Paranoid Mage - eChapter 10: Retaliation

“The light touch isn’t working,” Archmage Janry said flatly. The other mages sitting in his study looked uncomfortable, but they didn’t deny it. He wouldn’t have thought that the American Alliance would have had any political acumen at all, but they’d been successful in fending off the indirect action Janry had been directing. Not to mention wooing away some of the Houses via the Guild of Enchanting, which was an organization that Janry didn’t dare try to break just yet. Too many Houses were part of it, including his own, but he could order other action.

“I’m not sure what else we can do without instigating a full war,” the representative of cadet house Leshiel said after a moment, her lips pursed in thought. “The fae seem to be anxious for that but most people don’t have an interest in inviting a direct attack from Archmage Taisen or Archmage Hargrave.”

“The Earth side has reason to avoid outright conflict, but we don’t,” Janry said. “They care more about preserving secrecy and they are, quite frankly, outnumbered. We need to take advantage of that and push. Just dare them to escalate.”

“Beyond killing one of the Princes of the Seven Lesser Courts?” the cadet house Horan representative asked.

“The fae don’t care,” Janry waved it away. “It’s all fair play to them. That kind of assassination isn’t really something they get mad at. Not like the Houses would if Wells went after an archmage, and he knows it.” If House Fane had more allies, or people had really appreciated the danger Wells posed, the entire thing would have broken open years ago, rather than ending up in the current morass.

“Attempting to assault House Hargrave would be a fool’s errand, and we don’t even know where House Taisen is,” Magus Leshiel pointed out. “The only people we can really move against are the fae enclaves and Alpha Chester.”

“And Alpha Chester’s the center of the whole damn American Alliance,” Janry said grimly. “We should have just removed him earlier.”

“Easier said than done,” Magus Horan muttered. “Do we just bring a bunch of mages and sink the place underground?”

“Yes, I have decided that would be for the best,” Janry said. “Take the DAI, bring a bunch of mundane agents to tie their hands, and then have them all arrested. Either they fight back against the mundane government, which breaks their power, or they don’t, which breaks their power. It doesn’t matter if we actually kill him if we can remove him from play.” His lips quirked and he inclined his head toward Horan. “And then we sink his place underground.”

“You’re not worried about other people? Like Wells or, say, Archmage Wizzy?” Magus Leshiel asked as she dutifully noted down his orders.

“Not necessarily. Like I said, they don’t want to start a war. They’d have to strike our Houses directly, and even Wells would have trouble with that.” After seeing how he’d approached the other assassinations, they’d altered security enough that he was confident Wells couldn’t simply stroll in. Not to mention acquiring proper jamming equipment to block off his access at any time. Fortunately he’d had the foresight to get the equipment before the Guild of Enchanting had embargoed his House.

“There’s also one ally we’ve been forgetting.” Janry held up a finger and looked around. Though it was supposed to be a meeting, he was really only giving marching orders. “The dragonblooded have been the ones most opposed to open war, and while they claim that’s for neutral reasons, it actually benefits the Earth side most. I don’t see any reason we should leave them in play.”

“Archmage Fane found that properly killing a dragonblooded was an issue,” Horan said. “I’d be afraid of opening another front.”

“I don’t intend to open another front,” Janry said. “I’m going to take a page out of Wells’ book. We aren’t getting any benefit from keeping the dragonblooded around, so why not drop a few tons of rock onto their portal? That should be enough to close it.”

“That seems precipitous,” Horan said cautiously. “Wells closing the vampire portal was what allowed us to get all the Houses to rally behind us.”

“And what good has it done?” Janry demanded. “Yes, words and material support are fine, but without direct action it means nothing. Everyone tiptoes around the dragonblooded, but since they’ve taken care not to get too engaged with people, nobody is going to be too miffed if we remove them.”

“As you say, Archmage,” Horan said, exchanging glances with Magus Leshiel. “When did you want to do this?”

“As soon as may be. We need only delay long enough for our fae allies to join in.” Janry stood up and gestured to the door. “Go ahead and give DAI their orders. I’ll take care of the portal myself, now.”

“Yes, Archmage Janry,” Horan said, automatically standing when Janry did. “It will be done.”

Janry waited until they left and then strolled through the House grounds to the Earth portal. GAR at the very least still fulfilled the purpose of giving the Houses a proper Earth-side infrastructure, and despite the American Alliance spreading beyond the bounds of that particular country, most of Europe and China still hewed to its hierarchy. The people gave him the proper respect when he strode in, though he didn’t stay.

