Paranoid Mage

“So it’s war, then.” Janry’s voice was as calm and measured as ever, but inwardly he was seething.

“Not necessarily,” Archmage Lobran said. Janry’s eyes flicked to him, not surprised that he disagreed. House Lobran had been one of the first to be swayed away from the plan by the Guild of Enchanting, but for some reason Lobran had kept showing up for any meetings that weren’t specifically for Janry’s inner circle.

“Outside of DAI personnel there were very few casualties, and most of the surrendered personnel have already been returned to their Houses,” Lobran continued, waving around at the gathered mages and archmages. “The damage to GAR is irreparable, yes, but it was not necessarily an attack on us.”

“An attack on GAR is an attack on us,” Janry said flatly. “The Guild of Arcane Regulation is the Archmage Council’s authority on Earth. It’s what ties the Houses together. Destroying it undermines the whole foundation of our relationships.”

“On Earth,” Lobran pointed out. “The Houses have managed affairs well enough here in Faerie, where there aren’t mundanes to worry about.”

“Are you even in Faerie anymore?” Janry asked pointedly.

“House Lobran has deep roots,” was Archmage Lobran’s oblique reply, then he waved it away. “I know that House Lobran personnel returned with a request for a summit. House Hargrave, House Taisen and all those people want to have an actual meeting before this goes any further. Anyone else care to confirm it?” He looked around the room.

There were some reluctant mutters among some of the representatives for the cadet Houses. Janry sighed, not able to pretend that he hadn’t heard the same thing. Not every member of House Janry in GAR had been in DAI, and a number of them – along with all the duds that were employed in menial positions – had returned with the same message.

He looked around the room and found entirely too many people who looked like they preferred talking to fighting. He would have liked to ignore the message, but most people had no spine and would seize on any opportunity to avoid conflict. Trying to bull through at the moment might fracture the core he had left.

“I suppose there would be no harm in it,” he said grudgingly, but already he was considering how to turn it to his advantage. House Taisen was new, and House Hargrave was not known for their diplomatic prowess. The ancillary players were almost nonentities — the fae princess didn’t have any real backing or heritage, and he didn’t think Wells would show up himself. Even if he did, he might well be a millstone given his infamy.

“Under the circumstances I would suggest inviting House Duvall as well,” said Archmage Mayer. “It ought to put more pressure on the Earth Alliance.”

“Assuming she’s willing to come,” someone else muttered. “She sure doesn’t care about the conflict.”

“If we are going to deal in this waste of time, we need to ensure that we’re in control,” Janry said. “Should they have anything to say that is worth hearing, they can come here and say it to the majority of the supernatural community.”

“I don’t think they’ll like that,” Lobran said. “What’s wrong with a neutral location?”

“Can you name one?” Janry asked pointedly. “The Guild of Enchanting isn’t neutral, and neither are the dragons. Earth itself is in question, and most of our facilities have been disconnected from the teleportation network.” He ignored that the private links had already been returned to the Houses so they weren’t entirely cut off from their peers in the Deep Wilds.

“If one of the Lesser Courts promised a neutral ground, they’d be bound to uphold it,” Lobran replied.

“And how much are you willing to pay for that consideration?” Janry retorted. “More, who would be willing to stake their reputation on keeping order among archmages?”

“We can keep our own order,” Lobran said cuttingly. “Unless you plan to start trouble.”

“I was thinking about Wells. He certainly would try something, and the fae would probably let him!” It was unfortunate that the man had managed to parley his wanton savagery into a reputation that the fae actually appreciated. Certainly it made the entire diplomatic process more difficult, since the fae paid far more attention to monsters than to civilized folk. Without Wells it was likely the Lesser Courts would just see the Earth Alliance as a vague morass.

“From what I’ve been hearing, the other Archmages are keeping him on a leash,” Lobran said with a shrug. “Unless you think Taisen and Hargrave can’t manage him between them, I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”

Janry considered for a moment. He could demolish Lobran’s argument, but now that he’d time to think it over it was probably better to consolidate things diplomatically. Pushing someone from the other side into violating a guaranteed neutrality wouldn’t be that hard either, and might well pull back people to the proper side.

