil?”
“Because he’s an outlaw faerie,” answered Shelley. “Any of the courts would arrest or kill him, and if he goes to someplace they won’t find him then he’ll have to deal with all the other outlaws who are higher in the foodchain. As long as he’s not answering to someone bigger and nastier who can protect him over there, he’s much safer in the mortal world.”
Daniel thought of what little he’d known of various clients when he’d worked at Rosmarus and then shrugged. “Makes sense, I guess,” he said.
“Good,” said Shelly. “Now can we get to the business of making sure you can keep me from dying, or do you have any other questions.”
“I have a question!” said Rachel, who had woken up by now. “Why don’t I just come along. I know how to kill people and break things!”
“Because, Rachel,” said Shelley without looking at the girl. “You’re still convalescent. I don’t care if you feel great, I’m sticking with the assumption that when what is essentially an evil, magic parasite gets into your system and is driven out by another magic parasite there are going to to be lingering side effects. Many of which will presumably not lend themselves to a fight.”
They were in the backyard now, a small space with abundant weeds, a patch of unruly grass, and a few small trees. Rachel was leaning out from the house on the tips of her toes, her arms spread wide and placing her whole weight on the wall and the handle of the sliding glass door. She bounced back and forth now, the door sliding along with her as she pulled on it.
“Oh, come on,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I feel great! I just finished three different designs that have been baffling me for weeks.” Then she beamed at Daniel and asked, “Is it like you for this all the time?”
“Uh,” said the wizard. “I suppose...I mean it’s not like I have any frame of reference. I haven’t ever been any other way.”
Shelley gave the girl a somewhat skeptical look and then glanced at Daniel and said, “Wait. Are you a drug?”
“Excuse me?” asked Daniel. “What does that even mean?”
“It means that girl is clearly high after being directly injected with a bit of your power.”
“Am not!” shouted Rachel in a singsong tone that did not help her case in the least.
The Jaeger simply shook her head and muttered something about powdered wizard fingernails before she addressed Daniel again and said, “Whatever. How are you feeling from that anyway? I don’t see how the whole deal can be completely clean at your end.”
Daniel shrugged. “A savanos can be replenished pretty easily as long as there isn’t anything cutting off the natural flow of magical energy. The thing that takes time is getting the new growth into settling down into a steady, complex state. The end result is that I’ll have just as much power as ever--probably a little more in fact--but I’ll have trouble casting really sophisticated spells for a while and I won’t be able to heal as easily. It’s kind of a pain, but it won’t cause real trouble except in seriously extreme circumstances.”
Shelley considered that for a moment, nodded, and said, “All right, that seems fine. I wasn’t really planning on you working any upper tier mojo anyway. I figure you want to practice about four spells. plus the knife throwing angle and have those ready to use. One for a direct attack; one for a more general, grapeshot kind of hit; one to muck up anything they try; and one to get a hold on the environment and do things like turn the ground to mud. As long as you have a handful of basic responses to choose from, I think you should be fine and not freeze up like earlier. And if you subtract the time to get to the lair as well as a good buffer between us and sunset I think we’ve got about three hours to practice, which should be plenty of time to cram on those spells.”
“Sure,” murmured Daniel. “Sounds good.”
The wizard didn’t close his eyes or anything, but the scene before him immediately dropped into the background of his consciousness as he considered the idea. The first spell would obviously be an energy bolt like what he’d failed to use earlier and there were a lot of spells that could fill the second slot but the one that seemed best was a bundle of raw magical and kinetic energy about four feet in diameter. The other two slots were more difficult, but after going through several possibilities for the third slot he settled on a working that manifested as a mildly thick, green fog that inhibited and dispersed a broad range of physical and arcane energies and also was a tiny bit acidic. For the last spell he wound up in a tossup between fire and flora magic. In the end he went with a conjured plant somewhere between a moss and a weed. Then he sighed as he pulled out from his thoughts and allowed the backyard to return to the forefront of his attention.
“Got it?” asked the Jaeger.
