Helsing Chronicles: The Bastard of Rosmarus; Chapter 5

Guide
Intro
First Chapter
Second Chapter
Third Chapter
Fourth Chapter

Oliver Oehlert lay on the couch with the lights off, the doors locked, and the shades down and rubbed his forehead as the illusions returned to hammer upon his consciousness. They weren’t nearly as bad as they’d been the night before, but that was still a long way from anything that would leave him functional. Of course, Oliver didn’t know that what he was seeing were illusions, but it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if he had. Plenty of subtle mind tricks became useless if the victim was made aware of them, but these tricks had absolutely nothing to do with subtlety. He closed his eyes, and once again all the world was blood and thorns and fangs. He was back in the land of pain, where there was no place for mercy or innocence.

    Meanwhile, Troy Menjares prowled around the house in ever diminishing circles. The werecat had chosen to forego his larger, lynx-like shape and instead took the form of a medium-sized alley cat. After making three rounds, Troy looked at the van where the rest of the squad was waiting, twitched his tail twice, and went off to take up his position in Oehlert’s backyard.

    “Up and down, up and down, I will lead them up and down,” murmured Daniel. “Over hills and a fields and town, I will lead them up and down.” He uttered a line of Atlantean punctuated with a single word of power, the same line with which he had begun the incantation, and repeated the chant a third time. He sighed as the spell reached fruition and said, “That’s it. The spell won’t keep us from being noticed like the earlier ones, though. It’ll throw off anyone trying to observe us magically, but it’ll still be clear that there’s someone there.”

    “What about when we leave?” asked Ephraim. “Will it cover us at the motel?”

    “Nah,” said Daniel. “Like I said, the spell hides us from view but it does nothing to conceal our location. Think of it as a patch of thick fog around us. If we head back to the hotel it would be better to just make a run for it and hope they don’t track us before we get there.”

    “Assuming that the hotel is even an option,” said Ephraim. “Remember that you’ll need to drag my patient and me along if you do.” He turned his head to look at Daniel. “Shelley can lay down some decent wards over the home if the way back is too dangerous. Can you bolster them enough to hold against anything Fellbrook might try?”

    The wizard grimaced. “Large scale enchantments aren’t really my thing,” he said. “I could probably keep it up for the night, depending on how much gets thrown at it.”

    “All right then,” said Ephraim. “If Fellbrook responds immediately in force or there are complications with the operation, we hold up in the house. Shelley’s in charge as soon as I start the operation, so if it’s not clear whether or not we can make it the decision is up to her.” He turned his gaze back to the house. “Rachel, I want you to unlock the door. After that I’ll disenchant the home while Shelley and Troy stand ready for combat. If no one has any questions, I think it’s time we pray and make our move.”

    There weren’t any questions, so the warriors joined hands and began their recitation. Daniel squirmed in place and tried to look innocuous. He had never been particularly pious, but there was more to his unease than that. Knights and hunters of all kinds relied on ritual purity to empower themselves against the monsters they faced; it was part of their identity. The whole thing was a reminder that Daniel didn’t belong.

    As soon as the chorus of “amen” vanished from the air the three opened the doors and came out of the van in a firm stride. Daniel had expected some gadget or a toolkit to appear when they came to the door, but instead Rachel merely put her hand over the knob, took a moment to focus, and spoke a short incantation. Then they were in, and the moment Ephraim crossed the threshold he dropped to one knee, raised his left hand, and slammed it down on the floor. As he moved, a single line of arcane poetry rolled from his lips, and a power such as Daniel had never experienced rolled across the property. As it touched the wizard, he felt a sense of overwhelming solemnity, a terrible stillness suffused the air, and the enchantments around and on his person flickered and struggled to retain their form. Then Ephraim came back to his feet and the spell came to an end, leaving behind a fading silence and a cloud of metaphysical dust. Whatever magic had been at work in the home a minute ago, the sin-eater had nullified it.

    A second later there was the sound of a sliding glass door, and the emptiness of the home lessened slightly as Troy stepped in. The four youths advanced quickly and quietly deeper into the house, Ephraim in the lead and Shelley closely behind. The Jaeger and werecat each moved in a ready stance with a blade drawn while Ephraim went in a relaxed but confident stride and Rachel and Daniel trailed behind nervously in their closest approximation to the readiness of the older warriors. They met in the living room, found it empty, and stood ready as Ephraim sniffed at the air. They were still waiting when Oliver Oehlert screamed.