“Very well,” he said. “Set it up.”

***

“This seems like a horrible idea,” Callum said, looking away from the gorgeous view of his front yard to focus on the laptop. “There is a zero percent chance that it’s not a trap.”

“We’re the ones who suggested the summit,” Archmage Hargrave said with a touch of impatience. The rest of the gang was gathered at House Hargrave, mostly because that’s where all the injured were convalescing. Despite arriving with overwhelming force, there had still been casualties. So far as he knew there were only two actual deaths, one mage and one shifter, which was still more than anyone wanted.

There had been a lot more casualties on the other side, of course, but Callum couldn’t bring himself to care overmuch about those. He might not have personally moved against them but with all the nasty underhanded evil that GAR was involved in, it was hard to summon any sympathy. So long as it wasn’t supernaturals preying on mundanes, it really wasn’t his place to cast judgement anyway.

“Sure, and I get why, but Faerie?” Callum asked, looking over to where Lucy was aiming a squirtgun at a laughing Alex. “That’s their home turf and there are all kinds of things they can pull! And I know there would be archmages meeting regardless, but letting them set the rules?”

“We won’t be letting them set the rules,” Felicia spoke up. “I will be setting the rules, and making sure that they are properly binding. In that sense it would actually be safer than holding it here on Earth.”

“Sure, but what about Chester and Shahey? Even if there’s some kind of feeder portal, that’s a major vulnerability. Like, all of us high muckity-mucks showing up in the same place? Why wouldn’t they just try and drop a nuke or whatever?”

“With all due respect,” Taisen said. “You’re very much overthinking it. Most people aren’t willing to commit wholesale massacre, especially not when they are themselves present. It won’t just be Janry’s crew; all the neutral archmages and the Guild of Enchanting are going to be there.”

“Mm.” Callum grunted, rubbing at the back of his neck. Taisen wasn’t entirely wrong, but Callum couldn’t help but worry that having everyone together in the same place might be too tempting for their enemies to pass up. Which might well be the exact reason that the proposed summit wouldn’t be on Earth. His reputation working against him. “I still don’t like it. There’s no way it’s just some discussion. What even is there to discuss?”

“Mostly to see whether it’s possible to wrap this up now, but I suspect they accepted because they’re hoping to discredit us,” Shahey said dryly. “Most of the archmages live in Faerie, and they don’t know anything about you or I save for what they’re told through channels. Like GAR, or the Guild of Enchanting. Most mages don’t interact with the mundane world at all. Considering what just happened, Janry is probably trying to bring the Houses back on his side. To push for open conflict.”

“We just absolutely destroyed GAR’s infrastructure and got rid of all of its records and most of its wealth. That’s not open conflict?” In a way, Callum was just arguing from sheer incredulity. He well knew that so long as there was no official declaration, any fight, any combat, any losses could be swept under the rug one way or another. Especially in a society so old and ossified as the mage Houses.

“We’re one step away,” Hargrave said, almost in confirmation. “Leaving the GAR buildings destroyed goes against my old instincts, but the mundane authorities are absolutely aware something is going on now. It’s going to be much harder for the other archmages to sneak around.”

“I don’t think they’re worried about that,” Callum said, and he wasn’t entirely certain that any amount of alertness would help the governments deal with magic. Normal bureaucracies moved just as slowly as magical ones, and certainly didn’t have the tools to deal with the supernatural. “But I guess no amount of complaining from me is going to change the venue.”

“You don’t have to go, I suppose,” Taisen said, but Felicia shook her head. The drone’s pickup was a full circle, given its multiple cameras, so he had a good view of the room, even if he needed to tile the feeds.

“I think he does,” Felicia disagreed. “The Ghost has been the lynchpin of this entire effort from the beginning. Freeing Earth from the depredations of the supernatural community. I know I can’t command you,” she said, looking directly at the drone sitting on Hargrave’s coffee table. “But I think we’d get the best results with your presence, so long as you fully invest in going. Come as The Ghost, the grim arbiter. People respond to strength. By yourself you could possibly force the point that Earth is independent from the supernatural sphere.”

