Paranoid Mage

Taisen’s Antarctic base reminded Callum of a hotel more than a secret base. The corridors were large, the rooms well-furnished, and it was all heated and ventilated well enough that it was impossible to tell it was an enclosed building a mile beneath the ice. There were gyms and a well-catered cafeteria and, most importantly for the matter at hand, an operations room where Callum and Lucy could work.

“You know, on a personal note, I’m glad for the babysitting,” Lucy said, as they made sure they were ready. Callum nodded agreement, glad of having a venue where Alex could interact with other mage children from House Taisen and House Hargrave. He wasn’t entire a fan of the House’s general attitude toward normal folks, but now that Alex was starting the magic exercises for children, he needed exposure to other mages.

“The are two primary targets, GAR US and GAR Paris,” Taisen said over the scry-comm, the briefing less for the people who were doing the assault as the assorted support personnel back at the base. “The US Branches are all next to each other so they’re basically one target. Paris has more fae support, so be double-warded, though Princess Blackblood should negate most of that. Any questions?”

Callum had none. There were all the little GAR offices, but they were minor, as was GAR China near Chengde, now that House Fane was gone. In fact, most of the minor offices were staffed through the central offices, with no means for being independent, so they should be easy enough to clean up later on.

Lucy had her laptop sending drone feeds to various monitors in the operations room, and while Taisen wasn’t present, he had an attaché to represent House Taisen in case that was necessary. Callum was coordinating with everyone else through scry-comm, and his role was actually relatively minor. Important, but minor.

“Good,” Taisen said, when no questions came. “Sound off.”

“Gold squad, standing by,” someone from House Hargrave reported over the comms.

“Black squad, standing by,” House Taisen said.

“Red leader, standing by,” Lucy muttered under her breath, but kept her microphone off. Callum chuckled and activated the scry-comm.

“Gatecrasher, standing by,” he said.

“Ready for you to kick down the doors,” Alpha Chester said.

“Roger that,” he said, and turned to Lucy. “You get to start.”

“I’ve never had the opportunity to crash a whole service like this,” Lucy said cheerfully, and poked at her laptop. The back door to the GAR intranet was still in place, despite the fact that GAR clearly knew it was compromised. Callum wasn’t sure whether it was just that they didn’t have the expertise to isolate it, or didn’t think Lucy could do more than pull down email conversations.

Either way, Lucy was ready to take down the entire intranet, which meant it would also disable all the supernatural-oriented phones, laptops, and all the internal communication GAR relied on. Scry-comms weren’t vulnerable to that, but within GAR only DAI tended to use them since they couldn’t be networked like phones and were more expensive anyway.

“And down,” Lucy said, rapping a finger on her laptop for emphasis.

“Then here we go,” Callum said, and focused on his drones. GAR had adopted newer model warding, and even though the Guild of Enchanting was being relatively stingy with its sales, they still had protection that would give Callum issues if he was trying to be subtle. In this case, he didn’t have to be subtle at all, so he simply spun up a pair of small anti-mana portals and aimed them at the wards.

He'd noticed before that anti-mana had absolutely shredded through the wards on his own house, even if it hadn’t hit the actual enchantment. When it came to the heavier, more thorough wards and glamours that covered the GAR buildings, the effect was even more severe. It seemed nobody had built them with anti-mana in mind.

The wards fizzled, hissing around the foot-wide portals as they tried to compete against the anti-mana tearing them apart, and failed as the collapse propagated along the entire ward field. The building defenses fell in quick succession, first the ones in Paris, which were less robust, and then the ones surrounding the GAR America buildings. Faint sounds of audible alarms going off came through his drone microphones, and Callum toggled the scry-comm again.

“Gates are down, opening the door.” He still felt a little silly, using code-speak, even if it was fairly obvious code-speak, but Lucy sure got a kick out of it. He reached out and opened portals for the strike teams; four pair in all. Taisen and Felicia’s forces went to Paris, while Hargrave and Chester’s to the US branch.

There was a huge difference between the way that Callum did things and the way an actual military force of mages did things. Every single one of them was in flight, and the people up front were armed with shield-breakers. He caught some snippets of the archmages announcing their respective Houses, and then things turned chaotic.

