Paranoid Mage

“Do a jaguar next!”

“No, a dragon!”

Huitzilin smiled at the children as he handed the butterfly he had just finished whittling to the small girl hovering on his porch steps. She took it carefully and managed to squeak out thanks before dashing off to show it to her friends.

“A jaguar, ai?” He asked, taking the next block of wood. The little boy nodded eagerly, brushing the hair out of his eyes. Huitzilin started carving, but after the first two curls of wood peeled off, the phone in his pocket chimed. The ringtone identified it as coming from House Taisen, so he sighed and put the wood block down. “Seems like work is calling. One will make a jaguar next time.”

“Okay gramps,” said the little boy, and Huitzilin narrowed his eyes at the kid. The children dispersed as he pulled out the phone and answered it.

“Yes?”

“This is Taisen,” the voice on the other end said. “I have a report from Princess Felicia.”

“Ah?” That was a departure from the usual way of things. Huitzilin stepped inside the little house he had on the edge of the village, to have some privacy. “Is there an issue?”

“There is,” a new voice sounded in his ear, and he could feel the power in it despite being unaffected himself, his blood denying it any hold. “A group of hostile fae have just emerged somewhere in Central or South America. Not too far south though, and I know they came out somewhere in a deep cenote with lots of bones at the bottom. But I couldn’t tell you their exact geographic area.”

“One suspects that that will not be necessary,” Huitzilin said, recalling old, old memories. It made sense that the fae would be attracted to such important and venerated places, old and bloody as they were.

“Archmage Taisen is extremely busy dealing with the aftermath of an attack on Alpha Chester; would you be confident in addressing the fae issue? They have someone fairly powerful with them, though not of archmage level.”

“Yes,” Huitzilin said. “One will ensure that these fae commit no mischief.”

“I will block their escape route,” Felicia said. “If they retreated there is no telling where they would end up. Not in Faerie, that is certain.”

“Very good,” Huitzilin said, and hung up the phone. He had never entirely agreed with modern notions like mercy anyway, for that required that the enemy be in some sense very similar, with only circumstance putting them at odds. For strange creatures like the fae, any that set themselves against him could not be granted clemency.

“Then we hunt again?” His shadow asked him, bright eyes opening where it was cast upon the wall. The language it used had been lost to the ages, dying out with his people in time lost to time.

“We do,” Huitzilin confirmed to his old friend. He stepped out of the back of his house, activating his foci. While he preferred walking most of the time, sometimes flight was a better option.

The glamour kept him disguised as he flew out of the small village he lived in for the moment, carrying him past the hidden temple where the portal to Mictlān resided, and on toward other, half-remembered ritual sites. Most of them were after his time, but not all. People had been drawn to the same places again and again, as if there were something magical about them.

Huitzilin knew there was. It wasn’t the magic of mages, not the magic of vis, but something deeper and more primal. It was the kind of magic that raised and razed cities, the sheer will and determination of thousands crystallizing into a single point of action. Mictlān had done none of that, only bleeding off talented youth for the false promise of easy power. At least until he had sealed it.

There was nothing amiss at the first sacrificial pool he checked, nor the next, or even the next. It wasn’t until he’d worked his way all the way to Campeche that he caught the first hint of fae presence. The blood of the earth twisted and turned, spiraling in toward the ancient cenote in ways that it should not.

Huitzilin dropped down into the changed space, feeling the beating hearts of two, perhaps three banner worth of fae and humans. Or things that had once been human. The blood that flowed through them was too thick, moved too slowly, its nature twisted and changed by too much time in Faerie.

He reached up to touch the thorns piercing his earlobes, tugging lightly to generate a few drops of blood, which he sent circling around him as he walked forward through the jungle. A few moments later he broke through into the clearing where the fae were assembled, all of them in some mockery of human or animal form.

Of course, his arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed. Several of the more human-looking fae turned toward him, while the one in the big hat stretched out his cane theatrically. Though with the fae, theatrics were inseparable from effectiveness.

