StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Fires raged around me as I pulled together my will, gunshots and the invocations of power sang through the air. I drew the power in and directed it to a buckler strapped to my left arm and thrust it forward and snarling the latin word “Consulo!”.

The shield sprang up in front of me in a concave disk of blue-silver light and almost as soon as it was up bullets slammed into it promptly bouncing off at angles equal and opposite to their incoming trajectories. Many of them slammed into the ground but just as many reflected back on the men firing automatic weapons at the circle of staff and sword bearing men that was forming against their attackers. A circle I was a part of. More shields came into existence in the circle. Some simply took the incoming fire and spread the force of the bullets around a large area instead of a concentrated piece of human flesh, others were designed to use the energy of the gunfire against them fractionating the bullets into tiny pieces that showered the wizard who made the shield with negligible bits. Mine was designed to send bullets and spells back on the one who created it.

Yes. I just said wizards. I know what you are thinking. “Wizards are not real” you tell yourself, but we certainly are. As a matter of fact many of the things that you think are just boogeymen and old wives tales really do exist. That includes trolls, vampires, the fey, dragons. All of it is real and all of it acts within the mortal world to varying degrees. Over nine hundred thousand unsolved disappearances happen every year. Sure some of them are just runaways that do not want to be found, or husbands who run off with their mistress and change their name. Many of them just get eaten, think about that for a second. I bet there are two questions you might be asking yourself. The first is probably why I and my fellow wizards are being attacked. The second is why we are in a circle putting up shields when we could just be calling down lightning and fire. I will answer them in order.

The answer to the first question is that we wizards are members of an organization called the White Council of Wizards, and we are currently at war with the Vampires. This war was started several years ago by a wizard named Harry Dresden who violated the laws of hospitality set forth in the Unseelie Accords (which are sort of like our Geneva Convention) and took up arms against a powerful vampire who tried to destroy Excalibur by shedding innocent blood with it, and then kidnapped and half-turned his girlfriend out of spite. Needless to say I think he was completely justified when he immolated her and her entire house.

This kicked off a war that has not been going well for our people. This segues rather well into the second question. The vampires are capable of enthralling or simply employing mortals to do their dirty work. We have laws against using magic to kill mortals. These are not the sort of laws that get legislated and can be set aside or repealed either. It is the first of seven laws of magic. Thou shalt not kill another human being with magic. You see, magic comes from the life force of mortals, their imaginations, their hopes and dreams.

It is meant to be used to protect mortals from the things that go Bump in the night. To kill a mortal with it not only betrays its purpose and is tantamount to an abomination, but it also leaves a stain on the soul of the one doing it which leads to much darker temptations. The punishment for violating this law is, with few exceptions, death.. often by beheading. I and those I am traveling with are Wardens of the White Council, those tasked with enforcing the Laws, and also as serving as soldiers when we go to war. It would be really bad if we were to break the very laws we uphold wouldn't it?

My reflection shield though does not kill, it sends the death back at those who sent it, which is an entirely different matter. Sending hostile magics or bullets back at the sender is perfectly legal. Still, we cannot collectively hold our shields up for very long. Each spell we cast saps the will and vitality from the wizard. Granted we can get that back with rest and sometimes through other tricky means but that would not do us very much good if we are riddled with bullet holes.

Our commander, a large dark skinned man just under six feet tall named Morgan called out something and we heard him through the din of battle as if he was speaking calmly in a quiet room.

“Break them with wind, on my mark. Three, two, one, Mark”

With that the Wardens in the circle went to work, some thrust out their hands, others their swords or staffs. I gathered up my will and rammed the tip of my staff into the ground calling out the words “Ventus Validus!” A powerful wind exploded out from me at hurricane force sending the thralls in a thirty degree angle in front of me flying back to sprawl on their backs. Other wizards used other languages, German, Latin, Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic. The words were used to shape the magic and provide a buffer against its power in a wizards mind so it was typically not someone's native language. Some would even use their own magical cant. I used Latin. In any case the mortals surrounding us were flung away giving us a break in the gunfire and allowing us to move. I transferred my iron shod and rune-carved staff to my left hand , dropped my shield then drew my sword, a latin etched Arming Sword with a haxagonal cross section, and charged forward. The rest of the circle expanded outward. Part of the reason we were in a circle in the first place was because it forced our attackers to be more careful with their shots. Those that overshot might hit their fellows. It forced them to spread out too, which made this maneuver easier. Without deep ranks to absorb the shock they would be easier to break. Silver enspelled blades flashed through the air, executing the fallen and engaged in close quarters combat. I ran a fallen man through and then moved to parry a strike from a man who had drawn a combat knife against me. I forced his clumsy thrust aside forcing him to over-extend, stepped back out of his range and severed his hand at the wrist before he could recover, then spun around sweeping the edge of my sword against the backs of his knees severing the ligaments and causing him to flop helplessly to the ground like a landed fish. A man managed to get up and raise his Kalashnikov. I raised my shield again and sent the bullets to slam back into his chest.

It was just then that hell broke loose. Almost literally. A voice sang through the air like the ring of some malevolent bell. Someone was using a Name to call something. Names have power, and not just any name. A True Name spoken with the exact intonations and emphasis that a person or being uses to identify themselves can form a link to that being and can be used to compel or even kill them. With humans it is a bit more dicey because their self-identity changes, but with magical creatures that is not the case. I know a few Names, no I am not telling them to you. In the mortal world it took a good amount of juice to summon something from the fey realm, or Nevernever. We were in the Nevernever and as a result things got a lot easier for the summoner.

Through the battle I could see a robed figure pushing up its hands and reached out with my Wizard senses. Magic surged around inside a constructed circle and a being materialized inside it, its true name was spoken again and it was compelled to obey the orders of the summoner. It lurched forward, a being that looked like a spiked and many-toothed toad. It reared back and belched forth a spray of acid. It struck wizard and thrall dissolving them indiscriminately in a cacophony of agonized screams. The other Wardens were fighting for their lives, I was not currently engaged. It fell to me. I would have to rely on my warded armor, consisting of spell woven mail and a rune-inscribed wide brimmed medieval helmet, against bullets and knife cuts. I also had a fedora at home with the same enchantments against mind-magic, but the iron in this one was useful against creatures of the Sidhe realm that may not care that we are allied with both Winter and Summer Courts. Besides, I looked bad-ass when I wear the thing with my mail. The demon stood before me, holding the mangled corpse of another Warden, Johann Frisch a friend of mine from Utrecht in his jaws. Rage washed over me like a wave and I pointed my sword at it, balled my rage into a coherent ball of sheer will and screamed “IMPETUS!”.

Naked kinetic energy lashed out from the point of my sword and struck the demon in the chest knocking it back twelve meters and onto its back and giving me the chance to gather more of my will to lay waste to its summoner. The walking corpse however acted first. A black court vampiress, her body emaciated but pulsing with dark power drew in her own will and lashed out at me with tendrils of darkness. I threw up my left arm, drawing in my will and invested a not-insignificant portion of my will. “Consulo!” I hissed and the same concave disk flashed before me for a brief instant and reflected her spell back at her.

She was forced to dodge to the side to avoid her own spell and that left her off balance. I was already moving and reached into a belt pouch, removing a flask of holy water and tossed it at her. It hit and the thin glass shattered. The blessed liquid touched her skin and burst into radiant heatless flame that began eating at her flesh. She screamed a high pitched wail that carried across the field of battle. I did not have a whole lot of energy left after both of those displays. One could say my tank was at half. I have a good amount of raw power, perhaps in the top hundred or so wizards, but reflecting that spell took a lot out of me. I would need to end this quickly. Either that or tap the power I needed from something, or someone, else. I decided on the later option. The demon was getting up. I looked around me and saw a patch of thralls triple teaming a Warden. I gathered my will and using my left hand swept my staff in an arc that encompassed them, but not the Warden.

“Fertificus tepidus!” I called. The three thrall's skin became immediately frost bitten and their bodies wracked with the spasms of severe hypothermia. The warden engaged in hand to hand combat with them took the opportunity to decapitate all three of them That did not change that fact that I had stolen their body heat. It coursed over me, I felt a buzz, like standing next to a high voltage line and was filed with an odd tingly sensation over my entire body. You know, that feeling you get when your foot is asleep. Then I pointed my sword at the demon that was now charging and forced the energy plus an expenditure of my will through it.

“Incendia quod impendo!” I snarled, forcing the power I had gathered plus another large investment of my willpower into a tightly packed little ball and sent it streaking out from my sword to a spot between the vampire and the charging demon. It hit that place and energy expanded outward in a concussive burning wave. Fire and pressure washed over both of them. The vampire, weakened from the holy water was rendered into a somewhat different shape. Her corpsified body was contorted in ways that sadistic children could not dream up for their action figure de Sade routines and it was burnt beyond recognition. She fell to the ground and did not get up. The demon on the other hand was barely phased. Moreover with its summoner gone it was no longer under any constraint or compulsion. I was essentially tapped out. I had enough left in me for minor magics and probably could not stand up to that thing in hand to hand combat. I was about to die, but god damn it I was taking that thing with me. I called upon my life force itself, and prepared to die fighting and level my death curse at the the thing. All wizards have a death curse, a horrendously nasty spell powered by their very life force that they could level at a being of their choice when they were about to die. I held my staff diagonally out at my side and my sword in a high horizontal guard.

“Bring it Frog Face!” I screamed at the thing, gathering every bit of rage I could at it killing my friend to add to my death curse. I was in the Nevernever. If it died here it was not just banished, it stayed dead. The demon closed took a swipe at me with its wicked talons. I rolled with it but still took a rake across the chest. My armor was enchanted but as it turned out demonic claws were not bullets or sword cuts. The armor stopped the claws from flaying the flesh from my ribcage but the links burst and several deep gashes were carved into my skin and fat layer. Blood welled from the wound and I thrust with my sword, stabbing a foot of its length into the toad demon, I swung my staff around and clouted it about the head, driving it back half a meter. It was then that I heard the words. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the wizard who's foes I had incapacitated come to my aid. Power and the smell of Ozone gathered around him as he chanted a brief litany He was tall, had blonde hair in flowing locks and blue eyes. Rather than a sword he wielded a battle axe in one hand, and held his staff in the other. I recognized him as Sven Walsburg, his family had moved from Sweden to canada before he was born, but he picked up Swedish as a second language. Listening to him, I understood why he had chosen it as the language he used for magic. Swedish, from the pronunciation of vowels to the way the rs rolled combined with his deep voice, was a language of power.

“Bult av Blixtar!!!!” he screamed as he finished, swinging his down in an overhand stroke and pouring lightning in a stroke as big around as his chest. Air ionized and expanded and with a deafening crack of homemade thunder struck the demon full in the chest sending its broken and charred body back three meters to fall to the ground with a sickening thud.

“Thank you” I said to him, releasing the energies of my death curse back into myself, not longer needed.

“You're welcome” he replied before turning to charge headlong into the battle behind us. Then I realized something. One of those little rules, a truth that modern horror movies always remind us of but that everyone, wizards included, always seems to forget. You can shoot something, stab it, spray it with holy water, have a priest chant the roman ritual over the corpse before running over it with a panzer... and they always get back up at least twice. That goes especially well for black court vampires. I looked at where the corpse should have been and my heart climbed up into my throat and tried its level best to escape through my mouth. The din of battle was getting lower, filled more with the cries of the wounded than with actual combat now and most of ours were still alive. Maybe not standing very well anymore, but alive. Still, having a Black Court sorceress unaccounted for was a very bad thing. I reached out with my wizard senses and tried to detect if she was under a veil but there were so many spells and residual magic that I could not isolate anything in particular. That is when I felt this horrible tearing sensation at the back of my knee and felt like I had been hit by tree trunk wielded by an over-sized Mark McGuire. Needless to say I did not stay on my feet. As a matter of fact I heard a few of my ribs break and flew backward about four meters. I sharp stabbing pain in my ass alerted me to the fact that my coccyx had broken why I hit the ground. My fucking coccyx! Of course I had dropped both my staff and my sword when I was forcibly propelled backward, leaving me seemingly defenseless.

The vampire dropped her veil, re-materializing before my eyes in the sort of flicker you see when the Predator drops its cloak. The walking corpse was missing its left arm and most of its face, as well as having about half its torso blown off. It walked on one dislocated kneed with a rather pronounced limp. Still, it began walking toward me in a very intimidating stalk.

“I shall enjoy bleeding you dry wizard” it said.

“Why cant you just do the world a favor and die a second time you blood sucking cunt” I moaned right before the vampire began bending down and lurching toward my throat. That is when I unloaded the other secret weapon. In that same belt pouch I had a surprised. I pulled out a child's squirt gun, you know, the type that you fill under a tap that fires about two meters. This one did not just have holy water in it though. It had holy water that I had turned into a blessed garlic marinade, and the little jets of pungent liquid shot right down the vampire's open mouth. It screamed as holy fire began consuming its head. Then I trust my buckler forward. On its face was etched a pentacle, a five pointed star representing air, earth, fire, water, and life bound by a circle. It was the symbol of the one thing I held faith in, magic bound by human thought and will and meant to serve and protect humanity from the things that go bump in the night. It burst into radiant silver-blue light and everywhere the little shafts of radiance created by my own faith touched the vampire she burst into heatless fire. She shrieked and moaned as the fire consumed her body and cast her demonic excuse for a soul back into the abyss from whence it came. I tried to get up but could not any weight on my injured knee. The attempt to do made my vision tunnel with the sheer agony of it. Instead I used my arms to crawl the smoldering now finally inanimately dead corpse and spat upon it.

“Bitch”


…

“Get the dead and wounded through the gate first” came Morgan's voice. It was a deep basso, sort of like Samuel L Jackson I suppose, but a bit more terse. I would have been helping, but my staff and grey cloak made up part of my litter. Of course I was on my back, which sent shooting pain from my broken tailbone surging directly up my spine. Eventually I just passed out.

