Paranoid Mage

Felicia breathed in the heady fumes of conquest, feeling her own aspects and power base solidify around her. She had expected to have to match herself directly against the Seven Lesser Courts, but the Court of Leaves had been very careless. Perhaps they did not deal with inner Faerie enough, but they should have known better than to allow a wager.

Admittedly, it wouldn’t have been possible without The Ghost. She still wasn’t sure what, precisely, he was doing to erase magic from its very foundations, but it was a tool that nobody else had. One she was not at all shy about using to cheat through any magical contest — a method which was usually more potent than winning one outright.

Some of the power went to her own body, making her more, but she made sure most of it went back to her glade in the Ways, expanding its control and anchoring it even deeper. Some even went to Ray, which was an ongoing and ticklish business. Her power was shared with people who weren’t fae, which was so far as she knew a completely new situation for fae royalty, or possibly fae in general.

Along with the inflow of power, she could feel the humans she’d won in the bet. Some of them were deeply infiltrated with Faerie’s magic, others were merely bound by it. Prince Galivrick looked on as she pulled them across to her Ways, out of the Court of Leaves. She would deal with them later, perhaps with The Ghost’s help, though by the terms of the wager she might be able to address it herself.

“You’ll want to tell the others in the Lesser Courts that we’ll be taking their mundanes as well,” Felicia said, one fae noble to another. “They may surrender them properly, or suffer the same humiliation you did. I think you’ll agree that we aren’t lacking in ability.”

“No, I can’t say you are.” Galivrick was not happy, but he’d get over it. The way he’d been crushed would, eventually, make for an interesting story, as would the demonstration of the human weapon. She didn’t know how far across Faerie the explosion could be seen, but there was already an upwelling of significance around the Court of Leaves that could be eventually parleyed into something greater.

“Then go,” she said.

Galivrick went.

Felicia had to admit she enjoyed being able to tell one of the princes of the Lesser Courts to obey. It was not a power she’d ever sought for herself but, now that she needed it, there was a certain pleasure in surpassing those who wished to control her.

“I didn’t think we’d be throwing our weight around this much,” Ray remarked. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I just imagined it’d be a more gradual process.”

“As did I, but Galivrick was careless enough to offer me an opening.” Felica tilted her head toward where The Ghost stood, hands clasped behind him and watching the table full of archmages with a hard expression.

“I still find it hard to believe he’s the one we’re relying on.” Ray shook his head slowly. “Such strange ships that pass in the night.”

“He’s relying on us, too.” Felicia pointed out, as the last bits of power settled into her bones. “We will have to move quickly and consolidate our hold over Earth’s fae. Only then can we fulfill our side of the agreement.”

For all that she had avoided it for so long, Felicia found that there was something very right about assuming her role as fae royalty. Her time as detective had rooted her story in humanity’s mindset, rather than the fae one, and with that she could resist the temptation to grow her power by more expedient means. Without that past, she wouldn’t have seen any reason to play the longer game and be more accommodating to those around her.

“Princess Felicity?”

Felicia’s eyes flicked to the fae who had approached her, instantly on guard. It looked like a black housecat, completely mundane save for a silver collar set with black opals. But she hadn’t noticed it approaching, which was a disturbing prospect. Even now it had barely more presence than an ordinary animal. A flicker of a thought had her guards ready to leap from her shadow, while she inclined her head to the cat.

“I am Princess Felicity.”

“Good.” The cat yawned and stretched, then turned its head and somehow had a tiny scroll case in its jaws. It leapt onto her shoulder before anyone could react, purring as it settled down and offered her the case. Felicia very gingerly took it, uncertain of how to react, and unrolled the message therein. Then she blinked, because while it held only two words, every fae would know a message from the King of Faerie, her father, Oberon.

Well done, it read, and that was all.

“You should come back home from time to time,” the cat said, washing its face with its paw. Then it sprang from her shoulder, fading into transparency before it vanished. Felicia let out a long breath.

“What the heck was that?” Ray said, and Felicia only belatedly recognized the vis swirling around him from his offensive foci.

“A messenger from my parents,” Felicia replied, staring off in the direction the cat had vanished. “Cait Sidhe.”

