Paranoid Mage - eChapter 20: Nuclear

Callum had always known that Cheyenne Mountain existed, given its popularity in certain kinds of fiction, but for obvious reasons he’d never been there himself. It was on the list though, so he sent the drone in past the enormous door, through the tunnels deep in the mountain, alert to any supernatural influence. The whole thing was an impressive fortress, however many years after the Cold War, and there weren’t any traces in the background mana. No supernaturals had been there for ages, as far as he could tell.

That changed when one of Taisen’s squads went through into the control room for the actual silos, all glamoured up to keep their presence subtle, at least until Chester convinced the President that not only did supernaturals exist but there were some magical terrorists in play. The missiles themselves were in range of Callum’s perceptive sphere, and the strange complexity of the internal mechanisms was so baffling that he could almost believe that fae magic didn’t matter. But only almost.

“Next,” he said grimly, even as he opened a portal for one of the horrific behemoths the dragons had provided. It was so energetic it almost destabilized the portal as it went through, but Callum didn’t mind putting in the extra effort it took to keep things stable. He didn’t know exactly how much power was involved, but if it was enough that it was literally evaporating from the avatars, it had to be even more than archmages could manage.

“West Virginia,” Lieutenant Korin said, and then recited a string of GPS numbers. Lucy typed them in quickly and referenced them against the drone feeds, telling him the drone number without him trying to do it the slow way. He flipped to the proper one and started using the Alcubierre trick to flit the drone he kept near his home town of Tanner into the mountains where all the military bases were.

After a few quick jaunts, Callum honed in on what seemed to be an ordinary farmhouse, sitting on top of a massive network of underground tunnels, the silo doors hidden by crop fields. He sent his drone straight down, teleporting through dirt and stone and metal into the cavernous spaces dug into the mountain. The base wasn’t nearly as populated as Cheyenne, though that wouldn’t make any difference to supernaturals with magical stealth.

The base was absolutely huge and with the time crunch he couldn’t be as thorough as he liked, just scanning around for anything out of place as he transported people in. One portal for Taisen’s team and another for one of the behemoths, and he was ready to move on since there wasn’t anything immediately out of place. At least until Shahey spoke over the scry-comm.

“There’s a countdown.”

“Well, shit.” Callum dropped everything else and forced his perceptions wide on the military base, trying to find out where the fae were hiding. He didn’t know if killing them would even stop anything, but it was the only action he could take.

His enormous perceptual sphere really showed its worth when it only took a couple teleports to locate the fluid fae magic, which he found at the base of one of the missiles. The fae themselves were still there, little thumb-sized types crawling around inside the guts of machines. Despite their size, several of them had fairly potent vis, short of a fae prince but far more than a regular lackey.

Callum didn’t bother with any further investigation before opening an anti-mana portal to hose the area. There were probably all kinds of alarms going off if the fae had somehow managed to initiate a launch sequence, against all the safeguards meant to prevent exactly that, so it was far too late to be even slightly subtle.

The ravening darkness blacked out the launch area, and when the portal collapsed there wasn’t any trace of fae magic. He toggled the feed for the drone microphones, but the countdown crackling over the loudspeakers continued. Frankly the countdown itself had to be part of what the fae were doing, since he was certain that’s not how it was supposed to work in real life, but whatever alterations they’d made hadn’t been fixed by his actions. There was no telling how or if it could be canceled.

“Guys, I think you’re going to have to wreck the missiles,” Callum said, since the only ordnance he had large enough to do anything to such military hardware was nuclear-yield itself. He ran his perceptions through the missile, which was easy enough since it was all mundane, but all the pieces were so tightly fitted he couldn’t easily teleport things out. Not that he knew what to target even if he wanted to destroy it, since the missile interior was insanely complex.

The behemoth huffed and bored an eight-foot diameter hole in the nearest wall, the group heading straight for the silos. The mages and the dragonblooded avatar zipped through the opening and the passageway sealed up behind them. It only took a few moments to reach the silo, bypassing startled soldiers and ignoring pipes and wiring severed in the process, but in that time the automated countdown finished.

