Paranoid Mage

“Man, I’m glad I’m not doing the stakeout,” Lucy remarked, holding out her hands to catch the foam ball Alex was aiming their way, then had to lunge when it went wide. “Oof! Good throw, sweetie.”

“It’s not exactly exciting,” Callum admitted, waiting for his turn in the game of catch. All he could do was pay attention through the anchor sitting in Felicia’s pocket, so there was no point in holing up inside. Playing out on the front lawn seemed like a great way to pass the time. “Even if it was my idea. Go long, kiddo!”

“They probably would have done the same thing without you,” Lucy shrugged. “It’s just that The Ghost makes it more likely to work.”

“If I can keep up,” Callum said, scooping up the ball and then throwing it back to Alex. “That’s the one thing I’m worried about.” He well knew that supernatural speed was just too fast, and when they moved flat out he couldn’t react in time. But they couldn’t use that speed to the full inside buildings or on city blocks, so with teleports he might prove a match. Just obliterating the vamp with an alpha strike would be preferable, and he had the antimaterial rifle loaded exactly for that reason, but it would be unwise to rely on it.

“You’ll do fine,” Lucy said. “Hard to defend against a bad penny, you know?”

“Yeah,” Callum said, and missed catching the ball. He teleported it back to his hand, somewhat amused by being able to cheat that way, and threw it back to Alex.

While he was enjoying himself, he was pretty sure that Felicia and Ray were not. It seemed like a lot of tedious work, interviewing person after person, writing things down, and just generally spending enormous amounts of time on minutiae. He had to credit that they were genuinely digging into the fae influence, and not just making noises.

“Contact!” The scry-comm tapped into Felicia’s group suddenly blared, and Callum almost jumped. Acting as Felicia’s guard was a dangerous thing, considering how easily the vampire had broken both mage and fae defenses, but nobody would believe she had no protection. Besides, Taisen had his own grudge against the person who had nearly shattered the secrecy of the supernatural. Who still might, since the fallout from the vampire killings hadn’t exactly gone away.

Callum held up a hand to show Lucy and Alex something was happening – earning a foam ball to the gut – and focused on what he could sense through the anchor, reaching for the remote on the table. He didn’t think he’d have a chance to use the rifle right away, especially not in a populated area, but there was no telling how fast things would move. Ray and Felicia were actually two rooms away from where their doppelgangers were conducting interviews, being impersonated by two of Felicia’s retainers.

He didn’t like that those two were probably going to die, and felt personally responsible for it. They were protected as best could be done and they were volunteers, and if they were fae Secret Service it was their job to take that risk. But he’d suggested the idea and if anything happened it’d be on him, even though he couldn’t think of a better way to deal with the kind of threat the vampire posed. He was still agonizing over it as he looked for the intruder.

A moment after he began searching a blur crashed straight through the interior walls of the building, sending brick and drywall flying everywhere. The vampire just smashed straight through like a cannonball, barely slowed by the architecture. He teleported himself down the war room, since he didn’t want to fight while out on the front lawn with his child, and spoke into the scry-comm.

“On it,” he told them tersely as the vampire exploded into the room with the decoys, and Callum tapped into his vis crystals to make anti-mana portals. He had to be at least a little careful about it; anti-mana would go straight through walls and he didn’t want to hit any of the other mages or fae with it. Normal people, thankfully, wouldn’t be affected at all.

He pulled his cloak to him and donned it as he opened a pair of portals once again, in the rooms on the floor above. He aimed them to intersect in the middle of the room where the vampire and decoys were, but kept ahold as best he could to sweep them and saturate the room. It’d been maybe half a second, but before the anti-mana could reach the room it looked like one of the decoy fae had been torn in half, the other smashed against a wall.

Callum had seen fae survive that kind of thing before, but then the anti-mana splashed over both the fae and the form of the vampire as it paused for a fraction of a second. Without magic, being cut in half was probably lethal, and he winced but he couldn’t redirect the massive columns gushing from the portals. Just swiveling them rendered them unstable, and they started to collapse moments later.

The vampire emerged from the blank, mana-less area at speed, back through the hole he’d punched in the walls on his way in. But it wasn’t as fast or with as much power as before — the anti-mana hadn’t instantly dropped him, like the vampires that had assaulted his house, but it had clearly taken a toll.

