Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

20th of September 2006 A.D.

Trying to track down a medicine man willing and able to take the Ways to Chicago on the strength 'trust me there's a Skinwalker on the loose' was what some wizards might call a Sisyphean task I just call it the most shit luck I'd had all year, well almost. It was coming on October soon so I'd be able to stop counting the Kemlerite Fan Reunion. It would almost be better if they'd just not answer at all, then at least I would not have to read twenty versions of the same excuses for why they can't help, can't tell me anything that will help, all topped off with the same well wishes at the end. I was a Warden after all, responsible for a big swath of the Midwest, just not enough that anyone would risk their skin or their knowledge on my say so. Absently I wadded up the latest note and tossed it in the wastebasket on the other side of the couch.

"Three points," he mock-cheered under his breath.

Being fair, hard as it was in this mood, I was keeping back plenty of things, like the fact that I'd learned about the thing from Molly, Pandora's Box on legs as Bob put it, before commenting too much on the legs in question. It was almost, almost enough for me to take Peabody's offer to pull some strings and get the job done, he'd keep really impressed by the Big Book of Yomi Wan, called it 'a mark of rare courage and skill' and a priceless addition to the Edinburgh Library, but I didn't want to pull some hapless wizard away from home in the middle of a war just because Peabody had them in a vice over not returning a book on time.

As though that weren't enough Murphy needed help with her latest case, a spate of deaths the peppers were calling the Recluse Poisonings, in a play on the spider and the fact that all three of the victims lived alone and as far as anyone could tell hadn't hurt a fly. Toxicology had been able to tell it was a poison, though they didn't have a match on it because there wasn't any natural poison that killed not just the victim but every living thing in them and on them. Sounded to me like a warlock looking for loopholes in the First Law,. Regardless he case it was indirect enough not to leave any traces to follow up with the Sight, like a black smudge on the face of the world. Only lead Murphy had been able to find is that all three had close relatives that went to John C. Haines Elementary. Me looming over them is not what those kids need...

There was a familiar knock on the door, loud but spaced out, Molly. I was barely up from the couch when I heard Mouse unlocking with the rattle of chains. Ever since he's gotten that phone Mouse was a lot more open about being more than your average dog and I wasn't quite sure how to take it. Sometimes it felt like having a roommate, or like how he thought having a roommate would feel from the TV shows he'd seen as a kid.

"So er... do you know anything about Dragon Nests?"

Dragon... I reached for my blasting rod without even thinking, for all the good it would do me if it were the capital D ones.

"Sorry I mean ley line nexuses. I was fixing one up for the spirit who claimed it and there are some people living there..."

The conversation that followed was long enough that it took us all the way across town, though a dodgy warehouse where the people were far too familiar with Molly and down into the depths of Undertown. "Hypothetically if I told your mom what you were doing down here what do you think she'd say?"

"That she's glad there's someone else to help me when she doesn't have the time." Now there was the smirk that said 'I've been waiting for weeks to land that one.' I'd have tipped my hat at it if I had one and if I thought Molly could afford a bigger head.

Instead I just nodded and motioned down the long damp tunnel. "After you."


23rd of September 2006 A.D.

The Jade Dogs, as Molly had called them, were something else. Most of them looked so damn young, like they should be planning spring break, not guarding a place of power in the bowels of Undertown, but then out of the corner of my eye I would catch the mantis-like jerk of a nocturnal predator recoiling from the light atop my staff or the dirty green flash of a ghoul's eyes as the head peered over the shoulder, twisted as no human could.

"They are fine," came the reminder from beside me. More than the enormity of the subtle power hidden behind that 'fine' it was the tone that sent a chill down my spine. It wasn't the bravado of a kid empowered overnight, nor the hardheaded confidence if someone who had a hell's worth of horrors dropped into her head, it was simply a statement of fact. To her eyes there really was no difference between the vampire holding the mug of steaming tea like it is a grenade they are about to toss and the young mother trying to calm her baby.

"And this is Porter, Porter this is Harry Dresden, he's the Warden of Chicago."

The collection of boulders and rebar in roughly draconic shape opened lamplight eyes to consider it. "Hmm... Warden in Chicago."

"What...?" Admittedly not the wisest response, but it wasn't like seeing spirits animate pure elemental matter like this was common. I'd only met one other before and that was in the Ozarks, where there was still plenty of untamed wilderness for them to draw on. What was this a pipes and plutonium elemental?

"Maybe it's hinting you should make like Frederick the Second," one of the older ghouls laughed darkly. Joke's on you buddy I barely scraped a D in history.

"Where's this enchantment and what's it run on?" I ask Molly and the stone dragon.

So she did, even though the jargon was rough to decipher in places, halfway between electrician and Ancient Mai, leaving me scratching my head at the sheer weirdness. It was almost like the reverse of a wizard's natural aura, grounded in stone and bound in lightning, but there was something missing, something that made the power amenable to being manipulated.

Ring after ring of analyses runes blurred into one another, sputtered and sparked, an unnatural order in ten points. Ten's five times two a pentagram doubled, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the duality was. Then as I was metaphorically smashing my head against the wall I looked up at the neon lights, with the serial numbers still on them. Base ten Arabic numerals, like the stamp of man's hand in this part of the world. Beyond the ceiling were the hundred feet of earth and rock and above them the City of Chicago... the city. Of course, an environment that was made by man for the use of man, the elemental shared its nature and so when it passed through the leyline it created a field of...

"Chicagoness," Molly proclaimed it to be when I explain what I had found. "So it should be safe for everyone right?"

"As safe as the abstract idea of a city given magical weight," you shrug. "It's a neat little riddle." Part of me wondered if I could use the newfound understanding of city-wide magic to improve Little Chicago even more, maybe not the fidelity, that was already pretty good, but the safety, being able to ground attacks into it rather than into the model.

It was nearly enough to make me miss that I was not the only one mussing. "I wonder what would happen if you folded it down and down again, if you could focus and give it meaning... voice? It would make a kind of city spirit."

"Whoa there I know the Pistons are getting pissed, but I don't think we should invoke the wrath of Chicago on them just yet," I joked, though my smile may have come off a little forced.

"But it could counter the tech-bane, it would make mortal magic, especially wizard magic no longer short things!"

Something about my expression must have curbed Molly''s excitement a little, because she did not press, instead pointing out. "Or you could try to cast in a urban frame of mind, you know in harmony with the concrete and electrical grid, that should have a similar effect." She stopped, listening to a voice only she could hear. "Or if we could make an artificial ley-line shunt we could at least make your apartment as safe from the techbane as this place and you wouldn't even have to pay the power bill."

The scariest part was just how reasonable 'make your own ley line' sounded when compared to 'lets raise the patron god of Chicago'. "That's an interesting idea," I temporized as one of the girls watching giggled.

Do you try to pay Harry for his work?

[] Yes
-[] Write in with what

[] No, you will find some other way to make it up to him later

OOC: Just to be clear raising a City God would take a hell of a lot more energy than Bane did. Proper Exalted Crafting can do it, but Dresden does not know what that is and so his thoughts immediately go to darker places.