Without opposing archmages, there really wasn’t any chance of the employees of GAR resisting the military might of the people involved. Taisen and Hargrave weren’t actually trying to kill anyone though, which made the process messier than simply flattening everything. The addition of extra enemy forces would have made it worse, so one of Callum’s first jobs was to disable the teleporters.

With the wards down, Callum yanked all the paired teleport cores out of their slots — some in storage in the switchboard room, others in permanent installations where they connected to individual Houses. He swept them all out into one of Taisen’s storage rooms for later return to House Duvall, or whoever actually owned them. While they were disassembling GAR, it was worthwhile to remember that GAR itself was mostly composed of people and properties from various Houses and enclaves and it would salve some wounds if things were properly returned.

Some things. It would be stupid or outright suicidal to rearm to their enemies, and mages played by an older set of rules anyway. The DAI would be lucky if Chester conceded even a single piece of paper. Not that Callum blamed him; the DAI had attacked his home on multiple fronts, and that made it personal.

Despite Callum’s practice with multitasking, too much was going on for him to be able to parse everything that happened as four forces stormed two locations simultaneously. He caught glimpses of Taisen and Hargrave using their force magic to section off hallways and block in offices, though that level of condensed vis also made it impossible for him to send his threads through.

A sharp report, like some kind of explosion, came through one of the drone pickups, but he had to assume that the combatants had things under control. Remote as he was, his major concern was tripping any more negative-healing traps, carefully and cautiously jumping his bad pennies around and prodding places with vis. Most of what he accomplished was stealing into storage and record rooms and sweeping them out to the prepared storage rooms. It was an almost nostalgic sort of feeling, from the times when he was looting vampire nests, though on a far larger scale.

There were basements chock full of papers. Bins and cabinets and drawers, all of which Callum scooped up and dropped off in the pseudo-warehouse below the operations room. One sub-basement in GAR Paris had a bunch of fae magic strung throughout it, but it didn’t seem to impair Callum’s salvage operations. Possibly thanks to the cloak, but more likely because of all the fighting going on.

While he was emptying out the armory, someone blew a hole in the wall with a summoned chunk of stone and disrupted his teleportation framework. At GAR Paris, fire alarms had started sound, both in the building and out in the streets. The problem was, Callum couldn’t tell what bit of vis belonged to what party, or even which mage bubbles were aligned with what force.

“I’m really no use in a straight up fight,” Callum muttered to Lucy, teleporting a whole rack of enchanted rifles of some sort from GAR US to Taisen’s warehouse. While his perceptions could do a lot, and his remote method of operation made him practically untouchable, it also made him completely useless for pitched battles. Even if he could interfere with the fighting going on, there was no telling whether he’d be targeting enemy or ally.

“Hey, we play to our strengths,” Lucy said. “Can you put all the server stuff over in our warehouse? I might be able to set most of it back up so all those phones and stuff all the civilians have aren’t useless. The enchanting dongle should still work, I’m pretty sure.”

“On it,” Callum said. He teleported his drone down to the basement where Lucy used to work, and started grabbing all the tangle of server hardware and the connections to the enchanted ward-like tray that it used for validation. It was all so modern that he had to wonder who had been involved aside from Lucy.

Teleporting the computers took longer than almost everything else, simply because he had to deal with all the cable connections. While he did have the juice to sever the connections in an emergency, it was still so difficult that taking the extra few seconds to wrap the teleportation framework was worth it. It was fortunate that Lucy had reminded him when she did, because between the first batch of servers and the second the basement floor bucked and crushed half the remaining equipment like a hydraulic press.

“Holy crap,” Callum said, hastily grabbing the intact server hardware before something else happened. “It’s a real warzone over there.” The GAR US forces seemed to be playing quite a bit rougher than GAR Paris, but neither of them had much regard for infrastructure and Callum winced at the damage they were doing to some fine old architecture in both places. Neither building was built to take the damage that mages could dish out even when they were being careful — and nobody was being particularly careful.

The damage to people was somewhat less severe. Most of the people had surrendered, it seemed, since most of them were just office workers. Even if every mage spent some time out in the portal worlds and supposedly knew how to craft offensive spells, nobody who’d spent the past several decades pushing papers and eating doughnuts was going to be in practice.

