Paranoid Mage

One of the keys to Callum’s plan to take care of Jusael was an idea that he’d rejected long ago: the infinite portal box. His assassination of Constance had showed him that the sheer force and speed of things in space could match supernatural toughness, but intersecting drones was tricky and unwieldy. It had seemed the best way to do things at the time, but with more skill and resources came more options.

Letting a projectile accelerate infinitely in the vacuum of space sounded good, but it wasn’t as easy as that. Even the slightest drift would send it careening against the walls of the container that braced the portals, which would at best destroy the entire thing. He needed the spatial field to force the projectile to the center of the apparatus, so it would stay, pick up speed, and not end up exploding ahead of time.

Enchanting a gravity field that pulled not just downward, but inward, was well within his capabilities after several years working with the Guild of Enchantment, and a portal pair inside a mana insulation box barely took any work at all. All that went into space near the moon, with a feeder portal to his pocket universe to keep it powered, and he started it up. A collection of corite buckshot started its infinite fall.

The yield for such a device got absolutely insane if he let it run for weeks rather than hours, starting to climb past nuclear and into planet-cracking territory, which was not the sort of bomb he wanted lying around. In the short term though, the buckshot turned into something with a lot more pep than a mere gun. Or even artillery.

Considering the potential of making the box, he wasn’t going to tell anyone but Lucy. It was one thing to be The Ghost, and it was another to be The Ghost with a nuclear arsenal. He didn’t want people thinking he could or wanted to eradicate entire countries. Nor did he want to get into thinking on that scale himself. No, The Ghost went after individuals, for their own actions.

He and Lucy spent some time setting everything up beforehand, since they were for once inviting people over to the redoubt rather than using Chester’s compound. There was a very good reason for it — Callum’s portal world was completely disconnected from Faerie. There was not even a trace of Faerie’s mana, which would make it extremely difficult for any retaliation on Jusael’s part. Not that he was using the house for it, despite the usefulness of the war room.

They’d left Alex with Chester’s people for the moment, where he was happily playing with shifter kids. Sometime soon he’d start manifesting his magic, and that would introduce a whole raft of problems, but for now he was just like any other nearly-three-year-old. Admittedly, one with friends that could change between four legs and two.

The two of them set up a big pavilion tent on one of the other islands, a smaller one with barely any greenery, along with plastic outdoor furniture. Power and internet were brought in through a temporarily-reassigned drone connection, and they set up several spare monitors on the tables. Lucy looked it over and laughed.

“Seems more like a picnic than an attack,” she said. “Dinner and a show, featuring The Ghost!”

“It does seem a bit of a circus,” Callum agreed with a chuckle. “There’s more people involved every time. If it weren’t a fae prince I wouldn’t want to do any of this.”

“I wish we didn’t have to do any of this,” Lucy grumped, popping another piece of sour candy into her mouth. Since Gayle was coming, she was flagrantly and smugly cheating on her diet. “I liked it when things were quieter.”

“Gotta earn that level of quiet,” Callum sighed. “There’s going to be a lot more of this for a while.”

“I know, I know,” Lucy said. “Doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it.”

“Right, time to get everyone over.” Callum simply opened a portal to Chester’s place a few minutes earlier than he’d anticipated. He had feeder portals set up for the shifters and for Felicia, one from the Deep Wilds and the other from near Faerie itself, which meant that almost his entire drone portal network was tied up. No matter how many anchors he had, it never seemed to be enough.

Chester wasn’t attending himself, but his Wolfpack was, five heavy hitters that were more than enough to secure Callum’s physical safety. Then there was Archmage Taisen, accompanied by Gayle, Felicia, and Ray. Not that he expected to need any of them.

“Oh wow,” Gayle said, looking around, her eyes bright. All the floating islands were visible around them, with the waterfalls and associated fragments of rainbow. With the protections against the wind up, it was extraordinarily picturesque. “This is amazing.”

“It’s not bad,” Lucy said modestly. “We’ll be working on getting you guys your own portal world soon enough, but no guarantees what it looks like. Hard to control that kind of thing.”