“Halt, mage!” He boomed, shadows rising around him. “You tread upon the Court of the Loa! Pay your respects or face the consequences.”

“You are invaders,” Huitzilin said softly. “And will receive only what you have earned.”

The altered humans were weak, and he simply seized control of their blood directly, puppeting them to turn around and immediately attack their masters. Weak though they were, it was a surprise to their fae masters to be set upon by five or six withered bodies clawing and grasping with savage ferocity. Not that Huitzilin expected the thralls to do all the work for him.

He flung his blood forward, drops spattering against two of the fae – a bull-headed man and an owl-headed woman – and forced it into their veins. His vis tangled with theirs, his blood flowed in their veins. After a single moment, he ripped it all out of them, reducing them to dried chunks of meat and bone. The blood went splashing out, threatening the rest of the fae.

The rest of them blurred into motion, several of them coming directly at him with weapons that may have looked unimpressive but were clearly heavily magical, meant to cleave and sever. All of which he ignored, for when they met his skin they stopped, the blood inside it stronger than steel and as immoveable as a mountain. All that did was bring them closer to death, for the few drops of blood they freed whipped out to flense flesh from bone.

At the same time, the man in the oversized hat conjured up a great cresting wave of shadow, sending it Huitzilin’s way with a flick of the cane. It withered anything it touched, plant, fae, and human alike, but Huitzilin had ways of dealing with that kind of thing. Perhaps he could have withstood it on sheer strength of power alone, but there was no need to take the risk.

His shadow shot out to meet the one that the fae had conjured. For a moment the yawning abyss of Mictlān cracked open on Earth, the darkness there swallowing the pale imitation the fae had conjured and leaving only ash behind. That seemed to be enough for some of the fae, and a number of them jumped back down the cenote. Whatever they were expecting, it didn’t happen, the bone-choked water merely rippling and splashing. Felicia had kept her word.

From there the fight took on a note of desperation. The fae came at him in a horde, ignoring the ones who were being beaten to death by the hijacked thralls, and he welcomed them. All they did was speed up their own deaths, though his shirt and pants were torn to tatters. While his control over his own blood meant there was little in the way of injury they could inflict on him, it still sliced through the mundane material he was wearing as if it were air.

The only one who was at all a challenge was the hat man, who didn’t bother with anything physical and instead threw magical attacks. Not powerful ones, but insidious stuff, trying to infect the air he breathed and the light he saw. His old, dead friend was proof against that, a shadow that overmatched the darkness the fae could cast.

Huitzilin strode forward, drops of blood hanging around him as the exsanguinated corpses of his foes crumbled onto the grass. The hat man’s cane whistled through the air, the simple stick sharper than an obsidian blade. Even Huitzilin was wary of letting such a foul artifact touch him, especially since he could feel the hunger it had, so his blood pulled him to one side faster than mere muscle could move.

Like any real fight, it was over in seconds. Huitzilin was not taking any chances, and he ripped into the fae with all the blood he had gathered. He forced it into the fae’s mouth and nose, down its throat, into its ears and eyes. The hat man’s shadows tried to tear at his vis, but instead his old friend devoured them, diamond eyes glowing.

Then Huitzilin tore him apart from the inside, shredding his body and stealing his vis, funneling it into his shadow to repair what had been spent in the fight. Not that his friend would ever go away, but his shadow could only do so much without a ready supply of energy.

It didn’t take much longer to remove the rest of the enemies, with their lord and general gone. That left only the remaining altered humans, and Wizzy peered at them closely to see if any were still intact. But no, they had been that way so long that if they had minds, death would be a release. He stilled their blood in their veins, an instant mercy.

In the bloody silence, he reached down for the water of the cenote and used it to wash things clean, scouring open a patch of earth to bury the remains and using one of his foci to seal stone around them. No need to burden the jungle with the problems that fae bodies could invite if they were left out for the birds and the worms.