     The man charged straight at Ephraim, a knife gripped in his hands and held out before him. He snarled and shrieked incoherently, his eyes burning with rage. As Oliver came at him, Ephraim turned to his attacker, raised his hands loosely, and stepped forward. And then Troy rushed between them.

    “NO!” shouted Ephraim an instant too late.

    There was a flash of grey and yellow, and a cacophony of crashes and bangs shook the room. Daniel didn’t see the boggart when it tore at Troy with its nails. He didn’t see it when it knocked Ephraim’s legs out from under him. It was only when the boggart was headed straight for him that Daniel was able to make out its yellow, owlish eyes, unhinged jaw, and huge hands. Then Shelley lashed out with her shortsword and the fiend shot out of the way and escaped into the walls through an electric outlet.

    Daniel was about to sigh in relief when he heard the floor creak and moan. He froze in place and listened for the boggart as it navigated the hidden spaces. He glanced over at Ephraim, and saw that he had disarmed the mooncalf and was wrestling him to the floor. Ephraim had always known he could handle a human attacker, and it was the supernatural danger that Troy and Shelley had been intended to repel. Now the sounds of the dark faerie settled in the wall a few feet away from the sin-eater, and both Troy and Shelley moved in anticipation of a strike.

    Fun fact: boggarts specialize in making frightening, misleading sounds.

    The faerie shot up through the floor directly behind Shelley and raked its claws across her back much as it had down with Troy. Except that this time it used both hands and it left deeper wounds. It didn’t wait to see Shelley respond to the wounds, but instead shot off again in the direction of Rachel.

    “Lychnariou!”

    The banishment sigil glowed with fierce, golden luminescence as the paper on which it was inscribed floated an inch from Daniel’s outstretched hand. The light hit the boggart like an iron fist, knocking it from its path and forcing it to the floor in a crumpled mass. It looked up in shock at the wizard and let out a soft, rattling hiss. It began to claw at the floor with its huge nails, and Daniel took a step forward.

    “No,” said Daniel in a tone of simple, overwhelming authority. “When you leave, it’s going to be final. I won’t let you finish your work.”

    Daniel continued to advance slowly, muttering a minor binding as he went. He knew little to nothing about an actual fight with the blood and the flurries of movement, but he knew plenty about duels. One mage casts a spell and the other counters and so on until one of the two is outmaneuvered. His spell now was perfectly suited to bringing down his opponent, and as long as he maintained his advantage he had a win. He continued to walk toward the boggart until he was standing directly over it pressing the sigil down against the fiend. It let out a single, extended shriek that resembled a car horn, a cat’s yowl, a clanging cymbal, and several other less identifiable sounds. The cacophony hit Daniel in a wave of nauseating panic. He felt the force of it driving against his flesh and rattling his bones, and he felt like any second it would break him. But then the shriek ended as the boggart folded in itself and disappeared with a pop.

    Even was quiet for a moment, except for Ephraim who had Oehlert pinned to the floor and had begun the healing. Then Rachel asked, “Did you kill it?”

    “No,” Daniel said. He sat down on the floor and then decided stop fighting the need to just lie down. “I just banished him. It hurts a lot, he’ll be confused, and he can’t come back here until the city has changed enough. So basically he’s out of the way for now.”

    “What the hell are you lying down for?” asked Shelby. She was on the couch unscrewing a healing potion for the gashes to her back. Other than that she did show the slightest sign of pain. Daniel couldn’t even see the wounds since the boggart had pulled up her jacket and shirt as it had mauled her rather than trying to tear through the leather. “Ephraim is now out of the picture, which makes you my bitch. Now start scrying for threats while Rachel salts the doors and windows.”

    “All right, all right...” said Daniel.

    There are three basic ways of scrying: one that uses something (usually a mirror or bird) as a camera, one that targets an individual using something belonging to them, and one that takes an arcane view of a broad area. This was a working of the third kind, and the fact that Daniel was looking for faeries (creatures uniquely skilled in avoiding detection) it usually would have taken a while to get going. As it happened, the wizard was able to use the befuddlement enchantment he’d already lain over the area as a foundation. It took him all of three minutes to confirm that the four goblins, the kobold, and the spriggan were all lying in wait within a few yards of the home.