“I’m not sure how much you’re going to actually see,” Callum cautioned them, donning his fae cloak before settling into his chair. “But you’ll know if things go wrong.”

The only anchor he’d left in Faerie was the one embedded in the wooden masking ball, and even that was outside of the confines of the castle that Jusael used for his court. He’d stuffed it into a tree, and now he used it to push out his surveillance drones and start hopping them into place through chained teleports. Since he’d spent so long on it before, it only took him minutes to get them all in position.

Jusael was very much a creature of habit, so far as Callum had observed. He moved through the same rooms, using the same hallways, accompanied by the same people. The Prince was very rarely by himself, though Callum doubted most people realized it. One of Jusael’s attendants was invisible and ethereal, a flowing vortex of vis. Though it might not have been an actual person as such, maybe some manifestation of Jusael’s control over the local mana. There was no way that Callum could eliminate Jusael without also affecting that phantom guard, which was something he’d had to accept.

The best time to catch Jusael by himself was not in his bedroom, considering the number of paramours he had waiting there, but at the top of a high tower. The prince often went there to send or receive bird-carried messages and sometimes practiced swordplay. It certainly looked flashy to Callum’s perceptions, especially since the fae’s movements would quickly exceed what he could track, but he didn’t know how useful it actually was.

Even the best swordwork couldn’t beat orbital bombardment.

He was vaguely aware of his guests chatting as he waited for Jusael to head up to the tower. Callum always felt a little awkward when other people were around for his operations since it was mostly in his head, so he was glad they were leaving him alone to work. Even if he was mostly just waiting.

“Jusael’s moving,” Callum said, when the prince finally got some news and started the climb to the top of the tower. Given Jusael’s displayed ability to be anywhere he wanted in an instant, Callum wasn’t sure why he walked, but a good amount of fae life seemed to be performative. Which made Callum’s job easier, if nothing else.

The fae prince reached the top of the tower and reached out an arm, calling down one of the enormous birds that circled above the castle. He tied a scroll about its leg and then released it back into the air, where it shot off toward one of the other fae princedoms. Callum took the opportunity to teleport one of his drones to just outside the tower, out of the line of sight under an overhang created by the crenellations. For this, Callum wanted as short a path for his vis as possible.

He tapped into his vis crystals, opening two small portals linking Faerie and Earth, and two anti-mana portals Earth-side. The next few moments were somewhat delicate, as he pushed the anti-mana portals through the connectors to Faerie before they collapsed, making sure to aim them Jusael’s way. Then he pulled the anti-mana portals wide, pouring enormous amounts of vis into them to expand them to a six foot diameter. The two were positioned to intersect at Jusael’s position, though given his prior experiences with large-scale anti-mana, it’d blanket most of the tower’s top.

Callum figured that was the most ticklish part, because with Jusael’s speed he could possibly avoid the anti-mana effects — but only if he realized what it was. Given the degree to which it had made Jusael flinch before, he was hoping that a wide-area saturation would be enough to distract and catch the fae prince in its path. Not that he expected to kill Jusael with it, but to isolate him from all the power he could draw on from his princedom.

The blank anti-mana billowed out, not quite as energetic as it had been on Earth, but the enormous columns still blotted out big swathes of perception. Including, unfortunately, where Jusael was, but it was better that than leaving the fae prince free to pull on more power than Callum would use in a lifetime. Through the drone’s pickup he heard Jusael scream, which he used as his cue to teleport over the contents of the infinity box at the same time that he repositioned the drone to see Jusael on camera.

With the ammunition accelerated to an impossible blur, he needed to grab the entire space and move it to Faerie, making sure it was pointed in the proper direction. Even if he couldn’t see the fae with his perceptions directly, his spatial instincts were so sharpened he could aim by sight alone.

The infinite loop portals collapsed, separated as they were from the enchantments that had powered them, and the buckshot slammed into Jusael and the surroundings with the force of a small bomb. The shockwave and shrapnel took out his poor drone, the feed instantly going blank and the portal collapsing. He switched to one of the other drones he’d put nearby, teleporting it up to the tower to make sure he’d actually managed it. If he’d simply missed Jusael, he was going to be irritated.