“Uh-huh,”said Daniel. “By the way, what about the potions and the toys and everything? I’ve even got a strangling spell that I wrote up and prepared earlier today. Should we---”
“No,” said Shelley flatly. “Maybe we can spend a little time with the strangling spell, but for the most part I want you to forget everything but those four spells and the knives. The more choices you have going in, the slower you’re going to be pick one. Besides, using a bead or a potion in the middle of combat is a very different skill from the kind you employ just firing off spells in a quick, natural manner, and I don’t want you breaking out of that spell-slinging mindset. I want you to build up momentum and hold onto it.” Then she strode out to the middle of the lawn, gathered power into her hands, took a stance, and said, “Now then, hit me.”
* * * * *
“This is not about fighting,” Daniel muttered to himself as he and Shelley drove off to pick a fight with an evil faerie and his thugs, one of whom had a habit of dying his hat with human blood. “Someone else is going to fight and you have a scheme that involved you meddling in that fight. That’s it. If someone notices you meddling and takes a swing at you then you do what you have to do to keep the scheme going, but that’s it. This is a clever, dastardly plot. You know those. You can do those.”
“What are you mumbling about?” asked Shelley.
“I’m trying to spin this to myself,” said the wizard. “Trying to make it seem like something I can do.”
“You don’t need to spin it for that,” said Shelley. “If I didn’t think you could back me up I wouldn’t have taken you. I have no intentions of dying from some half-assed bully of a hobgoblin.”
“Oh,” said Daniel. The vote of confidence came as something of a surprise that he had no idea how to handle. “Thanks.”
“Typical monosyllabic male,” said Shelley in one slow sigh. “But anyway, it does help that you’ve got a crush on Rachel.”
“What?” said Daniel. “No, no, there’s no crush. All there is is just--Why would you think there’s a crush?”
Shelley might have rolled her eyes if she hadn’t been driving. “You’re fourteen. She’s very interested in you as a puzzle, a semi-mythic figure, and probably a little bit as a dude. She’s said a number of flattering things to you. She’s probably treated you more kindly than any of the rest of us. Also, she’s cute.” She made a sidelong glance at the lad that practically screamed “Duh” and said, “Even if you hadn’t freaked out when she was hurt it would still be obvious.”
Daniel blushed. “Of course I was worried. She was on my team.” Then he paused and sheepishly added, “Sort of.”
Shelley didn’t bother to argue the point any further. “It’s not a bad thing,” she said. “It’s perfectly normal for you to to fall into like with someone, especially if you’re both involved in something exciting and scary like everything that’s happened so far. Tactically speaking it might be the kind of thing that can get in the way of good judgment in certain circumstances, but it also can give you a sense of why you’re fighting. It’ll help for now.”
Daniel didn’t say anything to that, partially because he couldn’t think of anything to refute the possible crush and partially because they were approaching the overpass. He could feel the power of the fey rolling through the air, tinged as it was with cruel cleverness and savage merriment. The arcane residue clung to everything like soot from a fire, smothering any hint of innocence and inspiring a constant emotional itch. The wizard felt a sudden urge to turn around or go some other way, and he wondered how it could possibly have taken him so long to find the hideout. They pulled into a parking space a few hundred feet out from the lair and Shelley did a final check of her armor and gear while Daniel quickly ran through a few exercises and did a divination spell to search out any traps or ambushers. Then the two went down under the overpass, poured a small measure of power into a crack in the concrete, and as the August sun lowered itself slowly toward the horizon they entered the cave of the hobgoblin Fellbrook.
“Hear me, wretch!” bellowed Shelley Clerval in a voice that nearly made Daniel jump. “Come out, you overgrown imp, and meet the wrath of my blade. Cease your hiding, you craven guttersnipe, lest I hack off your limbs and make a gift of you to the Court of the Caverns. A champion seeks you, oh troubler of the weak. Will you emerge to face she who is but the fruit of your labors, or will all the Small Folk laugh as they tell of your cowardly flight?”
Daniel cringed at the words and glanced at Shelley. Her eyes gleamed with a berserker’s glee as she strode forward, her blade clutched in both hands. She was doing everything right, and Daniel knew it. Insults were a big deal with faeries, and if she confronted him like that it would force him into a direct confrontation rather than running away or getting the two of them stuck in a trap. It wouldn’t bind him completely to a fair fight, especially if he could produce a reason why he didn’t have to take a challenge from her seriously, but it would certainly curtail his ability to fight dirty. So theoretically those big, bold challenges were exactly the right thing to be hurling right then, but the theory seemed a lot less meaningful now that Daniel was standing in the lair of a being that generally regarded human life as a bad joke.