Huitzilin stretched and yawned, feeling a little bit drained from the encounter. He was of course unbothered by the carnage, since he had seen much worse and bloodier sights, and with less deserving victims. But he was out of practice, having not needed to use his offensive skills for a very long time.

“Thank you, old friend,” he said.

“It was fun,” the shadow replied.

He took out his phone and frowned as he saw he had no service where he was, then energized his focus to take to the air again. He needed to return home anyway and get new clothes, for the current ones were in tatters and people would balk at seeing the innumerable bloodless papercuts put into his skin. Huitzilin flew over the jungle as the sky darkened, content with what he had managed.

Even if he had not been a blood priest for a very long time, it was good to know that he still remembered how to deal with his enemies.

***

With Alpha Chester’s compound destroyed, House Hargrave ended up hosting what could credibly be described as a summit. Callum wasn’t entirely happy with it, but there weren’t too many choices. It needed to be held on Earth if the shifter and fae members were to be at all comfortable, unless Callum wanted to volunteer to hold portals open for the duration of their discussions. Which he didn’t, especially since he was completely tapped out from his work with the dragons' own portal.

He was still keeping an eye on it, though it seemed to be stable enough, even if the mana flow wasn’t yet at the level of the original. Perhaps it never would be, considering how rough and haphazard the process had been, but it was probably good enough. It weighed on his mind enough that he was still worrying over it by the time he had to leave, and only reluctantly teleported his family over.

House Hargrave was astonishingly opulent to his sensibilities, the rooms enormous and spacious and filled with antiques. Hand-carved furniture, paintings that looked to be from the Dutch masters, and a lot of subtle enchanting for the lights, the windows, even the carpets. Though what surprised him the most was that there was an entire pack of shifters serving as guards and butlers.

“Welcome to House Hargrave, Master and Madam Wells, and of course the Young Master too,” one of the butlers said, bowing to them after they appeared in the vestibule of the House. Alex bounced happily at being called Young Master, staring around at the expensive carpets and hand-blown glass chandeliers. Callum had to admit he was impressed, though not entirely comfortable with that level of extreme wealth. While it was incredibly opulent, he suspected it was less showing off as just the way very powerful people lived when they accumulated wealth and connections over hundreds of years.

“Thank you,” Callum said, and followed the butler through the house to where he had already sensed a number of mage bubbles along with Wizzy and Shahey. Even though House Hargrave were allies, he was still twitchy being so deep in another mage’s territory. It wasn’t as nerve-wracking as his first contacts, at least, so he was able to focus on something other than escape plans.

The sitting room had a half-dozen Hargraves, the family resemblance obvious when they were all gathered together, and the ones he hadn’t met stared politely when the butler introduced them. It gave Callum a moment of befuddled confusion to see actual fear in their expressions, but of course he had a reputation. The fae cloak he was wearing probably contributed, since the material was clearly not of Earth and he was sure it looked intimidating to mage-sight.

“Alpha Chester should be arriving soon,” Archmage Hargrave said. “And Princess Felicity is en route with Archmage Taisen.”

“That’s fine,” Callum said. “I’m pretty sure we’re all on the same page after the past couple days.”

“Their willingness to move to open hostilities is worrisome,” Archmage Hargrave acknowledged. “Even I know that the incident at Chester’s compound is getting far too much scrutiny. Especially after the vampire massacres. I’m not sure that GAR is even bothering to try and cover it up.”

“The DAI inherited BSE’s job, basically,” Lucy said, digging a book out of the bag for Alex, since he was sure to be fairly bored by the proceedings. “And they don’t have the expertise for it. Or the interest, probably. Isn’t the new policy that they don’t actually care about secrecy anymore?”

“It’s not clear what the new policy is,” Glenda said, watching as Lucy settled Alex on her lap. “We still have some people over in Faerie who talk to us, but the inner circle of Archmages are keeping their mouths shut.”

“Announcing Archmage Taisen, Princess Felicity Blackblood, and Princess-Consort Magus Raymond Danforth,” the butler said, which didn’t surprise Callum since he’d sensed them arrive. What did surprise him was the amount of power swirling around Felicia, significantly more than the last time he’d seen her. She was also dressed in what could only be described as a tactical ballgown, an armored black dress that integrated both pistol and sword.