I woke up in the infirmary of the White Council's headquarters, a sprawling complex tunneled under Edinburgh Castle. Much to my chagrin of course, many of the Master Healers there had gone to medical school before Pasteur figured a few things out about bacteria. Still there were enough modern doctors there that I was not in too bad a shape by the time I was discharged. Oh! That reminds me. All of this and I have not told you my name, or even really described myself other than the trappings of my wizardry. Tells you a bit about me right? It is almost as if I don't have much in the way of a sense of self-worth. That is not really true. It is just that I forget those niceties somewhat easily. My name is Steven. Well, properly it is Steven Richard Frost. Most people call me Steve, though I am known properly by my title of Warden Frost within the council. I am around five ten, and of a medium build. When I say medium build I mean my general frame. I have good muscle tone from working out in a non-fanatic sort of way and from regular fencing. I have close cropped sandy blonde hair and green eyes, with a strong jaw and not particularly hawkish features for those of you who care about that sort of thing. Oh, and I am twenty seven years old, and will live to at least three hundred unless I get immolated, ripped apart or otherwise killed first. At the rate things were going in this war, that seemed more and more likely every day. Between hunting dark wizards and fighting everything from vampires to demons It was likely I would punch out by my thirtieth birthday, let alone my three hundredth.

As it turns out, not only was my ass broken, but my lateral collateral ligament and posterior cruciate ligament had been severed. The healers managed to put most of it back together, but it would take me a long time to regain full functionality in the leg. If I did not have a wizard's ability to heal injuries given enough time, I never would. One of the little perks. As a result tough when I was discharged I had to hobble on my staff for an hour to get to my exit point and go home. I opened the gate through the Nevernever by muttering the word “Ostium” and sending my will to rip a whole in the fabric of existence (cool huh?) and stepped through, closing the door behind me. I hobbled for another hour and re-opened the gate in the designated spot.

The gate through the Nevernever opened on Mill Avenue in Tempe Arizona. Close to home actually. I lived a bit less than a mile away across the campus of Arizona State University, and the area had a free shuttle service that picked up at regular intervals. In particular the gate opened in a back alley of mill avenue in a spot regularly patrolled by heroin addicts. Let me tell you the looks on their faces when there is a flash of light and a guy leaning on a staff wearing chainmail, a medieval helmet and carrying a sword and buckler steps through a hole in the universe that was not there a second ago is priceless.

“Fuck this” one of them said before tossing his syringe into a trash can and walking away. See? We wizards do good things in the world. I got a lot of odd looks sitting at the shuttle stop in my full battle gear. A horse-mounted cop stopped next to me.

“So... what's with the getup?” he asked, his tone polite. I could see him mentally classify me as 'nut-case, maybe dangerous'. Not that this part of Tempe did not have its fair share of plenty of those.

“Would you believe me if I told you that I was a wizard who got into a fight with a vampire and a demon in another dimension and just got discharged from the wizard hospital?” he eyed me skeptically. I got that a lot.

“Not that that is true, I was just checking your reaction.” I said in response to his expression.
“No, I just got back from an SCA event and got beat up a little bit. Got off the last bus and am taking the shuttle the final leg home.” he nodded with understanding and I could see him reclassify my as 'harmless weirdo' then spurred his horse inward with loud clopping sounds.

The shuttle rolled up a few minutes later and I limped inside and was home in about fifteen minutes. Home for me was a little house just off campus. It was a little green thing with blue trim and a shingled roof, with a little man-tall wrought iron fence in the front, and a cinder-block wall surrounding the small back yard. A little “no soliciting: sign hung next to the front gate. It looked on the outside to have only one floor but I had a small basement dug under the foundation for my lab. I disabled my first set of wards, really more of an alarm accompanied by an electric jolt equivalent to the sting of a cattle-prod that hung around the fence and walls and went inside, closing them behind me. When I got to the front door I disabled the set of far nastier wards. These wards were the magical equivalent of a castle wall with anti-personnel mines wired inside. They were designed to withstand magical as well as physical attack and intrusion and turn anything trying to force the wards into a smoking crater. They also had this tendency to redirect hostile magic sent remotely via thaumaturgy back at the caster. It took me a long time and a lot of money to etch those symbols into the walls, set up the ward candles and pour the necessary energy into them, but I pity the fool that would try to attack me in my home. I walked inside and muttered the words “Lux candela”. Several dozen candles sprang into flame around the small house and the fireplace came to life. We wizards tend to disagree with modern technology. I did not keep electric lights or anything like that. They tended to explode. The only modern devices I had were things that were old and reliable. The one electronic device I had available was a battery powered CD player that I kept inside a circle inscribed in silver on my floor. I would use the circle to keep out the magical energies that would cause it to violently react with me and my wards so I could play classical and rock music. Other than that I did without hot water, and did all my cooking on a gas stove. Hell, my refrigerator was an old fashioned ice-box. You know, the type that stocked actual ice. The house was decorated with less color and more texture. Tapestries hang from the walls, the hardwood floors were covered in hand-woven throw rugs, and all of my couches were second hand but very comfortable. Bookshelves covering all manner of topics both mundane and arcane covered the walls that the tapestries did not and a candle lit writing desk sat on the far corner, a stack of papers I needed to grade.

Yes... I said grade. I have a day job, as if all the other things were not enough. I was a professor of Medieval and Renaissance studies at the university, specializing in medieval folklore and the occult. It helped that I had first hand knowledge of a lot of it, and I had written several books detailing mystical creatures that in addition to helping out struggling students would also be of assistance to wizards having to deal with that sort of thing. I winced as I sat down on my broken coccyx and got a red pen out, and started to read the homesick abortions that were the collected work of my students. Thankfully the painkillers the Healers had given me seemed to work nicely to dull the pain. The work had a bright side. I was able to identify potential practitioners of the art, let them know about the Laws of Magic and what the penalties for breaking them were, and administer the tests for membership in the White Council. I could even do it with a mask of mortal-world legitimacy. But damn it I hate grading with a passion.

It was going to be a long night.

That's some pretty decent story-telling. Is this intended to be a recurring character, or just a one-off?

"Bult av blixtar!" means, roughly translated, "rivet made of lightning".

Aside from (and including) that, nice read, brief though it was.

This is pretty cool. You do a good job capturing the essence of the Dresden Files. Is this any character we've seen before, or an OC?

Eleas wrote:"Bult av blixtar!" means, roughly translated, "rivet made of lightning".

Aside from (and including) that, nice read, brief though it was.

I used a translator. Bolt it seems translated differently than how I thought it did. I speak german not swedish. How would I say "bolt of lighting" would the word spear or shaft work better?

As for the rest, it is definitely recurring, I am going to keep this going as long as I can in installments as rapidly as I can push them out. The character is of course original.

Alyrium Denryle wrote:

Eleas wrote:"Bult av blixtar!" means, roughly translated, "rivet made of lightning".

Aside from (and including) that, nice read, brief though it was.

I used a translator. Bolt it seems translated differently than how I thought it did. I speak german not swedish. How would I say "bolt of lighting" would the word spear or shaft work better?

As for the rest, it is definitely recurring, I am going to keep this going as long as I can in installments as rapidly as I can push them out. The character is of course original.

This is why I hit up native speakers, whenever possible, when I want to drop a few lines of German/Latin/whatever in my fics. Online translators mangle everything.

Imperial Overlord wrote:

Alyrium Denryle wrote:

Eleas wrote:"Bult av blixtar!" means, roughly translated, "rivet made of lightning".

Aside from (and including) that, nice read, brief though it was.

I used a translator. Bolt it seems translated differently than how I thought it did. I speak german not swedish. How would I say "bolt of lighting" would the word spear or shaft work better?

As for the rest, it is definitely recurring, I am going to keep this going as long as I can in installments as rapidly as I can push them out. The character is of course original.

This is why I hit up native speakers, whenever possible, when I want to drop a few lines of German/Latin/whatever in my fics. Online translators mangle everything.

Good idea, will use in future. Dont know too many swedes though

Eleas just posted in the thread and he isn't the only Swede on the board.

Imperial Overlord wrote:Eleas just posted in the thread and he isn't the only Swede on the board.

A resource he will definitely be.

I liked the classic professor look. I walked into my classroom in the Language and Literature building, one of the older ones on campus and more than a tad worn with age wearing an honest to god brown-green tweed suit with elbow patches. I wore formal shoes and hobbled with the assistance of my staff and cane with had a thin spring steel rapier concealed inside. I also wore my fedora that protected me from mind-influencing magic over my head. You could never be too careful with college students. Some might be Practitioners I did not know about and have a talent for illegal mind magic.

I had gone over my zero tolerance policy when it came to academic dishonesty earlier in the semester and that if I caught someone cheating on anything I would push for expulsion. I did not tell them that in the case of mind-reading or mind-influencing spells the word “expulsion” meant “execution”. That actually did happen once, I swear.

I told the student that I had scheduled a disciplinary hearing that would meet in a given room, and when that student showed up I and a few other wardens captured her, put a black bag over her head, dragged her to a trial where she was found guilty of the use of black magic. All in all Morgan had chopped her head off within ten minutes.

She stopped showing up for class after that. Why cant students failing my class just offer to sleep with me or something?

“What happened to your leg?” Sally Struthers, a student of only average academic potential asked me.

I replied completely dead pan.

“A vampire sorcereress severed a few of my ligaments in a pitched battle in the spirit realm before I drenched her in a marinade made of garlic and holy water.” a few students snickered, the two students I knew had magical talents and were clued in about that sort of thing got that shocked wide-eyed looks of terror on their faces. The rest just stared at me like I was crazy. I was used to it.

“No, really... what happened?” she pressed.

“I went hiking on Camelback and tripped. Ripped the tendons in my knee.”

“I am sorry.”

“So am I, believe me.”

“In any event, today we are going to talk about Dragons. How many of you play Dungeons and Dragons by chance?”

A few students raised their hands

“Excellent. Good work” they did not know I lived their weekend games. It was funny.

“In legend, Dragons run the gamut from being terrors-to-behold that you see in your games.”

I went into the classifications for dragons that I had pieced together from a bunch of old manuscripts. Worms, Wyverns, Hydra, Drakes, Asiatic Lungs, and European style Wyrms. I even talked about the Tarasque. I then went into a long diatribe on the physical anatomy of dragons, diagramming it out on the board in an amount of detail I was rather impressed with.

“Ok ok” a student who's name I didn't know interrupted.

“First off, isn't this all pointless? Why do we need to know the anatomy of dragons, and how would anyone ever know or confirm any of this?”

I loved straight lines like that.

“In answer to the first question” I replied “You are the one who took a class on mythical creatures, it is not cross listed as biology or anything but damn kid, take advantage of my knowledge.” the class snickered a little bit.

“As for how we know all of this. When Saint George killed that dragon in Libya back in the 5th century, Merlin got to examine and dissect the body. Now the drawings were not much better than the drawings of human anatomy done by the roman physician Galen, but it gave us the general gist and we have cleared things up from there.” The class sat there for a minute, then caught what they thought was a joke and burst into laughter. I am not sure if they were laughing at me or the person who asked the question.

And then someone's cell phone rang, this annoying rhythmic sound pulsed out at the back of the room with a vocalist who sounded like he was talking in the language of drug-addled violence peddlers. I muttered a single word under my breath and sent out a little bit of my will along with it.

“fracta”

The phone burst into electrical sparks and screamed for a moment, then died right as the student tried to put it on silent.

“That is what happens when you bring cell phones to class. The universe punishes you for your rudeness.” It was on the syllabus. No laptops, cell phones or electronic devices. I am not responsible for the consequences like property damage. I then continued as if nothing else had occurred.

“No really, these are mythical creatures and a lot of these things are speculation pieced together from a lot of old and even a few modern manuscripts. You can find one of the more modern ones in any decent library. It is called 'The Flight of Dragons' by a guy named Peter Dickinson. He was wrong on a lot because he had to twist a few things to make a mythical beast work with modern science, but it isn't bad on the whole. Hell it almost makes me think Dragons could really exist. Though you have to be wary of the shape-shifting ones. I imagine you could spot one at a club by watching for people who smoke unlit cigarettes” that once again drove the class into raucous laughter.

I talked about dragons and how they could historically be placated with milk or virgin sacrifices for a while before class ended and I dismissed them.

…

An hour later I was in my office laboriously translating a document from attic greek into english when a heard a knock on my door frame. Believe it or not I have an open door policy with my students. I encourage them to come in and ask questions and in a roundabout way make sure they know they can talk to me if weird things happen in their general vicinity. It is surprising how much information you can gather about the area in your jurisdiction from scared students who saw something strange or did something they did not think was humanely possible.

“Um, Dr. Frost?” said a male student with black hair and a very attractive body frame, piercing blue eyes and cute barely noticeable South African accent...Stop it Steven. He is your student, you are a dirty old man. Yeah I am one of those gays. Sue me. Not that I ever did anything with it. I have a somewhat busy schedule, what with being a professor and fighting the forces of darkness, the only places I could go to get any action were also infested with White Court vampires. Otherwise known as succubi and incubi for females and males respectively.

“Whats up Duncan?” I asked, without a hint of my mental indiscretion showing in my voice or facial expression. He was one of my best students too, and it had nothing to do with the fact that were he not my student and into that sort of thing... I will shut up now.

“You are not kidding when you talk about the weird stuff are you?” His question set me back. He looked scared and confused. Something had happened to him. I could not lie to him.

“No.” I responded seriously. Not deadpan, there was conviction in my voice.

“I make it seem that way because no one really believes in magic anymore and if I made it seem as if I believed in it people would think I am insane. It is real. I have the battle scars to prove it.”

“This is unreal” he paused. “I, I cant believe this is happening to me.” he looked terrified, but also relieved that someone might believe him.

“What happened? Did you see something? Did you do something?” I tried to make that last bit as non-accusatory as I could. If he had used black magic there was nothing I could do to save him from my own sword, but if he was just coming into power that was different. It was late in his life for it to happen but it was not unheard of. Sometimes trauma could cause it to manifest. Usually that trauma was puberty but other emotional issues could do it.