“Pursuing,” he said over the scry-comm and teleported the anchor after the vamp. Despite being able to move a thousand yards in a second he could only barely keep up as the target blazed out onto the city streets. There was clearly more magic than just body augmentation as the vamp could take corners without digging massive furrows in the asphalt, somehow redirecting the momentum of its incredible speed.

It was less careful about the people in its way, and more than one bystander was sent flying as they were clipped by a speeding vampire. Callum caught them as he went, using a teleport to reposition them and absolutely cheating by removing their momentum in the process. It was only three or four people, since the cold rain kept most people off the streets, but it did come close to making him lose track of the vamp.

Callum couldn’t tell whether that was purposeful or it just didn’t care that it was flinging people into traffic. On one hand it created a trail, but on the other it could have easily forced anyone else to slow down or stop to deal with the chaos. It clearly wasn’t stupid, and whether or not it realized it’d been had when it came to Felicia and Ray, it was moving faster than even Taisen’s mages could manage. It also was taking a complicated route through the city, crossing roads at a single bound and going down alleyways or crossing rooftops.

For some reason Callum had thought that the vampire would slow down when it got a few miles away, but it did not. If anything, once it reached the metro line it sped up, no longer having to worry about running into things or people. He had to stretch to his utmost to keep up, chain-teleporting along after the thing, and he didn’t really register where they were until the vamp left the tunnels.

They were headed for downtown Washington, DC, Capitol Hill and the National Mall. The only reason he even realized it was because they passed near enough to the Smithsonian for him to recognize a building. Part of him was wondering whether the vamp was intending to kill the president or part of congress, though he had no idea whether anyone was even there. Not that he knew why the vampire would bother, save for general disruption — something that the vampires clearly were aiming for.

Fortunately, the vamp veered off toward the Mall, beelining for the Washington Monument. Callum knew exactly where the vampire was going when a tangle of fae magic came into his perceptions, covering part of the reflecting pool on the monument side. The vampire stopped for a moment, right on the edge of the pool, but before Callum could line up a shot the vamp dived into the pool.

The fae magic unfolded, and Callum hastily shoved a thread of vis through to follow in the vampire’s wake. It wasn’t a portal, but it still folded space in some way so he had to follow close so he wouldn’t be left behind. The moment he teleported into the place the fae passage led he winced, the space inside so displaced and distorted that it grated on his nerves. It seemed like it was a piece of Faerie, but not like any of the places he’d seen before.

As disconcerting as it was, he didn’t need to unravel its mysteries immediately. Despite the weirdness inherent to the place, it wasn’t so contorted that he couldn’t get a shot. The vampire had finally slowed down, clearly thinking it was safe.

Callum was tempted to bring in anti-mana once again, but he didn’t know what it would do to such a seriously distorted space. It might end up unraveling and putting the vampire in some random corner of Earth, alive and intact and ready to cause mischief. So instead Callum stuck to the tried and true method of using a big gun.

He snapped open a portal and toggled the remote, firing the bane-loaded antimaterial rifle. Whatever protections the vampire had against mordite had probably been stripped away by the anti-mana, but if not there wasn’t much Callum could do about it. Though without anywhere to hide, he could just hammer the vamp with brute force.

The first shot sent it stumbling, blowing a hole through its midsection. But it didn’t drop immediately, and it darted forward even as the rifle cycled, and Callum’s second shot missed. He cursed under his breath, since even if the vampire couldn’t dodge bullets, hitting something that was zigging and zagging was difficult even with Callum’s advantages.

He waited for a few moments as the vampire zoomed forward, making its way through the bizarre interstitial space, teleporting the anchor up ahead between what was probably a tree and what was probably a bush, but the intense magic flux made it hard to know for certain. The vampire’s head was bobbing around, but after a second to line up a shot Callum put a second hole through its torso.

No matter how much vis the vampire had, punching bane material wounds through the thing’s chest had to slow it down. It was a shame that he hadn’t killed it instantly, but by sticking itself in this odd place, Callum didn’t even need to worry about his backstop. Sure enough, a few seconds later it had slowed down to almost human speed, but at the same time it jumped through another fold in space — one leading to a familiar destination.