The missile detonated.

Callum flinched, despite being several links away from the blast, but the expected wave of nuclear fire never came. Shahey’s behemoth had an iron wall of vis encircling the missile, consuming and containing the explosion. The thermonuclear explosion.

While Callum’s perception couldn’t see through the massive vis expenditure of Shahey’s behemoth, there was still leakage. The mage team had their shields pushed outside of their bubbles, interlinked and warding off sprays of plasma and radiation. The long seconds ticked on as Shahey’s avatar steamed, scales ablating from everything that he couldn’t eliminate, holding back an all-devouring nuclear fireball with raw power.

Then it was suddenly gone, Shahey’s vis dispersing back into mana and revealing that the top of the missile was gone, along with a good chunk of surrounding silo, a perfect sphere of annihilation where there had once been a warhead. The behemoth itself vanished with a final flare of vis, expended or self-destructed by Shahey after exhausting its energy.

“Well. That actually worked,” Shahey said, through one of his other avatars. Callum barked a laugh without any humor in it.

“Now we know it’s not a bluff,” he said, his hands trembling slightly from adrenaline even if he, personally, had never been in any danger. But everyone else had, and he knew the consequences of any nuclear detonation. “We’d better hurry.”

“Send another me through,” Shahey said, prompting Callum to open a portal for another behemoth. The big monstrosity jumped through to land next to the mage team, and a few seconds later the damage had been reversed, new electronics and mechanisms spun into being from nothing. Callum didn’t have time to marvel as he received the next location from Lieutenant Korin. They couldn’t afford to cut it any closer than they already had.

***

Felicia strode through the Gate of Bones into the court of Prince Nayamar. That particular fae had adopted the local mythology, which Felicia always found to be both a poor choice and in poor taste, for the passage of centuries tended to leave only gods and monsters. Nayamar’s court featured people with too many arms, snake-bodied men and women with slit-pupiled eyes, and those with elephant or tiger heads.

Despite the borrowed deific symbolism and the hollow powered it had brought them, the nigh-giants inhabiting the enormous pagoda quailed away from the crackling mantle of her displeasure. Nayamar himself might have had the good sense not to pretend to actually be Ganesha, but he still presented himself as an oversized elephant-headed, gold-bedecked demigod, perched atop an opulent throne. He looked at her with indifference until she grabbed onto the oaths that bound him to her and pulled.

The entire pagoda trembled as the foundations of Nayamar’s power were assaulted, and while she couldn’t quite exact the penalty for oathbreaking yet, he was still treading on the one constraint she’d asked of her subjects. Not that a fae such as him would care overmuch if the mundane world crumbled to ash. All he needed was his own power base and his own subjects.

“Recall your agents,” she told him coldly. Some of the people in the court began moving in their direction, to encircle them, only to fall to the ground writhing as Ray snapped his fingers and sucked the air from their lungs. Nyamar’s eyes flickered at the simultaneous collapse of a dozen of his most powerful court members, but he still affected an air of innocence.

“I have no idea what you mean, Princess Felicity,” he said, almost simpering.

“My people are already in New Delhi,” she told him. “Your assassins are doomed. I will give you one chance to recall them, else I will name you oathbreaker and sever your power at its root.”

“Were any of my people in New Delhi, I doubt they would be doing anything of concern,” Nayamar demurred. Felicia sighed internally, completely unsurprised by the man’s stubbornness. Instead she coaxed the Gate of Water from her wrist and pulled it open.

With The Ghost backing her, she had found that she could mimic, in ever so faint a fashion, his habit of creating portals from place to place — provided she had made the proper preparations. In this case she had split the Gate of Water and given it to the leader of her combat squad. That particular fae had decided on a story that was decidedly not fantasy, a warrior from the future with faceless armor, inexhaustible stamina, and weapons of incredible potency. It would be some time before he was truly powerful, but for the moment he was perfectly suited to defending humankind from the depredations of Nayamar’s monsters.

“Begin,” she said. Noises filtered through the Gate — shouting, hostile words in Hindi, laughter, and then the sounds of gunfire. Each report seemed to punch the air even through the Gate, Nayamar’s entire court flinching from the deadly promise of those shots. Then there was a horrible, bloody silence.