“A little bit of both I guess.” he said sullenly.

“Close the door.” I asked, he looked at me quizzically.

“Close the door. It may look like some sort of impropriety but I would rather have people think that than overhear what you are confiding in me” he did so. “So, a bit of both you say. Care to specify?”

“Well” he said “things have been weird since I was a teenager. I see things Dr. Frost. I see things with a vivid clarity that I did not before I hit puberty... I see people and places differently... as if I am seeing them in metaphor which is ok... until I see something terrible. And whatever I see I never ever forget it. Sometimes I can make it stop but... My mom put me on anti-psychotic meds” he trailed off a bit.

If it was schizophrenia, the visions would have gone away. If not, it may mean that he was a fledgling practitioner. He had The Sight. A sixth sense that would allow him to see things as they really are. He could see a person's true nature, or the power around a place.

“They did not go away” Yep. That was that. Not being able to hold his Sight closed... it was amazing he was still sane.

“This is insane. It isn't real, I am just crazy.” he got up and turned to leave. I stood up and picked up my staff, muttering a word in latin. The book I was reading levitated off the desk and floated in front of him as his hand reached the door. He looked back at me, and I muttered another word and created small wind inside the room, a breeze when there should not have been one.

“You are not crazy Duncan. Sit down and talk to me Would you like to know when I first knew what I was?” he nodded.

“I was fourteen. You can imagine me, a somewhat bookish wiseass?”

“Yeah” he responded

“I was doing what happens to bookish wiseasses in Jr. high. I was being bullied. I was surrounded by the football team and insults were being tossed in my general direction. I was fed up and wanted them to go away. I believed that they should go away. At that moment I felt a surge of power and a pressure wave centered on me formed and shoved them back a meter and onto their asses. They never messed with me again.”

I left unspoken that I was called a witch after that. Fucking baptists.

He laughed a bit

“Nice”

“Look the point is, I was in a similar position to the one you are in. I found someone I could trust and I talked to them, they helped me. I want to be that person for you. It is okay. I understand and am here to help you. You just have to open up to me

There was a tone of kindness in my voice that even I did not think I was fully capable of. Then he settled down and continued.

“Other weird things have happened too. When I was in the Navy I served as a medic. I could... I could remove pain with a touch, sometimes the injuries themselves would repair themselves a bit”

“The laying on of hands” I mentioned. It was a rare talent, but I did not want to stroke his ego. His talent was not modest. He might even be White Council material.

“what do you mean?”

“This requires some background, are you alright with that?:”

“In for a penny in for a pound I suppose”

“Alright. The magical world is real. Magic, vampires, werewolves, the fey, dragons, there are nations of supernatural beings that exist alongside the real world, and in the Nevernever. Think of that as the spirit realm. I will stick to magic and those who use it for now, just to keep from overwhelming you.”

“Wait. Vampires, werewolves? They exist?”

“Yes.”

“How have we not noticed them? I mean, there are cryptobiologists looking around all over the place for that sort of thing”

“Well they are good at staying hidden for one. And even when they are found, even cryptobiologists who survive the encounter do not actually want such horrible things to exist. They put blinders on. They see something weird and when they remember it later they rationalize it away, because to not do so would mean that their parents were lying to them when they said that monsters did not exist. It scares the hell out of them. You have seen things often enough that you can't rationalize it away anymore. Understand?”

“Yeah. Fuck... I am scared to death” he said looking down a bit.

“Don't worry. It is alright to be afraid. As a matter of fact being afraid is smart. If you are not afraid you will do something stupid and you will die, or get someone else killed. It is a very dangerous world, and it is something that the law and mortal authorities cannot and in fact will not comprehend or be equipped to deal with. Sometimes you may find yourself alone in a dangerous situation, sometimes even trying to protect someone else who has no idea what is going on. It is better to be afraid, but not panicked, because you will make better decisions.”

“Kind of like how a soldier on a battlefield needs to have a healthy amount of fear?”

“Exactly like that.”

“Alright, rational fear is good. Got it” that perked him up a little bit. Being told that there was such thing as constructive cowardice tended to make people feel better about being afraid of what might be lurking behind a corner.

Alright. Those few mortals who can wield magic are a part of a sort of nation called the White Council. It is a sort of democracy where everyone has a vote, and there is an executive body made of the oldest and most powerful magic users called the Senior Council. The job of the White Council is to recruit, train and police other magic users, as well as respond to threats against those under its jurisdiction under a set of treaties called the Unseelie Accords. Think of those as the magical equivalent to the Geneva Conventions; they codify the ancient rules of hospitality, rules of war, duels, and trial by combat, among other things”

“So everyone who can use magic gets a vote?”

“No.”

“How is that fair? Shouldn't everyone get a vote?”

“Think about what it's job is. It has to have members who can respond to a crisis and who have a lot of knowledge about the supernatural world and enough power not to get killed for having that knowledge. Not all people who can tap into magic have equal talents. Most people who can do it, regardless of how hard they train, will never be able to do more than levitate small objects and other little things like that. Others have more talent but it is highly specialized. Some people are really good at one particular type of magic, but cannot do anything else. Others have a lot of talent but never got found by the Council so they have learned what they have through trial and error and thus are not very versatile. On the other hand they also tend to hang out with bad crowds and slip into dark magic. Only the most powerful magic users who have had formal training can call themselves wizards and thus have a vote in the White Council.

“wait, there is Dark Magic too?”

“Oh hell yeah. It is nasty stuff. Look, magic is the result of the life force, imaginations, hopes, dreams, and aspirations of sentient beings. It is meant to help protect and preserve those same sentient beings. Dark or Black Magic as it were is the use of magic in a way that corrupts or perverts that purpose. Not only is it an abomination, but it stains the souls of a person who does it, they do it more and more, corrupted by their power until they are no longer a person. With a very few exceptions the council has the mother of all zero-tolerance policies when it comes to that. One strike, and the head gets removed at the shoulders.”

“Holy fuck that is harsh... and it seems a bit poorly defined to. How do you decide when someone crosses the line? Does one person get to serve as judge, jury, and executioner?”

“There are seven Laws of Magic that define the dark arts. Breaking them makes one a warlock. A Dark Wizard. There are those empowered by the council to enforce the Laws. Wardens. Think of them like a combination between magical police and Marines and Judge Dread. They serve as law enforcers and soldiers when the council goes to war. Typically there is a trial, but sometimes that is not possible and there must be summary judgment. Wardens as a rule are very powerful wizards who are trained in combat magic. I happen to be one of them.”

Duncan gulped. “So... you have...k k killed people?”

“Yes. But not with spells. At least not directly. That would violate the First Law, which is Thou Shalt Not Kill Another Person with Magic” Normally his question was not asked. Professional courtesy. He would know that and be hardboiled about death if he was in the Navy. Then again he had seen war and death with his Sight. It really was amazing he was able to function.

“Would you kill me if I broke one of the Laws?”

“In a heartbeat” I replied, without any sort of hesitation or intonation in my voice whatsoever. There was none. He gulped again.

“And the others?” he asked, shaken.

“Thou Shalt Not Transform Another Person, Thou Shalt Not Invade The Mind of Another, Thou Shalt Not Enthrall Another.”

“Invade and Enthrall? Sorry to interrupt but I can understand why you should not kill or transform someone into a Newt, but what is the harm in mind-reading?”

“Entering, let alone coercing, another persons mind causes a lot of psychological trauma. It literally damages their soul.”

“Oh... I see how that makes sense. Hurting someone's soul seems to be one of those automatic bad things. Even with the best intentions”

“Exactly. The fifth law is a prohibition against the summoning, binding, or exploitation of the unwilling dead. Specifically sentient beings. Messing around with someone's soul or violating their remains is one of the blackest things you can do. Now, animals are a bit of a gray area. It is still an abomination but it can be very useful and in fact some necromantic rituals can only be disrupted by someone with a necromantic aura around them. Summoning a pigeon from beyond the grave can act as a loophole around that under dire conditions. I know a wizard in Chicago who disrupted a necromantic ascension ritual by summoning the corpse of a dead Tyrannosaur. Zombiesaurus rex, as it were.”

He laughed at what was presumably a rather funny mental image.

“The sixth law is a prohibition against time travel. Paradoxes are bad. The seventh, and this is very important... Do not seek knowledge about, or attempt to summon Outsiders.”

“What the hell are outsiders?”

“There are things that exist beyond the boundaries of our universe that are antithetical to life. Have you seen Hellboy?”

“Yeah”

“That thing Rasputin was trying to summon was one of the nicer ones.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. There is an office on the Senior Council called the Gatekeeper. He maintains the wards that keep the doors to that nightmarish place closed, and tries to fight off anything that comes through.”

“Well that is good at least.” he replied to that last bit. “So happens now?”

“Well, my office hours are up.”

“Oh” he said as he got up to leave

“That does not mean go. It just means I want to get out of here. Have you eaten lunch?”

“No.” It took me about half a second to decide what I needed to do.

“Then come over to my place I have food and a few things I need to show you and some tests to run.”

“Tests?”

“Yeah. From what you have told me you either have a few very specialized talents, or a serious generalized one. I want to see which it is. In either case I need to teach you how to close your mind off to the things you See, and if it is the later there are some things I need to teach you if you are going to be my apprentice.”

“Your apprentice?” he asked, his eyed blinking, and he seemed to reel back with a bit of shock.

“Yeah. Unofficially for now, I will make it official when I next to to Edinburgh. Is anyone at home expecting you at home?”

“N No. I live alone.”

“In an apartment devoid of electronics?”

“Yeah. Everything dies on me, eventually I just stopped replacing things. I manage to keep a landline phone and an old TV and VCR working because they are cheap and easy to replace. Why?”

“That is pretty common. My house is the same way. Come on”

I wonder: do most wardens also have a day job? The impression I get is that most wizards don't actually have any other responsibilities outside of their supernatural work. Professor Frost seems to be a full-time professor and part-time warden -- is this accurate?

SCRawl wrote:I wonder: do most wardens also have a day job? The impression I get is that most wizards don't actually have any other responsibilities outside of their supernatural work. Professor Frost seems to be a full-time professor and part-time warden -- is this accurate?

It seems to depend. Dresden for example has a lot of Autonomy, and something has to pay the bills in a legally legit way. Someone (in the IRS) will get suspicious if someone makes a steady income without a job on record.

I figure it varies. There is no question what duties come first of course, and the job does have the benefit of allowing him to find promising recruits so it fills a Warden function as well. He found a way to exist within society and use what he does there to further his function as a Warden. You could say he is full time Both.

Alyrium Denryle wrote:I used a translator. Bolt it seems translated differently than how I thought it did. I speak german not swedish. How would I say "bolt of lighting" would the word spear or shaft work better?

It depends. The words themselves were (as you saw) translated perfectly well, but their meaning was garbled due to the translator having misunderstood the context. In all fairness I must echo Edi's sentiment in regards to Swedish, though - it's a worthless fucking language have to learn.

"Blixtar" is the plural of "blixt", which by itself means "lightning bolt". Thus "blixtar" means "lightning bolts", and "bolts of" is a redundant (and improper in that sense) qualifier.

Usually, when you want to modify the meaning like that, it's done by adding the qualifier as a prefix or suffix. "Åskvigg/Åskviggar" (thunderbolt/s), "Ljungeld" (old word for lightning used in the LotR translation, literally means "flash-fire"), "ljung" being the prefix and the "l" being silent, "nedkalla blixt" ("summon lightning", although the flavor of the expression would suggest a LARP-esque shout á la "lightning bolt! lightning bolt!" This may not be quite what you're shooting for).

I think I myself would go with "baneblixt", which (as you probably deduced right off) means "bane-lightning (bolt)". It sounds pretentious but is grammatically valid, not ambiguous in the least, and yet so archaic-sounding that the user would be able to separate it from contemporary swedish without trouble. It also sounds quite potent, IMO.

Some reflections I came up with while considering the question may be a digression, so to the spoiler tag with that, thus. If you have any questions at all regarding how to employ swedish catchphrases in magic, don't hesitate to pop me a PM; I'll gladly provide you with a list and even pronounciation guide. I'm somewhat versed in german as well, but, I fear, not on your level, but if there's anything I can do for assistance in that area, I will.
Spoiler In closing, the classroom scene was quite good. The first part was fun, but now, it feels less like a Harry Dresden refluff and more like your own unique story, only set in the Dresden Files universe. Makes me want to know more.

In closing, the classroom scene was quite good. The first part was fun, but now, it feels less like a Harry Dresden refluff and more like your own unique story, only set in the Dresden Files universe. Makes me want to know more.

Ooooh thank you for the suggestions.

And also, awesome. I will keep it coming.

We took the shuttle to a corner right down the street from my house, keeping more or less quiet along the way, though I did get the chance to tell him what The Sight was. As it turned out it was closed off more often than not, but he had only the most rudimentary control over how to close it. We got to my little iron fence and stopped before my wards.

“Alright.” I told him. “It is not open now and this area is pretty safe to use it. So I am going to teach you how to open your Sight, and then close it again. Are you alright with that?”

“Um... yeah!” he said excitedly. That level of control would be a great comfort to him. Having your senses bombarded with things that could never be unseen at random intervals was not something anyone wanted, and with that control he would be able to heal the psychic trauma that had been inflicted on his soul. A lot of psychic trauma was brought about by lack of control, at least the stuff that was not brought about by torture spells. That is why the third and fourth laws existed. Both were violations of free will, akin to magical rape, but far more intense than that. The stain of the violation, the feelings of helplessness, and your Self constantly trying to reassert itself over the compulsion were what caused a lot of it.

I suppose that a particularly strong willed person could just get used to the chaos of having their Sight open, provided they did not go insane first. This might be doubly true if someone had some sort of anchor. A life line, or source of strength they could draw upon.