“Ugh.” Callum sighed and rubbed his eyes. He really did not like the idea of attending some interminable, dangerous meeting of archmages and fae and trying to exert some kind of political pressure on people. Among other things, he was still quite convinced it was some kind of trap. Even if there wasn’t a direct attack, there’d be something, and he thought his allies were giving far too much credit to the opposition.

On the other hand, he wasn’t indifferent to the concept of a peaceful solution. He didn’t actually like killing people, and he was very aware that every death had the potential to spiral into a never-ending feud. That these weren’t obligate monsters anymore, like the vampires had been, but mages with families and Houses and backing. They were people, and that made things harder.

“There’s another thing,” Felicia said quietly, reaching out to hold Ray’s hand as she spoke. While Callum was used to her normal appearance, considering how he couldn’t see glamours, the drone’s feed also showed that she had dropped the human appearance and was back to the slightly fish-like form. Perhaps because she was now actually embracing her fae heritage. “You’re my largest backer. If you’re willing to publicly support me, that would give me far more power and latitude to enforce politeness and neutrality at the summit.”

“Those are a lot of good points,” Callum grumbled. He didn’t want to go. He really, really didn’t. But if he was going to actually put his money where his mouth was, or whatever aphorism was appropriate, he would have to put forth the effort and take actual risk by showing up himself.

“I don’t apologize,” Felicia said with a smile. “The longer this goes on, the less likely it is we can resolve it without wholesale slaughter.”

“Right, okay.” Callum said with a growl. “We’ll go to this diplomatic summit. But I’m going to be setting up some contingencies just in case.”

“I wouldn’t expect any less,” Felicia said, almost proudly. Taisen just shrugged.

“It’d be stupid not to,” he said. “We should have a plan for everything up to and including a full archmage brawl. I happen to agree that they’ll try something, though I don’t imagine it will be direct force.”

“I’m pretty sure that me showing up will throw them off no matter what,” Shahey said with a broad, toothy smile. “They still don’t know that you stabilized the portal. Hiding ourselves from people that came sniffing around was fairly simple afterward.”

“I hope the gym’s still open,” Callum said, a bit wistfully. “It was a good gym.”

“Oh sure,” Shahey said with a laugh. “I’ve got a suit that looks perfectly human.”

“There is one problem,” Hargrave mused. “You have no idea what the protocol is for such an event.”

“No, and I’m not expected to,” Callum pointed out. “I’ll come as I am, or rather, as The Ghost is.” Even as he said it he knew he’d regret it, but at the same time he was convinced he’d regret not going more. But he wasn’t going to be stupid about it.

As soon as he rang off, he started planning. Fortunately the Guild of Enchanting was doing more extraction on the private portal world Callum had supplied, and with a few calls – and parting with some of his hard-earned money – he had enough extra raw metal for his preparations. So far as Callum could tell, the new material was somewhere between copper and gold, with a low melting point and soft enough that he could do some cold working with his limited industrial tools. It also started to lose its mana suffusion rapidly if it stayed molten too long, but it was fine for 3D printing small things — which most of Callum’s enchantments were.

The first thing he did was set up a series of vacuum boxes, at different speeds. Given that he had a week to work with, it was easy enough to plug the calculations into the tools he found online to find different yields for a handful of steel ball bearings. Now that he had somewhere to dump anything that went beyond what he considered safe – which was to say, empty portal worlds – he felt more comfortable dealing with something that might have nuclear potential.

Those all got put into space, facing away from Earth just in case. If one broke containment it’d still cause issues somewhere and some time, but at least he wouldn’t accidentally start an orbital bombardment. Considering how rapidly enchantment materials degraded in space, even with the insulator he’d cribbed from the Mictlan portal area, that was a real concern.

Resolving to keep an eye on them, he turned to making a few more pairs of bad pennies. Although the scry-comms were useful, they lacked all the hundreds of features a proper modern voicechat had. If he was really going to some ridiculous summit with his allies, it’d be best if everyone had a bad penny and everyone carried full wiring as well as a way for him to bounce around between individuals regardless of where they were.

