Paranoid Mage - eChapter 1: Exploration

“Any luck?” Lucy asked, as Callum opened his eyes.

“Not yet,” Callum said.

“Maybe the moon just isn’t the best place to find somewhere livable,” Lucy suggested.

“I suspect you’re right,” Callum agreed. “It can’t be coincidence that there were so many portal worlds that had perfectly breathable atmospheres on Earth’s surface. In the grand scheme of things, the surface takes up basically zero percent.”

Up to that point, he’d only been opening portals from the far side of the moon, thanks to the portal nexus he’d put on the moon’s surface, or in the dragonlands. There was no way he was risking the Earth with a passage to some terrible hellscape. Which had been the right choice, back when he’d first started. Now that he had some grasp of the subtleties of dimensional portal creation, it was probably time to experiment somewhere closer to home.

“Then we can stop crashing at Chester’s place,” he muttered, but Lucy just laughed.

“It’s not too bad here,” she said. “I like the house better, but not without water, or when it’s…” She pursed her lips. “Well, perched on a big dirt patch in the middle of nowhere.”

“Yeah,” Callum sighed. After GAR had found out where his bunker was in Mexico, he’d needed to move the entire house and cave-cache, but that meant there was no water or sewer. The electricity still worked, since he could feed his infinite-portal setup from the portal world connections. At least Chester’s people had repaired the damage from when the GAR hit squad had broken through the back door and wall.

“Alright, I think I’ve got enough juice for two more today.” Callum rubbed at his temples. He’d been wringing himself dry trying to find a useful portal, and even though it’d only been three days since he’d closed the Night Lands portal he was frustrated by his lack of progress.

The old adage was that when it rained, it poured. Callum had managed almost two years of relative quiet, time enough to train his own magic and learn a few tricks, but with the closure of the Night Lands portal everything was happening at once. He had to find new and useful portal worlds, he had relocate his house and his family, and he had to worry about the forces that were stirring in Faerie.

All that was almost too much to handle, but just handling it wasn’t enough. If all he did was react to their moves, he would never get anywhere. There were thousands of mages, entire Houses, and the Guild of Arcane Regulation that were still arrayed against him. Worse, they had no compunctions about targeting ordinary people, even if it was just to punish him.

There was an enormous amount to do, both for himself and his allies, but it all started with the portal worlds. An untouched but habitable portal world would be an unassailable redoubt for him and, potentially, his allies. If he could find multiple ones, even better.

“For luck,” Lucy said, leaning over to give him a kiss. He held her close for a moment, then released her and focused on his spatial perceptions.

The moon nexus had grown to fifteen connections. Three were connected to space drones – one of which was actually in the dragonlands – and one each to a drone located in the Night Lands and the Deep Wilds. The rest were in more conventional remotes scattered throughout the world.

If he tried to run his senses through all of them it’d overwhelm him instantly, so for the most part he restricted his passive perception to his cave cache and whichever drone he was working with. That did run the risk of someone happening across one of the drones while he wasn’t paying attention, but they were all parked somewhere normally inaccessible. Inside a duct, in a space between walls, or inside some forgotten junction box on an overgrown property, whatever place seemed the safest.

He selected the drone he kept in Australia, in the vicinity of Portal World Five, and teleported the little frame he used for dimensional portal tests down there. Since he never knew what would be on the other end of the portal, he only ever opened it inside a box with six inch thick steel walls. Even that probably wasn’t really sufficient, but it was the best he had.

Making a new dimensional portal required pushing vis through four different foci that each created a braided torus, doing most of the heavy lifting while he got the angles and sizes exactly right. Lucy had actually printed out a wireframe of the best working portal structure for him, one that consistently connected to portal worlds with mana, to make it even easier to compare structures and make sure he was doing it right. A physical example was far easier than trying to parse models on a screen.

When he’d used that structure on the moon, it’d gone to a section of alien space with what looked like stone discs floating around in vacuum. But he’d seen that some portal worlds were far smaller than a planet — the Deep Wilds and Night Lands both seemed to be fairly limited — and there probably wasn’t actually anything outside that liminal space. The concept of a reality simply stopping bothered him, but that seemed to be how it worked. The distance between Earth and the Moon was larger than a planet, so he was tentatively thinking that opening the same kind of portal from Earth’s surface might go somewhere else entirely.