There were some holdouts, which was where all the destruction was coming from. A single fire mage holding an incendiary shield in GAR Paris overwhelmed the poorly-maintained sprinkler system and the flames bit deep into the old, dry wood. In a sense it wasn’t much of a loss, since the plan was to demolish the buildings before emergency services arrived, but Callum still cringed at the rapidly-spreading building fire.

Over at GAR US, the same earth magic that had collapsed the basement had cracked pipes, shattered windows, and generally rendered the three-building campus unfit for habitation. Light fixtures dangled from the ceilings and as Callum went through to salvage what equipment he could, it was inevitable that somewhere the electricity would short.

“Why is everything on fire?” He asked rhetorically. Several of the drone feeds showed smoke rising from the buildings, which – in addition to the general sounds of combat – was sure to attract the attention of local authorities. One of the downsides of Callum’s puncturing of the wards and glamour was that nothing was actually hidden from the populace at large, but he doubted the enchantments would have survived what was going on anyway.

He kept looting everything he could even as he talked, and Taisen’s warehouse was rapidly filling up, to the point where Callum was going to have to start dumping things in one of his backup caves. It was easy to underestimate how much stuff was inside office buildings, especially ones with basements. Though it didn’t help the situation that Callum was taking literally everything that wasn’t nailed down. Even the chairs, the pictures on the walls, the coffeemakers and water coolers.

“Every magic fight I’ve ever seen ends up with something on fire,” Lucy said, and he wasn’t sure she was entirely joking.

“Right, well, they’d better hurry things up or they’re going to have to explain that to the police and fire departments,” Callum said, hearing the wail of sirens in the background from GAR Paris. GAR US was outside the city enough that there might not be an immediate response, but the explosions and earthquake would probably draw military attention. At worst it might seem like someone had detonated a nuclear device, since to Callum’s hazy knowledge those were tracked more with seismic data than anything else. Either way, hopefully the collateral damage was kept to a minimum.

In a way, the open nature of the destruction was deliberate. The attack wasn’t just to dismantle GAR entirely and destroy the infrastructure that the Archmage Council was using to influence Earth, though that would have been enough for Callum. It was a statement that Chester and the Earth-side Houses weren’t going to let secrecy cripple them.

“Medical evacuation, entry one,” came Chester’s voice over the scry-comm. He flipped his attention back to a bad penny left by the front door of GAR US and opened a portal to the hospital room with Gayle.

“Got it,” and opened a portal. He could barely track the shifter blurring in and out of his perceptions, but they threw someone through into the waiting area and the healers got to work. It wasn’t the first medical evac, but there hadn’t been many of them, and as things wrapped up they seemed less and less likely.

He took another sweep through to try and make sure he’d gotten everything. There was a lot of enchantment material built into the walls and floors and ceilings, but he couldn’t extract that. There were also fewer hidden vaults or safes than Callum had expected, though there was plenty of weaponry and currency in the normal storage rooms. Also a lot of bottles of pills and packets of powders that made Callum wonder about drugs. It seemed entirely too banal for mages, but they were still human. Nothing made it impossible for them to be indulging themselves.

Whatever it was, it went into the warehouses with everything else. When he was satisfied there was nothing else he could take, at least not without cutting things apart, he tapped the scry-comm to report.

“Bag is full,” he said, referencing the list of code phrases he’d been given. Callum felt it was overwrought, but there was a reason that a military operation didn’t abide casual chatter on open comms.

“Roger that,” Taisen’s voice came. “Prepare for exit. We’re almost done here.”

***

Alpha Chester was enjoying the chance to rip his way through GAR. He hadn’t ever liked the organization, and its banal bureaucratic tyranny had only grown over time. In fact, he’d left for the United States simply to get away from the overly officious oversight – as Lisa had put it – of Paris. Of course, then GAR US had introduced the Department of Arcane Investigation and the Bureau of Secret Enforcement, and things had been just as bad as before.

It was no secret that most mages thought of shifters as a half-step above mundanes. Unfortunately – compared to mages – most shifters really weren’t much different, as enhanced strength or speed or senses was nothing like the ability to move rock or shape metal at will. On the other hand, a sufficiently powerful shifter up close rendered all those fancy tricks completely useless. Chester was pretty sure he could shred even an archmage’s vis, if he ever had need to and a clear line of attack.