More than that, both Chester and Shahey would need to have a direct feed to their respective portal worlds, just in case. Even if the fae in charge of hosting the summit guaranteed mana access, it would be insane for any other supernatural to attend without a personal portal like that. Part of him was surprised that they didn’t already have personal feeder portals, since it wasn’t like he had invented them, but there were probably political implications. Between Duvall and GAR, mages would have made certain that other supernaturals didn’t have the ability to hop portal worlds.

“You’re sure working hard,” Lucy said, coming out to the machine shop with Alex and a couple glasses of lemonade. “Guess I don’t blame you though. High powered meetings aren’t really that fun, but, y’know, I wish I could go along.” She gave him a smile and he chuckled, leaning down to kiss her and put one hand on her swollen stomach.

“Yeah, I understand, but there’s no way that they’d let you leave. The fae track record with kids is not good.” He straightened up and shook his head, lifting his glass. “Besides, I’m going to have a hard enough time keeping myself safe. If you were there I wouldn’t be able to think straight at all.”

“What, ‘cause I’m so sexy?” Lucy asked with a grin posing with her hands behind her head. Callum laughed.

“That too,” he said, though he was quite serious. He didn’t trust anyone on the other side a single inch, and as much as he loved Lucy she didn’t have a mage shield or anything to protect her. Even he would need to lean on the archmages for protection, since the best he could do was teleport away. Which he would absolutely do, but it wouldn’t impress anyone.

“Y’know, the best thing to do is think of this as some kind of top level business meeting,” Callum mused, shutting down the scriber as Alex crawled up into his lap. “Hey kiddo, how’s your practice been going?”

“Great!” Alex beamed, and pulsed out a child-sized version of a mage bubble. “See? I can do the sphere thing!”

“Fantastic,” Callum said, smiling down at his son. “I can’t even do the sphere thing. You’re going to be a lot better at the whole magic thing than I am.”

“No way,” Alex said. “Dad’s the best!”

“Don’t know about that, kiddo,” Callum said. “But I try.”

When he eventually finished up the enchantments, he set up a second mini-nexus on the moon. It was absurd to consider that he could do something like that so casually, but it did show how far he’d come. There was also a trip out to an electronics store with Lucy to get the microphones and earpieces for the comms network. Which Callum trusted more than the magic version, anyway.

Then there was the trip to get clothing.

“Oh man, I really wish I could go,” Lucy said with a pout. “I mean, I guess I don’t exactly because this would be an issue,” she added, rubbing her swollen belly. “But how often do you get a chance to go to the fanciest party ever?”

“Fanciest and most dangerous,” Callum said, as they examined three-piece suits. “Pretty sure that it won’t be as fun as it could be. Besides, I need you to run overwatch just in case.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lucy waved it away. “Go with the tan, it’ll contrast the cloak,” she advised. “Black’s boring anyway.”

“Yeah, that works for me,” Callum agreed, and waved a hand to flag down an employee. Spending thousands on a suit was an odd experience, but it wasn’t just for the summit. At some point he’d get Taisen’s people to reinforce it, both through materials and enchantments, because he was an actually important person now and he needed to dress the part. Eventually he might reach the same status as Wizzy, and command respect in jeans and a wifebeater, but he wasn’t there yet.

He suffered himself to be measured and poked and prodded, and paid the extra fee for the rush job. It wasn’t something that would take that much time, but Savile Row was very justly proud of their handicraft and charged a premium for everything. In fairness, there were an awful lot of very important people who used the Savile Row shops for their wardrobe so they genuinely were busy.

Much of his time leading up to the summit was spent discussing things with his allies. While he’d been a proponent of simply seizing the Deep Wilds portal and moving it ahead of time, everyone else thought it was worth making that a concrete point at the summit. Including Chester, who he thought would be the one most anxious to get the Deep Wilds portal somewhere safe, but even if Callum thought of Chester as the king of all shifters, he really wasn’t.

“I would appreciate it if you kept an eye on the portal, though,” Chester said privately, a few days before the summit, his face on the VoIP program on Callum’s laptop drawn and unhappy. “The problem is, I don’t actually know where it was originally. Somewhere in Africa, I believe, before it was brought up to Norway, but Africa is a big place.”