He double-checked the model and then shoved his vis into the portal structure, his teeth gritted and hands gripping the chair arms as he focused. The portal strained against space, ripping open a hole to a different dimension, and his perceptions found mana and atmosphere on the other side. The destination wasn’t even that much distorted from normal space, which was one reason he’d been focusing on that variant. The atmosphere was proof that he’d been right, and that the same portal structure let him access different places depending on where he opened it. He teleported a drone through, and looked at the feed.

What he saw was a massive stretch of water and rock, glimmering in bright light from something very like a sun overhead. Grey stone outcroppings jutted up from what looked to be a shallow ocean, with sand breaching the surface here and there. Small straggles of green clung to the sides of the juts, which was the only speck of color on them.

It wasn’t really that promising, but neither was it terrible. The sound of rushing water came through the microphone, and on closer inspection it seemed the tide was coming in. Or going out. It was flowing at a tremendous pace, scouring away and depositing sand at a visible rate. Callum winced, thinking about how much force that water had, but it wasn’t something horrifying like the sun-eyed beast he’d seen in one of his first portal explorations.

“Hey, it worked!” Lucy said, peering over his shoulder. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

“Not at all,” Callum agreed. “Not exactly somewhere to live, but at least a place to survey for enchantment material. I’ll leave a drone there.” If nothing else, it’d be great as a mana source to keep his nexus stable and give him extra sustainability through his gut portal. “And I’ll also put out the habitability test.”

They didn’t have any fancy chemical analysis hardware, but just because it looked like normal sky and greenery didn’t mean it was actually safe to breathe the air or drink the water. The simplest expedient was to just teleport a cage with a couple mice over to the portal world and observe. If they didn’t keel over and die or grow extra heads or anything, it was probably relatively safe.

Going somewhere himself would take more than that, but if he wanted to start providing alternate portal worlds for his allies, all he needed was something with value. A full House of mages could wring inestimable value from a portal world that was useless to him. He let the dimensional portal drop, relaxing as the vis drain vanished and the drone stayed in contact through its own portal anchor. So far he hadn’t had any issues connecting to portal worlds when the initial dimensional connection was severed, but he didn’t trust that would always be the case.

“Guess we aren’t going to be having a beach day,” Lucy said as she studied the drone’s feed. “Kind of bleak, now that I look at it closer. Not even that warm.” The slightly unreliable thermometer/barometer combination attached to the side of the drone reported it was in the mid fifties, which wasn’t much warmer than Chester’s compound in Nebraska.

“It’s better than vacuum,” Callum said. “And I don’t see any monsters. Nasty tidal scour though so maybe it’s not surprising nothing’s around.” Not that portal worlds seemed to need a true ecology. It was all mana fueled, or a consequence of the weirdness of the liminal physics that governed them.

“Well, go on,” Lucy said, nudging him with her elbow. “Get another drone in there so we can go exploring. It’s a whole different world! One that isn’t scary!”

Callum laughed and searched for a spare drone he could use to surveil the portal world, and pulled the one out of the west coast. He hadn’t really needed it, and he could always put it back later. Leaving the first drone by their test mice, he scooted over so Lucy could sit beside him and pilot the other one around.

From high up in the air, the tidal plain seemed to be endless, with no actual ocean or even a moon in sight to cause the water’s movement. It could have been a giant river, too, but something about it reminded Callum more of tidal estuaries and saltwater marshes. Maybe it was just the dearth of plant life.

Lucy steered the drone forward, the lightweight machine bobbling in the occasional gust of wind. There were no landmarks of note, just lots of the rock spurs poking twenty to fifty feet out of the sand wand water. In a way it all looked the same, but a few minutes later he was pretty sure it was actually identical.

“Fly down closer to that island there,” Callum said, pointing at the screen. Sure enough, as the drone got closer, they could make out the mouse cage and the other drone resting on the bare rock. It seemed like the space wrapped around itself, and if it was the same in every direction the whole thing was probably no more than twenty or thirty square miles.

“That is a heck of a thing,” Lucy said, laughing. “It’s tiny! Itty bitty pocket world.”

“Yeah, it’s kinda weird,” Callum agreed, shaking his head at the screen. It implied there were maybe hundreds or thousands of such pocket dimensions, but most of them would probably be worthless. Though he wouldn’t mind a ten square mile pocket world if it was nicer than a desolate tidal plain.

“Any enchanting materials though? I guess they wouldn’t be bane material since there’s nothing really here.” They still had a drone in the Night Lands to collect mordite since that was the easiest enchanting material to get, especially with Callum’s abilities, but a more reliable and private source would be a gold mine.