“You see, there are plenty of stories of heroes,” Felicia said, her smile sharp and uncompromising. “And they are all in my Court.”

“I see,” Nayamar said, flicking giant elephant ears forward and then back. “That is certainly impressive, but such heroes only have power when there is an aligned humanity behind them. Break humanity, and their heroes mean nothing. The monsters will always be there in the dark.”

“And in the end, the monsters always lose,” Felicia said, gathering her mantle and her power to herself. Fae who acted the way Nayamar had, and the way he promised to continue acting, could not be allowed on Earth.

“In the end, maybe, but not today.” He pointed at the ceiling of the pagoda, which swirled and cleared to show in the distance a white pillar climbing to the sky. Ray sucked in his breath and Felicia felt a chill as she realized what it was.

Nayamar cackled, anticipating the potency that came from presiding over destruction. Felicia would not have it. She knew that even one of those weapons being used could spell disaster for the entire world. The one she’d sworn to protect.

Felicia reached outward through the oath, not merely taking her due from the breaking but reaching down to the foundation of Nayamar’s power, where he was connected to his court, his enclave, his history, and his story. He had caused this, so it was only fair that he would help solve it, drained unto death.

She hauled mercilessly on that power, the accumulated vis and significance, the time and tide swirling about the court, and added it to her own, directing it toward that far-off speck glinting as it rose above the clouds. Her perspective winged along as if borne by an eagle, Ray’s magic feeding into her own and moving as quick as air. The tower of metal standing on fire had its own grace and awe, a thing of terrible beauty.

“Death, I name you. Destroyer of worlds,” she whispered to it, voice carrying uncounted miles. “Death I give to you, those forsworn, who have unjustly awakened you from your slumber. I beseech you now, stay your hand and return your rest.” The entire weight of her power and authority flooded through her, and the missile paused in its flight. Like a video in reverse, the white pillar shrank, fuel unburning, the missile returning to whence it came as the last few minutes of its existence were unwound.

Nayamar’s court withered. The pagoda turned to splinters and dust; the people to empty husks and ash. The opulent throne tarnished, gold turning to aged brass as all that power and potential was siphoned out to rewind a tiny slice of time and space. Far away, the fae that had triggered the launch to begin with burst into flame and burned away into nothing. Felicia staggered, and only Ray’s strong hand kept her from collapsing to her knees.

“Come on,” he said, looking around at the crumbling remains of the Court and enclave. “Let’s get out of here.”

***

“All the sites are locked down, Alpha,” Gregori Morozov reported through the pack bonds. Russia had his loyalty as a person, but Chester had earned it as a shifter, and Gregori knew that he couldn’t manage the oncoming storm without that strength. He was a relative newcomer to Chester’s pack, his symbiote still not entirely familiar with the magical connections, but the link to Chester was strong enough.

While he might have been new to Chester’s pack, Russia had been his home since before the Cold War, and his family had a lot of connections within and without the army and even the secret police. After finding out the exact targets the Fae were looking for, he had made some calls and pulled some strings among his children and grandchildren. The result was a frenzy of activity that had physically disabled – at least temporarily – all the vulnerable nuclear sites, not just the ones they knew were being targeted.

Chester’s affirmation and approval came back through the bond, along with a glimpse of what the man was dealing with. He had the impression of United States Secret Service arguing with their President, agents and shifters all pitching in to make for a confusion of noise. Gregori was glad that wasn’t him; all he had to do was deal with the mages that were out to kill his country’s leader.

Perhaps they thought they were clever, going after a helicopter in the air where most people, no matter whether they were supernatural or not, would be at a disadvantage. But the mages had never encountered modern weaponry, and while glamours might hide things from machines and mundanes, he knew exactly where they were. So did the two other members of the pack under him, and all of them were operating Kamovs.

The mages swept in as a group, four of them with glamour rippling the air; Gregori could smell the stink of their magic even through the cockpit. His hand blurred as he input tracking for the others, coordinating between the escort helicopters and the ground-based anti-air batteries. While he didn’t believe there was an archmage in the assassination squad, even regular mages could withstand quite a beating. One that he was eager to give them.