He didn’t trust the teleport to the Dragonlands portal, especially not after what Wells had done with Fane. Unless Duvall personally verified the connection, it was safer and easier to move himself the old-fashioned way. The moment he stepped outside the office in France, he sank into the ground and shot off toward Switzerland.

The earth welcomed him like an old friend, rock shifting and bending and helping him along. His control had long become instinctive, and the only issue was finding landmarks — something that was less common deep underground. Instead he pulsed his vis to map out the landscape, navigating by his familiarity with Europe’s terrain and rock strata.

The Matterhorn was fairly easy to recognize from underneath, and he aimed himself to emerge from side of the mountain. His temperature foci kept the chill away as he lifted himself into the air, flying the last few feet to the outpost. While he could have erased it just as easily without emerging from the ground, he had some pieces of equipment to detect more subtle mana variations just in case, and those needed a clear line of sight.

He could feel the sheer amount of mana pouring from the portal, and while it would be a shame to lose that, he was sure that Duvall could generate a replacement in time. Or if not, permanently weakening Earth was not so terrible a thing. The mana had always been thin anyway, compared to his House estate in Faerie, so frankly it would hardly matter.

The subdued blue sky of the Dragonlands was visible through the portal, but it wouldn’t be for long. Janry stretched out his earth manipulation framework, and pulled down thousands of tons of rock. Wind whistled out of the cave as it shut with a juddering boom, the portal framework shearing and crushing stone. But the mass of the mountain was inevitable, and the mana began to fray and unravel under the sheer mass of rock.

Another few seconds and the portal destabilized, collapsing into itself. He was a little surprised that no dragonblooded tried to stop it, but then, there likely wasn’t much they could have done. Even if they threw all their power against preventing his rockslide, that much vis would probably disrupt the portal all by itself. Just before the connection vanished completely he thought he caught a flare of something from the other side, but it was too late.

Snow cascaded down in an avalanche from the shift in the rock and the sound, but his shield deflected it without issue for the few moments that he was above ground. Satisfied that he’d done what he came for, Janry sank back into the earth and headed back to Paris. It was so easy that he half-wondered why nobody had done it before. True, the dragonblooded had tremendous wealth and knowledge, but in the end, what did that matter if they wouldn’t be of use to him?

***

“We’ve tracked the fae influence to the Department of Arcane Investigation,” Ray said, looking into the camera pickup on one of Callum’s remotes. “I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not. Felicia wasn’t the only fae they employed, though I don’t think anyone quite measured up to her.” Beside him, Felicia chuckled softly.

“I can’t say I’m surprised.” Callum frowned. “Really, I should have looked at disassembling DAI and, frankly, all of GAR earlier. As soon as I had this fortress, probably.”

“I wish I could disagree,” Ray sighed. “It had problems when we were there but now it’s just an apparatus for Janry’s policies. In a way I’m surprised they haven’t openly declared themselves to the mundane governments.”

“Most mages are a bit more conservative,” Lucy pointed out. “A lot of the people leading the Houses remember the days when they had to hide out because they just weren’t powerful. Convincing them to change a hundred-whatever years of policy takes time.”

“That said, all it takes is one unilateral action,” Ray replied. “And GAR is being run more centrally than it used to.”

“Well, we can’t let it stand,” Callum said, glancing over at Lucy. “We’ve got plenty of carrots for the other Houses, right? Private portal worlds, multiple spatial connections…” he ticked off the items on his fingers.

“Private intranets, safe connection to Earth networks and proxies for mundane good deliveries,” Lucy added. Callum added those items to his fingers and then closed the open hand that resulted. “I think maybe it’s time to apply a stick in addition to the carrots.”

“Probably not something to spring on people,” Lucy said. “Maybe it’d be better to have the people on our side give an ultimatum? I dunno, maybe that’d just make them dig in their heels.”

“It’s not like I intend to just kill everyone in GAR,” Callum said, tapping the table as he thought. “I was thinking more just disassembling the infrastructure. Take all their archives and records and vaults and hand them off to Taisen and Hargrave to be disbursed back to the Houses. A bureaucracy is more infrastructure than people, anyhow. And Felicia, I guess you could take the fae? I’m not entirely certain how that works.”

“Talk about unilateral action,” Ray muttered, but looked at Felicia for the answer.