“Ok. I want you to imagine a third eye on your forehead. Keep your eye focused on my house, and push against that eye, willing it to open.” The kid did it. He stared at my house and averted his gaze.

“What do you see?” I asked him.

“Power. I.. I felt a buzz when I came close but now I see a barrier of light in different colors in two layers around your house. What is that?”

“My wards.”

“Wards?”

“Defensive spells around my home. The first is an alarm and deterrence. The inner layer will kill anything and anyone who tries to enter without permission either magically or through mundane means. It will also shield my home from magical assaults”

“You constructed those?”

“Yeah. I will give you an amulet that allows you to pass through them once I have confirmed a few things. But first, close your Sight. Do the same thing, only in reverse. Picture in your mind the third eye closing and will it to occur.”

He closed his eyes and tried, wavering on his feet.

“Focus.” I commanded him. He strained against himself for a few long seconds that seemed to take a lot longer, a few beads of sweat started to trickle down his face but eventually he got it and let out an exhausted breath of relief.

“That was harder than opening”

“Yeah. I think of using the Sight like watching a train wreck. It is easier to gawk than it is to pull your eyes away. That is what makes using it too often dangerous. If it popped open on you and you never accidentally closed it, or if it has opened against your will more often... you would be insane.”

“To feel magic do you have to open it?”

“No. I can teach you how to extend your senses to sense the flow of magic without having to use the Sight, but sometimes you wont have much choice.”

He nodded in response.

I disabled the wards and opened the little gate, inviting him to come in. He did so, and followed me through my front door as well. I ignited the candles and the fire with several words spoken in Latin and allowed him to take it in.

“It looks cozy” he said after a few seconds.

“It gets really warm in the summer because I don't have air-conditioning... but yeah. It is. I have a little cot down in the basement so I can sleep in july.”

“You have a basement? Almost no one has a basement, the soil around here is too hard.”

“I used earth magic to move the soil. Much easier that way.” he gave me a look that indicated that he was impressed.

“I have my lab down there.” I told him.

“You mean that stereotypical Wizard lab with eyes of newt, toad skin, skulls, dead animals and a circle for summoning demons?” I stared at him.

“Actually... yeah”

“So... what sort of tests do you need to run?”

“I need to see Who You Really Are.”

“Wait what?”

“I have to Soulgaze you.”

“Soulgaze?”

“Yeah. Have you ever looked into someone's eyes to the point that it gets uncomfortably intimate?”

“No... I always feel something happening and I turn away first.”

“When normal people do that, it is just awkward. It is why prolonged eye contact is an aggressive move in a lot of cultures, it can start fights. The eyes are the windows to the soul, and while a quick glance can show respect, people instinctively avoid that sort of contact for prolonged periods. When a Wizard does is, or a powerful sorcerer, they see the person for who they really are, and the other person sees them. It will let me know if I can trust you enough to teach you magic, will confirm for you that you can trust me enough to literally trust your life to me as my apprentice, if that is what you choose. It is sort of like the Sight. You can never forget it once you have Soulgazed someone. Is this what you want?”

“Do I have much choice?” he asked.

“You always have the choice.”

“Why did it need to be done here?”

“It really is something that should be done privately, and there are a few things I may want to teach you how to do, and I want to know for certain the sort of person I will be teaching them to, so I know how much to teach”

“Such as?”

“I need to teach you how to create magical circles. It is the first thing anyone should learn regardless of ability, and even that ability will help you protect yourself against magical assault.” He considered it for a moment. Then nodded.

I motioned for him to sit on the nice bearskin rug I had on the floor in front of my fire, and sat in a half lotus across from him.

“Alright Duncan. Stare into my eyes, it will start automatically.”

“How long will it take??”

“Seconds, if feels like longer.”

He looked directly into my eyes, and within a few seconds, the Soulgaze had begun. I felt like gravity pulled me into his eyes and I soon found myself surrounded by a world in chaos. I was on a dusty street, somewhere in the middle east I think. Iraq? In some places the area shone with idyllic beauty. Birds sang, children played, dogs barked. It was nice, normal, orderly. The good and the beautiful bubbled and flowed in those spots. However they were intermingled with areas where the streets, even the walls literally bled. There were mangled corpses everywhere, a nightmarish chaos, and what was worse, which sections were which changed every few seconds in a flowing transition, as if there was only so much death and destruction that could fit into the total space and it continually moved from areas of high to low concentration in some sort of cycle.

The realization hit me like a speeding mini-van. This was the world Duncan lived in. He was constantly exposed to scenes of heart-lifting beauty and unspeakable terror, and because they changed he could not even stay in a safe place. I saw him, he stood there in the middle of everything. He was tired, worn thin. Even his clothes were threadbare and there were circles under his eyes. However, through all of it, everywhere he went, everywhere he touched he restored order. He imposed his will on chaos and brought it to heel.

That was how he was still functional, but still not exactly all there. Asking intelligent questions about things that would terrify most people to know exist, but at the same time being horrified. He forced himself through sheer force of will to get used to it and function. Not many people could do that. He was traumatized, hurting, exhausted, but he kept on trucking despite it... no... in spite of it. I could feel it on him. I could see it in his eyes. The anger, that quiet determination that he would not break down, that he would not let himself fall victim to his own mind-numbing fear. He had made the chaos his personal nemesis. It had taken its toll, but he was not down. He had serious power, and qualities that would make him an excellent warden. Wardens that we were badly in need of. However, he would need to be told why and accept it of his own free will.

As soon as I realized that, I came back to my body again. He let out a shiver when he came back.

“So?” I asked.

“Wow. It is just like The Sight. But you are not nearly as terrifying as I thought you might be. You protect people. Even if you have to kill. I trust you”

“I have made up my mind as well. I would like you to consider becoming my apprentice, though there are a few things I need to tell you before you make a decision.” his eyes brightened. Come to think of it, this was probably the happiest day of the kids life, and he didn't even wake up thinking that it might be. Now I had to rain on his parade.

“And what is that?” he asked

“The White Council I told you about is at war.”

“What? With who... or... what?”

I told him about the different vampire courts, the reds, the blacks, the whites. I even told him what little we know of the Jade Court. I told him what they do, their strengths, their weaknesses, and that we were only really at war with the Red and Black courts. The whites of course we had a sort of unspoken peace with, and the Jade court was mostly quiet. I told him about how disastrous the Red Court offensive of 2005 had been, and I told him about the traitor, and the possibility of the Black Council, and I told him how Warden Dresden had been involved in all of it.

“Do you still want in?” I asked. He scrunched his face thoughtfully for a few minutes, weighing his options, and then finally replied.

“I cant sit idly by while good people, even if they are often arrogant and egotistical good people, suffer. I am in. Besides, even if I was not, without being trained to use my abilities I would fall victim to the war anyway. If the council looses, I will die. If the Council is able to continue the fight... I might die. The choice is obvious.”

“I thought you would say that.”

…


A year had passed and it was once again late January. The president who had been sworn in the previous year was leaving something to be desired, or at least that is what I had heard. I was not on the up and up about mortal politics. How could I be? Politics in the supernatural community were much more interesting and dangerous. Besides, we wizards live to be three hundred years old or more, heal injuries that otherwise would never heal and have our own in-house medical corps. What did we care for healthcare reform?

Duncan was progressing very quickly. He could already throw up a shield, do some low-powered evocation, and apparently had discovered a talent for Psychometry. He could feel and even see psychic impressions left on objects. This was of course in addition to learning the basics of thaumaturgy and what one could do with Circles.

The war had slowed down somewhat, both sides needed to catch their breath and now it was mostly the same dark alley shadow games the war had been before the 2005 Halloween Offensive. I had gone to Edinburgh with him and formalized the apprenticeship and barring the occasional warning to minor practitioners about not violating the laws, I had been free to teach

We were in the back yard playing catch, well no. That is not true. I was throwing baseballs at him and he was trying to shield himself. Pain was an excellent motivator, though I was not cruel enough to not let him wear a motorcycle helmet and a cup, and I started with water balloons and did not go straight to baseballs when I first started training him. He was doing well. I had one of those pitching machines and was lobbing them at him at a pretty good rate.

He stood in a bubble of azure light, rocking back and forth chanting a litany in German. I had not allowed him to start using foci yet. It was more exhausting to do it that way, but it taught him better control over his magic and at some point he may get caught without his and be forced to improvise. Baseballs slammed into the shield, sending ripples of energy around it as the shield absorbed the impacts and redistributed the kinetic energy across its surface. This type of shield was the most general, but also because it simply endured the incoming energy was one of the most difficult to maintain.

Eventually I would teach him how to put up other shielding spells, ones that better suited his talents. However, it was better that the bar be set early, and high. It is how I was taught, and I am doing pretty well right? Well... except for the knee. It still had not healed completely. His shield finally flickered and one more ball shattered it like a pane of glass sending destructive shards of magic in all directions, I had to throw up my own barrier to protect myself from them.

“Nice one. Did you do that intentionally?”

“Yeah” he said, panting. “I figured if I am holding off a vampire in close quarters like that, I could take it with me, or at least hurt it enough to distract it and let me level my death curse”

“Good thinking. If you are going to die, take as many of them with you as you can, as a general rule.”

Then the phone rang. I got that sinking feeling in my stomach. I somehow knew it would not be good. I did this awkward limping vulture-run to get into the house before the phone stopped ringing and picked up the hand set on the old rotary phone.

“Hello?”

“Warden Frost?” said a female voice on the other end of the line.

“Speaking.”

“This is Melanie Bartlett.” my local contact for the Paranet, a sort of practitioner's neighborhood watch set up by Dresden and one Elaine Mallory. If one of the lesser magic users who was a member got into supernatural trouble, they could call the line and they would receive assistance from other members, and if the threat was serious enough a Warden could be contacted. “One of our members, Elizabeth Powers put in a call to us, she said she was in trouble but did not specify how. She was crying, terrified. I sent Mark to check up on her but he has not checked back in since last night. Could you stop by her place and make sure she is alright? No one is answering the phone.”

“Yeah, I can do that.” I responded. I wrote down the address she gave me and headed back outside.

“Hey Duncan!”

“Yeah?” He said, sipping a glass of ice-water he had poured from a pitcher on my patio, as wind chimes sang in the cool evening air.

“We might have trouble. Come with me.”

Without saying a word he got up and followed me inside and grabbed my personal effects, as well as a brown leather bike jacket and helmet. He grabbed something a bit more sleek, one of those new composite-practically-armored bike suits and we both got dressed appropriately and went outside.

As we reached my driveway I enabled my wards and felt the invisible hum of decidedly lethal power spring up around my home. My next door neighbor had a sign that said they were protected by Brinks Home Security System. I could not suppress a snicker every time I saw it.

Wizards don't react well to technology. Anything manufactured after the 50s tends to act up, and even though I had managed to get my hands on an old vehicle it still had more mechanical problems than its age and fastidious level of upkeep would indicate. Now, when say old, I mean old. I managed to get my grubby mits on an old German Wehrmacht Züdnapp KS750, complete with sidecar at a state auction a few years back. It seemed some neo-nazi got busted and his assets seized. I found it appropriate that I would now use it to get around town and bring down warlocks, among other things. It was satisfying in a bizarre way.

I had done some things to it. First the swastikas had to go. They are not in vogue this season, or any season after 1945. The license plate was affixed properly, and I had gotten a new seat. Something with a bit more padding than one can expect on a military bike was definitely necessary. The last thing I had done to it was put a holster in for my staff, and a sheath for my sword. Had to have those. With a bottle of cheap champagne I had christened her Der Hexenhammer, german for “hammer of the witches”. Yes. I named my motorcycle after the Inquisition's Textbook, the Malleus Maleficarum. I liked the pun.

We took the US 60 down into a seedy suburb of Phoenix called Apache Junction. It was engaged in a sort of territorial war with the mormons that have de facto control over the city of Mesa. There were pockets of nice safe suburban developments scattered through a sea of skeez that would attract tornadoes like moths to a flame if Arizona saw more than a handful a decade. Thankfully the address we were given was in one of the nicer spots.

I pulled into the driveway, Hexenhammer giving off a loud roar that probably shook windows, and something immediately felt wrong. I took from the bikes saddlebag a small pouch that contained materials we would need for Thaumaturgy. I also removed my helmet and replaced it with my hat. I limped to the door and knocked, rap music thumped inside with a regular beat so I thought someone might be home. I waited, my gray cloak rustling in the wind for a moment, and knocked again. When no answer came I pulled a small hanky from my jacket pocket and tried the door. It was unlocked. I opened it, and immediately felt that the sanctity of this home had been violated. The energy that would normally thrum against an entrance to a home, its threshold, was not there. I reached out with my wizard senses to try and detect veiled creatures and magical wards and when I did so I was immediately bombarded with what can best be described as a horrible stench.

“Black magic. It is thick here.” I muttered before stepping inside. Duncan followed and once we got past the front annex we were greeted with what can only be described as an abomination. The smell of blood wafted into our nostrils when we saw the living room. Arterial spray covered the walls and ceiling. Who women, one in middle age the other in her mid twenties were crucified to the far wall, being supported by what I could only assume were the wall studs. Their feet were planted to the wall, their arms splayed to their sides. Railroad spikes were driven into their wrists and between the metatarsals of their feet. Judging from the vaginal bleeding both had been brutally raped while crucified there, before their throats were cut. I looked closer, fighting back the urge to vomit with an effort of sheer will. I locked the horror and revulsion inside a little cage in my mind and promised it that I would let it out when I would not contaminate a scene. There was tearing of the flesh on the cuts. They were not clean, the knife was dull.

Duncan ran out the door and I could hear the heaving sounds outside of him vomiting up the tortellini I had made for dinner.

There was a third corpse. A man in late middle age. He was naked and covered in small razor cuts, as I examined them I smelled citrus. Whoever had done that to him had poured lemon juice on the wounds. His manly parts were covered in blood, and I guessed may have been forced to rape one or both women, his throat had been cut too. I looked around and room and saw spent roaches and a syringe, but saw no tract marks on the victims. I thought I knew who did this.