The mages found themselves abruptly under fire by thirty-millimeter cannons at full autofire, the sawing rasp of the gun vibrating Gregori’s cockpit as the air was saturated with heavy fire. The sheer weight of lead and raw startlement of the attack shattered the glamour, revealing the men floating in the air and the shields that protected them from the gunfire.

Gregori bared his teeth as they swept away, keeping credible formation and flicking out offensive spells as they tried to evade the gunfire. He rattled off instructions, but the pack bonds were faster, the maneuverable attack helicopters dodging as supernatural reflexes kept the autocannons on target. One of the mages tried to target the craft with the important personage inside, but the old fae charm Gregori had placed there deflected the spell. There was no telling how much supernatural trickery that charm had warded off over the years.

Russian security – supernatural and mundane alike – was highly trained, and despite the unusual nature of the attack they did their jobs, screening their escort as they poured fire on the flying bubbles. The shield had become nearly opaque, and while they could block cannon fire for a short time Gregori had faith in the supremacy of technology. Especially as the mages reached the appropriate distance from the agile helicopters.

“Открыть огонь!” he commanded, feeding the coordinates into the command network, and air-to-air missiles launched themselves from the helicopters, interlocking with fire from the ground. Explosions saturated the area where the mages had been, the wash from the shockwaves rocking his Kamov and forcing him to correct.

The helicopters hurried away from the battle scene, as additional air support scrambled in, but Gregori was almost certain they wouldn’t be needed. He’d seen at least one of the shields fail himself, and while it was possible a mage or even two had escaped under glamour, they wouldn’t be returning. After running into that kind of fire, most mages were far too interested in their own hides to dare again.

What he wasn’t looking forward to was explaining what had just happened. While to some extent he could claim ignorance, it would not be appropriate when several other countries had just been forcibly exposed to the supernatural. He tugged on the pack bond again, and Chester agreed. In fact, it would probably be for the best if the ruler of his nation and the ruler of his pack got together to compare notes ahead of the reveal.

Gregori would leave the cleaning up to others. He surely wasn’t being paid for it, in either money or favors, and he knew that he was no match for an archmage. Not without far more available to him than a set of Kamovs.

From what he’d heard of The Ghost, he wouldn’t need to worry about it. If there was anything the accounts agreed on, it was that The Ghost took a very dim view of attacking mundanes. After Fane’s death, it wasn’t a question of whether he could remove whoever was behind this, but when.

***

Archmage Harper regarded the scry-comm with distaste as Janry ended his stream of orders, tapping his fingers against his thigh. He had been less than convinced about Janry’s plan to begin with, and while he didn’t like the idea of ceding any ground to some upstart GAR replacement he did have limits on what he was willing to risk. More, he had limits on who he was willing to risk it for.

“He didn’t even wait,” Moravin said, his voice tight and controlled. “Magus Leshiel only reported that they’d spotted Taisen’s forces, not that she was defecting. The cowardly bastard had everything ready to go the moment he thought someone might have second thoughts.”

“This shouldn’t surprise you,” Harper said, taking a glass of tea from the servant with a nod. Perhaps they were being indiscreet, simply staying at House Harper instead of following Janry’s plan, but the time for discretion had long passed. To judge by the orders they’d overheard on the scry-comm they weren’t supposed to have, the time for anything but a final decision had passed.

“Perhaps not, but I did think he was overstating things.” Moravin scowled. “Posturing is one thing. Sacrificing entire Houses – his own cadet Houses! – by blaming them for all this destruction is another.”

Harper grunted. Neither of them cared all that much about the Earth Alliance, or even the mundanes so much, but at the same time they didn’t care to be the bonfire upon which Archmage Janry’s star rose. Harper, personally, had thought that the entire operation Janry had described would be a bluff. The teams – all but the one Archmage Tasser was leading to take care of Alpha Chester’s stronghold – were all told they’d most likely just be threatening the target. Only a few, if any, would actually go through with it.