    “Are they moving in?” asked Shelley after Daniel relayed the information.

    “I don’t think so. They’ve pretty much held their ground for as long as I’ve been watching.”

    “How’s that charm, then?” asked Shelley. “Can you repel them all the same way you did the boggart?”

    “No,” said Daniel. “I think that round left it pretty tattered. I’m not sure I could handle one of them the same way again.”

    The Jaeger girl nodded. “In that case, we stay put. We still need to find where they’ve been hiding, deal with the ones outside, and we need to take out Fellbrook. And we need to do it all fast because by now he’s probably planning on either calling in help or else leaving town. I figure Rachel can probably find the hideout, which means the main concern right now would be the thugs outside. Ideally, they’d attack us in here where the space is more confined and we can lay down some fortifications, but I don’t see how we can make that happen.”

    “I don’t get it,” said Daniel. “Why do you think Fellbrook would run? He’s already got us pinned down and outnumbered. And if he wants help he’ll have to pay for it; evil monsters don’t just risk their lives in a fight because their buddy is in trouble.”

    “She knows ‘cause the freaks out there haven’t tried to get in here,” said Troy. “If Fellbrook were stupid, someone else would have gotten him a long time ago. When he found out we were here, he had to have known that his choices were to either hit us hard and fast before we could dig our heels in or else put us under siege. He went with the cautious choice, so we know he’s a cautious guy.”

    There was a brief silence in which Daniel could hear only the murmured incantations of Ephraim mixed with the wet sounds of the healing potions at work on Shelley and Troy. He looked back at the sin-eater and tuned into his magical senses. He had sensed something like a sound of rushing air earlier, which experience told him mean Ephraim was feeding on the man, but now it looked like something entirely different was being done. As he focused on the two figures he saw motes of silver light with specks of gold and blue flowing out of the sin-eater and into the mooncalf. There were also a number of sparks drifting out from the two in a manner that reminded Daniel of a science fiction movie he’d once seen in which blood drifted out of a wound in zero gravity. As he watched, a slender stream of light seemed to be...interrupted. It twisted and jerked as it coursed into the prone figure and the number of sparks that fell loose from it more than doubled. The wizard felt a twinge of panic as he watched the rest of the flow get caught up in the same problem, and pain became clearly visible on Ephraim’s face. But then that visage hardened in concentration and after a moment of resistance the flow snapped back into working order.

    It was only after staring at the figures for several seconds that Daniel understood what he was seeing. Ephraim was using his own animus to patch up the psychic wounds in the mooncalf. Every spellcaster has three basic sources of power that they can draw on: the animus, the savanos, and the external world. Of these, the animus was the source which was tapped into least often. It was often regarded as the soul of the mage in question, and it was a bundle of vitality that flowed through everything from childhood memories to the beating of the heart. Every form of health was tied to the animus, and to draw on it for power was to risk insanity or worse. No wonder Ephraim was out of the action.

    “Troy,” said Shelley suddenly, breaking Daniel away from his musings. “Can you tell me why the fight went badly?”

    The werecat grimaced and looked nervously away. “I guess my reflexes were too slow. Or I wasn’t aware enough.”

    Shelley stared expressionlessly for a moment. “No. The reason you failed--”

    “Hey, I didn’t--”

    “The reason you failed,” repeated Shelley, almost shouting over her subordinate. “Was because you didn’t trust your comrades. You assumed that Ephraim, despite being a full fledged knight, couldn’t handle one mooncalf without your help. You ignored the plan and created an opening for the enemy. There is no good reason for us to have this much trouble with a simple boggart, regardless of how well it has been eating. The only reason the fight went so poorly is because you broke away from the plan and created weakness where we’d had strength.”

    After staring at the floor for a few breaths, Troy said, “You say that, but I know there’s been times when you didn’t follow the plan for a mission. Hell, I can’t think of a single knight who hasn’t improvised at some point or other.”

    “Yes,” said Shelley, a bit softer now. “But knowing when to break orders is a skill you only develop after you learn to follow those orders. Once you learn to move within the pattern you’ll be able to tell when the pattern stops fitting, but even when you do improvise you’ll still be borrowing from the routine of coordinated training.” Then with a sigh she added, “You’re a good fighter, Troy, and your instincts are generally good, but if you want to hold your own in a real battle you can’t rely on the skills that come naturally. You don’t survive an encounter with a fiend that’s been killing for centuries without serious training.”