“Boastful words,” said a snarling, hoary voice that seemed to emanate from the very stones. “Particularly for an amateur huntress backed by a frightened little mageling. A huntress so insignificant that she is not even called upon when her people are in an hour of need greater than any calamity they have known for over a hundred years.”
Shelley stiffened at that. As she did, Fellbrook emerged from the subterranean darkness with his remaining minions going out before him. He was a tall, gnarled figure with narrow, pointed features and an abundance of warts and scars. His teeth were jagged, uneven, and predatory, and his serpentine tongue flicked out between them at every opportunity. His clothes looked like they might have been neat and fashionable in the early eighteen hundreds, though they were now frayed and stained, and by his side he wore a sword that looked to be yet older by its style and ruggedness. Before him were the redcap and a goblin. The former was just over five feet tall--although it was hunched over and thus could have been much taller when fully upright--with long, thick fangs that showed even when its lips were closed and a flat, broad nose. The redcap carried a spear with a short haft and a long end that might have been intended to double as a sword and in addition to its distinctively sanguine hat, it wore an outfit that looked like nothing more than a bundle of disparate rags torn from more complete garments. Stories momentarily came to the wizard’s mind about how some redcaps wore nothing except what they took from off the bodies of the slain. The goblin in turn looked very much like the ones that Shelley and Rachel had fought earlier. It wasn’t any bigger or more muscular than they had been, but it did seem quite a bit more feral. It wheezed and cackled ceaselessly and it juggled a wicked looking knife between its hands as it approached them.
“Even from here I can detect the fragrance of Jaeger blood carried on the winds,” said Fellbrook, carefully annunciating each syllable. “It is a delightful aroma.”
“Oh, you are going to get it,” growled Shelley. “You ugly bitch of a knave”
“Mmmm,” answered Fellbrook with an amused smile and a stare that spoke nothing but hate. “Garltrot, Himskink, would you kindly repay the girl for her insolence? Do leave the mageling intact, though; he looks like he might be worth quite a bit to the right buyer.”
Well that was good. Theoretically. If Fellbrook had charged forward himself then he wouldn’t have been able to order his subordinates to help him but he also couldn’t have been blamed if such bloodthirsty underlings were simply overwhelmed by their desire to do violence. But since he had sent his minions on ahead of him he had proclaimed in both word and deed that Shelley was in no position for her insults to be considered meaningful. That meant that he couldn’t join in the fight without admitting that he’d made a dishonest assessment, that she really had dealt him a serious insult and that he had been a coward to ignore it. Which would be a serious blow to his own personal legend, and since stories were an integral part of the nature of the fey it would also be an equally serious blow to his power. So it was a good thing that two of the creepiest fey Daniel had ever seen were advancing toward him and Shelley. Theoretically/
Of course, Fellbrook could still throw pebbles and their magical equivalent at the fighters without being considered a participant. And as long as he didn’t push the envelope too far it was pretty much up to him to decide just how big a pebble could be while still being a pebble. And if the minions were bested then he could admit to have underestimated Shelley without looking like anything but someone who happened to have made an error. And since everything had been addressed to Shelley, anything Daniel did would be meddling--which, to be fair, had been how he himself had seen it from the start--and would serve as a perfectly legitimate excuse for Fellbrook to meddle in response. Faeries are so much fun.
As Garltrot and Himskink closed on Shelley, Daniel stepped further to left of her and began the sequence she’d instructed him to follow. Two, four, three, he thought to himself as he sent out the bundle of force he had prepared against the two thugs. The resulting blow wasn’t anything like dangerous seeing as how widely it was dispersed, but it was enough to knock the goblin back and force the redcap to take a solid stance to maintain his footing. Shelley immediately pressed her advantage with a flurry of swings, forcing the redcap onto the defensive. As she did that, Daniel touched a middle finger to a sigil he’d made over his left wrist and uttered two words of power, summoning a green fog that swept through the cave and settled into place between Fellbrook and the remains of his crew. Then in one continuous motion the wizard grabbed two fistfuls of seeds, each one emanating a golden glow as they settled around the cave. Daniel didn’t have time to appreciate his work, however, as the goblin had recovered from his earlier blow and was rushing at Shelley with a shriek. The Jaeger backed away from her two foes quickly in an effort to keep them from surrounding her, but there was no way she could keep ahead of Himskink for more than a few seconds that way. Right. Spell slot one.