“There was never meant to be an inner circle of Archmages,” Taisen said, not at all ashamed about listening in on their conversation. “But that’s the nature of people. Even equals aren’t equal.”

There was another round of greetings as the new arrivals settled in, but aside from mild complaining nobody broached the serious topics. At least, not until the last guest arrived, only a few minutes after Taisen. Chester strode into the room looking grim, though not despondent, and for some reason smelling strongly of pine. Callum didn’t ask, and Chester didn’t explain.

“Let us begin, then,” Archmage Hargrave said, as honest-to-goodness maids came around to serve drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Alex immediately gravitated toward the bacon cream cheese things, but the Hargraves or their household were thoughtful enough to also provide some fruit slices which were slightly more healthy. Callum left wrangling his kid to Lucy and focused on the topic at hand.

“It seems to me that we need to disassemble what remains of GAR and remove Archmage Janry,” Callum said. “Perhaps in that order. I’m not even sure what GAR still does at this point—”

“Coordinates exchange between supernatural and mundane finances, settles grievances between parties, provides education and recordkeeping, recharge services for foci, a marketplace for fae items…” Taisen ticked off a list on his fingers. “Removing GAR is going to mean a lot of trouble for a lot of people. Not that I disagree with you, but it does run the risk of making more enemies.”

“The fae, at least, should not be a problem,” Felicia said, sending the glasses to ringing in resonant sympathy. “They will all have to come under my banner at some point, and it may be for the best if our craftsmanship is less easy to acquire. There are far too many things out there with hidden barbs.”

“The enclaves in the American Alliance aren’t going to like that,” Chester warned. “They prefer their independence.”

“I have no desire to dictate to people whose arrangements already work perfectly well,” Felicia said, waving it aside. “Serving under the banner of the blood of Oberon is an entirely different prospect as well, compared to dealing with the Greater or Lesser Courts.”

“If you can negotiate with them, that is their business, but the American Alliance won’t take kindly to any attempts to force our members to join,” Chester said, frowning at her. Felicia merely smiled and inclined her head.

“We’ve got a lot of Houses pulling out of Janry’s little alliance thanks to my portal worlds,” Callum said. “Do they really need GAR? I mean, GAR does stuff on Earth and most of the rest of the Houses are over on Faerie or the Deep Wilds now.”

“Need?” Hargrave frowned. “Perhaps not, but Earth has the sort of various sundries that even the Faerie types enjoy. The industry of billions of people produces things that magic just can’t match at the price. Without some connection people will find they’re missing many things they took for granted. As we found out when we were cut off ourselves.”

“So we set up a digital marketplace,” Lucy suggested. “We take all of GAR’s magical internet stuff, and model ourselves off of the mundane ones. Get some fae or shifters to deliver things or just send it through regular post.” That suggestion got some very considering looks, but Chester refused to be distracted.

“We may debate the specifics, but we need to take our pound of flesh,” Chester said, almost with a growl. “These people are unafraid of any consequence but death.”

“Have to agree with that,” Callum sighed, glancing over to see that Alex was still focused on his book rather than the conversation. “I’d rather target the right people, though when it comes to GAR it’s hard to figure out who’s responsible for what.”

“For once I don’t think we’ll need The Ghost’s assassination abilities,” Taisen said. “If we’re going in and clearing out GAR completely, then it’s going to be a full military exercise. Your ability to bypass wards and retrieve items will be far more valuable. Besides, this isn’t just your fight.”

“That was the sort of logic that ended up with the Night Lands debacle,” Callum said, not really arguing, just grumbling. “Are we prepared for their response?”

“As we can be,” Hargrave said. “This isn’t something that can go unanswered. They’re daring us to curb our response for fear of escalation. But nothing is stopping them from taking those steps anyway, save for the consequences.”