“What the heck did you just do?” Gayle asked, boggling at the feed from the drone. The entire top of the tower was simply gone, the anti-mana portals already collapsed. There was just a stump of stone, steaming slightly for reasons that were probably magical.

“Killed Jusael. Probably.” Unfortunately he had to add the conditional, because he’d been a little too potent and there wasn’t anything left that might be construed as a corpse.

“You removed a fae prince. In Faerie. In twenty minutes.” Taisen bit off each sentence, sounding as if he didn’t believe it.

“And several hours of preparation,” Callum pointed out, though he had admit it had been a pretty clean and direct operation.

“You realize even I would have difficulty accomplishing that,” Archmage Taisen said, looking at the drone feed with narrowed eyes. “And it would involve considerably more destruction. With an entire realm to draw on, it’d be a pitched battle at the very least.”

“Pitched battles aren’t really my thing,” Callum said, made somewhat uncomfortable by how focused Taisen looked.

“Doesn’t that mean you can assassinate anyone?” John of Chester’s Wolfpack asked, taking a sip of one of the beers Callum had provided. “Like, Archmage or whoever? That amount of force concentration."

“Possibly,” Callum conceded. “But I’d rather not draw too much attention to that fact. I don’t want anyone jumping in with our enemies just out of fear of me.”

“At this point I think you’ve made as many enemies as you ever will,” John remarked.

“Sure, but if we’re too scary people won’t stop being enemies,” Lucy pointed out. “I mean, I know I sure don’t want us to have to fight all the Archmages.”

“That’s honestly kind of scary,” Gayle said, still staring at the drone feed. “Like, I know you’re on our side, and I guess it’s not too different from grandfather getting serious, but it feels different.”

“Looking at it, even if you destroyed the tower that shouldn’t be enough to kill a prince of Faerie,” Felicia said, regarding the damage. “I presume there was cold iron involved.”

“Yeah,” Callum said, not mentioning the anti-mana. If it ever became an issue he’d reveal it, but for now it seemed better to keep it under wraps. “Is there any way you can tell if I actually managed it? All the local mana seems to be in a tizzy, but that doesn’t tell me anything.”

“In a tizzy,” Lucy murmured in delight. Callum gave her a brief, tired smile. She still found his occasional rural turns of phrase amusing.

“It should be safe to open a brief connection,” Felicia confirmed. “Even a second or two will make it clear whether the princedom is leaderless. Or if Jusael is simply recovering.”

“Archmage Taisen?” Callum waited for Taisen to summon a half-dozen spell forms and nod at Callum, ready in case something tried to come through. His head ached as he opened yet another portal between them and Faerie, finding that even with the vis crystals to take the brunt of the load, juggling so many portals, and such large ones, drained him pretty thoroughly.

Felicia went so far as to put her hand through the portal and waved it about, like she was feeling what direction the wind was going, then drew it back. Callum shut the portal after, finding the lack of reaction encouraging. The last time Felicia had even been near Faerie, a fae prince had showed up instantly.

“The realm is trying to adhere to the next in line,” she reported. “Jusael’s successor will inherit much of his power, but Jusael himself is gone.”

“Great,” Callum said, sagging into his seat. “Then we’re done here.” He went to recall all his drones, but then stopped and waited a moment in case there was something urgent he’d forgotten.

“Didn’t have to do anything,” John rumbled. “Least there was beer,” he concluded. Callum snorted. He had provided some refreshments, just in case they had to wait a while for Jusael to write a message, but it had turned out to be a fairly quick operation overall.

“I’m glad we didn’t have to do anything,” Gayle declared. “Fighting isn’t any fun and I see enough injuries with Archmage Taisen’s people.”

“I’m on your side,” Callum declared, pulling all his drones out of Faerie and standing up. “Thank you for being on hand anyway.”

“This is going to make waves,” Taisen noted. “Are you intending to go after the others? Or any of the Archmages?”

“Not today,” Callum said. “I don’t have any evidence the other Fae are doing anything untoward — though if you get me that, I may change my mind. I also need more corite, though,” he said with a grimace. “I’m out.”