    By then Rachel had finished her work, and she was standing by the kitchen pretending not to notice the scolding. Once Shelley finished speaking she and Troy became distinctly conscious of the two magelings’ positions as spectators. The resulting silence smothered the dim living room for a couple minutes of twiddling before Rachel said, “So what do we have? I’ve got five or six clickets, a sucker-singe, and a healing potion. Plus my blades and a revolver, obviously, but those bullets won’t be much use.”

    “Not much,” said Shelley. “There’s two hex potions, a murkstone, and five beads. Out of those beads we’ve got two torrents, one jump, one entanglement, and one sacred light. Plus what’s left of the health potions.”

    “Uh...” Daniel said. “Maybe I’m missing something, but that sounds like a lot to me. In fact, five beads and two hex potions should mean we have enough magic for each of the six thugs with one item to spare.” He stopped with a sudden frown. “What was that stuff you mentioned, Rachel? I feel like I should be counting that too.”

    “Clickets and a sucker-singe!” said the changeling cheerfully. “Clickets are little robot crickets I make that click when they turn on, get new orders, or are about to explode, and a sucker-singe is a sort of grenade that’s little glass ball packed with coal dust, salamander scales (the magic ones, not the mundane ones) and an incendiary zauberstaub which is really cool! The sucker-singes don’t actually hurt that much, but they’re great for dispersing magical energy and they make a flash that’s great for stunning jerks.” A hint of disappointment came into her voice when she added, “I’m afraid all the big bombs are still at the hotel room. Those ones are tough to lug around.”

    “Okay,” said Daniel slowly. “That sounds useful. So doesn’t all that make us wildly well-armed?”

    Shelley just sighed as if he were being unbelievably stupid and said, “You’ve never used magic in combat have you?”

    “Sure I have,” said Daniel. “Just now. You were there.”

    “Aside from that.”

    “Ah,” said the wizard. “In that case, no. But I have used it to tail people and do assassination jobs.”

    The Jaeger glared at him. “It may be a little different for you, but for most people it’s kind of hard to use stored magic in combat. You have to know which charm to use, activate it quickly, aim properly, and be ready for however the enemy tries to not get hit. Faeries tend to be very good at dodging these things, and even the most minor fey have magic of their own to make it all much more difficult. And you have to do it all under pressure with no time to think things through. And it’s a generally bad idea to use up all your charms in one fight even when you aren’t planning on another fight with a tougher enemy hours later.” She paused to let it all settle into Daniel’s understanding. “Are you getting why we can’t just blast our way through yet?”

    The wizard looked down at his hands, his face twisted in thought. “Yeah, that makes sense,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to be quite as hard as you said. I mean, I can work out a few spells to help hit the targets, and it’s not like you need to throw the hex potions.”

    “We don’t?” asked Troy. It was the first thing he’d said since Shelley had rebuked him. “Isn’t that kind standard for potions? The ones that for hurting things, I mean.”

    Daniel shook his head. “All a hex potion needs is an intent to direct it. Usually you get that through the effort of throwing it, but if you brew the potion right (like the way I did with those) you can actually drink the potion yourself and then sort of...exhale the hex at whoever you’re after.”

    “Seriously?” asked Shelley. “You’re telling me to drink the potions made specifically to give people a very bad day?”

    Daniel shrugged. “I can do it if you like. The point is that it doesn’t have to be as hard as you make it sound.”

    Rachel’s eyes lit up. “I don’t suppose you’re any good at empowering iron? I’m sure I could get some filing out of the stuff around here.”

    She looked like she was about to say more, but then she stopped talking and looked over at Shelley. The Jaeger attempted to maintain her glare, but after a few moments she rolled her eyes, sighed, and said, “Fine. I figure Troy and I have forty minutes to an hour until we’re feeling well enough to fight again. Can you to prep all your tricks by then?”

    Daniel smiled. “All of them?” he asked. “Nope. But I’m sure I can make a few really big booms.”