“Duncan.” I croaked and tried again. “Duncan?” I managed a bit more forcefully.

“Can you touch that syringe with the back of your hand and get an impression? I will need you to sketch the face later.

He looked at the corpses again and dry heaved, but he nodded and did so. He knelt in front of the syringe and touched the plunger with the back of his hand. He went tense for a moment.

“Got it.” he croaked in confirmation.

The room was becoming too oppressive, my resolve to keep those distracting emotions like terror and painful revulsion started to crumble. I used the hanky again and picked up one of the spent roaches. It plus the saliva should be enough to get a tracking spell going. The mortal authorities could not touch this guy, but that did not mean we should not call them. I found the house phone and dialed 911. Then I went outside and puked my guts out.

….

The police came. We sat outside on the curb as they gently interrogated us. I was accustomed to lying to the local constabulary, or rather, telling lies of omission. Detective Richardson was a large black guy. Not fat. He worked out. He had his hair in a flat top cut, and wore an immaculate suit and tie with one of those CTR rings that mormons wore.

I told Detective Richardson that a mutual friend had called me because she was worried, and that I had agreed to check up on Ms Powers and her family. They asked if Duncan knew her, I said no. I even put on the extra bit of charm and told the officer that he was my boyfriend. Such an unfortunate lie. They asked if either of us knew her, we both said no.

“Do you know Johny Powers?”

“No. Why would I? I am a mythology professor detective. Wait... didn't I see him in the Arizona Republic a few days ago? Got off scott free on a meth bust?”

“That's him.”

“Well shit. Fuck... you think this might be retribution for something he did?”

'It is a possibility professor.”

“You can call me Steven.” I said, giving him those lustful eyes. He looked at me with a little bit of disgust.

“Stay here, I will talk to the Sergeant and make sure she does not have any questions for you.

Mormons are so predictable. When he went inside one of the forensics guys came out, shuddered and lit up a cigarette. He took a drag and shook his head.

“Fuck another one.”

“Another?” I inquired innocently.

“You dont read the paper?”

“I skim the big articles.”

“Oh, yeah this stuff gets shoved to the back the first few times it happens. In the past week there have been two more crimes just like this one... well not exactly the same, but they share enough... Oh I should not be talking about this.”

“I wont tell if you wont cutie” I said, hamming up my gay lisp a little. He was kinda cute, bit on the skinny side, but he had attractive features and close cropped blonde hair. He blushed, he was definitely family. The detective came out about a second later. Perfect timing.

“What about the sword on your bike Professor?” he asked pointedly.

“You can never be too careful in Apache Junction detective.” I replied.”I am a trained saber fencer and I dont like guns. I am more likely to shoot the wrong person or have a gun taken from me than make a mistake with a blade.” I added just the right emphasis on the word blade to make it sound dirty. He grimaced.

“Alright you can go. I may have more questions for you, so dont leave town.” he took down my address and then let us go.

We got back to my house about half an hour later.

“Nice work with the detective back there.” Duncan said to me as I disabled my wards.

“What can I say? Its a gift.”

We got inside and he did the drawing. It confirmed my suspicions. I had a file cabinet in my lab full of dossiers on every warlock who had alluded capture. Edwardo Mendez.

I would like to thank Enforcer Talen for giving me suggestions on Mr. Mendez

Alyrium Denryle wrote:I would like to thank Enforcer Talen for giving me suggestions on Mr. Mendez

Barring a few spelling errors, quality is excellent and the story engrossing. I eagerly await the next update.

Eleas wrote:

Alyrium Denryle wrote:I would like to thank Enforcer Talen for giving me suggestions on Mr. Mendez

Barring a few spelling errors, quality is excellent and the story engrossing. I eagerly await the next update.

Why thank you. I think for some of those errors it happened when I changed a word mid-thought, and missed it on the edit.

I pulled his file from my file cabinet and started to read through it again. He had violated four of the seven laws, and had used magic to give himself a mortal rap sheet that was as long as my arm. He was powerful but not particularly skilled. He tended to use compulsions against those who were not trained to defend against them, and then control them with drugs after that. His lack of skill though did not make him less dangerous. That rap sheet was long but there were no convictions, and he had managed to take down more than one warden through careful planning. When dealing with a warden he would use magic to set up a means by which the warden could be killed using mortal weapons. The somewhat twisted part was that he was not some power-mad warlock that did these things to fulfill some dark agenda. Sure, he was twisted and evil, but his motivation for most of his crimes was a combination of greed and sadism. He tortured, killed, and raped people because that was the best way to scare his rivals in the drug and slave trades into submission and to escape prosecution, and he used magic as a means to achieve these ends.

The prosaic motivation however did not change the facts though. The man was a monster, he was dangerous, and he was in my jurisdiction. It was my job to take him down, bring him before the council in chains and a black bag, and so help me it would be my sword that shuffled him loose from the mortal coil.

The magical compulsions however would be a problem. I handed the dossier over to Duncan. I had been teaching him Latin, which was the language the document was written in, and he struggled through it, occasionally asking me about a verb or what a particular word ending on one of Latin's many strange verbs meant. I helped him through the document and he finished it, then set it aside.

“He likes to take hostages and use compulsions.” he noted. “If you get involved, he will try to use me to get to you wont he?”

“That is how he operates” I confirmed. “He knows from experience that everyone has a price, with mortal authorities that usually means some sort of bribery, with us it means leverage using the ones we care about, that does not work as well with older wardens, who often become emotionally distant for that exact reason. I am not sure I will ever be capable of that, which makes him dangerous.”

This was a true statement. Some of the older wardens had been around for centuries. They formed close friendships when they were young, but wizards can live for several centuries. They would be alive when everyone they had ever cared about was long gone, and will put up barriers against close attachment because it is practical in their line of work. Me? I have a visceral hatred for those who victimize others, and a profound sympathy for the downtrodden, alone and afraid. It was why I had taken Duncan in so readily and why I became active in the Paranet. Even without close personal attachment, it was something that has gotten me into trouble and probably would continue to do so in the future. It definitely had the potential to do so in this case. Some would call it a flaw, including many in the Council. I just thought it was human. It kept me grounded in the world.

“He will try to enslave you into working against me, if he cannot do that he will hold you hostage so I cannot act against him without also harming you. You don't have any skeletons in your closet that I know of that he can use, so that means physical capture. That self-destructing shield will do you some good, but I have not taught you how to defend yourself against mental assaults.”

He thought for a second, then spoke again.

“But no one on the council could possibly be an expert in attacking someone's mind. It violates the third and fourth law. How can they develop an effective defense against a mode of attack that no one knows anything about?” I knew I picked a smart one.

“You hit the nail on the head. However, there is a loophole in the law. It specifically prohibits invasion into someone's mind. Forced intrusion. Forming a link into someone's mind is completely legal and is usually done for communication.”

“So you are going to try and teach me to block mental attacks by trying to force a message through my defenses? Doesn't the council do this?”

“Yeah, that is how they train. However, they have a bad tactical doctrine. Most of the warlocks they face that use compulsion magics are all brawn and no brain. They try to brute force their spell in one massive assault. The defenses taught work well against that kind of attack, but suck against something done by one more clever.”

“But the file says that Mr. Mendez is basically a magical thug. Wouldn't he use the same technique.”

“Probably, but it is the sort of arrogance that only the Council can manage to assume that this all they will ever encounter. More subtle compulsions, or ones that take a different form than a psychic battering ram will slip right through those defenses. It has happened before. Captain Luccio did not always have the young body she does now. The late Corpsetaker switched their minds around to elude capture.”

“Oh that was the Darkhallow wasn't it? Halloween a few years ago?”

“You have been doing your homework. Excellent.”

“Well, I have to get through university, I may as well do your homework too. I mean, it is embarrassing enough when a professor knows my name and I fail to do my homework and make myself look like an idiot. I practically live with you, the effect is exponential.”

I chuckled

“Alright, I need a good image. Let me think for a second.” I said. I wanted to think of something that he would not want to see. I searched my thoughts and memory and then thought of something so disgusting that most people people would cringe.

“Got one.” I notified him. “I am going to send an image into your head. I want you first to construct a wall to block out the image. I will try to beat my way through it and send you the image. After that, we will repeat the exorcize, with some variation on technique.”

“Works for me”

I gave him no other warning. I tried sending the image and felt a wall materialize before the entrance into his mind. I focused my will and tried to force my way through. The wall shuddered, but held. I tried again, and once again the wall withstood my assault. What I did not tell my apprentice was that I did not plan on starting and then stopping the exercise. Instead of hammering again, I put on a slow and steadily increasing pressure. Rather than a cannonball, the force I was applying was equivalent to that of an earthquake. His wall was strong but had no flex in it, and began to crumble. When the first cracks appeared I thrust the image through them and broke off contact.

“Oh god!” cried Duncan as he contemplated the image I sent him. “Why? Why god why!?”

“Pain is a good motivator. Be happy there were not tentacles. Your defenses are not bad, but do you know what the weakness was?”

He shook his head, trying to clear the image from his mind before speaking.

“It was strong, but did not flex. There was no give to it, like a cinderblock wall in an earthquake. Ugh, where do you find that stuff?”

“Japan. You alright?”

“Yeah” he said. “I have seen worse.”

“Do you want to try again?”

“Might as well”

We started again. This time it was less of a stone wall my probe encountered, and more like the wall of a massive rubber wall. I slammed into it, and it held in place, giving and wobbling before sending my probe back. I tried to apply the same oscillating pressure, and the wall stood there, wobbling. It absorbed the shock. I then decided to try something new. I concentrated my will on a tiny point and stabbed through. When I tried to get the image through though, it just closed, like I was stabbing a three inch thick sheet of vinyl. He had anticipated that. I broke contact.

“Clever”

“Thanks. It is difficult to hold up though. I would not be able to do much else.”

“It gets easier with practice. Meditate on it for a little while each day, trying to extend the length of time you can hold the barrier up.”

“Like my shield?”

“Exactly. Eventually you will be able to multitask. That will be a while though. Still, it is good when someone is trying to use magic to break into your mind. If they do get in, reciting mantras and keeping them away from your working thoughts will work for a little while, extend the time you can hold out.”

“Aright. I can do that.”

…

After that exercise I left Duncan to work on potions in my lab while I prepared my lecture for the following day. I must have passed out on my desk at some point because I found myself in my bed when my Kermit the Frog alarm clock alarm went off in the morning. He must have picked me up and got me into bed without my waking up.

I got up and turned off the alarm, then did the usual hygiene thing. I had gotten used to cold showers. Before I put the web of wards over my home I had a water heater far enough away from me that the usual catastrophic effects wizards had on technology did not do much to it. Now that the wards were up the ambient magical energy surrounding my home did all kinds of horrible things to everything that was not inside a Circle. I came out of the shower shivering and clean shaven, and Duncan was gone. He tended to spend weekend nights on my couch, but it was now Monday and he would be in his morning ethics class by now.

I got dressed in my usual tweed, but this time I had my chainmail on under it, with an arming jacket. It would be warm, but better to be a little sweaty than possibly dead if someone got the drop on me. I put some things in my backpack, including my buckler and went out the door, staff in hand. I still walked with a pronounced limp, and my knee bothered me after a while, leaning on my staff helped. It also gave me an excuse to bring one of my foci to campus with me, so I would not be unarmed.

The walk to campus was uneventful, even though I missed the shuttle, and I got into class right as it started. Today I was talking about the Sidhe, which you would call faeries, though don't say it to their face. The lecture was fairly standard until I said something I had never said before.

“So given what see in common, bound to places or forces of nature, trickers which speak the truth and still manage to deceive, and bound to the word of agreements to the exclusion of the spirit, do you know of any other mythological figures which are similar?”

One student who's skin tone and accent told me came from somewhere in west Africa raised his hand, I pointed at him.

“Anansi”

“Good. Spider trickster of africa.”

Someone who I knew to be Navajo raised her hand

“Coyote”

“Excellent Jaclyn, anyone else?”

One of my students, Charlie, who was Cherokee from Oklahoma raised her hand and looked over at Charlie with a cruel grin. Must have been an ex boyfriend

“yee naaldlooshii “ he said. Jaclyn winced, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Dont mention that name.” I said very slowly and clearly. The words 'you sadistic asshole' being implied by the angry tone of my voice.

“Why not?” she asked “it isn't real.” she said

“You knew Jaclyn would be upset by it and did it anyway. It was not just rude it was cruel and I will not abide cruelty.”

I took a deep breath, exhaled, and moved on.

“That actually brings me to a question. Why are all of these legends so similar? Why do all of these different beings have the same properties? If legends were really random cultural things, we would not expect these commonalities. So there are three options; the first is that each of these legends somehow resonates with the human condition and cognitive processes, so they arise independently in each culture; the second is that they have their roots so far back in human history that they evolved just like animals do, and share certain things in common; the third is that these myths are all talking about the same thing. What I mean by that is that they have a factual basis, maybe the details are off but that they are essentially true.”

The class laughed.

“I am serious.” I told them. “It is a possibility that the fey, Anansi, Coyote, and the things I wont mention, actually exist. That there is something to those legends. Something really does suck the blood out of mexican farm animals, and something really did scare the Navajo people so much that even the mention of its name a century after most of them stopped believing in them causes them terror.” is said pointedly at Charlie.

“That is your first essay assignment. I will assign by going down the class roster and dividing the class into third, one of those positions for you to take and argue for in a twelve page paper, with literature citations. It is due by spring break. Come to my office hours if you need help digging up sources.”

I divvied up the class roster, dismissed class and went to my office. No one showed up. As usual. When my office hours were over I decided to head home early and try out that tracking spell, but first I needed food. I packed up my bag, picked up my staff and limped through the throng of people. I got inside the memorial union and went straight for the Gyro place on the far wall of the main common area. I got myself a traditional gyro with an extra ration of feta cheese. I sat down and noticed two people who I thought I had seen waiting by my building when I left sit down a few tables away. This made me suspicious, but it was a huge campus and I could not be sure. I was in public, they would not try anything, so I ate unhurried. I got up and left, sure enough they followed. I took them for a little ride.