“Don’t know yet, I’ll have to—” Callum cut off as another mage bubble appeared in the range of his perceptions, accompanied by a fae. Not inside the little cabin they were staying at, but at the teleportation area that Chester had set up for the American Alliance. It was an archmage, which demonstrated to Callum why it wasn’t good to have an unsecured teleport inside secure territory. That archmage was probably Hargrave or Taisen, but someone else could wreak all kinds of havoc.

“What is it?” Lucy asked, tensing and reaching out to grip his arm.

“Archmage visit with fae companion,” Callum replied, wrapping a teleportation framework around himself, Lucy and Alex, his son being absorbed in some toy cars off to one side. “I doubt it’s just social.”

“Not like there isn’t enough going on,” Lucy muttered, maneuvering the drone to land again in a sheltered spit of stone.

“Yeah.” Callum stood, reaching over to close the laptop. It wasn’t like what he was doing was secret, but he wasn’t quite prepared to tip his hand that he had a pocket dimension ready to go. Even if it wasn’t viable for habitation, it’d make a good source for feeder portals. “Might as well go see what the crisis is.”

“Look on the bright side,” Lucy said, going over to Alex. “It might not be a crisis.”

“It might not,” Callum admitted, but he didn’t believe it.

“Come on sweetie, we have to go check with Uncle Chester. We’ll be back in a little bit.” Alexander picked up his car and held his hands out, and Lucy scooped him up.

“Sorry I’ve been so busy, Alex,” Callum told his son. “We’ll play some games tonight after dinner.”

“Gravity tag!” Alex demanded instantly, and Callum ruffled his hair.

“Sure, kiddo, sounds good to me!” Normally it wasn’t too difficult to catch a two-year-old when playing tag. When that two-year-old could and did literally bounce off the walls, and ceiling, it was a lot more athletic proposition.

They shrugged on their coats to make the short trudge between buildings. While Callum could have teleported or portaled them easily enough, it was a pretty rude thing to do in someone else’s house. Besides which, he didn’t want to pop in on an archmage unannounced in case said archmage was twitchy. Callum still hadn’t cracked any kind of useful shield.

By the time that they reached the main mini-mansion in the compound, Chester and Lisa were in the front room with the archmage. Callum had a moment of uncertainty, thinking maybe it was presumptuous to think that his presence was necessary, but the shifter hanging out in the front room waved them onward. Sometimes it was weird interacting with people whose senses were good enough that they were functionally better than his spatial perceptions.

“Thanks, Gregory!” Lucy said, and Alex waved at the guard. Somehow even his son seemed to know more shifters than Callum did.

When they entered the sitting room that was the default meeting area, Callum was somewhat relieved to see the archmage in question was Taisen. He wasn’t sure he actually liked the man, but Taisen was a straight shooter and someone Callum could respect. It was far easier to deal with someone who was all business than political creatures. The fae accompanying him was another matter, and after a few moments of staring, Callum finally placed her.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Lucy. He glanced at her and then back to the fae.

“You two know each other?” He asked. Callum only knew her as the somewhat creepy fishwoman-looking agent who’d tried to interview him what felt like lifetimes ago. Which didn’t exactly endear her to him, but Taisen had also started on the other side. Even Hargrave had. It was one of the difficulties of dealing with what was essentially a combination of revolution and civil war.

“She was the one who interrogated me,” Lucy said, eyes narrowed. Taisen opened his mouth to say something, but the fae was quicker. She held up a digital tablet with text written on it.

“I want to apologize,” it read. “At the time, I was working for GAR and I thought you all were simply criminals. It was only later that I found out how much corruption there was within GAR. It isn’t an excuse, but it is the only explanation I can offer.”

“…huh.” Callum wasn’t sure what to say to that. Neither Taisen nor Hargrave had exactly apologized for their prior opposition of him, both seeming to view it as the inevitable consequence of high level politics. “Up to you.”

“Hm,” said Lucy, holding onto Alex’s hand. “I’m not exactly a fan.” She took a longer look at the fae, who was clearly upset. The fae wiped the tablet and scribbled something else, holding it up again.

“Please,” it read. “My partner is in danger.”

Lucy frowned, studying the fae further. Callum was glad he was rubbing off on her, because anyone could come in with a sob story. Admittedly, Taisen’s presence made it more believable, but they weren’t obligated to interfere in strictly supernatural affairs. After a few moments Lucy took a deep breath and let it out, then nodded sharply.

“We’re willing to listen.”

“The reason we’re here is that we need your expertise,” Taisen said, getting straight to the point. “Or rather, we need The Ghost’s abilities.”