Except that was not what had happened. The moment Magus Leshiel had made sure she was intercepted by Archmage Taisen’s forces, Janry had ordered every one of the teams under him – almost all the fae and half the mages – to move. While Janry himself stayed safe and uninvolved, willing to let everyone else shoulder the blame and consequences.

“He’s going to drag us all down with him,” Harper said. There was no telling exactly how powerful the dragons were, and how much they could do, nor did Harper trust that the new princess was the same as a fae prince. Combined with what The Ghost could do, Harper wasn’t willing to bet that this would be a success, let alone the clean sweep Janry wanted.

“Then what do we do?” Moravin would not normally have deferred to Harper – they were fellow archmages, after all – but with House Harper hosting House Moravin while the latter negotiated new land, he was extending a certain politeness. Harper appreciated it, but the question was rhetorical. Neither of them wanted to be left holding the bag.

“The question is, to whom can we turn?” If Harper and Moravin wanted to come out of this with their skins intact, they had do two things. Bring Janry to account, and survive the experience. Moravin’s metal aspect was far more suited to combat than Harper’s water, but neither of them were particularly practiced or, frankly, nearly as powerful as Janry. As much as nobody wanted to admit it, not all archmages were equal.

Moravin laughed, a dark and ugly thing. Harper looked at him and raised his eyebrows, not entirely encouraged by the expression on his fellow archmage’s face.

“There’s exactly one archmage aside from The Ghost himself that everyone fears, whether they admit it or not. Old Wizzy could deal with him, and I notice that Janry didn’t send any teams to his area.” Moravin shrugged. “Very unlikely that’s coincidence.”

“Agreed,” Harper said, suppressing a shudder. That particular archmage was unbelievably disturbing, and people preferred to ignore him. But after the initial altercation when they’d encountered him, he hadn’t been a troublemaker. At least not until the Earth Alliance had brought him onto their side. “We’d best be off before it’s too late.”

He handed the tea off to his servant and Moravin followed suit. Wells’ purge of GAR had erased most of the existing teleportation network, but there were still a few links. The connections to Portal World Five and Six still existed, as those had been in private hands to begin with and neither of those portal worlds had been in contention. Nobody actually cared about them too much.

There were probably some of Taisen’s people watching them of course, but that was of no moment. Neither he nor Moravin were doing anything anyone would object to, save Janry. With Janry’s teams moving, Taisen would probably be pulling in everyone he could as soon as Leshiel spilled the orders, so any watchers would be busy very shortly anyway.

The two of them exited the house grounds, using their flight foci to reach the small nexus set up Faerie-side in a matter of moments. No longer were there switchboard operators, each link having a dedicated teleportation framework. Harper synchronized his vis with the enchantment, and in a blink he was on Earth, near the bitter mana of Portal World Six. Moravin followed after, and the two of them barely had time to get their bearings before a dark shadow with diamond eyes slid along the carved wall toward them.

“Peace!” Moravin said, holding out his hands. “We merely want to speak to your master.” Nobody really knew what Wizzy’s shadow could do, as it was the only thing from Portal World Six on Earth. Or anywhere. Even to mage-sight it didn’t look like more than a strange shadow, yet it could move and think and talk, so nobody was willing to risk it.

The shadow paused, the white pinprick eyes looking them over, then vanished. A moment later Wizzy himself arrived in the underground chamber, sliding along the surface of the water as if it were a conveyor. Harper recognized the magic involved, of course, but Wizzy’s control and finesse was still astounding to his eyes. It was too bad the man had no interest in the broader mage world, given his experience.

“Archmage,” Harper said, breaking himself from his admiration of magic technique. “We’re here because we have an important request.”

“Oh?” Wizzy’s voice was not exactly welcoming, but Harper plowed on regardless.

“Archmage Janry has gone too far,” he admitted. “While we might have disagreements with people in your Earth Alliance, neither of us are willing to be disposable catspaws for Janry to realize his vision.”

“And now that you see what trap you’ve walked into, you come to this one begging for help in escaping it,” Wizzy said. It was not a question.