* * * * *

         By the time the Helsing were ready to make their attack, the street was swarming with lesser fey. Doxies and imps in particular were drawn to the harsh melodies of the goblins and their comrades. The more vicious of the Wee Folk bickered and babbled all around the house’s perimeter, their presence congealing into an incorporeal haze of hungry, mischievous power. Daniel didn’t like the idea of wading through that presence, but, on the other hand, the instincts of every Topsider for five miles or further would be responding exactly the same way. He suspected that they wouldn’t even need the murkstone, but when he suggested leaving it out Shelley shot him down instantaneously. In any event, it was about forty or so minutes after the wizard and the technomancer had begun their work that the threat of the miniature horde, the danger of Fellbrook’s escape, and the recovery of the fighters all conspired to demand sudden and immediate action.

    The four youths gathered in the garage as they readied for the assault. They were all keenly aware of how vulnerable a starting position the place was. Daniel had always preferred to cling to dark corners and darker alleys even before he’d started working for Rosmarus, and as a rule the Helsing prefered to fight in places with lots of walls or trees in which they could emerge for rapid, strategic jabs and then vanish into the surroundings if those jabs hadn’t already given them an overwhelming advantage. The idea of emerging slowly from a largely indefensible space into an open area against enemies that were very much expecting them was not one which any of the young freaks found even remotely appealing. But going out through the front door was an even worse idea, and breaking the windows would compromise the protective aura around the home and leave Ephraim exposed to danger. And they weren’t quite helpless.

    “I guess I should make a speech or something,” said Shelley. “Have they changed position at all, wizard?”
    “Nope,” said Daniel. “As far as I can tell, Fellbrook’s crew is still sitting tight and the tiny, crazy latecomers are just kind of swarming.”

    “All right,” said Shelley. She held out the murkstone and spoke a one-word incantation that poured arcane fog out for half a mile. Then she turned back to her comrades and said, “Rachel, make things go boom. Troy, keep slashing like I’ve seen you do in training and you’ll be fine.”
    “That’s not a speech,” said Daniel.
    The Jaeger's eyes narrowed. “You. Bitch. Mine.” Then she turned back to Rachel and said, “It’s time for takeoff!”

    A trace of savage glee appeared in the changeling’s expression as she snapped at the garage door and whistled at something outside. The door rattled up at about three times its normal speed (which was still pretty slow for combat) and a handful of overeager fey shot into the garage teeth first. They made little squeaks of pain as Shelley batted each one against the wall with the flat of her blade, and the sounds were answered by the growls of the goblins and other minions that were beginning to leave their positions and approach the house. The Jaeger rolled one of the beads between her fingers as she waited for the opportunity that would come at any moment. Just as soon as the clickets got out of the gutter drain

    The explosions weren’t particularly big, but they were packed with far more fire magic than Rachel could have fit in them on her own and they also threw tiny bits of magically empowered iron up in every direction. The force of the strike drove the miniature horde toward the Helsing, and as it did so Shelley invoked the spells Daniel had laid over the bead. It sped straight into the rush of fey, three large beads of iron following behind it, and exploded into a tangle of raw, vicious force laced with iron shavings. The whole place lit up as silver and blue flames burst out from the attackers. In an instant, the entire swarm of lesser fey all either hid away or zipped off into the Veil, and Fellbrook’s minions had retreated as far as the sidewalk. With a few more seconds left of the spell, Daniel pushed the torrent out into the street where it spread out and dissipated.

    Most goblins looked like rats, toads, or diminutive ghouls. These three belonged to the rat-like variety with bloodshot eyes, pointed features, and thin, sharp teeth that were bared as they snarled from the end of the driveway. Crouching on the roof of a car a few yards to the right was a kobold, a scaly, four foot tall faerie of a kind known for its propensity toward theft.

    “Where’s the spriggan?” asked Daniel.

    “On the roof waiting to ambush us,” said Shelley. “Obviously.”

    As Daniel fumbled with a vial of hex potion, Shelley looked over at Troy and jerked her head up. The werecat changed back to his bestial form and seemed almost to glide up the side of the garage door as he sought his prey. As Daniel swallowed the potion he could hear the thuds, yowls, and shrieks of Troy and the spriggan up above them. Then he blew the hex off to the goblins, and Shelley charged forward with a roar. Not a yell or a scream or a shout. A roar. He couldn’t see her teeth or her eyes from where he hung back, but from her stride he could tell that whatever fey and grendelkin power there was in her ancestry had come rushing to the surface. Meanwhile, Rachel followed a few steps behind her and to the right, the changeling’s whole form aglow with the alchemical power by which she worked her technomancy.