“I’m sure we can find some if we need another prince removed,” Taisen said, and Callum nodded. He hadn’t expected a gift of a fairly precious material, since nobody in the Earth-side alliance had real access to Faerie. The Guild of Enchanting might be able to provide it, or he’d have to scavenge it from Faerie himself.

It would have been really nice to loot Jusael’s treasury. There was so much stuff there, that even if he just took cold iron he’d be set for a long time. But The Ghost was a cold, direct actor. He wasn’t punishing Jusael’s entire court, just the man in charge. Possibly he could have taken Jusael’s private property, if any survived the destruction, but the domain treasury was off limits.

He'd started that approach a long time back and it had proven to be a good idea as the whole reputation of The Ghost grew. The Ghost’s attention was personal, and anyone who wasn’t being individually evil was safe. Both their person and their property. It was an integrity that couldn’t be bought, and was probably the only reason he could be the backbone of the Earth side alliance.

If he wanted to make a world that he wanted Alex and any other future children to inherit, he needed to be strict with his behavior. Even if not everyone would agree with it, consistency was king.

“Now that this is done, we should discuss how we’re going to approach Janry,” Taisen said. Callum nodded agreement. The problem was, he wasn’t sure what he could do about Janry. Not only was removing an archmage an entirely different prospect than the constrained politics of the fae, but he wasn’t sure how much Janry was personally responsible for. Or if he was just another link in a chain leading somewhere even further afield. It was useless to take out the emperor when it was the grand vizier who was the problem all along.

“We’ll have to be careful about it. I might be able to target him, but only when we’re absolutely, positively certain,” he said.

“Oh, I agree,” Taisen replied. “And if you have to take him on directly, we should at least peel away as many other Houses as possible.”

“I suppose we’re done here then,” Callum said, glancing around at the little island. “You all can come back to my house, or I can send you back to Chester’s. I’m sure most of you would rather just go home.”

“I’ll stay,” Gayle said, glancing over at the monitors even if they were blank. “To represent House Hargrave.”

“That sort of stuff is Chester’s or Lisa’s business,” John said, standing up. The rest of the wolfpack followed. “We’ll head back.”

Callum spent the next few minutes juggling portals and teleports, cleaning up the little outpost by the simple expedient of sending the entire thing into his back yard. He wasn’t really looking forward to another afternoon of hashing out political moves, but he did have a responsibility. He didn’t want to end up with another Night Lands debacle.

***

“What.” Archmage Janry stared at the fae standing in his study. It wasn’t one of the usual messengers, since the Lesser Courts at least used generally human-looking types for that purpose. This fae looked like nothing more than a very large, black dog, even if it could speak.

“The Court of Roses will be dealing with internal matters for some time,” the dog said, underplaying the sort of cutthroat maneuvering that a power struggle entailed. “We have no interest in severing relations but of necessity any help will be contingent on the debts or inclinations of individual fae. The Court of Stone will be the first among equals until such a time as the Court of Roses has resolved matters.”

“Very well.” Janry knew that he betrayed no real emotion over the news, a quirk that he’d used to his benefit for a long time. But that didn’t mean the irritation didn’t burn at the back of his chest. “I will redirect my communications to the Court of Stone.”

The dog made a sort of amused growl and left. Janry watched it go, then sighed and then summoned his aide via scry-comm. Magus Tiana appeared with commendable alacrity, and once again Janry schooled his ire for the sake of his niece.

“I’ve just been told that Wells removed Prince Jusael of the Court of Roses,” Janry said without any preamble. Not that he knew that for certain, but there was nobody else it could be. “Inform the Archmage Council, and tell them that we’ll be dealing with the Court of Stone instead for the foreseeable future.”

“Yessir,” Tiana said, only showing her surprise with a slight widening of her eyes, and bowed before leaving the study. Janry watched her go, then stood and paced over to his window, looking down the slopes of the majestic mountain his House was built on. He was finding the Earth alliance, though they hadn’t yet started calling themselves that, very irksome. If they had attacked one of the Houses, that would have been different. But removing Jusael was only praiseworthy to the Seven Lesser Courts.