Callum rubbed his temples. That was why he hadn’t wanted to get into the political angles, but wherever there was power, that was bound to happen. Even if he wasn’t interested in politics, politics was interested in him and he had to engage if he wanted to have any say in what was happening.

“So what are we going to do, if this whole alliance is going to be involved?”

Lucy and Gayle went off with Alex to keep themselves occupied while everyone else spent the next few hours discussing tactics and strategy. Even some of the other Hargraves and Chester’s shifters drifted in and out, since most of them had little to contribute. Callum was fed up with it early on but he stuck it out from sheer force of obligation.

The surprise, at least to him, was that Wizzy volunteered to go along. So far as Callum understood it, Wizzy tended to stay out of these things. He might be willing to defend his own area, but he didn’t get involved in other people’s business. Unlike Callum, GAR seemed perfectly willing to let him be.

“One is not committing to the assault,” Wizzy cautioned them. “But there must be an observer to attest to truth of the conflict. Whatever that truth may be.”

There was no need to stall in their attack on GAR, but it wasn’t just Callum this time and people needed time to get ready. That left several dead hours for Callum and Lucy to address the reason they’d brought Alex along in the first place: magic testing. Callum was pretty certain he knew what Alex’s aspect was considering some of the things he’d caught his son doing, but he didn’t say anything in case he prejudiced the tests.

Fortunately it wasn’t something as awful as the big box that Callum had been stuck in. It was instead a person-sized metal cylinder, heavy with enchantments, that Alex only had to walk into and put his hands on the handles. It was far gentler and lower-powered than what GAR had put Callum through, and it didn’t seem to bother Alex at all.

“Feels all bubbly,” Alex commented, tugging on the handles while the complex enchantments worked. It was looking for some sort of manifestation, because there was no a priori way of determining a mage’s aspect. Callum wouldn’t have been surprised if a number of mages had slipped through the cracks just because their aspect was something nobody had seen before, but without practice and knowledge they wouldn’t have been able to accomplish much.

“Just tell me if there’s a problem, kiddo,” Callum said from outside the cylinder.

“It’s okay, dad,” Alex said cheerfully, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he watched the wards light up around him. To Callum’s view there was just a lot of vis boiling out at random, not really forming any structure for more than a fraction of a second.

“Huh,” Glenda said, squinting at the runes. “That’s odd.”

“What’s odd?” Callum asked, or maybe even snapped. Those weren’t words he wanted to hear when it came to his son.

“Well, he tripped the wards for gravity fully, but there was also some draw on light, metal, and fire. Just a touch. And some of the supplementary ward structures snapped.” Glenda tapped her lips with a forefinger, then shut the appraisal box down. “Very well, we’re done, Alex.”

“Aww,” Alex said, but let go of the handles and backed out of the cylinder.

“So what does all that mean?” Callum asked, reaching down to take Alex’s hand. “Sounds like maybe an aspect you aren’t testing for?”

“That would be my guess,” Glenda agreed. “I’ve never seen it before but, no offense meant, most mages come from very established lines. Your pedigree is not exactly known.”

“Hey, mine is,” Lucy said, but she didn’t seem too upset. “But yeah, Callum here’s a bit of a weirdo,” she continued affectionately, putting her arm around him.

“Dad’s a weirdo,” Alex confirmed. Callum snorted and ruffled Alex’s hair.

“Okay,” Callum said, some of his irritation fading. “That’s not as bad as it could have been, but…” He trailed off, contemplating the issue. It wasn’t a great thing, because even if Alex ended up being able to do things no other mage could, he wouldn’t have the benefit of hundreds of years of magical resources. Of course, neither had Callum, but he was hoping for something better for his son.

On the other hand, there was no guarantee that they’d ever manage to isolate what that aspect was. At least Alex had gravity as a fairly normal aspect, and even someone who was a master of it that they could consult for help. There was no way that Callum was going to suggest the internal method for his son though, not with an unknown aspect.

Unless there was some way to split the methods by aspect.