He smashed through the doors at the DAI offices only a few seconds after going through Wells’ portals, his claws out. While Wells himself was concerned about making sure that every target deserved everything that was coming to them, Chester knew that the DAI as a whole was a rotten edifice. Everyone there was involved in the attack on his home and his family, and that was something he would not abide.

The rest of the fighters he brought headed for the upper offices, while Chester went right for the Director’s door. O’Keefe was a new installation, but thoroughly a creature of the enemy. The wood shattered to splinters as he burst through, not bothering to open it.

It would have been embarrassing if O’Keefe weren’t in, but they’d ensured that most of the targets were there before the assault began. Not that it was unusual, since GAR was effectively the enemy headquarters, though it was a strange war indeed when there was no territory to take and no redoubts to defend. And yet there were certainly enemy combatants to remove.

O’Keefe’s shield activated, a latticework of ice and swirling water, and to his credit he didn’t hesitate before trying to drown Chester in a summoned wave of water. Ice and water mages were hilariously deadly, if for no other reason than everything needed to breathe, but Chester knew how to fight mages. The floor splintered underfoot as he launched himself up and to the side, his claws digging into the walls and ceiling as his feet punched through drywall and found a beam.

It creaked and groaned but a flex of Chester’s own magic let him use it as a springboard to pounce on O’Keefe from above, his claws shredding the man’s shield. Shards of ice went flying even as they evaporated back into raw mana, and water bubbled as the power that held it in reality was sheared apart. O’Keefe’s wide eyes stared at Chester just before claws wrapped around his throat.

There was nothing Chester would have liked more than to tell O’Keefe exactly why Chester was there, and exactly why he was going to die. But mages were too dangerous; even with Chester’s claws on him the man could still wield magic. Or he might have a homebond, or some terrible fae artifact, or just a silverite knife somewhere close at hand.

Chester just closed his hand, ordinary flesh and blood offering no resistance to shifter strength, and ignored the arterial spurt from O’Keefe’s severed throat. The corpse dropped to the floor and Chester felt the vis start to fade. Chester took a moment to sort through the impressions he got from the pack bonds, prodding his people to shift their attention to those who had encountered someone with silverite, or were above their ability to deal with.

Chester never would have dared to assault GAR on his own. Despite his own personal power, and that of his Wolfpack, Archmage Hargrave was the only reason the mages at GAR hadn’t just buried them. With him tying up the actual combat assets, everyone left was a bureaucratic paper-pusher and easy prey. They fought, if poorly, but considering that the shifters weren’t taking prisoners, that was only to be expected.

A metal whip swept through the wall as if it weren’t there, and Chester bent over backward to duck out of the way. The steel flicked upward through the ceiling, not even aimed at him, and the room groaned as it started to collapse. He bounded out, following the whip, while distantly the roar of flames and the rumble of earth came from where Hargrave’s people were fighting. There wasn’t going to be much left of the buildings by the time it was over.

The metal mage was not one of Hargrave’s, fortunately. Less fortunately, the metal had been too much for Candace to handle, and she was barely hanging onto life, her body looking like she’d stumbled into a blender. Chester lunged for the mage, calling on his magic to harden his flesh as the metal whip snapped his way and grabbing it the moment it tried to slash against his face.

The mage tried to dissolve and reform it, but she was stuck at human speed. In Chester’s accelerated frame, there was more than enough time for him to dig his claws into the floor and pounce through the wire shield the mage had. Metal strands snapped before he tore her face off. It wasn’t as satisfying as dealing with O’Keefe though, partly because of the shape Candace was in. He scooped her up and blurred back out of the building.

“Medical evacuation, entry one,” he said, tapping the scry-comm.

“Got it,” came Wells’ voice, and a portal snapped open in front of Chester a moment later. Gayle was on the other side, along with some of his shifters with medical training, and he handed Candace over before rushing back in. In real combat, every second counted, and he didn’t want to have to bring anyone else to the healers. Or have it be too late.

***

Felicia strode forward, Ray at her side and guards ahead and behind her. They were starting to really settle into their roles; the black suits, sunglasses, and arcanopistols finally becoming part of them. Sadly, that excluded cold iron ammunition, but that was in short supply anyway.