He hadn’t even noticed it thanks to how strange the entire surroundings were, but he wasn’t about to let the vampire go. Given the slightest chance, Callum knew that such an enemy would come back and wreak as much havoc as possible. As powerful as the creature was, that would be a lot of havoc. He shifted through and teleported the anchor once again, into the Night Lands.

It was the missing castle, and Callum knew that there were negative healing traps about so even before he took another shot he tapped the vis crystals and opened up another anti-mana portal before shoving it through into the Night Lands. The stuff billowed out, snapping all the wards and whatever they were connected to with contemptuous ease, and not coincidentally aimed right at the vampire.

Callum had no idea what anti-mana looked like to anyone else. Neither he nor Lucy could see it, and from a pure visual inspection the other side was just the same as a normal portal worlds; some random liminal space with a vague relation to the local surroundings. But clearly others could sense it, since the vampire dived out of the way, but that just delayed the inevitable.

He hit it with another bane bullet, and then a last one to the actual brain as it dropped to its knees. Considering how much punishment it had taken, Callum wasn’t satisfied it was dead until he saw the vis start to fade from it, bleeding out into the surroundings. Only then did he reach for the scry-comm to report.

“Subject terminated,” he said, feeling like he was in a movie or something for using such language. “Tracked him back to the Night Lands,” he added, glancing at the clock. The entire pursuit had taken maybe ten or fifteen minutes, which wasn’t long but it was also one of the most involved actions he’d performed since figuring out anchors.

“Understood,” the response came back, and Callum blinked, then rubbed his eyes. They were dry and gritty from staring, despite only using his perceptions. He left the gun remote in the war room and returned the cloak to the earth-side storage, then teleported himself back outside where Lucy was helping Alex read from a storybook.

“All done?” She asked after she finished a paragraph.

“Pretty much, but could you get Felicia on the horn? I need to ask her a few things. Whatcha reading, kiddo?” He added, taking Lucy’s place with the book. They’d pretty much rejected the books that the magic community had. Along with subtle anti-mundane sentiment, they just weren’t as good as the books Callum’s parents had used.

Callum managed to finish the book before Lucy got through to Felicia. The delay wasn’t too surprising; the vampire had done a lot of damage and probably set off all kinds of alarms and gotten everyone detained. Even if they could use the scry-comm network instead of cellphones, everyone was likely busy dealing with the chaos.

“Yes?” Felicia asked.

“The vampire tried to escape through some strange fae passageway thing,” Callum said, getting right to the point. “It was located at the reflecting pool in the National Mall, on the Washington Monument side. There’s another exit at the castle in the Night Lands, though where in the Night Lands I couldn’t tell you. Figured I’d check with you before I tried closing them.”

“I see,” Felicia said after a moment. “Yes, thank you. I can take care of the passageway on this end, but I would be obliged if you removed the Night Lands end of it.” He noticed she didn’t bother asking how he would close it, or even question that he could.

“Roger that.” He wasn’t incurious about what exactly the vampire had used, but he didn’t want to prompt any fae secrets over the phone. They’d probably be meeting face to face at some point anyway, simply because they were working together. He did find it amusing that he actually was meeting people in person, after so long keeping everyone at the other end of a portal. “We’ll touch base later.”

Destroying the fae passage was easy enough. While he couldn’t get through it with just his own talents, there was still a magical and material framework that held it in place in the castle. A quick anti-mana portal destroyed the magical part, and he simply teleported the framework away to storage. It seemed to be nothing more than a large mirror, and without magic it probably wasn’t anything else. But he was sure Felicia would want to see it regardless, in case the source could be tracked.

“H’okay, all done,” he told Lucy. “Free for the rest of the day, barring catastrophes.”

“Don’t tempt fate!” Lucy said. “I’ll see about going over to Chester’s this afternoon. I know Alex is missing some of his friends.”

“Gonna see Jason?” Alex piped up.

“Yeah, we can go see Jason,” said Callum, teleporting the foam ball to himself and tossing it from hand to hand. “Should be nice and relaxed.”

He took over while Lucy went to call up Chester, just to make sure it was okay to visit. The portal anchors meant they were functionally neighbors, and heading over didn’t take more than a thought, but it was rude to intrude without notice. Unfortunately, as it turned out, it wasn’t just a friendly visit.

“I do have some business to discuss,” Chester said, a few hours later, after they’d settled in.