The campus itself had a very interesting feel to it. It was a seamless combination of old and new. Old red brick buildings stood beside green-built structures made of class and unpainted concrete, post modernist sculpture and zen Buddhist sand gardens were juxtaposed next to eachother. In all of this, there were over sixty thousand students on the main campus alone, it seethed with life, with creativity, and hope for the future. It was a good place to draw magic from. However I could not use any here. Too much chance of a bystander being harmed. I took them through the campus stopping to talk to people I knew at the various tables set out on the lawns and malls seeking membership in this student organization or that. Each time I stopped, my little fan club either walked by or stopped an unobtrusive distance away.

I needed to know what they were, so I opened my Sight, willing myself to see that which could never be unseen. The university was filled with vibrant colors, patterns of energy. The people were seen as they really were, some seemed weighed down by anchors, others choked by the expectations they were forced to meet. Others were legitimately happy and looked as if they were positively alight with joy. I got a good look at my pursuers. One was a white guy of below average height with somewhat unkempt but not unattractive features. His arms had a sleeve of colored tattoos, mostly fire. The flames however licked and moved to consume him as little slathering mouths masticated on the crooks of his elbows. His head had scars on his forehead, as if someone had lobotomized him like they did back in the 19th century. The other one was a latino male, taller and a bit more thin than the well muscled white guy. Gaunt even. Through the Sight, I could see that he had identical scars on his head, and sores all over his body.

I willed my eyes closed and shut the memories of what I had seen into a neat and tight little pandora's box inside my mind and locked it shut.

“You alright?” asked Father Fred, the priest at the local catholic parish. He wearing a pink sweater over his usual clerical garments and had one of those smiles that told everyone that he never had a care in the world.

“Yeah I just need to use the bathroom. Pleasure talking to you.” I replied.

“Always a pleasure Steven” he beamed back. I took my leave and headed across a lawn of grass and around an old dorm building that had been converted to classrooms. The building I was heading for was the Coor building. Named after the old president of the university, it was constructed of concrete and blue glass with mathemtical symbols frosted into it. It was home to the philosophy, math and history departments, as well as a computing commons. It also had a little unisex bathroom that was outfitted for the disabled. I went into the bathroom, closed the door behind me and muttered a single word, focusing my will to rip a hole from the real world into the Nevernever.

“Ostium!” the door opened as if I had opened a hole in the universe with a zipper, and I closed it behind me. If only I could cherish the looks on those guy's faces when I they waited by that bathroom for half an hour only to see someone else go in, with me never coming out.

Sometimes I love my work.

I know Dresden doesn't like to open doors like that, because of what's on the other side... or what MIGHT BE on the other side.

LadyTevar wrote:I know Dresden doesn't like to open doors like that, because of what's on the other side... or what MIGHT BE on the other side.

He also had debts hanging over his head that made going into the nevernever dangerous for other reasons. If you dont have a high ranking Sidhe after you for a debt, you can work out a few safe ways through, via trial and error.

I knew a Way through the Nevernever to get between that bathroom and my house. I know what you are thinking, you are asking why I don't use it every day. The reason is that going through the Nevernever has its own risks. Even though we are allied with both summer and winter courts of the Sidhe, the dynamics of that alliance were different for each court. The Winter Court gave us safe passage through the Ways in order that we may travel quickly from place to place, however they offered no direct military assistance. Summer did the opposite. As it was I was in Arizona, the entire region very thoroughly in summer territory. And because it was January Summer would be on guard against Winter incursions and would have guardians along the Ways.

I stopped as soon as I closed the portal behind me and reached into my pack. I removed two iron capts and fit them onto the tips of my staff, fixing them in place with a clamping lever that resembled the ones that secured roller blades on people's feet. I also yanked out my gray cloak and fastened it around my shoulders. It never hurt to have the official accoutrement. I strapped my buckler to my arm as well.

I looked over the landscape, it was a dunescape, rolling hills of golden sand stretched in every direction punctuated periodically by rocky outcrops. In the distance however was a ring of hills, the summit of one of those rocky hills was my exit point. The sun was at full strength and the heat was blistering, my tweed and chainmail were not going to make this any easier. There was no time to lose I supposed, and started toward the ring of hills.

I made it uncontested as far as their base, but as I reached it I laid eyes upon a massive golden serpent sunning itself on a rocky outcrop near the only path I could take to my exit. I approached it, and it noticed me.

The massive snake, its scales glittering in the sun moved with unnaturally fluid alacrity to interpose itself between me and my destination, its neck flattening into a massive hood. It spoke in a rasp.

“Go back whence thou camest man-thing, for I cannot let the past.” it hissed. I planted my feet firmly, transferring my staff to my left hand and holding my right hand out before me and a right angle to the ground.

“I seek no quarrel with thee or Summer, Uraeus. Thrice I say to thee and done. I am Magi, one of the Wise and Warden unto the White Council. Stand aside and allow me safe passage, or I shall be forced to initiate conflict.”

“I am bound to the will of Summer, Magi. I cannot let thou past. Go back whence thou camest or I shall smite thee.” This was not going to be fun. I continued with the formality.

“I have no quarrel with thee or Summer, Uraeus, guardian serpent. If thou were to offer unto me your word of safe passage under the Unseelie Accords, I give thee my word that I shall offer no insult or injury to Summer unless provoked by the same for a year and a day. Moreover, I would be obligated to Summer to perform one boon at the request of the Summer Queen provided it is collected during that same interval and it does not violate my conscience. Twice I say to thee and done. I am Magi, one of the Wise and Warden unto the White Council. Stand aside and allow me safe passage, or I shall be forced to initiate conflict.”

It was in the nature of the Sidhe to make bargains and to accrue debts and favors owed. The catch of course was that for them, only the word and not the spirit of an agreement mattered, so they needed to be made very carefully and only under particularly dire circumstances. I could not stay in the desert. I would be dying from heat stroke within hours, and if I could make it back I would be too weak to face my pursuers. So I tried to make a deal. I had to be careful though. If I had not put those conditions on the bargain, the Summer Queen could hold power over me for centuries before she decided to collect on her debt, or could order me to grant a boon that I would find morally reprehensible to fulfill. The Summer Court was not evil. By far they were the friendlier of the Sidhe courts. However just as winter was not all harsh and predatory, so to was summer not all flowers and sunshine.

The great golden serpent seemed conflicted, but responded in the negative.

“I pray thee Wizard, I wish no Quarrel with thee, but I am compelled by Summer to guard this passage and the Queen was not particular regarding whom I ought or ought not prohibit passage. I pray thee, turn back whence thou camest or I shall be forced to smite thee.” Damn, the guardian was under very solid orders, orders that could not be disobeyed. Still I said I would give him three chances to deny me, so I did so.

“My intentions are peaceful guardian, but do not mistake peaceful intention for weakness. Thou willst be unable to smite me shouldst thou make the attempt. Once more I say to thee and done. I am Magi, one of the Wise and Warden unto the White Council. Stand aside and allow me safe passage.”

“I am compelled to deny thee wizard” the snake finally hissed, and struck. It opened its mouth and ejected a stream of fluid from its two massive front fangs. I raised my buckler and hardened my will into a simple barrier. Against a liquid my usual reflecting shield would do little good as the fluid would simply scatter upon impact. I got it up just on time and the venom aimed at my face splashed and sizzled against the shield.

Not wasting any time the giant snake lurched forward on its belly scaled and charged, its great mouth open and ready to inject a deadly neurotoxin with fangs that on their own would be enough to kill me. If I let it slam into my shield it would still have the initiative and nothing would stop it from flowing around the glowing quarter dome of my power and striking my flank.

So I used my staff as a fulcrum to compensate for my crippled leg and move around its giant head, planted my feet and brought my iron shod staff down upon his head while focusing my will and crying the word “Impetus Jugis!”

As my staff came crashing down on the serpent's head his scales erupted into green fire as the iron came into contact with his flesh, my spell came into effect at the same time allowing me to compensate for my meager mortal strength and pin his head.

“Yield unto me Uraeus, and I shall spare thee.” I said through my grating teeth. The snake did not answer. I was too focused on his head and I had forgotten about the other sixty feet of snake as it curled around. A coil struck me like a small car throwing me to a rocky outcrop. My left side struck the stone and I felt a sick cracking sound as several of my ribs broke and me head whipped around violently. Whiplash was not my friend. The snake twisted and rolled on the ground to put out the iridescent fire, then rose to its full height and flung himself after me. I no longer had my staff, but his defensive roll gave me the time I needed to clear my head. Adrenaline rushed through me as I scrambled out of the way just in time to avoid his strike. Instead of biting me, he clamped down on the rock-face and rebounded off it shaking a head the size of an office chair against the pain. Once again his lithe body was my undoing. Instead of bludgeoning me with one of his flanks, he rapped a coil around me and tenses his muscles, expelling the air from my lungs with the pressure and causing my blood to slow as if my entire body was in a jumbo sized version of a blood pressure cuff. I started to feel light headed as he rose again to his full height and prepared to bring down his massive mouth and put a very final end to me.

I was not doing to go down that easy.

My left hand and buckler were still free. I drew in my will and threw up a shield and his maw struck the half sphere of energy I up between me and his venomous teeth. Venom squeezed reflexively as he bit down on it and started to swallow. The yellow fluid poured in sheets over the shield as his jaw expanded to encompass the shield, putting continuous stress on it. It flashed white as the force was distributed over its surface. It would only buy me seconds, if he engulfed it completely he would simply eat my shield and swallow me along with it. Besides, not enough oxygenated blood was reaching my brain anyway and my vision started to tunnel. My only choice was to remove his ability to fight.

I touched my left hand, the one that absorbed and redirected energy to his flesh and gathered what will I could summon.

“Fertificus tepidus” I croaked, and began leaching away his body heat. There was an up and a down side to this. The down side was that I had to absorb a lot of energy into my body. It was very hot out and the snake was very very big. The upside was the opposite side of the coin. Because he was so big, once I absorbed the energy he would not able to warm up again for some time.

The energy flowed into me, starting as a pressure in my mind and then expanding outward. I developed the mother of all migraine headaches, every cubic inch of my body felt like it was on fire. But it worked. As his teeth rounded the edges of my shield his entire body relaxed, his muscles no longer having the energy to continue contracting. I took a breath of air and my blood rushed to my starving brain, then I wiggled free. The adrenaline kept me from feeling the horrific pain my ribs were undoubtedly in. I just hoped none of the fragments would cause trauma to my organs. I found my staff and ran around his massive torpid form, drawing a crude circle in the sand. As soon as it closed I forced the power I had absorbed into it. I felt the release as the massive serpent was trapped in a circle of cold. It would prevent him from warming, and would kill him if he stayed in too long.

“I am bested Wizard” the cobra hissed. “Finish it.”

“I am inclined to offer thee mercy, conditionally of course. After all, we were both but discharging our sworn duty.”

The snake nodded “What are your conditions?” the snake moaned piteously.

“That thou shalt extend unto me thy word of safe passage and that from this point forth neither thee nor those under thy power shalt bar the passage of me and mine through this Way. Additionally, this battle shalt not be construed as an insult on my part toward the Summer Court. In exchange for this final condition, I am to be bound to perform one boon for the Summer Court, to be collected at a date no more than a year and a day hence, provided it does not directly in action or indirectly in consequence violate my conscience or pre-existing duties. Dost thou accept these terms?”

The guardian Naja considered it a moment, then nodded. “I accept thine terms.”

“Thous givest me thine word?”

“If thou swear'st to release me.”

“I do”

“Then I give thee my word” the snake repeated a second time.

“Thou thus swears?”

“I do. Now release me mortal”

”Thrice, and it is done.” The fey were bound by their natures to speak the truth, but that did not stop them from deceiving. Making them repeat an oath three times was the best way there was to ensure that they would keep their word.

I scuffed the circle and felt the energy release. The Uraeus heaved itself away and into full sunlight and sprawled into it. I winced, holding my ribs as I started to climb the rocks of the hill toward my exit point.

…


I opened the door back from the Nevernever and appeared from the gate in a back alley used by garbage trucks to collect trash across the street from my house. The sun was going down which meant that my half hour trek through the Nevernever had taken four hours in the real world. I disabled my wards and reached my front door.

I found two greasy red stains that could only have once been people. I would not have been warned of the intrusion by my outer ward while in the Nevernever. This meant that the individuals tracking me knew where I lived. My eyes widened. If they knew where I lived, it stood to reason that they knew where Duncan lived.

My eyes widened and panic coursed through my very soul. I loved Duncan. He was my apprentice, he was as my own son, to say nothing of the decidedly non-platonic affection for him that I dutifully and brutally suppressed. Yes, I know holding both sets of emotions at once is a bit wrong.

If that son of a bitch Mendez and his toadies had brought harm to him I would rain down the very fires of hell and the lightning of heaven to lay waste to them like Mt. Vesuvius had rendered the cities of Pompey and Herculaneum to ash. Damn the Laws of magic.

I thought about that for a second.

To be fair I could technically kill them without violating the laws, but I was not sure at that moment that I would have the restraint.

I disabled the wards around my house proper before going inside and grabbing my sword. I went to the garage and started up Hexenhammer, its dull thrumming engine sending rumbles of power through me. I opened the garage door, backed out the bike and re-enabled my wards.

This was why they tailed me so clumsily that I spotted them. They didn't mean to follow me home, they already knew where that was, they were waiting for me there but had under-estimated or simply did not know about my wards. Either that or Mendez used his thralls to test them. That seemed likely too. No, I was tailed so that I could be spooked, driven into the Nevernever so that they would have the time to attempt to capture Duncan without my interfering. Those fucking bastards! What was worse, I fell for it! I got out onto Rural road and followed it north. Duncan lived on the corner of Rural and McKellips, about five minutes away, fifteen with traffic.