“Call it what you will, but we all know that archmages don’t fight each other. We’re all old, careful, and none of us really know how it’ll turn out.” Moravin snorted and shook his head. “The rest of us wouldn’t stand for it anyway. But now? No, Janry thinks he is better than us, and that he will be some kind of kingmaker when the dust clears.”

“At this very moment, he’s ordering people to sabotage the mundanes here on Earth,” Harper said. “We were going to go along with the original plan, but even we have limits. What he’s doing isn’t just politics, it’s going to get a lot of people killed and that is only if it works.” It might well be too late for some of the fae and mage teams.

“You want this one to clean up your mess.” Wizzy tilted his head just slightly, and Harper took a breath. This wasn’t going how he expected. If anything, he’d thought that Wizzy would be perfectly happy to help them out, since Janry was his enemy too. The man never participated in the politics of the Archmage’s Council, so Harper thought Wizzy would be straightforward.

“We want to remove someone who has violated all the rules we put on ourselves,” Moravin said into the silence. “He’s willing to sacrifice his own cadet Houses. Maybe even his own House! After all, he’s not at House Janry right now, where you’d strike.”

“No?” Wizzy showed the first real expression, even if it wasn’t much of one. A single eyebrow went up half an inch.

“He’s with Magus Rossi,” Harper supplied. “Not sure if it’s for an alibi or if he wants hostages. He could probably destroy the entire Enchanting Guild if driven to it. But he might well come out to meet us, given the right excuse.”

“Simply baiting him out would be a pittance of the restitution required from you,” Wizzy said, which made Harper wonder how much Wizzy knew. The oldest archmage in the world was nobody’s fool.

“Better than what Wells would do to us when all this is over,” Moravin said sourly. “Or the dragons, or that new fae princess. Even if Janry’s plan worked, that wouldn’t shield us from reprisals for actual deaths.”

“It would not,” Wizzy acknowledged. “Very well. Let us see an end to this foolishness.”

“What excuse are we using?” Moravin asked, looking over to Harper, who smiled in response.

“I am not quite as late to this conclusion as it may seem. There have been some messengers from the Greater Courts in Faerie asking about the Houses, and even Archmage Janry – especially Archmage Janry – would have to meet one in person. I was originally intending to suggest that the messenger summon Wells, but under the circumstances I doubt that would work out.”

“The Ghost cares not for Faerie’s blessings,” Archmage Wizzy said, showing a slight trace of amusement. “Yet, bidding a messenger from the Greater Courts will be on your own head. As will many other things.”

“Yes,” Harper sighed. “Let’s get on with it.”

Wizzy stepped forward, his odd shadow coiled at his feet, and waved languidly at the teleportation circle. Neither of them had gotten more than two steps beyond it.

Harper simply turned around and energized the teleportation framework once again, reappearing in the small common compound in Faerie. Archmage Wizzy appeared the moment he stepped out of the receiving circle, and Moravin came last. Harper had the distinct feeling that he was being escorted by Wizzy, rather than the other way around.

The return to House Harper was entirely silent, the back of Harper’s neck itching from Wizzy’s regard. When they landed, Harper had a servant bring the appropriate scry-comm before they got past the vestibule. It wasn’t like they were intending to stay.

“Archmage Saren? Yes, this is Harper. I was wondering if that fae messenger was still there with you.” So far, none of the people from the Greater Courts had been by House Harper, but that was perfectly fine with him. Nobody close to Earth dealt with what were euphemistically called the Summer or Winter Courts, since those fae were very far from human.

“Yes, it’s — hang on,” Saren’s voice came over the scry-comm, sounding distracted. “It was here.”

“You wanted to see me?” Another voice interrupted Saren’s, and Harper blinked down at the oversized black cat stretched languidly across the polished wooden floor.

“Ah, the messenger is here now,” Harper said, trying to remain calm. It was no good to try and expect normal behavior from deep fae. “Thank you, Archmage Saren.”

“Better you than me,” Saren said, and the scry-comm clicked as he disconnected. Harper turned his attention to the cat, which didn’t look all that powerful, but still had managed to teleport directly to House Harper, through all the wards, without him noticing.