Daniel was a half second slower than he should have been when conjuring an energy bolt, but that was still plenty fast. He remembered the instructions Shelby had drilled into him, raised the bolt, and fired at Garltrot. He hit the redcap in the shoulder, pushing it back an inch and causing its whole body to jerk as all its motions broke away from the rhythm of the fight. Before the first bolt had made impact Daniel had already begun conjuring another, and now he hurled the second bolt straight at the redcap all over again. This time Garltrot blocked the spell with his spear, but the bolt went out in a bright flash and the redcap looked like he had just swallowed an unpleasant medicine or flexed a wounded arm. The bolt had been stronger this time, and it had been aimed better as well. Of course, that only mattered if he was able to do more than sting the redcap with it. As the goblin finally got around behind Shelley, the redcap took a step back, kept its guard up, and demonstrated its low opinion of Daniel’s evocations with a bolt of crimson lightning.
The hex knocked him off his feet and sent burning agony coursing through his body. The pain was terrible, but what was worse was the sense of helplessness. Daniel’s savanos, composed as it now was of so much fresh, crudely bundled power, had been thrown entirely out of order by the hex. There was a moment of delirium, vertigo, and a keen sense of vulnerability before the savanos gathered itself back together and he was able to start getting back to his feet. At that point he could clearly see that the redcap’s attack had been all the time Shelley had needed to spin around and decapitate the goblin as it rushed her. It had also been all the time Fellbrook had needed to dispel all but a few wisps of the fog that had until now been keeping him out of the fight.
At that moment two distinct contests began. On Daniel’s side of things, the wizard pointed his left wrist at the hobgoblin and uttered two more words of power. He poured his will into the fog, and changed its magical structure ever so slightly as he did so. Fellbrook grunted in annoyance and muttered a word that blasted much of the fog away through sheer force. Then as the conjuration coiled up and pressed back into the clear space he began chanting a counterspell that shot yellow lightning from his fingers. It was a crude spell that didn’t unravel the fog so much as burn it up bit by bit just a little faster than Daniel could restore it.
It was then that Daniel understood something about the hobgoblin. Fellbrook was deadly with a blade, he was as strong in physical and arcane power as any beast of the Veil, and he knew mischief like Mozart knew music, but when it came to the subtler aspects of magic he was an amateur. It was why Daniel and Shelley had sensed his hideout so strongly on the way in. His spells were all like cracked jars leaking whatever power he filled them with. As the revelation hit Daniel, he remembered the conjured weed he had cast into the cave. The spell was designed so that as long as the conjuration was intact there would be a small channel of energy flowing between him and it. Even now the plant was drawing on his power to grow and with the slightest effort of will he could feel its presence. All its poisons and traps and all the ways he could focus his magic through the weed presented themselves to him with that same effort of will, a bundle of potentiality that rose to brush against his fingertips. Then, almost before he knew what he was doing, Daniel waved one hand back and forth three times at the floor of the cave. He allowed his reinforcement of the fog to devolve into a simple channeling of power for the moment as he lay a spell over the weed to catch the impressions of any arcane power that fell upon them. The spell was basic prep for many enchantments, and as such the boy knew it by heart. He was surprised to feel a rush of fresh arcane energy as the weed sucked in power, thinned the magical atmosphere ever so slightly, and quickened the flow of power from the town outside and all the places and things tied to Shelley and Daniel through such abstract ties as magic honored. Daniel allowed the relief to sink in for a moment before he projected his will once more into the conjuration and commanded it to drive deep into the earth and stone of the cave so as to conceal its growth. Then he returned to the matter of the fog.