Callum exchanged glances with Lucy. She shrugged, and let Alex go run over to Chester. It seemed like it was going to be the sort of discussion that a small child didn’t need to be part of, and Chester was obscenely good with kids, mage or shifter. Callum tried to take notes, but Chester’s prowess was obviously just knowledge from being however many years old and helping to raise however many generations.

They took their seats on the couch, Taisen and the fae woman settling in across from them. Chester and Lisa stayed off to the side, clearly keeping an eye on things but mostly taking care of Alex. Callum took Lucy’s hand, looking at Taisen and the fae.

“So what is it you need The Ghost to do?”

“This is Felicia Black,” Taisen introduced the fae. “She doesn’t tend to speak in mixed company because of her particular heritage.” Lucy’s grip tightened on his at that, but she didn’t add anything. “A few days before you closed the Night Lands portal, she was looking into that video threatening your child that was leaked, along with her partner Raymond Danforth.” It seemed like lifetimes ago that Callum had seen the recording of fae threatening Alex, but just mentioning it brought it fresh into his mind once again. “Ray went missing in Faerie,” Taisen continued. “And we have reason to suspect he was abducted by one of the Courts.”

Callum frowned. That was not exactly the sort of request that he had been anticipating. He’d thought there would be more fallout from the vampire attacks, which he knew was still a looming issue as mundane governments investigated things. Not that he was going to make any moves against the poor saps trying to find out what was going on, but helping move supernaturals en masse was definitely something he could do.

“I’m not unsympathetic,” he said slowly. “But my encounters with the fae have shown me that they’re very difficult to deal with. No offense intended. It’s a kind of magic I can’t really be sure of dealing with, and I’ve never even touched Faerie itself.” He did feel he had some responsibility, if Ray and Felicia were investigating on his behalf, but he wasn’t going to stick his head in the magical blender for them.

“You have some way to remain hidden from fae senses,” Felicia wrote on her tablet, as a statement of fact rather than a question.

“Sure, but I don’t know how well that’d work in Faerie proper,” Callum said. “And even then, it’s not all-powerful. I would need something that was better proof against fae magic than one item that I can’t really even trust.” In fact, he would prefer not to engage with Faerie at all, but that ship had sailed. If he wanted to get out ahead of events, and all the people buddied up with the Houses still backing GAR, he needed the ability to operate in Faerie too.

“I’m going to need something that is definite proof against fae magic.”

***

Felicia Black regarded the man on the other side of the table. Though she had been introduced to him as Callum Wells, it was difficult to think of him as anything other than The Ghost. Even now she could feel the power gathered around him and his wife both, making them feel like they were barely there.

Part of her was surprised that he was meeting them in person at all, but she supposed they had come to him. Actually, to Alpha Chester, who well knew the power of playing host to someone like The Ghost, but they were the ones on foreign territory. Considering how he operated, it seemed likely using Chester as intermediary was a grudging compromise.

What the Ghost asked was not unreasonable. She still didn’t know how he managed all his infiltration, but the magic of humans and the magic of the fae was different enough that a powerful enough fae might be able to stymie him. Especially a fae from the Seven Lesser Courts, whose princes were indistinguishable from their holdings. Even if The Ghost was as inconspicuous as a flea, a flea of human magic would still be something they noticed. And would deal with.

“There may be something I can do,” she wrote, slowly and reluctantly.

Felicia knew that The Ghost was the only one who could get Ray out. It wasn’t just her experience as a detective but her instincts as a fae screaming at her about the sheer weight of The Ghost’s story. There were thieves and assassins from Faerie, of course, but they had their own interests and lacked the potent history of both justice and subterfuge The Ghost had. Nor would a human demand something as insidious as a fae’s idea of payment. Not that they’d even discussed remuneration yet, but it was clear he wanted something that would permanently protect him from the fae.

There was no question she had to find and rescue Ray. The worry gnawed at her gut, and showed itself in her voice. In a way it wasn’t a very fae-like thing to admit to, but that was one reason why she’d left. Her path was something closer to human, and Ray had been her constant companion through the whole thing. Their relationship was still a little ambiguous, and purposely so, but now she’d come to a critical point. Not just for them, but for her own story and sense of identity. She had to decide what she was willing to sacrifice for Ray.

“What did you have in mind?” Wells asked, his face a cold mask of life and death.

“I would ask that this does not leave this room,” she wrote, rather than answering directly.