“I would have to absorb GAR’s fae anyway, at some point,” Felicia admitted. “Either under their own prince or directly.”

“I’ll call everyone up,” Lucy said. “Don’t want to surprise people with a job,” she said, poking him in the side.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, fending her off with a smile. “It’s not me that’s making more work for everyone else.”

“Right, we’ll be in contact pretty soon,” Lucy said to Ray and Felicia.

“And thank you for following up on that government compulsion stuff,” he added. “I definitely appreciate it.”

“I agree with you that the separation of powers is necessary for any supernaturals who are going to live on Earth,” Felicia said somberly. “Fae rules for fae, and mortal rules for mortals.” Callum winced slightly at the term ‘mortal,’ but it was the right attitude regardless.

He wasn’t looking forward to more meetings, but this wasn’t something he could just do and damn the consequences. Not that he expected anyone to disagree with it, as such, but there was preparation to be done. Plus there probably were people that deserved to be removed, at the very top. In truth a good amount of GAR had probably done stuff that deserved death, but ultimately it was the organization itself that was the greatest problem.

Before any such meetings could happen, though, he got a call from an unexpected source. While he hadn’t actually forgotten his promise to the dragonblooded, he’d been somewhat preoccupied by all the other things he needed to do with his portals. Not to mention that he wasn’t entirely certain how to make a dimensional portal permanent, though he had a good idea. So when Shahey called him, Callum had braced himself for at least a mild scolding.

“Someone closed the Dragonlands portal,” Shahey said instead. “I’m holding open the link you gave us just so we can keep connection to our avatars, but that will only work for so long.”

“Oh, hell,” Callum said, his heartbeat spiking, while Lucy just blinked. It really shouldn’t have taken him by surprise — and in fact, he would have to worry about someone doing that to the Deep Wilds portal, too. The dimensional portals were obvious weak points for any supernatural alliance, and while there were shifters in Europe that were on the side of GAR they might be considered acceptable losses. He’d have to relocate the Deep Wilds portal soon.

“I suppose the question is, are you ready to open full, permanent portals yet?” Shahey said.

“I have no idea,” Callum answered honestly. “But I suppose I’d better find out.” He looked over to Lucy. “Give me some time to get all my notes squared away and I’ll see if I can open another portal.” It had to be an oversized dimensional portal, since his normal portals required a physical connection, and using a paired enchantment would be vulnerable to degradation and disruption.

His accidental discovery with the oversized anti-mana portals made him suspect the key to duplicating the Dragonlands dimensional portal was to fully duplicate it, size and all. The structure just didn’t work right any smaller, and since none of the other natural portals were small, he had to imagine that was true in general. The only exception might be the Mictlān portal, and that one was weird enough he hesitated to make any conclusions about it.

“You know where to find me,” Shahey said, and hung up.

“What the heck,” Lucy muttered. “At least he doesn’t seem panicked? Kind of extreme for that to happen though.”

“We’re a half-step short of actual war,” Callum sighed, trying to shove aside his own anxiety. “Could you warn Chester about a possible threat to the Deep Wilds portal while I’m getting my notes? In fact, when we look into shaking up GAR we need to take control of the Deep Wilds portal away from them. That only leaves Portal World Five to worry about, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Taisen already has control of that one.”

“Will do,” Lucy said, and turned back to her laptop.

The Dragonlands portal was, fortunately, the one he’d studied the closest and the one he’d used for modeling most often. In theory he had the entire structure recorded, but that didn’t guarantee it would work like he wanted. Especially since he wouldn’t be able to punch through to the Dragonlands from just anywhere in the world.

“Ah heck,” Callum said. “The Matterhorn isn’t where the portal was originally. We can try but I don’t think we’ll get the Dragonlands from there.”

“Oh right, it was in China someplace,” Lucy said. “Wonder if I can dig that up from the GAR servers. Not that there’s much new stuff on there,” she muttered. “People barely use the forums anymore, even. I spent a lot of time setting those up!”

“Well, they helped me at least,” Callum said. “And a lot of Houses are going to want that for themselves, the big ones anyway.”

“Yeah, and I guess we can’t tap all of them,” Lucy grumbled. “H’okay, I’ll see what I can dig up.”

While Lucy sorted through document archives, Callum sorted through his own files and thought about trying to instead open a portal from the Dragonlands to Earth, but he’d not had any luck with that kind of experiment so far. While location mattered, it was also a hazy concept inside a portal world. The space inside wasn’t fixed to anything in particular, as shown when he’d formed the first portal to his redoubt. It really shouldn’t have been falling at the same speed as the islands if space magic really conformed to the scientific concepts of the same.