At the same time, Shelley was locked in combat with the redcap. The faerie’s weapon had indeed been intended to be used as both spear and sword, and it had the superior reach. On the other hand, swords are designed to be used like spears and spears aren’t designed to be used like swords, and the hybrid weapon was clumsy. The disadvantage allowed Shelley to parry the blade one-handed without much trouble while hitting the redcap with basic combat spells with the other hand. The redcap flinched at the blows but otherwise he seemed unaffected. After several such strikes he lurched back, howled, and leapt forward as he swung the blade at her with enough force to shatter concrete. Shelley raised her shortsword, braced herself against the blow, and gathered all her strength. The two blades met in a ringing clash, the two blades met in a ringing clash, and Shelley stood firm. In the moment that the impact rattled through the bones of the combatants the Jaegar shoved her enemy’s blade aside and closed the distance between them, thus turning the reach of the weapon from weakness to strength. Garltrot let go of the spear, allowing it to clatter to the floor a few feet away, and made a grab for the hilt of Shelley’s blade. In a moment he had disarmed her, but Shelley was just as comfortable with unarmed combat as the redcap. Every bit of her supernatural lineage came rising to the surface as her nails hardened and extended, her teeth grew into fangs, and her face developed a distinctly feral expression. What followed next was too rapid for anyone there to completely follow. Strips of cloth went flying as Shelley tried to claw at the redcap’s midsection. Blood spewed as the redcap made a similar effort, but Shelley jerked back enough to keep the wounds superficial. Then there were several loud thuds of impacts and a few more slashed before Shelley got a hold on the faerie, pulled him close, and bit a large chunk of flesh out of his neck and shoulder. She threw the redcap against the wall of the cave opposite Daniel and roared like a bear. Then the lights went out.
“Shit,” muttered Daniel.
Fellbrook had finally unmade the mist which had thwarted his magical efforts, and the moment it was gone he had conjured a darkness that was a presence all its own. And Daniel was pretty sure he knew to whom it gave the advantage. After five or six unimaginably slow seconds, Daniel dispelled the enchantment to see Shelley standing over the corpse of the redcap. She was leaning heavily on her left leg, blood was dripping down both arms, and she was breathing heavily. She had beaten the thing, but it had cost her.
“How very disappointing,” said Fellbrook as he advanced on Shelley. “Still, the minions weren’t a total loss. The head of a Helsing bitch is a valuable commodity, and quite rare in recent years.”
Then the hobgoblin crossed over a yard in a single step, though he didn’t seem to leap or even put in any serious effort. He knocked Shelley to the ground with an idle slap and placed a foot on her wounded leg. She tried to grab onto his leg, but the fight had cost Shelley more than a few wounds. It took serious training and willpower to draw on the power of Jaeger bloodline, and it was even more difficult to call up the power inherent in the mantle of a Helsing knight. She had done both, and even such a short exercise was exhausting. It was all she could do not to scream in torment as Fellbrook casually shot a bolt into her chest.
Then a three foot long chunk of rock shot out of the ceiling and hit Fellbrook in the face. He fell back a few steps, but before the stone hit the ground he had already recovered his balance and was staring straight at Daniel.
“That,” said Fellbrook, the whole cave shaking with his slow, deep voice. “Was unwise, mageling.”
As Fellbrook spoke, Daniel hurriedly grabbed a fistful of paper cuttings from his pocket and tossed them into the air. He spoke a word and poured power into them as they floated around the hobgoblin. They murmured the chants he had uttered while preparing the spell, and threads of light formed between the cuttings before they split apart and settled into an arcane web too intricate to be seen with the naked eye.
“I won’t let you hurt her,” said Daniel a bit unsteadily. “I won’t--won’t let you hurt anyone.”
Fellbrook shot a crimson bolt at the wizard. It broke into about two dozen motes of fading light when it met the strangling spell and several disconnected strands of power drifted away. Then the web became partially visible as the hole sealed itself shut and Fellbrook grunted amused interest.
“A clever trap,” said Fellbrook. The cuttings drifted inward, and he put out a hand sheathed in blood-red power to hold back the spell. “But I doubt it will hold even half as long as your little mist.”
This is not a fight, Daniel thought to himself. This is a scheme. It’s a scheme to steal something that just happens to be this bastard’s life. The target knows we’re planning to rob him, which means there have to be at least three layers to the scheme. The first is the robbery itself. We break in and contend with whatever is protecting the item. The second is all the supporting action. It’s how we plan to change the conditions of the robbery in order to give ourselves the advantage. The third layer is the long con. It’s the setup for one last masterstroke in case everything else fails. Everything that goes into the first two layers is also part of the third layer, maneuvering things so that when we play our ace we have everything lined up to make it work.
“What are you babbling about?” demanded Fellbrook.