Just my luck, there was construction and it took me twenty.

I pulled into the apartment complex, one called Shadetree. It looked like military barracks housing. A number of white painted cinderblock two stories arranged around a central courtyard. I got off the bike and hobbled up a set of stairs to apartment 20D. The door was broken off its hinges and there was a charred corpse at the door.

Duncan's wards were something like my own, but not as strong. If someone wanted to commit suicide the wards would collapse, leaving just the solid core wooden door between the outside and Duncan. This was not the best neighborhood. The residents would prefer to stay out of the way rather than bring the authorities in on something going down at their doorstep. That and the cinderblock did a good job of soundproofing.

I raised my shield, my staff in my left hand, sword drawn in my right, and stepped in.

The apartment was a bloody mess. Hells bells did I teach him to fight. Bullet holes riddled the walls, save for a space by the couch where a neat hemisphere of wall was unmarked. That is where Duncan shielded himself. All of the candles were snuffed out, and the mace and shield that typically hung above that same couch were on the floor. The mace dripped and oozed with what could only be blood, and the shield was dented.

Duncan was gone. I stepped over a brained corpse, and saw movement from the corner of my eye. Someone was trying to move away. I strode over to him, assessing his injuries. One army hung limply and his shoulders didnt look right, so I knelt over him and grabbed his wrist, wrenching his arm backwards. Ah! A broken collar bone.

He screamed, letting out a high pitched cry that I almost felt pity for. I may have once, but I was too enraged to feel much of anything.

“Where is he” I growled

The young man screaming under me looked familiar. Yes. He was in my class last year, the one who asked about the pointlessness of learning dragon anatomy. What the fuck was his name? Francis?

He could only wimper in response to my question, so I eased up on the shoulder wrench.

“Where is he? Tell me and they will find you alive in a park somewhere rather than only finding a few scraps of you in the zoo's lion enclosure.”

“I... I … I dont know” he stammered. Something dawned on me. Duncan had studied with this one. He had been over to Duncan's apartment, they had gone to a few parties that semester before I intensified Duncan's training.

“Duncan was your friend, you piece of shit. Because of him your worthless ass managed to get a C in my class, and how to you repay him? You betray the location of his home and allow some crazed sorcerer to kidnap and abuse him. Give me one reason why I should not torture the information I need out of you. Waterbording is a fuck-ton better than you deserve.”

“Sorcerer? Magic... isn't...real.” he wimpered. His brain was trying to make sense of things, and between the drugs he was probably on and the magical compulsion he may or may not have been under it was not doing a very good job. It did not stop me from rolling my eyes.

“Then explain how not a single bullet hit Duncan at point blank range, and how your friend could be served at KFC extra crispy from just touching an unmarked door?”

I could have put him to sleep gently. I really could have, but I didn't feel like it. Instead I wrenched his arm back, hard, and then used my other hand to bash his head against the floor a few times until he fell unconscious and limp to the floor. Then I searched Duncan's apartment for something I could use to track him.

Unfortunately I taught him too well. No nail clippings, no hair or blood. The only thing I managed to come away with was a pair of dirty underwear, and my intentions for those underpants were entirely thaumaturgical, get your mind out of the gutter.

I needed to keep interrogating Francis, but could not do it here, even with a cop-shy population those screams were bound to alert someone who could call the police, so I picked him up in a fireman's carry, strapped him into my sidecar and took him home.

…

He started to stir, and I slapped him hard enough to cause whiplash. That woke him up. He struggled against his bindings, but he was stapped into heavy wooden chair with a combination of rope and manacles. The room was still pitch black.

“Lux candela” I muttered, investing a tiny portion of my will. The room was bathed in light as candles scattered throughout my basement lab came to life, and torches by the door sprang into orange flame. The lab was a typical wizard lab. A silver inscribed summoning circle was in the far corner from the door, there was a worktable in the center, and shelves full of...stuff. I had jars, bags, and boxes full of everything from sulfur to eye of newt to distilled sunshine. His eyes widened at the sight. I wasted no time.

“ Impetus Jugis” I said, investing another bit of will to gently lift his chair off the floor. I then imparted a spin, and twirled him around like a child on an office chair. I sat him down. He vomited all over himself.

“I can snap my fingers and turn you to ash, Francis. And there are fates worse than death.” I paused. He was terrified, shaking, and had pissed himself.

“Tell me what I want to know Francis”

He stammered, the words trying to come out, but he could not force them. Fuck. He was compelled into silence. I felt kinda bad about how I had treated him. Okay, I actually felt really bad. I took one look at him and did him the only mercy I could.

“Somnus” I said clearly, and the kid fell into a deep sleep. Extremely frustrated I grabbed the underwear and a little packet of smelling salts and stepped into the circle. I willed energy into the circle with a touch and felt is spring up around me. Then I took in a whiff of the smelling salts and muttered several words, summoning up my will in the process.

“Scientia ex scaena” Then I took a big breath of dirty boxer briefs. Their pungent odor filled my nose and I scuffed the circle, feeling its energy release. I got nothing. The spell did not work. Fuck. This either meant that Duncan was dead, or was contained behind a circle, which would cut off the mystic connection between him and the shorts. I then tried something similar with the spent roach, but the connection was too fleeting for the spell to work.

I lurched upstairs and collapsed into my big arm chair. I needed to clear my head, but couldn't. I looked over to my coffee table and saw the picture on the frame. He stood with a beaming smile in my living room holding up his grad school acceptance letter. The picture was grainy and in black and white, I had used a camera from the 40s to take the picture, but he got accepted into the Medieval and Renaissance studies program, under my advisement. Worry and despair ate at me, it felt like my heart was trying to crawl out of my throat. I closed my eyes and felt two salty tears flow down each cheek.

It was then that felt the intrusion on my wards. I grabbed my sword and staff from beside the door and strode, still limping, outside. My ribs still hurt of course and the speed with which I moved caused pain to stab through my chest, but I could not let that stop me.

As I got outside I heard a car peeling around a corner, and almost stepped on it. A crossbow bolt with a rolled up piece of notebook paper wrapped around it. I unwound it and read the message.

Two hours, The Library, come alone and unarmed

So Edwardo wanted to arrange a meeting. I did not see how I had much choice. Then I heard the sparrows singing to each-other and inspiration hit me. I had forgotten a certain Norse legend, one which I was well equipped to imitate.

I made my way down to my lab and yanked the flask of dragon blood off my shelf. Yes, I said dragon blood. It is a long story how I got it, it was payment for services rendered, that is all I will say on the subject. I measured out a dram of the blood and drank it down. There were three effects. The first was that my throat and chest burned as if little miniature suns had been rammed down my gullet, and a headache exploded in every part of my brain that almost made me pass out right there. I focused on the pain and controlled my breathing, forcing the agony into a nice little box inside my head along with the pain in my ribcage and left it locked inside. It would break out later with a vengeance but I could burn that bridge when I got to it.

The second thing that hit me was a sharpening of my senses. The resolution at which I could see increased. What actual sight was to my camera's photographs was what my newly enhanced vision was to my normal sight. Colors were deeper and more sharply contrasted, definition increased. I discovered that my floor was not exactly level and I could see imperfections in the silver of my summoning circle. My hearing also sharpened, I could hear little scuttling sounds in my walls, and could even narrow down the number of legs. I had cockroaches. Damn it.

My entire body tingled with power not my own and I felt a strange euphoria. It was the same feeling I felt when I tried pot back in high school. I focused on the cockroaches in the wall, and I could hear them talking. They were muttering something about the distinct lack of food crumbs in my lab and how the kitchen was always more productive.

That was the effect I was looking for. I was somewhat curious as to how permanent this would be, but I did not have time to think about it. Sigurd had eaten a portion of Fafnir's heart, I drank a dram of blood. I was not sure how the effects would differ, but it should last long enough for the blood to be digested, perhaps ten hours. Some parts of it may remain permanently. I left my lab, grabbed some chalk from my desk, Duncan's picture, Mendez' file and a chunk of the baguette Duncan had brought over for dinner a few nights ago, and walked outside.

When I got there I could smell things. My neighbors on the left were cooking lamb chops, and my neighbors on the right had gotten distracted cooking dinner by an early evening quickie. Huh. I could hear where they were too. The kitchen. They must have had a food fetish. I filed that away for later, and felt something inside me stir. That animal part of me that wanted to mate, to reproduce. The part that felt only need. It had been a while, I mused. I could probably join in their fun if I... I realized that I did not need the distraction and looked down and scolded myself like one would a dog who liked to jump up on strangers.

“No! Bad! That is very inappropriate!”

I broke the bread into crumbs and cut my finger with the edge of my sword, smearing a little bit of blood over the crumbs and sprinkling them on the ground before drawing a circle.

The birds I needed to talk to were everywhere. Some chattered on about food, others were trying to convince females to mate with them. They all saw the bread. As I stood back, a number of them, some two dozen little sparrows descended upon the crumbs. As soon as one of them took a bite of a blood soaked crumb the circle snapped closed around them and they were trapped. I stepped up.

“Hello little feathered ones.” I said to them in greeting. They all looked up at me, their little eyes wide with shock that I understood them.

“In exchange for thy freedom, and for my services guarding thine nests from cats, prithy track down these two persons” I laid the images down before them. One of the sparrows, a male slightly larger and more brightly colored than the others hopped forward and looked at the pictures

“We have thy word?” the little bird asked.

“You do.”

“When we shall do as thou asks, in exchange for our freedom, and nest guarding. You have our word”

“I would like to hear it from all of thee” I replied, to which all of the little birds tweeted their ascent.

“It will take time. Come back to this place six hours hence and we shall have the answers ye seek” the alpha make twittered. I scuffed the circle, releasing them. They finished off the bread crumbs and then flew outward over the city. I had a meeting to keep.

…

I pulled Der Hexenhammer into a parking spot on Mill Avenue, Tempe's party district and placed enough coins in the parking meter to give me an hour of time, then I walked the hundred meters to The Library. I had to work very hard to not be overwhelmed by the sounds, smells, and sights newly discovered by my drinking of the dragon's blood. I was so distracted I was not able to properly pay attention to my surroundings and must have seemed as if I was drunk, I could not even keep from running into several in the throng of college students who walked the same sidewalk.

There were street preachers on the corner opposite the little book lounge I was going to. They seemed to be staring pointedly at the little establishment while talking about how the bible said to suffer not a witch to live. Too bad they got the translation wrong. I looked across the street and flipped them off, muttering a word in latin; their sign burst into flame spontaneously. I did not stick around to see their expressions. I opened the heavy wooden doors and stepped inside.

The Library was a strange little place. It was surrounded by college bars. A lively piano bar was downstairs, Hooters and the Skylouge were above, both of which were rumored to be nicer establishments run by the White Court. This one however was a combined occult book shop and lounge, and catered to the supernatural crowd. The proprietor was a tall blond haired Norwegian woman by the name of Birgette, not unskilled in the art, she placed avoidance wards on the door to keep mortals from giving the place much more than second look. Suggestions like that were a bit on the gray side of the Laws of Magic, but because they were so useful we Wardens did not consider them problematic. She had also had her establishment designed neutral territory under the Unseelie Accords, as indicated by the sign in the door that said “Accorded Neutral Territory”.

The lounge had thirteen tables, thirteen bookshelves filled to the brim with both mundane and more significant works on the supernatural, as well as thirteen candelabras which held thirteen candles each, thirteen mirrors, and thirteen ceiling fans. All of this was carefully arranged in a seemingly haphazard fashion in order to disperse the wanton magical energy that often accompanied those who wielded power. I opened my Sight, and checked for veils, cloaking spells. I saw only the scattered light and magical energies that the furnishings ensured. I willed my Sight closed and strode up to the bar with a slight limp.

“Hi Steven!” the cheerful proprietor beamed. She was in a conservative librarian's suit and wore her hair in a ponytail that went down to her waste, she also had square rimmed glasses, and spoke with a distinct accent. Then she saw what was wearing. I was dressed for battle, in my arming jacket and chainmail, black fatigue pants, fedora and sporting the gray cloak that marked me as a Warden. Her gaze hardened with concern.

“What's going on?” she asked.

I leaned next to her and motioned for a honey Meade which she handed to me while leaning in so I could speak quietly.

“Malum ferox captus meus discipulus. res est penitus ut Niveus Concilium , is vires satus pugna. Aufero vestri patronus pro suum salus.” I said in Latin. I reasoned that if any of Mendez' thugs were here, they would not speak the language and it was reasonable that he did not have the discipline to learn it either.

“EGO mos operor sic. Rudimentum ut aufero pugna ex illa moenia ut vos es validus” she replied, getting the implicit message.

“I will try not to bust the place up, and the Council will pay for any damages.” she nodded rung a small bell. The patrons knew what that meant, and they started to clear out.

Around fifteen minutes later, after everyone had cleared their tabs I sat at a table near the entrance reading a copy of Nibelungenleid.

I smelled them first. They smelled like sweat and drugs and burned cordite, then I heard them, walking confidently if with ridiculously strange postures down the sidewalk chattering to each-other in Spanish.

Two goons walked through the door first, both hispanic and in baggy cloathing, tattoo sleeves on their arms. I could tell through my dragon blood enhances senses that they were carrying weapons, probably concealed machine pistols. Behind them came Mendez. He did not look much different from them, but his gait was more predatory. He surveyed the lounge and motioned for his goons to leave. They exited and he sat down across from me.

“Gotta hand it to you Frost, you trained the kid good. His wards took out one of my guys, he brained one with that mace and seriously wounded five others with that exploding shield of his before we took him down with a ketamine dart.” he told me casually, his accent more than a little thick. “His mind is strong too. Four hours and his defenses have not broken, better than most apprentices do. Still between my assaults, the torture and the drugs I dont think he will make it to morning before I break him. Mentally and... physically.” he grinned at me, casually shrugging his shoulders.