He was certain that the dragons would really prefer if he could anchor the portal to them rather than the cliffside, and it seemed like it would be possible, but he had no idea how. The only thing he could think of would be building a focus on both ends, but how to get that to work after he’d created it was beyond him.

It wasn’t likely he’d actually need any of the things he was considering, but Callum really didn’t have faith in large, unsupported portals. They were too vulnerable, a single point of failure that was nearly impossible to hide. He also wasn’t entirely convinced having an open portal flooding the Earth with mana was the best way to operate when smaller portal foci would do — but the amount of enchanting time and material that would require was prohibitive.

He set aside his useless meanderings and started dripping vis into his spare crystals, since if he was going to reproduce the Dragonlands portal, it’d be a nearly thirty-foot monstrosity. That was far larger than he’d ever done before and he didn’t expect to get it right the first go. At least he already had foci to help him with some of the more finnicky bits.

“Okay, we might have an issue,” Lucy said, while Callum was in the middle of piloting a drone over to the general region of China. Though given how large the country was, that was about as useful as having a single drone for the whole United States.

“Lay it on me.”

“The original location of the Dragonlands portal was on the ground of House Xu, which is still an active GAR-supporting House. Unless they’ve got a monument up, that’s probably as good as we’re going to get,” Lucy told him, squinting at some poorly-scanned document on her laptop.

“That’s not good.” Callum considered it. “It might be possible to open a portal and then move it without someone interfering, but I doubt it. We’re going to have to either parley with them or take over their yard for a bit.”

“Surely the dragonblooded will be willing to step in for this, right?” Lucy suggested. “I can’t imagine it would go well if anyone else was involved.”

“Yeah, definitely. Let’s call up Shahey and see what he says.”

The conversation was short and to the point. Shahey did indeed remember the exact location, and was perfectly willing to show up. In fact, all the dragons were, though Shahey didn’t elaborate on that fact before he rang off.

“All, huh? I wonder how many that might be?” Lucy mused.

“Not many dragons, but there might be a lot of bodies. Pretty sure they can make as many as they like.” Callum knew what dragon magic could do, but he had no idea how that translated to actual combat. “Right, let’s get cracking.”

House Xu was not actually anywhere near House Fane, actually being somewhere in south central China. It was still out in the middle of nowhere, a big sprawling estate nestled in the hills, and it took a little bit of time to get to just because they didn’t have exact GPS coordinates. The records for the House only had a general area, so he had to search himself. Not that it was particularly hard to find.

Despite the delay, it hadn’t taken too long so he was surprised that the dragonblooded had beat him there. By the time Lucy piloted the drone down to the outside of the estate boundary there was a veritable army outside.

He recognized Shahey’s avatar, but Shahey was joined by three other semi-humanoid scaled types, each of them backed by what looked like honest-to-goodness cyborgs. They were vis dense enough that he couldn’t really tell anything about them with his perceptions, but the video feed showed hulking black-and-chrome beasts seated in four distinct groups. Each of them looked like something that could rip through a tank, and there were twenty overall.

Facing them were a number of mages on the other side of the wards, looking nervous — as well they might. While the dragonblooded’s combat forms looked technological, they were packed with enough magic potency that they’d probably shred any spell they cared to.

“That is not what I expected to see,” Callum commented as Lucy sent the drone in Shahey’s direction.

“Yeah, no. Dragonblooded are supposed to be scary but I wasn’t expecting mecha-lizards.” The four human-like avatars turned to watch the drone approach, and Lucy landed it on the ground.

“Mister Wells, I presume,” said one of the dragonblooded. Judging by the voice, it was at least affecting to be female.

“That’s me,” he said, leaning closer to the mic pickup on his own laptop. “Before we actually do anything, I’d like to check if this is close enough to the original location. Just in case we don’t need to impose on these people.”

He hadn’t yet had enough time to experiment on exactly how local portal worlds were, other than it wasn’t some infinitesimal connection. There were definitely regions, and some of them quite large – he’d actually connected to Portal World Five more than once while searching for his redoubt – but the specifics had yet to be determined. Testing it was easy enough though; he just formed a normal dimensional portal right there, punching through to what was on the other side.