“Lucy did say I shouldn’t tempt fate,” Callum sighed. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve been managing to keep the feds off our backs for now, thanks to your work,” Chester told him. “Unfortunately, someone leaked a list of all my people and they’re all being targeted now. Plus we’ve all had our social media accounts banned off a bunch of platforms for no reason. You know, standard harassment tactics.”

“Ugh.” Callum scowled. The power of government bureaucracy was essentially unlimited and lacked any real oversight, so the amount of mischief someone could cause with it was also unlimited. In a lot of ways it wasn’t any better than the supernatural bureaucracy, but he wasn’t prepared to start fighting that war. At least when it came to supernaturals there was a clear line. “I take it you need more IT support?”

“Yes,” Chester sighed. “We also need to find out who is starting all this.”

“Janry, ultimately,” Callum said. “I’d be perfectly happy to remove him this very moment if I didn’t think that’d just unite all the other mage Houses against us.” He’d really prefer to just kick in Janry’s teeth, but he didn’t want to spark open war and drag in the entire normal world in the bargain.

“It’s a shame we can’t redirect some of this attention to him,” Chester said. “I doubt the Archmage’s Council is going to care too much.”

“The bribes ought to help with that. Lot of Houses are going to be happy to have their own private portal world,” Callum said. “For now though, I’ll pitch it to Felicia. It’s probably related to the fae manipulation we’re seeing. If she can trace it to a specific source I’ll take care of it.”

“And in the meantime, Lucy has a lot of work to do,” Chester said dryly, waving in the direction of the playroom.

“Sure,” Callum agreed. “It’s mostly tedious but I think she’s still enjoying getting into government systems.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could keep all the evidence, too,” Chester said. “I think it’s only a matter of time before the supernatural becomes known, and I want to be ready for it.”

“Really.” Callum raised his eyebrows. He wasn’t certain that it was a good idea to introduce the two worlds, but he had to agree it was probably inevitable. The cult cover story for the vampires was incredibly weak, and when rooting through the government files it was obvious that a lot of people were still digging into the real culprits. And the identities of the people who had stopped them.

“The only reason why the secret’s survived so long is people are generally primed to not believe it when they see weird stuff.” Chester shook his head, swirling his drink and making the ice clink. “But tens of thousands of murders all at once — people will just keep prying at it. Not to mention that even with glamours, statistical analysis will turn up some weird stuff.”

“Well, you’re more up to date than I am,” Callum said. He couldn’t object to Chester’s points, because he was surprised himself that the secret still kept. Though the population of supernaturals was tiny, relatively speaking. “Did you have a plan?”

“Some plans,” Chester admitted. “You’re involved, though at a distance. Nothing you aren’t doing already. I’ll give you an actual proposal when we’ve got things more nailed down. The first order of business is to finish this conflict. The worst possible thing is let the types who want to control Earth break things to mundanes.”

“Oh yeah. That wouldn’t go well.” Callum had doubts things would go well no matter what, but it wasn’t his circus. Chester had a good enough head on his shoulders that he might

be able to make it work. Better to take charge of events than let events take charge. “Though I’m pretty sure nobody is going to be happy that I’m manipulating government records when it all comes out.”

“Nobody is happy about anything that happens in war,” Chester said dryly. “Fortunately, evidence that people are being bribed or coerced into doing the things you’re reversing helps.” He waved it away. “All worries for another time. For the moment, I have over a hundred people who are getting their banks locked down or their businesses cited or shuttered. Even my resources aren’t unlimited.”

“Sure,” Callum said. “Just send the list to Lucy and we’ll see what we can do.”

***

Felicia Black stood at the reflecting pool in the National Mall, examining the Gate of Water. The towering obelisk of the Washington Monument, cast into the water, served as the lynchpin for the Gate, the place where the point touched the sky and the water at the same time anchoring it in place. It was probably the best place for such a doorway, the strong iconography reinforcing its existence, and that was why she was stealing it.

Ray stood next to her, hand on her back. He had no way to consciously control fae magic, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t affect it. Ray had been by her side for years, and that loyalty did more to stabilize her own power than most would imagine. No fae ruler had ever taken a non-fae consort before, but Felicia wasn’t exactly a normal fae princess.