“Oh.” Ray blinked, taken aback. “Good news, I hope?”

“They approve of what I’m doing,” Felicia said, almost wonderingly. “I wasn’t sure they would. After all, I did run away from home.”

“Most kids do, for a while at least,” Ray reassured her, putting a hand on her arm. After day she’d had, she might have wished for more, but anything more intimate would be inappropriate where they were. “But I imagine most kids don’t wind up gunning for the rulership of a whole planet.”

Felicia laughed.

***

Janry hated to admit that he was impressed. Irritated, infuriated, and incensed, but impressed. Wells’ secret weapon, that terrible black hole that seemed to destroy mana, had certainly cowed the fae, and the Earth Alliance’s complete disinterest in extracting concessions had reassured a number of the Houses. It was the final demonstration, though, that had quietly changed a number of minds.

His side hadn’t lost as badly as it might have seemed. It was obvious that if the mundanes indeed had access to weapons of such tremendous power, they couldn’t be trusted with them. That, and it was clear Wells really was dabbling in things that no mage should, and he was too dangerous to let live. Unfortunately, even if he was willing to break the rules set by the fae at the summit, Archmage Taisen was too near, his shield practically covering Wells, and he was not someone taken lightly.

The discussion had devolved into a tangent about how to best use the private portal worlds. There wasn’t any negotiating to be done on terms, people either accepted them or didn’t. If they didn’t, it was at their peril. Of all people, the dragonblooded had made it clear that the gloves were off in the future. Janry was merely watching silently, pretending disinterest, and observing who was talking to whom. While he didn’t feel like being there, leaving in a huff would be an unconscionable display of weakness.

Their pet fae princess laughed, and the sheer musicality of it irked him. Janry restrained himself from glaring in her direction and focused on the other mages. He had to admit that he would enjoy a private portal world himself, but not one supplied by Wells. They were all poison pills, they had to be. There was no way that someone would provide such inestimably precious things without strings attached.

But if Wells could make them, so could Duvall. Why she hadn’t was a good question, though it had become clear she was not the expert in her field that she had claimed. With so many examples, surely she could divine the technique, and Janry preferred dealing with a neutral party over a psychopath like Wells.

The man in question wasn’t even involving himself in the debate, letting Rossi field all the questions relating to the worlds and standing like a gargoyle off to the side. It was impossible to understand how such an unpleasant person had ended up with so many allies — though perhaps it was the other way around. Hargrave and Taisen weren’t supposed to be canny enough to put the Earth Alliance together on their own, but it was a matter of historical record that Alpha Chester had stumbled across Wells early on.

Janry’s eyes flicked to Chester, who returned his gaze immediately afterward. Janry frowned and turned to examine Rossi, disliking the way Chester was so aware of him. In general he didn’t think much of shifters, but there were no records of what happened when they became powerful enough to challenge an archmage. There was no telling what sort of being he was, but it seemed clear that he was the heart of the alliance. Even more than the princess, even more than the Houses. Maybe even more than Wells.

“House Janry will withdraw for now,” he said abruptly as he stood. Many eyes went to him, including Wells and Chester, but he ignored them. “There seems to be little value in the current negotiations for us.”

“You will keep in mind the requirements we set out, yes?” Hargrave half-asked, half-demanded.

“Of course.” Janry lied through his teeth. He had no more intention of submitting to the demands of the Earth supernaturals than he did of abandoning his own House. But there was no point in throwing down before he had assured himself of his own forces.

With House Janry still in Faerie, returning with his allies was merely a matter of flight. Nothing dared to accost them, even in the neutral land between the mage enclaves and the Lesser Courts. Which was a shame, since he would have welcomed something to vent his spleen. As it was he merely dismissed his emotions as useless and landed in the courtyard of House Janry.

Then he returned to his study and waited.

In the next few hours, only three other Houses had joined him. Which was unfortunate, but Janry had done more with less in the past. He didn’t ask what agreements they might have reached with others, for none of that was relevant. Only that they agreed with the right path.