It only took a moment to see that he hadn’t hit the dragonlands. The section of ordinary horizontal forest made that clear enough. It actually looked like a good candidate for adding to their selection to bribe other Houses with, maybe even House Xu in this case, but that’d have to wait until later.

“Can you mark that one down,” Callum muttered to Lucy, before leaning into the mic pickup again. “No good, we need to be closer to the original location.”

One of the dragonblooded, not Shahey, turned to talk to the mages assembled on the other side of the barrier. Callum had no idea what they were saying, since he didn’t speak Chinese, and he had a hunch that it was an ancient dialect anyway. The words escalated to shouting, and then one of the cyber-lizards went over and swiped a claw against the ward shielding. It absolutely shattered them, which silenced some of the shouting.

For a moment Callum thought there’d be an all-out brawl, but an older gentleman with a beard down to his knees managed to yell at everyone equally before bowing to the dragonblooded. In turn, the dragonblooded hefted a large sack and handed it over to the bearded mage. The probable patriarch lofted the sack with a telekinesis focus and barked at his people, before striding off with dignity.

“Bribery it is,” Shahey said mildly. “Smart.”

“Yeah, those war-forms are scary,” Lucy said enthusiastically. “Are they actual mech-borgs or what is that?”

“They’re a collaboration between us,” Shahey said modestly. “I admit they haven’t seen too much use, but it’s better to have them than not.”

“Ensharrehael,” the female dragonblooded said sharply.

“It’s hardly a secret, Miyashientu,” Shahey protested. “Besides, it’s better to extend friendship to the person who is going to be making portals to new universes for us, don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” Miyashientu said, without enthusiasm.

“I won’t feel left out if you keep things secret,” Callum assured them. “So long as you aren’t kidnapping humans or anything it’s not really any of my business.”

“Seems awfully trusting of The Ghost,” Miyashientu frowned.

“You had a noninterference policy long before I came along,” Callum said. “Can’t ask for anything else, can I?” Miyashientu grunted and turned away, and Shahey winked at the camera pickup.

“Miya’s just grumpy because her avatar was driving when the portal cut off and she wrecked her favorite car,” he explained.

“It was vintage!” Miyashientu snapped. Callum wondered why that was such an issue when dragon magic implied she could repair any car damage with a mere thought, but he supposed it was the principle of the thing. Lucy had her hand over her mouth to suppress any noise, but her eyes were sparkling. Clearly she was tickled by the idea of a dragon being a car nut.

“Well, come on,” one of the other dragonblooded said, and Shahey picked up the drone as they headed into the estate. The cyber-lizards spread out to escort them, though if Callum understood things, it wasn’t like they were separate entities or robots. They were all directly controlled by the dragons, just like with their more normal avatars.

It was brisk walk through what was seemed like mostly open grass and trees, but a closer look showed they were carefully curated courtyards with decorative or fruiting plants. Lucy took frantic notes, snapping screenshots of the well-groomed estate, and Callum had to admit it’d be nice to copy some of that for his own backyard. Mostly though, he was focused on seeing if he could find anything in the spatial environment that would imply there’d been a portal there once. He just didn’t believe that someone had opened a portal to one of the few portal worlds with intelligent life by chance.

He could guess their destination when the camera caught a section of steep hill that had somehow become a polished cliff sometime in antiquity. There were characters engraved into the cliff face that he couldn’t read, but it was only when he got closer that he found there really was some faint distortion to the local space. It wasn’t anything that he would have easily noticed in passing, but it was something else to look out for while he was surveying for portal world connections.

Such natural portals were the strongest argument against simply closing everything and trying to keep earth entirely free of magic. The magic would come through eventually, and if people weren’t prepared something really nasty could appear. Like the dragons, only with the attitude of the vampires.

“Alright,” Callum said, as the procession came to a halt in front of the cliff face. “I think this is going to work, but I’ve never tried anything this large before so it might take a few tries.”

“Take your time,” Shahey said.

“But not too much,” Miya grumbled.

Lucy chuckled and Callum shook his head, reaching out for the location and prodding it with his vis. Not that he expected a response, but he wasn’t sure how the local flavor of space would affect portal creation. There was a rough sphere maybe fifty or sixty feet across, mostly inside the cliff face, that was different, but it didn’t seem to affect his vis.

“Testing again,” he reported, and opened another small portal using the process that he’d gotten familiar with over the past months. This time when it punched through to the portal world, not only did he get the Dragonlands, the entire sphere of spatial weirdness resonated, started to twist around it.