“It sure is,” Callum replied, glancing over at Lucy. “I’ll see if I can have Lucy find out where it was originally just in case, but given what happened with the dragon portal I’d rather not have to deal with that. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already gone and sabotaged the original entry point by now.”

“And if we bring it up at the summit, they might get the idea to try and shut it down just like they did with the dragonlands one.” Chester told him, leaning back in his chair. Behind him was a window looking out onto the Deep Wilds, past a branch the size of a city block. “Another thing we need to discuss — I still have all those federal agents here. I could ask Felicia or another fae to erase their memories and send them home, but I think it would be better to read them in and try to get them on our side.”

“Mmm.” Callum felt odd being consulted about it, but he was the one who was championing treating normal people in a fair and equitable manner. “I mean, I am not a fan of holding people prisoner or brainwashing but under the circumstances it’s not like you can just send ‘em back.” He tapped his fingers against the desk, and looked at Lucy again.

“I dunno what you’re looking at me for,” Lucy laughed. “The whole mundane and supernatural thing is such a mess. I don’t think I can solve it.”

“Well, with everything going on I imagine holding onto them is the best you can do,” Callum sighed. “It can’t last too long. They’re probably going to be declared dead soon and then things will be even worse. I guess it depends on what happens at the summit. If we end up in a good position to start reconciling the supernatural groups…” He ended with a shrug. “I’m glad you’ve got a plan to deal with it, because I sure don’t.”

Chester laughed.

“Plan might be too strong a word, but someone has to do it. At this point it’d be stupid to think the various governments haven’t started to look in the proper directions. Or if not the governments, at least certain highly-placed individuals. The longer we delay, the harder it’s going to be to couch things the way we want.”

“Have fun with that,” Callum said dryly. “Though I guess I’m not completely out of it either. Since I still want to buy stuff from the real world.” The fact of the matter was that without Chester as a go-between, converting his supernatural payment to something actually useful was far more difficult.

“Consider how valuable your talents would be to the mundane world,” Chester pointed out. “You need to start thinking like I do. As a sovereign power. You have your own land, hard power, and you’re generally unassailable.”

“That is true enough,” Callum admitted, taking a mental step back to consider it. He didn’t really feel independent, since he still purchased so much from the real world, but countries imported goods all the time and he certainly didn’t use land anywhere on Earth. There were the few backup caves, but they weren’t even accessible from the outside.

He still considered himself an American citizen, despite his somewhat rocky relationship with the authorities there thanks to supernatural meddling, but he was certainly more than that. In a way what he’d been striving for the entire time was the kind of independence only a sovereign nation had. Now that he was capable of creating – or at least discovering – entirely new realities, it was probably time to embrace that.

“Might as well make it official,” he said after a moment, and glanced at Lucy. “Time to start styling ourselves as House Wells.”

“Woo!” Lucy cheered. “I’ve already got designs for our coat of arms. Wonder if it’s too late to embroider onto your suit. Pretty sure I still know how to do embroidery.”

“How long have you been waiting for that?” Callum asked with amusement.

“A while,” Lucy admitted. “I just wasn’t sure how much we counted, being just the three of us.”

“It’s a bit small,” Callum agreed, ignoring Chester’s amused smile. “But I guess everything starts that way.”

Even if there wasn’t much more Callum could do to prepare for the summit, it still didn’t seem enough time before the day was upon him. They all gathered at House Hargrave, and Callum and Taisen ran through the final checks of their earpieces and microphones. Even Shahey got a set, and of course everyone had a bad penny in their pocket. Chester and Shahey actually had two – for the feeder portal and the miniature nexus – and while the mana flow would be obvious to anyone, there wasn’t much he could do to hide it. Taisen and Callum had pinhole cameras, so Lucy could see what was going on, but none of the others had been interested in carrying such devices even if they were tied into the communications network.

Callum also had a packet of antacids, because this was far and away the most stressful thing he’d ever done. He was doing his best not to show it, drawing on experience from the few times he’d talked to a high-powered executive, but he certainly felt the strain. It took all his willpower not to fiddle with his suit or his cloak, the latter of which seemed to have gotten even more lustrous over the past few weeks.