“Whatever Wells is playing with is far too dangerous to leave him be,” Janry started out, getting nods from his allies. “But there is, unfortunately, no way to remove him directly. It may take time to convince others away from their shiny new toys. If we want to defang the Earth Alliance we need to cut them off at the leg first. Their approach to mundanes.”

“What are they even thinking,” Archmage Moravin muttered. As head of one of the Houses that had ended up evacuating from the Night Lands, he had more of a grudge against Wells than most. It was a travesty how many of those Houses had been happy enough to take the bribe of a private world of their own.

“Indeed.” Janry held up two fingers. “First, of them all only Alpha Chester has any real purchase in the mundane world. Destroying his compound was a beginning but we must remove him to eliminate the center of the alliance. Second, as the only supernaturals on Earth, it should be simple to ensure the Earth Alliance is blamed for anything and everything. If mundanes and supernaturals start out with bad blood, it will be easy to force the Earth Alliance into the very conflict they wish to avoid.”

“It will take some finesse,” Magus Leshiel, the head of one of Janry’s cadet houses, said thoughtfully. “It’s always easy to blame someone else, especially someone who isn’t there, so anything we do will need clear evidence of who is at fault. Evidence that mundanes will see, not vis traces or House crests.”

“We have plenty of former GAR employees to consult for that, though no DAI ones,” Janry said, somewhat pointedly.

“I hate to bring it up,” said Moravin. “But what about that weapon that Wells demonstrated? So far we’ve been assuming that even if we cornered these Earth Alliance types, there was only so much they could do. But those dogs have teeth.”

“That is indeed a worry,” Janry was forced to admit. “I know that such devices are not nearly as common or simple to use as Wells said, but I can’t rule out that he has at least one other. When we move, we’re going to have to lock down all the portals to Faerie and use the jammers to protect us from Wells’ portals. He still has to deliver it, and we can deny him that.”

“I’m more worried about the mana destruction he demonstrated.” Archmage Harper spoke up at last. Of those present, he had the added pique of one of his House members – admittedly just a dud – joining with Wells. “We can’t simply refuse to act for fear of what the enemy can do, but that particular weapon — it’s hard to imagine defenses.”

“It is only mana, though. It can’t hurt us by itself.” Janry waved it aside. “I actually suggest we take a page out of Wells’ book. He can’t attack us if he can’t find us, so we simply need to stage things from somewhere else for a while. Long enough for the Earth side of things to fall apart.”

***

“You know they’re going to try something,” Shahey said as the last of Janry’s allies left the summit.

“Oh, obviously,” Callum said. “You have no idea how hard it was to restrain myself while they were here.”

“Hey now,” Lucy said in his ear. “No preliminary nuking. Only nuke things at the appropriate time.” Callum chuckled and shook his head.

“But yeah, I’m assuming they’re going to try sabotage or the like, which is why I followed Janry home,” Callum said.

“Did you, now?” Shahey grinned. “I’m surprised they didn’t notice.”

“Oh, I wasn’t anywhere near them. Just followed their trail.” It had been some time since he’d needed to use the trails mages left in ambient mana for anything, but if anything it was easier on Faerie than Earth. “It’s a shame that I can’t bug all of them, but sticking listening devices in House Janry is a good start.”

“Unless they find them,” Shahey pointed out.

“Eh. I have some advantages in positioning them and unless they know exactly what to look for, it doesn’t even need to be active all the time. I can just turn on the portal once a day and collect the feed.”

“Not once a day, don’t have the batteries for that,” Lucy said. “But yeah close enough.”

“And you can just send that all to Taisen.” Shahey nodded understanding, and Callum wasn’t at all surprised that the dragon avatar could hear an earbud from a few feet away.

“So how did all the discussion go?” Callum pitched his voice low, since there were still groups of mages around, some of them still talking with Hargrave and Felicia. “I have to admit I didn’t really pay attention past a certain point.”

“It turns out most people are greedy,” Shahey said happily. “Oh, I’m sure a lot of them are just agreeing for now so they can get a portal world, but by the time they’re moved and settled in, the effort of doing anything with Earth won’t seem worth it.”

“Some people weren’t happy with me wanting to take control of the Deep Wilds portal, but I pushed it through. Not like mages use it much anyway,” Chester added.