It was then that Daniel realized he had been reciting that mental self assurance out loud. He would have been extremely embarrassed if his mind hadn’t already been consumed with fear and focused on taking hold of the conjured weed. Then he finally gripped the conjuration and filled it with his will. Vines blossomed from cracks all over the cave, gathered themselves together into pods, and belched out a cloud of what looked like large, glowing dandelion seeds.
“Not much,” said Daniel. He raised both his hands and saw that they were covered in blue and red runes. “Just about how I’m going to kill you.”
“No,” said the hobgoblin. The menace had left his voice now. Daniel didn’t need a mirror to know that his pupils had turned bright red while the rest of his eyes changed to neon blue. “You can’t be--what the hell is a wizard doing here?”
“Geheshem!” roared the wizard. “Zura’ok! Tofliut!”
Even now Daniel wasn’t nearly as strong a mage as Fellbrook. He didn’t need to be. Fellbrook had been blasting holes in the strangling spell the whole time he’d been calling up the bright seeds, and the spell had been recovering from the blows only a tiny bit less quickly than the hobgoblin had been delivering them. Now the seeds joined the cuttings in anchoring the spell, and they added both their shared essence and all the magical imprints they had captured to the net that now closed in on Fellbrook. The growth in complexity was exponential, and all the strength Fellbrook had was suddenly irrelevant.
Fellbrook’s arms folded back awkwardly until they were pressed tightly against him. He rose up until he was halfway between the cave’s floor and its ceiling, and he gasped as he felt the spell cutting him off from the natural flow of arcane power all around him. Caught in that trap, Fellbrook responded in the same instinctive way any faerie would: with magic. The strangling spell caught his efforts and channeled them all into harmless flashes of light as the struggle accelerated the hobgoblin’s death.
Daniel watched the lights with fascination, and in them he saw the story of Fellbrook play out before him. He saw neighborhoods and villages from across the centuries thrown into strife, madness, and folly. He saw Fellbrook’s disdain, his sadistic playfulness, his spite, and above all his rigid pride. He saw it grow and blossom like a prickly, malnourished rose. And then he saw it snap.
Fellbrook’s corpse fell to the stone floor, and Daniel let go of the breath he just now realized he’d been holding.
“I’ll admit it,” said Shelley from the boulder she’s crawled over to and sat up against. “That was pretty cool.” Then she slowly got back to her feet, winced at the pain, and added, “Now let’s get out of here.”
* * * * *
“Gaius Miron Fortunato,” said the Venetian. “I am obligated to ask whether you intend to continue on seeking membership to the Stygian Fellowship. The tributes you have presented thus far would be sufficient for you to abandon the venture in peace and retain a certain measure of favor. If you continue to seek admission and are then found unworthy, you will not like what follows.”
Gaius’ eyes remained locked onto the floor as he answered, “I understand the risks, your Grace, and with them in mind I do freely submit myself to the judgement of the Fellowship in hopes of attaining a place within your ranks.”
“That being the case, you may rise, Baron Fortunato.”
Gaius got up from the bow and looked out at the seats of the theatre where sat the Venetian and sixteen masked human thralls. From out across the world, the undead masters of those thralls watched through the eyes of their servants.
“Baron Fortunato,” said one of the thralls on behalf of its master. “The deeds that have brought you as far as this hearing are well known to us all. Now tell us what tribute you offer us to bring you the rest of the way.”
The nosferatu allowed a small grin to emerge as he said, “As proof of my worth to the Fellowship, I have made a gift of the Buchanan Estate.”
In any other such gathering there would have been a chorus of murmurs, but the thralls were too obedient to speak out of turn and their masters were too paranoid to whisper to one another.
“You say that rather proudly,” said one of the vampires. “Almost as if scattering a mob of aimless brutes were something of which to boast.”
“Do not be so dismissive of the matter,” said another. “The Jaegers are the least of our enemies, but even they are dangerous within their own strongholds. However, the young one does also speak as if he alone orchestrated the attack. I have been a bit withdrawn these last few decades, but even I know that there were others who crafted that victory.”