It would be hard to convince the neutral Houses to take it seriously when the fae didn’t themselves. To them it was a stylish move, to be admired, not the threat that it really was. Janry had no doubt Wells was working with Archmages Taisen and Hargrave, along with that stray fae princess, and that was how he accomplished the removal of so powerful a target. Even if Wells was an Archmage himself, it wasn’t possible to summon the raw power necessary to eradicate a prince of the Seven Lesser Courts so easily.

He turned and unlocked his vis-keyed safe, taking out a specific scry-comm and activating it. Then he returned to his House paperwork while he waited, for he didn’t expect an immediate answer. There were plenty of plans that needed adjustment anyway, even though the general outline remained undisturbed.

Removing Wells himself remained an almost impossible proposition; if the fae couldn’t find and eliminate him, no mage could. Human magic just didn’t have that sort of flexibility, so Janry wasn’t going to bother with that at all. But given Well’s reticence in dealing with people who didn’t threaten him directly, undermining the power base of the Earth alliance was perfectly reasonable. And there were a number of allies that were vulnerable to indirect action.

“This is the Master of Weltentor.” A sour voice came from the scry-comm, and Janry positioned it in the center of his desk with a flick of his kinesis focus.

“This is Archmage Janry,” he said. “Were you aware that Wells removed Prince Jusael yesterday?”

“I was not,” the response came at length. “That is an extremely dangerous man. You need to eliminate him before he does any more damage.”

“If he could be found, I would,” Janry said. “Short of assaulting Alpha Chester’s compound in the middle of a visit – which would not guarantee anything – he is impossible to find. Even the Guild of Enchanting doesn’t deal with him directly. Only his remotes.”

“Then my strategy remains,” Weltentor said. “Assault him by proxy. Hurt him. Force him into a vulnerable position.”

“That’s your role,” Janry said, somewhat irritated. He was constrained by needing to keep the support of the other archmages. Weltentor was not, but the fact was the vampire had done very little to prosecute his part of the offensive. With free reign on Earth there was a lot of damage Weltentor could be doing, though admittedly of the incidental variety. There were lots of low-level personnel under Chester or the rogue Houses that were vulnerable.

Unfortunately Janry couldn’t actually order Weltentor. The destruction of the Night Lands portals had effectively severed their relations, and unless Janry could convince Duvall to reopen it – if such was even possible – they were at best allies of convenience. And Duvall was unlikely to be amenable until after the issue of Earth was settled.

“I have my own targets,” Weltentor said shortly. “I will have to advance my plans.” The scry-comm clicked as Weltentor hung up, and Janry rubbed at his temples. He very much disliked working with people he couldn’t control; even the fae were very biddable given the proper incentives and framing.

As annoying as Weltentor was, he did have a point. Janry would have to escalate the efforts to deal with the people supporting the Earth alliance’s principal actors. But do so in such a way that he didn’t tip things over into open conflict, since that would certainly scare off some Houses. That wouldn’t always be the case, but supernaturals tended to move slowly.

The question was what the best target would be.

***

“Thank you for agreeing to meet me, archmage,” Grand Magus Lorenzo Rossi said. Archmage Duvall nodded at him, lifting her teacup and taking a sip. As much as she would have preferred to remain completely aloof, the Guild of Enchanting was her most important contact — she barely worked with anyone other than Rossi.

The gift of a rare tea was unexpected — but suspicious. House Duvall and the Guild of Enchanting were on good enough terms that such a bribe implied asking something beyond the normal bounds of commerce. In these uncertain times, she was loath to take on any special work, but the coalition put together by House Janry had frozen her out of some of her usual markets. Not that anyone could replace House Duvall for certain services — but they could certainly restrict certain amenities.

“House Duvall is always glad to entertain the Guild of Enchanting,” she said diplomatically. “And of course, it’s good to see you personally. Thank you for the tea.” It was good, with notes that couldn’t be found on Earth or the Deep Wilds, delicate and sweet and tart with lingering hints that seemed more like emotions and memories than actual flavors.

“I understand it’s a particularly good crop,” Rossi agreed, studying her across the table. “Unfortunately, current events in Faerie may make it more difficult to get in the future.”