“Sounds like I have my work cut out for me, then,” Callum said. Moving the Deep Wilds portal was a one-time thing, but making new portal world connections seemed to be a full-time job. Which was just as well, since it was also the most valuable thing he could do. Between the favors owed and the actual royalties from the Enchanting Guild – who was very much not supplying the portal worlds gratis – House Wells was fairly wealthy. Assuming he could translate mage currency into real-world currency. The gold was straightforward enough, but enchanting material less so.

If and when Chester and the other Houses actually opened up the supernatural world, it’d be easier. After the debacle with Chester’s compound, he wasn’t sure what the plan was for that. He wasn’t so naïve as to think he wasn’t involved in the plans, but if anyone expected him to do the negotiations they were crazy.

“We – that is to say, dragons – will be contributing to the purse,” Shahey said, as if he could read Callum’s mind. “Ultimately we will need hundreds, maybe even thousands of portal worlds.”

“Thousands,” Callum said, at the same time as Lucy. “I’m not sure the Earth has that many portal worlds. Though now that I’ve got the dimensional portals wrangled, we could try punching outward from the ones we have…” He considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “Best not to borrow trouble. We’ll get to it when we get to it.”

“A wise attitude,” Shahey said.

“Are we done here?” Callum asked, glancing around at the now-sparsely-populated room.

“We are,” Taisen said, stepping up next to them. “I was surprised at their restraint. Only four probes in your direction.”

“I only caught two of them,” Callum admitted. He hadn’t had to do anything about them because Taisen’s shielding was so quick, but it just reminded him of how damned vulnerable he was. He was going to stick to overwatch and drones in the future.

It took a few dozen more minutes of pointless social niceties for the rest of their group to gather up. Callum glanced around and then opened a portal back to the Hargrave estate, and Hargrave did his invisible platform trick. To tell the truth, Callum was a little jealous of that ability, though he definitely wouldn’t have traded his spatial magic for force.

“It will be better if we return through the Ways,” Felicia said as everyone else started through the portal, fingers going to the blue bracelet around her wrist. “I will be in contact regarding the humans rescued from the Courts within the next few days, Archmage Wells.”

“Works for me,” Callum said, even though he had no idea what he could contribute. He could break the magic, but addressing the trauma or delusions of people who’d been under fae thrall for so long was not in his wheelhouse. Still, he wasn’t about to leave ordinary humans in fae control so he’d have to deal with that responsibility.

Felicia’s bracelet turned into a shimmering circle, very unlike the holes in the air of Callum’s portals, and Felicia and Ray walked through it. Callum’s party took the force bridge, and when he closed the portal behind them he finally relaxed. It was already dark out, and he felt like he’d been running full tilt the whole day.

“I’m not cut out for politics,” he grumbled to Lucy the moment he made it back home.

“You can’t trust anybody who is,” she said, embracing him and then standing back for Alex to run at Callum and launch himself without any hesitation.

“Daddy’s all dressed up,” Alex said as Callum scooped him up, and Lucy grinned.

“Oof! Sure am, kiddo. Had to do a lot of boring stuff today.” Callum smiled down at his son, and it made all the annoying and stressful things he had to do worth it. It even made him more ready to see Chester and the rest open up the rest of the supernatural world, so Alex could actually go out and live like a normal person. “Alright,” he decided. “Let me get into normal clothes and we can go out for dinner.”

“Can we have pizza?” Alex asked, with all the fervor any three year old had for that particular dish.

“Absolutely,” Callum said. “Pizza sounds great.”

Work on portal worlds resumed the next day. Even if it was a lot of tedious busywork, he really couldn’t complain. Not with the money, and not if it was part of the peace treaty.

“I’m still working on some way to quickly catalogue the portal worlds,” Lucy said, setting up another new tool for him. It was just a simple grid, but it let him quickly section off areas that linked to the same portal world — something he verified by using multiple drones and seeing if they could pick up each other’s transmissions. Rather than trying to actually figure out what was going on in any of the portal worlds, he took a quick snapshot, categorized it as livable, exploitable, or desolate, and continued on.