GAR Paris was almost its own little enclave, with fae magic sunk into the bones of the place from how long people had been living and working there. Even if she could overwhelm it with her own gathered legitimacy, it was a reminder of how she needed to take the existing enclaves for herself — else she would never have the power she needed to overwhelm any real holdouts. Taking control of the fae at GAR would be a good step, at least.

She flexed her will over the domain she felt at the front door, even as Taisen led his people inside. The magic collapsed with a snap into a small pixie-like fae, her wings buzzing as she reeled backward. Felicia’s hand snapped out and wrapped around the pixie before she could recover.

“Intinkity Belle, I am Princess Felicity Blackblood,” she said, and the pixie froze. “Will you swear to serve me, or do you prefer to die?” Intinkity gave a desultory struggle, wings useless in Felicia’s grasp, and then hung her tiny head.

“I swear to serve, Princess Felicity. Mind, heart, and breath.”

“Excellent choice.” Despite the pixie’s small size, she had plenty of power, centered around controlling who could enter a place — or who could leave. Since Felicia needed to defend borders, both between Faerie and Earth and between fae and mundanes, Intinkity would be a good start. Not that Felicia trusted her just yet, but dealing with higher stakes would be good for Intinkity’s story. Which was, in the end, the only thing most fae cared about.

She dipped her fingers into the Gate of Water wound about her wrist, pulling it open far enough to send Intinkity through. Then she nodded at Ray, and he gestured them onward. Rumbles and thumps came from up ahead as Taisen’s mages started to fight and take prisoners, and Felicia hummed a soothing tune. Her voice spread out ahead of them, undermining hostility and thoughts of resistance.

Of course, that wasn’t enough to stop all fighting, or even most. While Taisen focused on the upper levels, Felicia’s team went downward into the basements and sub-basements that took advantage of Paris’ extensive catacombs. Those places were more enticing to many types of fae, especially the insidious and secretive. Exactly the sort Felicia wanted.

A dark shadow whipped up the stairwell toward them and Ray reacted with a projected wall of frozen air, stopping the attack cold. Felicia’s guards took aim, enough power behind them that even regular bullets could pop the already-weakened spell. The report of arcanopistols firing filled the stairwell, and they continued on.

The first basement was pitch-black. Ray conjured a light, but it failed to penetrate beyond the abandoned desk at the entrance. Felicia frowned, reaching out a hand to Ray’s light, and brought it to just in front of her face. She whispered to it softly, and it brightened, going from a warm yellow glow to the brilliant green of foxfire.

“Try now,” she suggested to Ray, and he cast the foxfire out, splitting into a number of different, smaller points of light that scattered themselves throughout the basement. The green flames revealed rows of boxes and cabinets, but they also showed dozens of small, implike fae that would have been otherwise invisible. They clung to the shelving and ceiling fixtures, baring sharp teeth as Ray’s light revealed them.

“Fire at will,” she said calmly. “These are just pests.” The master of the domain was deeper, and they didn’t have too much time to waste. Vibrations from spells being flung on the floors above them set the fixtures to rattling, and somewhere in the basement books fell off their shelves. They advanced to the popping of arcanopistols and Ray’s gusts of wind.

“Here, I think,” Ray said, once they’d gotten partway through the expansive basement. Two of Felicia’s guard had knives out rather than guns, dealing with the little imps that tried to throw themselves past the outer ring. While they couldn’t physically hurt her, allowing any of them to reach her would undermine her dignity, which was far worse a wound than anything done to flesh and blood. A princess, even at war, had to meet certain standards.

There was nothing visually different about the spot Ray had located, but Felicia could feel it too, something subtly different. Fae magic and mage wards reinforced each other to hide something in ways that a single type of concealment alone would not. She gave it an experimental tug with her own authority, but it failed to yield.

“Be opened.” Her voice rang out and a doorway in the ground opened up, revealing a long spiral stairway cut into the stone. The remainders of the concealment spell she’d broken fizzed away into the atmosphere, and a hollow, sepulchral voice echoed from below.

“Go. Away.”

Felicia almost laughed. There was force behind the words, a cheap approximation of what her bloodline granted. Not that she was offended; imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, and every fae dreamed of being as powerful as Oberon.