“We all have secrets,” he agreed easily, then cast a glance over to where Alpha Chester’s mate was playing with his offspring. She smiled at them and picked up the child, bouncing him lightly and distracting him from the conversation.

“We’ll go get a snack,” she said, and closed the door behind her as she left.

“I suspect I cannot cast anything on you directly,” she wrote. Most mages actually could take fae enchantment fairly well, since their magic was concentrated into their shells, but Wells was another story. Rather like Archmage Huitzilin, his power blazed inside his body, utterly rejecting anything foreign. “However, I can create a token that would shroud you as you wish.”

“You can make something that would stand up to fae kings?” Wells asked, his voice admirably neutral. She didn’t blame him for his skepticism.

“There is a reason I asked for secrecy,” she said, and put down her tablet.

She had known this moment was inevitable. Her time as a civilian on Earth couldn’t last forever, and the moment that they’d left GAR the clock had begun ticking. By nature she would be drawn to the agents of change, but she didn’t think she’d be forced into things this way. Felicia took a deep breath and then let it out. Even if the people in the room kept it secret, there was no way to take back what she was doing. No mantle, once donned, could be shed freely.

“I am Felicity Niflungr Blackblood, daughter of King Oberon and Queen Mab.” Her words hung in the air, crystallizing the magic of Faerie around her. She reached up and plucked a hair from her head, holding it up before her. “By my authority I bestow upon The Ghost the mantle of Chosen of Oberon and Agent of Mab, so that no fae magic shall find him without his choosing, nor any child of Faerie raise their hand against him without peril.”

The hair braided itself together, growing and knitting itself into a long black cloak as the weight of Faerie draped itself over Felicia’s shoulders. She didn’t have the power for something like that herself, nothing near it. But as a princess of the fae, she could ask Faerie itself to provide. It was a mantle she had shunned her whole life, both because she’d seen what easy power did to people and because she knew what responsibilities came with it. But to save Ray, she had to finally take up her birthright.

Archmage Taisen stared at her after she spoke, since she’d never breathed a word about it to him. Even Ray had only hints, and she was glad he’d never pressed since she wasn’t sure she could have avoided telling him. Though that was moot now, and he would know when he returned. And he would.

She met Wells gaze, and even through the mask of The Ghost he seemed shocked or impressed. Lucy was less restrained, and she looked absolutely gobsmacked. Chester was the one that seemed the most unflappable, but she caught a gleam in his eye — or maybe it was an intuition from the mantle she had finally acknowledged.

Felicia held out the cloak, which was embroidered with a winged black cat, facing away. It was somewhat embarrassing as a personal symbol, but it would change in time. She had turned her back on the mantle and fled; but now that she had taken it up, that would change. Eventually.

“I have never seen magic do that,” Wells said at length. “It’s not as vis-dense as I would have thought for what it does — that is to say, what it is supposed to do.” He half-asked, raising his eyebrows at her.

“It is not quite as powerful as it may seem,” she confessed, continuing to use her voice as she felt the effects of her declaration continue to settle in. “It is certainly not a completely invulnerable defense. But it should be potent enough.”

Wells still didn’t take it, looking at it intensely with his eyes narrowed. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but eventually he nodded to himself. He stood up and held out his hand. She passed the cloak over, and he nearly dropped it.

“It’s heavy,” he said with surprise.

“A mantle always is,” Felicia agreed.

“Hm.” Wells considered the cloak, examining the feline heraldry, then looked at her. “A mantle? What sort of obligations come with what you said — Chosen of Oberon and Agent of Mab?”

Both the fae and the investigator parts of her were pleased that he wasn’t accepting the offer without reservation. That was exactly the right question to ask, though she was not so crass as to try and tie The Ghost with an unwanted binding. Though she doubted she could, even if she wanted to.

“I charge you with only one: to find and retrieve Raymond Danforth,” Felicia said. That wasn’t how she normally talked, but it was required. She was not speaking as the private investigator, but the princess. “Beyond that, it will only be revoked should The Ghost refuse a direct order from Queen Mab.”

“Interesting.” He didn’t don it yet, and Taisen spoke up for the first time.

“This is as much a surprise to me as to you,” he said, looking at Felicia before turning back to Wells. “However, I can vouch that such an artifact couldn’t be created if there were any untruth to it. Or rather, that kind of magic works because it is true, or becomes truth. Not common outside of the actual royals. Which I suppose Agent Black is.” He cast her another glance.

“I see.” Wells draped the cloak over his arm. “If this works as promised, then I am willing to help. What can you tell me about Faerie, who might be holding him, and where?”