“Yes,” Harper said to the cat, glancing back at where Wizzy stood, thumbs tucked into his belt loops. “We were simply thinking that this would be a good time discuss your business in Faerie with Archmage Janry. I would simply need to summon him.”

“I smell treachery,” the cat said with a purr, rolling over in a sunbeam like any housecat — even though there were no windows to cast the beam where the cat lay. “Delicious. Yes, do summon him. Tell him that Cait Sidhe of the Greater Courts requires his presence.”

“Please, come in,” Harper said, beckoning everyone into the front room and then heading into his office to retrieve the scry-comm in question. He took a breath and then activated it.

“Archmage Janry?”

“Yes? I am in the middle of a tour.” Janry’s voice came back, dull as ever but still somehow sounding just a touch acerbic. Unstated was that he was also in the middle of an attempted coup.

“I have a fae from the Greater Courts here at House Harper requesting your presence. Under the circumstances I don’t think it’s in our interests to wait.”

“I see.” There was a pause as Harper waited, and he paced the floor in his study. He suspected that Janry would actually leap at the chance, but the man had never decided anything quickly in his life.

“Yes, very well, that does take precedence,” Janry said. “I will be there shortly.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Harper said, and cut the connection. Then he stepped out of the office and looked at the butler. “Evacuate the staff immediately,” he told the man. “Warn all mages to have shield and flight foci ready.” He hoped it wouldn’t devolve to a battle, but there was no telling what would happen. He’d never actually seen what Wizzy could do.

People flowed out of the House, through the teleporters in the back, even as he returned to the front room. Wizzy was petting the Cait Sidhe, which seemed absolutely suicidal to Harper, but the fae was allowing it so he wasn’t going to say anything.

“He’s on his way,” Harper reported, not certain whether Janry would use the teleporter or fly in. “Be ready.”

“I am,” Wizzy said, scratching the Cait Sidhe between its ears. Harper regarded him uncertainly, but since Wizzy didn’t maintain a sphere of authority it was hard to know what to look for. It also didn’t make him look like a mage, so it might be easier to surprise Janry. Fortunately, the combat was not his responsibility.

Moravin cycled through his foci, sphere flickering slightly from reinforcing shields, and Harper went to the vestibule to greet Janry. If he weren’t a water mage, he’d be sweating. It was a long few minutes until the teleport pad activated and started to pull in mana, forming the spell framework before vanishing to reveal Archmage Janry.

“Welcome,” Harper said, hoping that if he looked at all nervous it’d be attributed to the presence of the Cait Sidhe. “It’s just inside. I’m not entirely certain what it wants.”

“Likely to discuss the disposition of Earth,” Janry said brusquely, almost brushing past Harper on his way through the door. “Where is—” He froze just past the vestibule, then whipped his head around, fixing Harper with a cold glare. “Traitor.”

Harper’s shields reacted faster than he could, rigid water deflecting stone shards as the ground shook, massive slabs of rock punching through the floor and destroying walls. Metal formed a sphere to protect Moravin, but the Cait Sidhe just watched as Wizzy simply took one step forward. A tiny dot of red punctured stone and shields alike, zipping forward faster than Harper could track, and everything stopped.

Janry stood rigid and unmoving, and Wizzy’s eyes seemed to glow with a strange light as the displaced and conjured stone sank back into the ground. After an instant Harper understood that Wizzy was controlling Janry’s own vis and undoing the spells he’d cast. It didn’t repair any of the damage that had been done, but removed all the obstacles Janry had thrown out in the few seconds of combat.

“I suppose—” Moravin began, but was interrupted by a sudden a portal opening, surprising him since he hadn’t even seen the magic to create it. A hulking dragonblooded came through, followed by Archmage Taisen. As if Wizzy weren’t bad enough.

“Ah,” said a voice, coming from a small metal box that Harper hadn’t noticed before. “You already have him.”

“He is helpless,” Wizzy said firmly. “I will ensure he remains so.”

“Good,” said the voice from the box, which Harper knew had to be The Ghost. “He has a lot to answer for.”