“Do not try that on me,” she said scornfully. “I am Princess Felicity Blackblood, Daughter of King Oberon and Queen Mab, and I command you to come forth.” Her own magic turned his attempts back on him, amplifying her command rather than nullifying it, and she could feel the flinch as a hunched, wrinkled gnome was dragged up the stairs.

While he wasn’t physically impressive, that clearly wasn’t the point. The man was a burgeoning faerie prince, with his demesne spreading out into the catacombs below GAR Paris. Felicia could feel fae artifacts stowed somewhere below, where the gnome controlled a much larger volume than just the GAR basements.

“I’m sure you can hear the combat above, Balobob,” Felicia said. Lucy’s list of the fae in GAR employ had come in handy. The lesser ones, she could retrieve after they had surrendered to Taisen, but she needed to convert the most valuable ones herself. “GAR is being removed, and the building itself is going to be destroyed. However, there is no need for that to be the end, for I have need of one such as you.”

Balobob grunted. He was a sour-faced thing, but he recognized that he was in the presence of royalty, for he bowed with a grace that belied his short and lumpen stature. Felicia marked him as quite a bit more intelligent than most of the fae in GAR service.

“Begging your pardon, your Highness, but do you think that is not premature? The Guild of Arcane Regulation has mages and backing of its own. It seems rather precipitate to write it off already.” His voice was still deep, but less eerie without any power behind it.

“The Ghost has ensured there will be no reinforcements, and there are Archmages leading the attack. It is only a desire to spare lives that has let them withstand the assault for so long.”

“Ah.” The Ghost’s name, at least, hit him hard, and Felicia felt that contribution to her authority stir, even if she knew The Ghost himself wasn’t at all sensitive to it. Should he ever oppose her actions, she would be in dire straits. It was generally not the way of fae to make themselves so vulnerable, but Felicia’s time among the humans had taught her the vulnerability in being a lone power. It had value too, but she was seeking to be a different kind of fae altogether.

Felicia gave him a little bit of time to think, but not too long. Not only were they time-limited by Taisen’s attacks, but it was neither right nor meet for a monarch to wait on her subject. The ground shook again, but this time there was no sound of anything toppling from shelves since everything was gone. Felicia hadn’t even noticed the Ghost’s magic coming in behind them, which only demonstrated how terrifyingly effective the man was. It also gave her authority a boost, just a touch of one, the mantle around her growing slightly more powerful, and Balobob sighed.

“Very well, Your Majesty. I swear myself to your service,” he said, kneeling. “My hearth and my home is at your command.” Felicia felt the domain that the gnome had built down in the catacombs merge into her mantle, a deep expanse of rock and bone.

It couldn’t stay. Not only was the GAR building going away, but there was certain to be a lot of mundane attention. Then, of course, was the fact that Felicia had no desire to put down roots in Paris itself. Her kingdom spanned the whole globe, and she wanted to avoid squatting in the ruins of a failed organization. Moving the entire demesne was a challenge, but a monarch had responsibilities as surely as a subject did.

“Ray, could I get some water?” She spread her hands wide, closing her eyes as she felt out the magic tied into the rock.

“Absolutely,” he said, and she could feel the conjured water spin out in front of her, a rotating disk. She coxed the Gate of Water from her wrist again, tying it into Ray’s contribution, and began to whisper words of encouragement. Sometimes a light touch did more than a command.

The demesne began to resonate, gathering itself up and matching tones with the Gate of Water, the flooded depths of the catacombs swirling in anticipation. A ripple of laminar flow climbed the walls of the subterranean lair, the liquid like glass as it enclosed the entire twisted, expanded space of Balobob’s archival basement. Her voice started to echo through the water itself, carrying her power until it suffused the entire space.

“Be moved.” She said, and with a wrench the catacombs vanished. At the same time, she felt the glade that she’d taken in the Ways stagger under the influx of so much real matter. Even with the suffusion of Balobob’s magic, it was more than the glade could comfortably handle. But it would have to, since she didn’t have a base on Earth just yet.

In fact, she might never have. While the Ways were not something people generally built in, it might be the most appropriate place for her. She would be everywhere and nowhere, able to touch all the borders. It certainly appealed to her gut. Another shudder rocked the basement, and Felicia turned away from the now-blank floor.

“Let’s get out of here before the whole thing caves in on us,” Ray said, and Felicia nodded.

“And if we’re lucky, we’ll find some new people to join us.”