“Ah,” said one of the unnamed dragonblooded, clearly perking up at the bit of dragonlands mana coming through the portal.

“Yeah hang on, I think I gotta do this now,” Callum said, worried by the spatial instability. He wasn’t sure if he’d incited some kind of spontaneous formation or if he had prompted a collapse, but either way he wanted the permanent portal made and out of the way before nature took its course.

He reached out to the vis crystals he’d charged and then sent it all through his various foci. The multiple toruses and feeder structures assembled themselves on a scale he’d never tried before, which meant that he predictably got it wrong the first time. A misalignment by a few degrees meant that instead of resonating with the spatial weak point, the structure grated against it, the portal itself unstable enough to collapse after an instant with a thunderclap of displaced air. Wherever it had led was not one of the compatible portal worlds.

That was why he’d prepared enough for multiple tries though, so he immediately started again, ignoring the strain. Even if he wasn’t having to empty his own vis pool, he was still doing most of the work. The second time, his practice paid off. It all came together, and a big portal bloomed just in front of the cliff face.

Which was when a big wave of vis came from underground and detonated the hill.

All the dragons blurred into movement while Callum struggled to keep the portal together. Even incidental debris flying through the portal destabilized the affected portions, and while the structure definitely seemed to be pulling in sufficient mana to hold itself together, it was still fragile. He didn’t even have time to think about the attack, entirely focused on preventing his new dimensional portal from falling apart.

A few mage bubbles appeared on the edges of his perception, coming from below as well as the sides, but it seemed the dragonblooded had things in hand, at least for the moment. But Callum wasn’t sure how long he could hold the portal and he had doubts they’d get a second try. Now that the enemy knew where they needed to be, it would be trivial to make it impossible to access the area. Assuming GAR couldn’t tap Duvall to make it literally impossible to open portals there, which Callum was not about to rule out.

One of the dragons seemed to notice his issues because a flash of power formed a big metal sphere around the drone and the portal, with long spikes anchoring it in the ground. That gave him enough of a break for him to wrap the portal in a giant teleportation framework and pull it away. He would have liked to put it on the moon with his nexus, since that was the safest possible place, but that wasn’t practical with an atmosphere on the other side so he dropped it off near Barbados via one of the drones he kept on one of the tiny islands there.

His China drone remained inside the metal sphere, but given that it was dragon-made the dense vis cut off his perceptions and made it so he had no idea what was going on. Which was fine, because he had all his attention focused on the portal. Despite the successful connection, he still had to keep ahold of the structure, since the moment his control slipped the various components started drifting.

Normally there was an enchantment enforcing the structure, or he didn’t care about the portal collapsing after he let it go, but in this case he needed it to stay intact. He was still studying the portal structure when one of Shahey’s avatars popped into existence on the edge of his perceptions, on the Dragonlands side of the portal. Callum wasn’t sure if it had ended up at the exact same part of the cliff as before, since so much of the rock was basically the same, but it seemed it was close enough.

“Lucy, can you set one of the screens to ah, drone oh-two-seven?” Callum said, reading off the engraved designation on the drone’s cover. If Shahey had anything to say, Callum wouldn’t be able to hear it – or answer back – without the proper connection.

“On it,” she said, flipping through the controls, and one of the viewscreens popped on to show the view of a beach, while the sound of surf came through the microphone. Shahey’s avatar floated into view through the portal, glancing around until he spotted the drone sitting on the grass.

“It seems to be working, but it’s not as strong a connection as before,” Shahey remarked. “Better than nothing, but it is worrisome.”

“I’ve never done this before,” Callum said after he activated the microphone. “But I think it’s still stabilizing. There’s a lot of mana uptake into the portal structure itself.” All the vortex structures were pulling in mana at an unbelievable rate, but it didn’t seem to be replacing the vis particularly quickly. Perhaps the entire thing would operate without his constant oversight when the mana was replaced. He hoped it would. “I’m still having to hold it in place.”

“I’ll have the others disengage,” he said. “No point in fighting if we got what we want.”

“Sure,” Callum said, and rubbed his eyes, glancing at the clock. “Alright,” he told Lucy. “I think we’ll have to break out the coffee for this. I’m not going to be able to do anything else for a while.”

“An excuse to have soda!” Lucy grinned. “I’ll go run pick up Alex and then I’ll keep you company. Besides, what are the odds something else is going to happen tonight?”