    The hex was supposed to intensify all the targets’ senses to the point of agony, leaving them distracted at the very least. Instead, the lead goblin simply waved his hand and the green vapor that was the hex dispersed a few inches away from his nose. Then the two girls hit the fey head-on, the kobold moved in from the side, and the six of them dissolved into a single feral brawl.

    Fellbrook’s minions outnumbered Shelley and Rachel two to one, but the Jaeger had superior strength and the goblins’ primary instinct was to overwhelm the girls with sheer force of numbers and to maul them with teeth, claws, and blades alike. It was a strategy that pitted strength against strength, and it gave the girls an excellent chance at victory. It was only the kobold that tried to flank the girls and exploit openings as they came and went, and that alone kept the fight going any longer than a few dozen seconds. For the Helsing side of the matter, Shelley was the driving force as she went at the dark fey in a flurry of slashes, claws, and kicks. She looked utterly wild, yet her footwork was sheer artistry. She maintained the distance between herself and her foes in such a way as to keep their attacks sequential. She would strike at one with her sword and then the next would come into reach just in time to meet the fist of her opposite hand. One would try to get in close to maul her and she would allow it to latch on to her arm (armored as it was with the tough, leather jacket) and backstep so as to let Rachel take the lead against the others while she brought the little fiend down. It was only the intervention of the kobold that kept such tactics from earning a kill, but then those maneuvers were intended just as much to force it into attacking (and therefore exposing itself) as they were to overcome the goblins.

    Not that Daniel understood any of that. Daniel knew plenty about tracking people covertly or staging accidents, but combat was not something he had every had any serious training in. It took him nearly thirty seconds to realize that he should probably be doing something other than standing around gawking. Then there were about twenty more seconds in which he twitched, sputtered, and tried to rack his brain for some inkling of an idea as to what that something should be. Finally, he opened his left hand and shed a tiny bit of his savanos into it, sheathed the fragment in fire magic, and finally drew a portion of all the excess energy for seven yards into the working. It was the formula for a basic energy, which in turn was a key ingredient for most evocation spells. But Daniel didn’t know those other spells by heart, so he stuck with the basics. He hurled the bolt at the goblin farthest from the girls. It missed.

    “Well, frick...” said the wizard.

    Daniel conjured another bolt. He tossed it at another goblin. He missed.

    “Ancient, mysterious powers,” he grumbled. “Are not supposed to be this useless.”

    Then he remembered the knives he’d been practicing with and resisted the urge to slap his own forehead. He pulled one from his jacket, gave himself a moment to extend his consciousness into the knife. He felt its shape and essence, tightened his metaphysical grip, and hurled the blade at a goblin. This time the thing actually bothered to dodge. Which should not have been so easy considering the fact that he was guiding the weapon telekinetically.

    “This is ridiculous,” Daniel muttered through clenched teeth.

    Apparently this goblin didn’t like it when people tried to kill it. Or maybe the others just hadn’t noticed. In any event, the ugly little minion backed away from the main struggle and started charging at Daniel, which gave the wizard half a second to throw a second knife. Somehow he got the blade out from his fingers in time, but this time the goblin just grabbed it straight out of the air.

    Wait. That was a good thing. Why was that a good thing?

    A smile stretched across Daniel’s face as the goblin came with five feet of him, he snapped his fingers, and he channeled a small explosion of raw power through the weapon. The goblin fell to the pavement, its hand blasted raw, and tumbled forward until stopped at Daniel’s feet. It took him a second to realize he should probably either kill the goblin or cast a binding spell on it. Not knowing the proper procedure, and fully aware of how little Shelley trusted him, he decided to go with the binding. By the time he had finished the enchantment, Troy had finished the spriggan and evened the odds against the remaining minions.

    “Congratulations, wizard,” said Shelley. “I think that might have taken a whole twenty more seconds if you hadn’t been here.”

    Despite the scolding, she was smiling with an almost drunken cheer as she went back to the garage and sank onto a box of random junk.

    “Next up: Fellbrook.”