“We’ll figure it out,” Lucy said, interrupting his thoughts. “It’s good to know, and we’ll get him started on the early stuff now.”

“Yeah,” Callum said. “Hear that, kiddo? You’re going to learn how to do magic stuff.”

“Like daddy?” Alex asked, eyes wide.

“Yeah, like daddy,” Callum confirmed.

***

“Not an unqualified success, but I’d still call it a victory,” Director O’Keefe reported. “Over half the shifters we surveilled were gone, and most of the remainder have fortified themselves one way or another. I can’t confirm that Alpha Chester is dead, especially since Archmage Taisen took control of the battle site, but all signs are that he is neutralized for the time being.”

“Without a body we have to assume he’s not dead,” Janry said. “If you’d actually managed to bury him under a hundred feet of dirt that would do it even for someone of his power, but he’s aligned with a spatial mage. He made it out. Not that killing Chester was the primary goal anyway.” Janry tapped the tip of his forefinger on his desk, regarding O’Keefe.

While taking Alpha Chester out of play was certainly worthwhile, even with the losses they’d incurred, the fact that all the mundanes had disappeared made it less useful. The primary purpose had been casting Alpha Chester as a villain and an outlaw, setting him against the mundane government. All the evidence being buried in a mysterious sinkhole confused matters, and it was harder to portray Chester as a scoundrel when there was nobody to testify about how bad Chester was.

The fae contribution to the attacks had run into some other kind of trouble, though nobody knew exactly what. Janry had wanted them to install themselves in some of the mundane cities inside Chester’s former territory, to offset the enclaves that were already in North America, but they hadn’t shown. He hadn’t gotten a reply from them yet, but for all he knew they were going to pretend it had never happened. There was a fae power struggle involved and even people who had lived in Faerie for centuries didn’t understand all the rules for those.

“Right, might as well strike while the iron is hot. Redirect all the personnel you can spare to the mundane conversion. The early signs were quite favorable, I think we just need to put more effort into it.” The mundanes had a lot of bizarre top-heavy organization, but Janry was confident that turning it all to his own purposes wouldn’t be too difficult. There were just so many of them that it stretched GAR resources to keep control of the byzantine processes of their governments.

So far they’d avoided going after actual presidents or kings or whatever they styled themselves, and that was sadly partly due to the lack of vampires. Fae had to play by certain rules to target someone so important, and so far there hadn’t been an opportunity to do so.

“Yes, sir,” O’Keefe said. “If I may ask, is there any progress with the Guild of Enchanting? We’re starting to run low on scry-comms and there are some offices where the lights are no longer working. We’ve moved some enchantments from the old Acquisition offices, but people are starting to notice.”

“We’re having to deal under the table with some of the Houses that have declared neutrality,” Janry admitted unhappily. “I’ll put you in touch with my nephew; he’s been handling that of late.” That particular coup on the part of the Earth alliance was an ongoing thorn in Janry’s side, but there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. Once they’d broken the Earth alliance though, there were going to be changes. There were enough people from his House in the Guild that he could probably replace Rossi and lose nothing of value, but for the moment he had to play nice.

“Yes, sir,” O’Keefe repeated, and Janry dismissed him. Alone in his office, Janry stood and paced, looking out his window onto the courtyard of House Janry. When he’d started the push to finalize the Archmage Council’s control of Earth, and thus his, he had not anticipated so much resistance. The mundanes had little they could do, of course, but the resistance from the other Houses and the fae over on Earth had been surprising.

It was exactly the reason the Houses made sure that no new mage could divorce themselves from the House system. Any free mage could be a threat, as Wells demonstrated, and it was clear that even allowing independent Houses wasn’t sufficient for keeping proper order. Given how many Houses were willing to go neutral, many people even in Faerie had lost their understanding of the way the world worked.

The offense had worked, so it was best to continue. Before the crisis with Wells he had been used to subtle dealings, but now he thought that blunt action would be a better policy. If people had no will to oppose him, he could open the door to his people and their fae allies to take what they could.