For no particular reason he started in the Texas area and spiraled outward, though he wanted to focus more on the northern part. He didn’t know how many of the portal worlds would ultimately wind up being used, but he didn’t want any to be near the one he inhabited. Leaving the real world location of his portal world, or the dimensional adjacency, unknown and part of unsurveyed land was the best way to hide it.

A concerted grid search rather than testing at interesting-looking areas resulted in finding a bunch of very similar portal worlds. Various desert-scrub landscapes stretched out under strange skies, those that had any light or visible sky at all. It wasn’t like every square inch of Earth was packed with potential portal world connections — or even every square mile, or ten square miles, the latter of which was the resolution of his grid. Only perhaps one-third of portals led somewhere rather than collapsing outright — though the collapsed portals would have led somewhere too. Just not somewhere he wanted connected to Earth.

There were even some portals that did work that he put on the list of do not use. Maybe one in every fifty or a hundred portal worlds was something like the bizarre sun-sized monster world he’d opened up so long ago. He’d poke his senses and a drone camera through and see some horrible stories-tall flesh beast or a mountain radiating palpable hate as city-sized eyes fixed, somehow, on the tiny portal. One just seemed to be an entire dimension of squirming dark something, webbed over a dead and desolate dimension. Those he closed with prejudice, and blasted the area with anti-mana just to be safe.

Sometimes that ended up crossing off a lot of space, because the size of the dimensional adjacency was a real mixed bag, with some being restricted to a single ten-mile grid point, and others sprawling over a hundred-mile line. Some were blobs, though with the grid it was hard to tell the exact shape. Callum had the vague idea that he was seeing some higher-level geometry projected down onto the Earth’s surface, but it followed no rhyme or reason that he could see.

He kept a close eye out for any other dimensional weak points like he’d seen with the dragonlands portal, especially whenever he found something horrible on the other side, though he didn’t find any. If there was a portal world just waiting to open up somewhere in North America, it probably would have already. As the database filled up, Callum felt like he was engaging in nuclear proliferation all by his lonesome. Though it worked in the exact reverse manner: the more portal worlds there were, the less dangerous ownership of them was.

While he was busy with that, Lucy was dealing with surveillance. He hadn’t bothered to look over any of the feed that they’d gotten from the couple of drones he’d stashed in House Janry’s walls, but he’d activated the portals every so often for her. It was a bit of a risk, since not only was there was intermittent jamming going on that threatened the stability of the portal, but it was always possible someone would simply notice the active connection. The spatial enchantment wasn’t very large or obvious, against the background of enchantments in the House grounds, but it also wasn’t supposed to be there.

She was also helping Hargrave, Taisen, and Felicia take care of the GAR branch offices; all the little places in cities across the world. Lucy had a whole list of them, and combat mages and fae were far more suitable for dealing with them. Though there wasn’t all that much infrastructure, relative to GAR, nor all that many branches considering the worldwide scope of GAR. The teleportation network centralizing everything was a real boon there.

They weren’t closing the buildings down, though, let alone destroying them. Instead they were being used as springboards for the Alliance’s own transport system and the physical part of the brand new supernatural digital marketplace. The conversions and property ownership and all that sort of thing was a logistical nightmare that Callum was more than happy to leave to others. He barely had enough time for his family after taking care of all the portal world exploration.

He was busy, but there was a sense of operating under a deadline. After the summit, not only did everyone who was clearly committed to the Earth Alliance’s way of doing things need their portal worlds, but all of Janry’s people had time to collaborate. In all, he had about a week’s worth of quiet before the rest of the world intruded.

“They’re totally setting up something nasty,” Lucy reported, which came as no surprise at all. “Apparently they’ve gone off to the Deep Wilds to set up a staging camp.”

“I hope someone tracked them,” Callum said with a frown. If he’d been aware it was happening he probably could have done so, but he’d been busy.

“Chester’s on it,” Lucy said. “Speaking of which, he wanted to know when you’d be ready to move the Deep Wilds portal.”

“Oh, damn, I totally forgot,” Callum said, putting aside the drone feed. He’d nearly forgotten about it since it’d been over a week and he hadn’t heard anything. “I can do that now. Go ahead and put him on the line.”