“This is true,” said Gaius. “I had many allies, but without my efforts there would have been no victory. I personally sired Evan Magyar, one of the vampires that led the assault, and I facilitated and sponsored the rise of five others. Additionally, I trained the necromancers known as Julian and Diana Hodson and introduced them to the contacts they needed to make their ascent. Since the First World War I have been building an arsenal of cursed weapons, most of which I recently sold off to weapons dealers whom I knew did regular business with the leaders of the assault. Finally, after decades of covert work I was able to create two distinct weaknesses in the defenses of the estate. First, I led one of the residents to commit adultery with his brother’s wife--an act of lust, treachery, and spite that desecrated the place and nullified the holy blessings protecting it--and second I got a young hunter who owed me a favor to momentarily shut down a portion of the technomantic security. The boy thought I wanted an inconsequential file, but the real purpose was to clear the way for a spirit to enter from Morpheum in order to tear apart the remaining security from the inside.”
“That is somewhat impressive,” said a Stygian. “Assuming that you have given an accurate account, of course.”
“The strategy shows talent,” said another. “But the prize is disappointing, nonetheless. From what I have read, almost a third of those at the estate managed to escape, and there are almost as many still holed up and awaiting rescue. If they should escape that will make more than half. The issue would not trouble me if we were talking about a stronghold of the Legions or the Knights of Saint George, but these are Jaegers.”
This time the silence was broken by several murmurs of assent.
“I believe my great grandchild is holding out on us,” said the Venetian. “That there is something else he is waiting to tell.” He paused. “I am told he has a flair for the dramatic when drunk.”
Gaius let out a sigh, the smile now fully formed. “It is true,” he said. “I am sorry to come before you in this state, but I wanted to see matters through so I entered the battle in disguise. It was only after I left the field that I realized just how much I’d consumed.”
“That is no cause for shame,” said a Stygian. “There is no better pleasure than to wade into the field of slaughter and drink one’s fill, to tear apart the dying bit by bit, to break their spines and consume them one at a time while the rest watch.”
“The sound of women screaming as you pull their spawn from their arms,” said a Stygian with a female thrall. “Whelps who were named for heroes and who have swordsmiths for godparents. Do you think the mothers appreciate the irony? Do you think they realize that their little lionhearts die as easily as any other brats?”
The Venetian held up a hand to silence any further commentary, and said, “This is a supreme pleasure and is our rightful victory feast, but we must be cautious. If we are to flourish we must maintain our pacts with Gwendolen, Atlantis, and the lesser powers, which means we must never indulge our bloodthirst in any way that can be proven or traced back to the Fellowship. Remember, my kin, the forces arrayed against us. The sages, the heroes, and that...” The Venetian paused and looked as if he had tasted something rotten. “...That Wretched Jew...” An involuntary shudder ran through the theatre. “They have all left their legacies to spread across the world. The heritage of each has been passed on like a disease without even good taste inhibiting their growth. Any bumbling, mortal oaf on any street could be an enemy. Any sickly child or mute idiot could prove deadly with the right tools at the right time.”
A silence fell over the theatre as every one of the vampires was reminded of the danger that had lead to the founding of that order. Even with the thralls as masks some of the Stygians who had spoken gave signs of discomfort and embarrassment. The Venetian had shamed them, and they were not likely to forget it. They were also likely to die if any of them attempted to move against him.
“Now,” said the Venetian. “You had something else to offer us. What is it?”
Gaius made another bow and said, “Your Grace, I believe you and all your fellows have heard how so many of the victors of Buchanan left the estate to seek out fresh hunting grounds. There are many opportunities I have prepared for them that may produce pleasant results for the Fellowship, but there is one in particular in which I have much hope.” He stood back up and spread his hands wide. “I offer to the Stygian Fellowship the defenders of Fresno. In a few more days, I expect the fall of one of the few remaining keeps of the Helsing Knights and the demise of the last descendants of Alexander Jensen!”
There were a few moments of silence as each of the Stygians considered the tribute. Then the Venetian said, “Given that all we have heard is true, I call this acceptable. If the venture proves fruitful, I vote in favor of membership. Do my fellows agree?”
There was a round of murmured agreements throughout the theatre.
“That being the case,” said the Venetian. “Scouts will be dispatched to investigate the claims of the hopeful and watch the unfoldings of what is promised. If there is no further business, then it is time we disperse.”
The Stygians opened a path into Morpheum through which the Venetian and the thralls left the building, and Gaius went out onto the streets outside. But there was one who stayed behind. She sat among the lights, and she laughed lightly to herself as she reflected on the feeble schemes of the Stygians. Then, the theatre fell silent again as the Mother of Tricksters and Queen of the Moonlit Court vanished back into the Veil.
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