“Mine.” Felicia said, claiming the Gate. It shuddered and twisted in her grasp, but she stared it down until it acquiesced. But that wasn’t enough. The Ways on Earth couldn’t be allowed to run wild like they did on Faerie, because Earth belonged to the humans, not to the fae. “Mine.” She said again, and the water in the reflecting pool boiled in protest.

She wouldn’t have been able to do it earlier, but the Ghost’s favor had empowered her more than a little. To have someone as dangerous as Weltentor destroyed with no more than a word from her was a potent thing, and while it was not just her own power it was still quite usable. Bit by bit she wrestled the magic into submission, until it was finally under her full control. She looped it about her left wrist, then turned to Ray. He could only have followed a little bit of what she was doing, but he still smiled as he saw she was successful.

“Let’s go see what’s inside,” she suggested. “We can’t leave it here just as it is, even if I control it.”

“Ready when you are,” Ray said, his vis shell growing more intense as he energized his foci. Felicia didn’t anticipate combat on the other side, but with the Ways it was always necessary to be cautious. She flicked her wrist and the Gate of Water unfolded, opening to the strange space of the Ways.

The pair of them stepped through, onto a log bridge that crossed a burbling stream. Tall trees with white bark and whiter leaves rose on either side of the path, with vines bearing blood-red berries climbing their trunks. To one side was a meadow, with an ancient forest titan in the middle. Its branches bore the leaves of a dozen different types of trees, anchoring the Ways in North America, with paths wending their way out of the meadow to lead to other Gates.

Distance was a vague suggestion in the Ways, and even as they watched it was shifting and changing, growing like the living thing it was. If there were any evidence of the Ghost’s pursuit of the vampire, the Ways had consumed it. In fact, that was probably why the sudden growth spurt, as it consumed expended vis and turned the energy into its own fuel.

“We will have to take all of this,” Felicia said, feeling the press of magic as she turned around to survey the landscape. “This runs deep into Faerie and anything, or anyone, could use it.”

“Makes sense,” Ray agreed. “How do we take it?”

“The traditional fae way,” Felicia said, baring her teeth. Without her glamour, they were long and pointed. “We fight for it.”

“Ready,” Ray said. Felicia flexed her will and her retainers emerged from her shadow, dark-suited with enchanted blades and arcanopistols. Not all of the fae that were swearing themselves into service were cut out for combat, but those that were got put through Taisen’s training. They were cold, professional, and ready to put their lives before hers, though she preferred not to spend any lives she didn’t need to.

“Let the spirit of the glade come forth!” She commanded, feeling the Ways flex under the crack of her voice. “Let it establish its sovereignty, or yield to mine.”

The tree swayed and twelve wolf-men shaped specters dropped from its branches, outnumbering them two to one. It was at least some sense of a fair fight, but Felicia was not there to fight. She was there to take control. Felicia held up her hand for everyone to hold their fire until the specters started to charge at them, then spoke.

“Fall.” She commanded, and the specters crumpled to their knees. She dropped her hand, and arcanopistols puffed. Ray’s vis flicked out and detonated around two of the specters, tearing them apart while her retainers punched holes in the others. Immobilized, they made easy targets. It was absolutely one-sided, and that was the point.

As the last of the specters dispersed, Felicia reached out and took hold of the magic’s root. Unlike the Gate, it yielded meekly, settling into place under her mantle. It wasn’t the entirety of the Ways, of course, merely a small portion of it, one still growing and maturing.

“Now,” she murmured to it, looking around the open meadow. “There was a vampire that came through here. Show me all the places he’s gone.”

The landscape around them stretched and distorted, moving without moving as the paths leading outward aligned themselves. One was the Gate of Water, that they’d come from. Another led to a severed piece of the Ways, a shattered arch choked with thorns and brambles, and she got the faint impression of hurt and resentment. That was a Gate of Glass, which had led to the Night Lands. There was no telling how Wells had closed it, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t want that open anyway.

Two other paths called to her. They both used Gates of Bone, one somewhere far to the south, the other one east across the ocean. One gave her glimpses of jungle and ziggurats choked by vines, while the other was a dark castle closed in by mist and rain. The jungle ziggurat was faint, barely connected, so she ignored it and focused on the castle, beckoning for her people to follow along the narrow trail.