“Already got him!” Lucy said cheerfully, and Callum’s VoIP program chimed. He pulled it up and found himself looking at Chester in his war-form. Which was interesting, because that meant that he had dispensed with the usual glamour that fixed it so cameras didn’t see eight foot tall, bipedal, furred predators.

“Mister Wells,” Chester said. “That was prompt.”

“Honestly, I should have brought it up earlier,” Callum said. “Just too many things on my mind, I guess. Where did you want me to put it?”

“We’ve got a bolthole up in the mountains that will work. Have to hide it from magicals and mundanes, you know. Even when we’re out in the open, that’s just too vulnerable.” Chester sighed, leaning back in the very comfortable-looking oversized chair. “I’m thinking we may end up putting it out in the middle of the ocean, on an oil rig or the like, eventually.”

“I’d suggest the moon, but you kind of need the mana on Earth,” Callum said. “Ocean floor, maybe? Nice thing about portals, you don’t need to worry about the supply chain.”

“Not a bad idea,” Chester admitted. “I have some people who can probably make the pressure vessels for it. But for now, the mountain place.”

“Sure, just take a drone there,” Callum said, doublechecking to see if there was already one over in Chester’s Deep Wilds facility. There was. “Do you have official control over the portal? Both ends of the portal, even? I mean, it’s going to be just as vulnerable from the Deep Wilds side.”

“The Deep Wilds side is protected by some allied Houses.” Chester didn’t seem concerned. “They don’t want to lose access to Earth. Perhaps if and when they decide to move to their own portal world, but until then, only Earth-side needs to be secured. Nominally, it’s been ceded over, but I expect some resistance anyway. Obstructionism, at least.”

“Should be fun,” Callum said dryly, groping through all the various drones in the nexus to figure out which one was where. While having sufficient enchanting material was a definite upside, he was far beyond his ability to keep track of things without a spreadsheet, not to mention having to refresh and replace the moon-side enchantments as they wore out. It took him several minutes, but eventually he had the proper drones isolated.

The Deep Wilds portal was equipped in much the same way as the Night Lands portal had been. It was in the middle of some wilderness in Norway, with a protective fortress around the actual portal and a gate room to control passage in and out. Something which all the personal portals he’d supplied to Chester and other Houses rendered entirely moot. Even before then, Duvall’s portal network had made any control of the actual dimensional connection somewhat redundant.

“Right, I can do it whenever.” Callum scribbled the drone numbers down in his notebook.

“Give me a few hours. I’ll want to get everyone together for this,” Chester said. Callum nodded, taking a break so he’d be at full vis for the transfer. With all the practice he was better than he used to be, and the vis crystals meant that he could do extra-large teleports without knocking himself out, but something as big as a dimensional portal was still no small strain.

One of Chester’s people carried one of the drones through a portal frame, ending up somewhere in the Rockies, while Callum put on his cloak. After having seen the strange fae connection between Earth and the Night Lands, he had to assume Faerie had tendrils everywhere and he wouldn’t put it past someone to try and sabotage the effort.

It did occur to him that by moving the portal, he was effectively granting Chester sovereignty over Earth’s shifters. Anyone not part of the de facto Earth Alliance could still use private portals, that was true, but there was a certain legitimacy from having control of the main portal. Besides, it wasn’t likely that many people outside of the Earth Alliance actually had private portal connections to the Deep Wilds. Especially with GAR disassembled.

Chester and five of his Wolfpack walked through to the Earth-side portal room, all of them big and bulky in war-form, and Chester beckoned to the mages on duty at the guard post. Callum braced for some sort of fight to break out, but apparently the agreements held for once and it just took some conversation. Shortly afterward the shifters wrestled the crossing ramp out of the portal itself, leaving it clear.

“Ready,” Chester said. “Move it.”

“Roger that,” Callum said, and reached out to wrap the big dimensional portal in a teleportation framework. Holding the teleport box stable against the massive mana flow took a lot of work, but he only had to hold it long enough to tap his vis crystals and shift the entire space over to the miniature fortress in the Rockies. He could see Chester relax as the portal vanished, before suddenly laughing.

“Could we get a ride back?” Chester asked, eyeing the place where the portal had been.

“Absolutely.”