He was definitely the type to rape those he took, just to break them down even further and make them easier to control. Monster. Rage built in me. I wanted to utter a word and burn him to ashes right there, but I forced that urge down.

Duncan had seen things that no human being should ever see. Through it all, his mind had survived more in tact than any I had ever seen. It had even made him stronger to a degree, fighting against that much awfulness had not broken his mind or left him vulnerable. It left him calloused. Most people who were not used to manual labor found themselves cut and bleeding after doing a bit of heavy lifting and construction work. Those who did it often found themselves largely immune to that sort of wear and tear. The mind I supposed was similar. Mendez was right though, he could not last forever.

“He has been under the tutelage of a Warden of the White Council. I have laid low demons and smitten black court sorcerers with my power, Mendez. Earlier this evening in the Nevernever I forced the surrender of a Summer Court guardian serpent. I eat Maleficar like you for breakfast. I do not take the training if my students lightly. What do you want?” I asked. My voice was even and my poker face was perfect, a sea of tranquility. He blinked. I thought he was expecting to get more of a rise out of me.

“I want you to back off Frost. Ignore my operation here. I will give your apprentice back to you, and in exchange for your cooperation will give you money, drugs, women. Whatever you want. I just want you to leave me to my affairs.” he said this while clutching a small fetish, a small dried mushroom in a medallion around his neck. The ward on my fedora triggered, giving me the seconds I would need to act before I had to throw up my mental defenses. I put up a hand and clenched it shut forcing a portion of my will into his body.

“Dollens Attonitus” I hissed, and his entire body wrenched. Every voluntary muscle in his body contracting from the alternating current I rammed through his body and ground out through the floor. I even put in the extra energy to control the current and keep it away from his heart and brain. He pissed himself and I heard a ripping sound as the force of his abdominal contractions forced his bowel contents out after ripping their way through the clenched sphincter. The only sound he could manage was a rasping almost soundless scream. I let him hang like that for about a second and a half before releasing the spell. His muscles relaxed, nothing permanently hurt but his pride, and he recovered, breathing heavily and quivering in his chair.

“That was for trying to force my mind. How does it feel to be a helpless victim asshole? I have a counter-proposal. You give me my apprentice within three hours. Unharmed. If you do so, I will give you a head start of six hours before I begin to use every means at my disposal to hunt you down and deliver a swift painless death. You may escape, you may not. You will have a chance then. If you do not deliver my apprentice to me within that time, or if you harm a hair on his head, I will make you beg for death. You will get down on your knees and suck my dick, your eyes looking up and pleading me to end your suffering. Either that or I will drop you off near the lair of a skinwalker. Take your pick.” my voice sounded almost jovial.

“You're bluffing” he told me after he regained his breath. “If you could do that, you would have used a tracking spell to find either of us, or both” he looked smug. He still thought he was holding all the cards. “besides” the continued “You are a Warden. Warden's don't torture people. That would be evil.”

I laughed. My laugh was long, rich, and deep. It probably sounded a bit crazed. His smug grin left his face.

“We Wardens execute children who violate the Laws. The only stricture I am legally under is that I cannot violate your free will or kill you with magic. Oh sure, some of the Wardens may not like the fact that I took a few pages from the Abu Girab Handbook prior to your decapitation, but don't think for a second that any of them would think you undeserving. You magically raped someone before you completed puberty, thrill-killed with magic prior to the age of majority, and have enslaved how many hundreds of people? You are a cancerous boil on humanity, a pathetic half-man who gets off on hurting others and enough of the Council will think you deserving of whatever punishment I decide to dish out that the only censure I will receive is a symbolic slap on the wrist for being overly zealous. You have killed Wardens, and you have someone I care for deeply held captive. I will stop at nothing to bring you down and have the resources to do it. Now get out.” I stood, pointing at the door.

“Oh and don't forget the baby powder. You might get a rash”

He shuffled to the door in obvious discomfort and said something in spanish to his toadies. Now, I am a mythology professor in addition to being a Warden. I speak a lot of languages. Sure I specialize in older european myths, so I speak mostly older european languages. However once you learn one or six languages it is easier to learn others, so I had picked up three of four modern european languages. French, German, Swedish, and Spanish. So when he told his minions to kill me and Birgette I was already moving.

They spun around the door at the same time I was interposing myself between them and the bar and raising my my left hand. I pulled in my will, focused it with a tremendous effort of will without my buckler as a foci, and poured the energy into a shield. Birgette started to scream.

“Tectum!” I screamed. Without my foci I could not do anything as complicated as a reflective shield, and the stray bullets would hit people outside anyway. Instead it was a simple barrier shield, matching my will against the force of the incoming bullets. It left me momentarily drained, and all I could do for a few seconds was hold the shield up as the air filled with steel jacketed lead in front of me. Through the gunfire and the strain of holding up a crude shield I managed to draw in enough power for the simplest spell in the book.

“Fracta” I hissed, and the guns practically exploded in their owners hands. Police sirens were blaring and I could hear screams from outside.

“ Impetus Jugis” I muttered, taking their weapons with telekinetic force and pistol whipping them unconscious with their own guns.

“You Okay handling the mortal authorities?” I asked her. She nodded, regaining her composure. “Is there a back way out of here?” She nodded again and pointed back toward the bathrooms.

“Look what those fuckers did to my books!” she yelled when she got her head fully back on. She started ranting in Norwegian.

“Put one more thing on the list of things Mendez deserves to die for. If you have trouble replacing volumes give me a call. I know a guy.” I told her as I left. Birgette was good people. She could lie convincingly to the cops.

I got back on my bike and headed home and back behind my wards. I was exhausted and had a few hours before the sparrows got back to me. I set my alarm and went to bed for a nap. I was asleep instantly.

My little Kermit the Frog alarm started singing Rainbow Connection at me and I woke up with a groan and turned off the alarm. Sharp stabbing pain ripped through my ribcage and I winced. I reached over painfully and turned off the alarm. I was groggy, but had gotten a REM cycle in and was thus not as tired as I had been.

I got dressed for battle in the same clothes I wore earlier that night, save that I replaced my fedora with my helmet and carried all of my foci. I then proceeded to shamble out into the kitchen and make some coffee. Soon the six hours were up and I gathered a bag of sand, and a small bag of bird seed from my garage and headed outside to wait for the birds.

Only one of them, the alpha, returned. He was panting, his little throat fluttering to ventilate his lungs faster.

“I have what thou seeks Wizard” he said to me.

“Then show me little wing” I responded and spread the sand out on the sidewalk. Birds could not read, but he did not need to understand the text to memorize and reproduce it. He used his little feet and dutifully scratched out the sign for a self storage place in east Mesa. Mormon country. It was in an industrial area, so no one would have noticed a group of thugs carrying an unconscious young man into a storage space.

“Dost thou know which room?” I asked. He scrawled out the number. “It is guarded” he told me.

“And the other man?” I asked.

“He moves frequently. We were unable to keep track of his current location. The boy was not moved however.

“I thank thee, little wing. Thy part in our bargain is concluded. Wouldst thau be willing to assist me in the future if I keep thee and thine supplied with food?”

“Prithy that we are not exposed to risk that would harm our nestlings, assisting thee should not be trouble.”

“Again I thank thee, little wing” I took some seed from the small bag and spread it before him so that him and his fellows could regain their strength, and then I went back inside. I needed a plan. Self storage facilities had locked gates and high walls. Sure I could get through those with a flick of my wrist and a forcefully spoken word, but that would expose me to weapons fire from multiple directions and cause a big raucous that would probably get the local constabulary involved. It was time to call in one of my markers.

I put up a veil and exited my house by hoping over the back wall and into an alley so that anyone watching my home would not see me exit. I walked across the street to the place in the alley I had exited the Nevernever from earlier that evening. I summoned my will and ripped a door through, and went in.

…

When I reached him the guardian serpent let me through and informed me that the Summer Queen had accepted my bargain and that I was in debt to her one boon. I had thanked him, and walked with Safe Passage through the Nevernever to my exit, that same bathroom.

There was someone on the pot. The young woman gasped in confusion and fear when I appeared out of a shimmering gateway in the middle of the restroom.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you” I told her, and beat a hasty retreat out the door. I walked for a little while until I found a good spot. One of the biology buildings had an experimental courtyard that was set up like a little desert. I hopped the fence, my ribs complaining some more as I did so, and I drew a circle in the dust, invested a bit of my will in it and used a Name.

Names, with a capitol N have power. A wizard who knows one can use a Name to compel a creature, magical or otherwise, to form a connection which can be used for any number of things. I used this one to summon a little mouse-like creature into the circle I had created.

He looked up at me startled.

“Frost!?” he squeaked. “I was having dinner.”

“Sorry Hops, I am calling in my marker.” his shoulders simultaneously slumped, and his eyes gleamed.

“You are?” he asked. We had a longstanding relationship, we were not as formal as I was with other Sidhe.

“Yep. I need a guide through the Nevernever to a place.” I described its location in the real world. “Can you get me there?”

“Oh yes! Of course!” he jumped up and down.

“Get me there, and then guide my apprentice and I back to my home, and we will be even.”

“I accept your terms” he agreed. “Are you ready to go now?”

“Yes.”

“Then release me and open the gate” I scuffed the circle, releasing the energy and the mouse fey from his prison and opened a gate large enough to get through. I stepped through.

…

Before I opened the gate into the storage container, I gathered as much power around and into me as I could. My synapses blazed, my entire body tingled with that same odd sensation that happens when your foot falls asleep. I drew my sword, opened the gate with a clear intonation of the word “Ostium”

I took in my surroundings in the second I would have before the reaction times of those inside kicked in. There were five armed goons, two at the door, one on each other side of the room. Duncan was blindfolded, bound,gagged, naked, bruised and bleeding from several good sized wounds on his arms and legs, as well as his eyes where capillaries had burst when he had been punched far too hard. A strap was around his right arm and it looked like he had been forced to take heroin. He was currently strapped chest down to a chair on his knees, he was... exposed. Someone I did not recognize stood over him, about to violate him in the most brutal way one could without the use of magic. Duncan was crying through his gag. Mendez was nowhere in sight.

Rage burned within me. White hot anger. I hated them. I hated them with a fire hotter than the burning of a thousand suns. I harnessed my rage and used it as a weapon. I pointed my staff, injecting pure hatred-driven will into words. They would all suffer.

“DOLLENS!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “DOLLENS! ATTONITUS!!” I bellowed the rest of the cant. All five guards writhed in agony. The force with which their muscles contracted fractured ribs and broke backs, but for the half second the spell was active, I kept the electricity from cross their hearts or brains. It took an extra expenditure of energy, but they would survive the spell. Though they would wish they had not when they woke up paralyzed from the waste down.

The one in the circle, who I could only conclude was one of Edwardo's now very ill-fated lieutenants looked like a deer caught in headlights. I scuffed the circle with my staff, releasing its energy. He gathered his will with with a frenzied shout in what I presumed was ancient Aztec threw a bolt of fire at me. I batted it aside with an effort of will invested into a word.

“Consulo”

The fire reflected wide as I raised my shield in an arc and deflected it. He went for a gun. He moved quickly for a gun. I was faster.

“Impetus” I snarled with another investment of my rage-enhanced willpower. I could not keep this up for long, but I would not need to. He flew back and impacted hard against the wall and slumped to the floor semi-conscious.

I heard shouting outside, and movement toward the door. I gestured with my drawn arming sword toward the door and called up more power with a word. A lance of fire streaked to the door and melted the latch to the frame. They hammered at the door uselessly.

Then I walked gingerly to my apprentice. I found his blood stained clothes and brought them to him. He was still crying, confused, and shaking in fear. I used my sword and gently cut his bindings, and removed his gag. I pulled him off the chair and held his naked form close to me. I gently took off the gag.

“S Steven?” he asked through his tears.

“I'm here” I told him “Everything is going to be alright. You are safe now. They didn't?” I comforted him and asked the obvious question.

“No. You can check my mind later if you. Oh” he said, realizing the question.”Mendez came in a little while ago ranting about something in Spanish. Then they bound me like this and I started hearing the sounds of porn.”

“He couldn't do it unaided. Good thing it took him that long” I said, putting my forehead to his and gripping his hand in mine.

“We are going to get you home, and get you started on offensive magic so you can lay waste to these fuckers as I have. First though I am going to put you to sleep so you can rest. Would you like that?” He nodded, but held his hand up. Glaring over at the one I had thrown into the wall. He had regained some of his composure, and now his eyes glared at the warlock wannabe with the same hatred I had.

“But first I want to see him die.” I nodded and handed him his clothes. Then I strode toward the downed lieutenant and knelt before him, pinning his struggling form to the wall with my sword at his throat. He spoke

“!Por favor Haber misericordia por mi cuenta! !YO mendigar usted!”

“No.” I told him. “There is only one punishment for your crimes, Maleficar. Rapist. Murderer”

I took a pen-knife from a pocket in my pants and carved a message on his forehead as he screamed and continued to beg for mercy.

“Maleficus per haud posterus. Exsisto is dictata illis quisnam preda in insons “

Then I picked him up and strapped him sideways to the same chair he was going to use to rape my apprentice. His head lay over the edge of it. He cried. He screamed. He begged. I didn't care. I knew deep down I probably should, but this bastard could not be allowed to pollute the world, let alone my city.

I lined up the sword on his neck, brought up up with one hand on the hilt, the other on the pommel, then I brought it down severing his head from his neck with one swift stroke. His blood sprayed the side of the building as men continued to attempt for force their way in. I heard a car start.

I quickly grabbed a rifle belonging to one of the goons from his moaning form and set it on the chair, I then grabbed the severed head and inserted the gun-barrel into the neck stump, my little message set toward the door for all the world to see. Then I helped the now clothed Duncan up, and helped him toward the still open portal in the Nevernever. When we were through I closed the gate with an effort of will.

“Ostium”

Very nice even though there are loop holes about the no killing with magic, as Warden's in the books killed evil wizards in combat with magic so he could kill Mendez with magic but only if it occurred during battle.