“I know,” Duvall said, trying not to grimace. She wasn’t going to lay odds on how the conflict was going to turn out, but she wasn’t willing to rule anything out — not after seeing what that heretic Wells was willing to do. Some of her detractors among the other archmages had called her out for cowardice, but she’d always kept House Duvall neutral in any conflict, small or large. Besides which, she knew what Wells was playing with and she wanted no part of it, either to deal with it being used as a weapon or the inevitable consequence of a mistake. “However, if you’re here about those events I’m afraid I can’t offer any aid of note.”

“I’m not, actually,” Rossi said, visibly brightening and clearly glad to put the topic behind him. “I have a spatial enchantment I would like you to help me refine, as well as some work I would like to get your estimate on.”

“Oh?” Duvall felt herself relaxing. That was far safer a topic than current politics — and the Guild of Enchanting sometimes had interesting ideas she wouldn’t have come up with herself. Theirs was the collaboration that had resulted in the switchboard that made the modern teleportation network possible. Even in the wake of the changes she’d needed to make, it was still the best way to connect so many destinations.

“If you have the time, I’d appreciate you coming out to our new site,” Rossi said. “I think you’d find it interesting and, speaking frankly, your professional opinion would be valuable.”

“I find myself with a surfeit of time today,” Duvall replied. “When I finish my tea I would enjoy seeing your new site.” She didn’t even know that the Guild of Enchanting had expanded its holdings.

“The new location is somewhat secret,” Rossi cautioned her, even as she was wondering about the particulars. “Of course, I know you will keep it in confidence.”

“Certainly,” Duvall replied. She was quite curious, but didn’t let that hurry her through the tea. It was just too good. Only once she had finished the last drop of tea did she stand. The servants could clean up while she saw what Rossi had to show her.

Like most of the Houses, Rossi had converted his connections to portals, though unlike most Houses he had a direct connection with House Duvall. They stepped through to the Guild of Enchanting, but Duvall noticed that the far end had been moved to Earth from Faerie. The layout was still the same though, and she noted that Rossi was leading her to the high security section, where he kept experimental products.

Out of respect both for his privacy and for the sensitivity of enchantment creation she didn’t use her active senses to probe the area, so she was surprised when Rossi showed her to another portal and stepped through. She followed, and frowned as she studied the sensation of the surrounding space. There was clearly a spatial construct in place, and she pulsed her vis to examine it.

“This is—” she stopped. It was a construct meant to make space act like Earth’s, an artificial version of her stabilization. It encompassed only the single room, though there were many other similar ones covering the rest of the structure. They were in a portal world — but not one she recognized.

“It’s not very good,” Rossi said, half-apologetically, while she was still recovering from the shock. “Any significant spellcasting will disrupt it, so it’s a stopgap and not a solution. We still need you to alter this space.”

“This is a new portal world.” Duvall snapped, not making it a question. “How did you gain access to it?”

“Alas, our sources remain confidential,” Rossi said, which all but guaranteed that the source was Wells. “However, we control sole access to this particular portal world. We have it on some authority that sole or primary access to other portal worlds may be offered to Houses on a case by case basis in the near future. All of which will need stabilization.”

Duvall huffed, looking around the blank receiving room. It went against the grain — she didn’t like anyone infringing upon her prerogatives and the specialty of House Duvall. But she wasn’t stupid. She certainly couldn’t provide access to new portal worlds. Wells was running insane risks, dealing with dimensional portals, but if he could make it work it was something that she couldn’t compete on.

Every House would want their own, but they’d also want the land stabilized. The enchantment Rossi wanted to collaborate with her on would provide a temporary solution, enough to entice people to build, and create more demand for her services. Not that it was lacking just yet — but there was only so much land in Faerie or the Deep Wilds.

She hadn’t gotten where she was by taking the short view. Wells’ experiments would only end in disaster — a disaster she had no desire to be part of. But in this case, there wasn’t a good reason to stay completely aloof. Whether these supposed other portal worlds appeared or not, House Duvall had to remain on the forefront of spatial magic.

“Very well,” she said, eyeing the enchantment skeptically. “Let us take a look. I am certain House Duvall can improve on this amateurish work.”

Rossi smiled.