Everyone else was dressed in similar finery, from Taisen’s black military formals with honest-to-goodness medals to Shahey’s oversized avatar equipped with gleaming plate. Even Wizzy was dressed up, in some extremely colorful Mesoamerican robe and a feathered headdress. If anything, Callum was underdressed, but he didn’t have centuries’ worth of history to don. The logo Lucy had come up with – a simplified portal torus, with a single stylized downward-pointing projectile, all picked out in silver thread – would have to do.

Felicia and Ray were the last to arrive, she in her battle dress and Ray in a suit bearing Felicia’s heraldry. It was still a winged cat, but it had shifted from facing away to facing forward. Callum’s cloak had changed to mimic it, which was an odd thing to see happen all on its own, but he’d accepted the fae artifact would just be weird that way.

“Everyone ready?” Hargrave asked, as the nominal senior of the group, though Callum was pretty sure Shahey was older and he knew Wizzy was. “Then if you would, Archmage Wells.”

“Certainly,” he said. While he wasn’t sure he really deserved the moniker just yet, there was hardly anyone who could contest it. Or rather, whatever technicalities there were behind becoming an archmage were irrelevant compared to what Callum could already do. Such as open portals into Faerie.

The host for the summit was the Court of Leaves, presided over by Prince Galivrick. Callum had been there once before while he was looking for Ray, so navigating a shielded drone back there had been simple enough, and he’d stashed it near the entrance at the enormous tree. Now he waved a hand, aware of the theatre as he created a ten-foot-wide portal in the Hargrave courtyard, positioning its opposite number at the end of the broad formal path that led into the tree. Hargrave formed a walkway through it at its widest point, the force construct shimmering, so they could walk abreast and not have to step over the edges of the circular portal.

Callum took his place in the middle of the procession, aware that on one hand, he had no real defenses, but on the other, that everyone else around him could collectively shrug off a nuclear strike. Which didn’t stop him from keeping a teleport framework tight around himself, ready to evacuate. Maybe he was overthinking it, but it seemed likely someone would take a shot at him.

For the first time Callum actually entered Faerie, and found it to be a strange experience. The trees of the Court of Leaves were huge, bigger than redwoods, and exuded the feeling of age. It was like he’d stepped into some primeval forest, with a scent that reminded him of the Appalachian mountains of his home, only more so. In fact, it was too intensely green and verdant, just barely crossing over some invisible line to become downright eerie.

He knew it wasn’t just a glamour, but he doubted it was entirely natural, for any given definition of the word. There was an absurd lot of magic bound up in all the trees and roots and leaves, not to mention things like flowers the size of oaks growing on either side of the path, their heads bowed and light dripping from their petals. The more he looked the weirder it seemed, like it was put together dreams and imagination rather than anything real, with all the exaggerations and overly sharp colors and sensation found only in the mind.

They descended from Hargrave’s force bridge to a pathway composed of what seemed to be densely interlaced flower petals, feeling like carpet underfoot. The fae themselves were strangely disappointing, being the absolute stereotype of an elf. Tall, pointed ears, looking like they believed themselves superior to God and all his angels. Callum disliked them on sight. Ahead of them, he could sense a lot of people and a lot of mage bubbles, many of them with the steely texture of archmages.

He surreptitiously teleported an antacid into his mouth and crunched on it.

Their group moved forward, ignoring the stares of all the elf-styled fae that were hanging around outside the venue, and Felicia waved one hand. A fae that looked like the spitting image of a secret service agent materialized out of her shadow, trotting ahead of them to whisper to the elf hovering at the entrance to the massive central tree. The fae in question bowed to them and opened the door, announcing them with a truly stentorian voice.

“Please bid welcome to Archmage Hargrave, of House Hargrave. Archmage Taisen, of House Taisen. Teopixqui Huitzilin, Archmage of Blood. Dragonblooded Ensharrehael. Princess Felicia Blackblood and consort. Alpha Chester of the Midwest Pack. The Ghost, Archmage Wells.”