The ivory trees lining that part of the Way loomed threateningly, then drew back from her presence. Even if she only controlled a small part of the Ways, the rest of it recognized her authority and let her pass without harassment. If she were to follow the far trail back to Faerie that would change, but the Earth-side Ways were cowed by her presence.

She stopped at the Gate of Bones, the twisted ivory forming an archway at the end of the path. Skeletal hands grasped the joined femurs and skulls, holding it open as Felicia and Ray approached. Ray scowled at it, and Felicia could catch the whisper of his vis as he strained to sense through the Gate.

“That seems excessively macabre. And there is definitely someone on the other side.” His vis pulsed outward, echoing through nascent connections. “Should we ask Taisen for more troops?”

Felicia put her hands on the Gate, suppressing the whispers of the dead men whose bones had been used. Instead she sought the feeling of the castle beyond, sampling the flavors of magic and the presence of the living the Gate hungered for. She was fairly certain that the fae were from the Court of Roses, but without the backing of a Prince there was nobody on the other side that was too dangerous.

“No, we can handle it, and we’d better before they realize that Weltentor is dead and the other Gate is closed.” Felicia frowned at the Gate of Bones. “No need to let the Court of Roses recoup its investment.” Like most early fae royalty, she was collecting subordinates from her enemies, enforcing a change of loyalty. It was less of an issue than it would be for humans, at least until she found someone of significant power.

At some point she would have to move on to swearing the fae enclaves on earth under her banner, but that would be on more generous terms than those she had personally bested. Once it became clear what she was doing, the most intelligent fae would be more than happy to swear allegiance. Felicia had no interest in changing enclaves that worked perfectly well, only in managing the interface between mundane and fae.

“Ready,” Ray said, and Felicia turned to the Gate.

“Open,” she commanded, and the Gate groaned as the connection to Earth was forced wide. Felicia wasn’t willing to pay the conventional price for using a Gate of Bones, which was one of the worst to use — though the quickest and easiest to make, if one was willing to sacrifice enough people. Ray and two of her retainers stepped through, sweeping the room before she made her entrance.

She stepped through just as two vampiric-looking fae were having their faces ground into the stone floor, one by a pair of her guards and the other by Ray’s magic. She glanced at them and dismissed them; even on her own those two would be no threat. There was only one fae that was worrisome in the whole castle; the one drawing from the magic of the place.

Ray glanced at her and she gave him a smile, pointing downward. He nodded and pushed vis through one of his combat foci, a sudden gale meshing with basic earth manipulation and tearing a hole in the floor. He flew down and the rest of them jumped, taking advantage of the confusion from a half-ton of stone scattering through the room.

Felicia ignored the lesser fae, focusing on the one who was tied to the castle. He looked remarkably like Jusael, with pale skin and bat wings, showing he was more a follower than a man of imagination. Like many unimaginative fae, he grasped after the cheapest power, even though that meant he would never manage anything greater.

“I am Princess Felicity Blackblood,” she said, her voice carrying over the sounds of fighting and the whistle of wind. Drawing on a little of her power she blurred forward, her hand reaching out to snatch at the tether between the fae-vampire and the castle. With the other she batted aside the fae’s instinctive cut with a broadsword, and bared her teeth at him. “Kneel.”

Her voice hammered him to his knees so hard the stone cracked, and she caught his sword as it fell to the ground. Despite not having wielded a blade in a very long time, not since she was a child, it felt natural enough as she pointed it at the fae. Though by the dazed look in his eye, he wasn’t capable of much resistance.

“Do you yield?” She demanded, the point of the blade pressed against his throat.

“I—” He swallowed, barely able to meet her eyes. “I do.”

“Good. Then you will swear to me, forsaking all former bonds. There is no room for the Lesser Courts here on Earth.” Felicia glanced around, seeing that the other fae in the room had been subdued, with prejudice. The rest of the castle wouldn’t be too difficult to take, either.

While it seemed they were doing well, Felicia knew it was only a matter of time before the Lesser Courts moved again. They wouldn’t let her gain dominion over Earth’s fae without a fight, and Felicia had to have that dominion. The fae couldn’t continue to act as they had, for many reasons. Simple morality was one, less for the fae as for the mundanes they interacted with, but more pragmatically was the fact that the American Alliance would not stand for it.

If they wouldn’t become part of Felicia’s Court, they would probably end up being visited by The Ghost.