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Horde Thief
Chapter 24
The week that follows passes much as the few before had gone. Karrin Murphy contacts you shortly after the celebratory ball thrown in honour of the Fomor's expulsion from Chicago, and you have the funds to support an expanded analysis group transferred. After that, there is a quiet time. You bend your own talents to the task at hand, but you're limited by the sheer number of Fomor present in a nation of over three hundred million souls. Also by the fact that, as you begin to close in on their centres of activity, your scrying encounters resistance. It's nothing like the grey haze of the magic of your own defences, but the interference is potent enough to restrict your own data gathering efforts to confirming the general area of a Fomor stronghold, like the one you destroyed in Chicago. That's enough for the Paranet to do the rest, but not without danger.
More than once you're drawn from the work of hammering an alliance of convenience into something steadier to defend an information gathering attempt gone wrong. You do not begrudge the work, it's necessary, but there is sometimes something to be said for truly abysmal timing. But you endure, and in little more than a week your dedication begins to yield actionable results. Some would say a week would be far too short a time to secure those allies you're capable of calling upon. Some people are not you. Lara Raith is far more reserved in her next meeting with you, and does little to try and tempt you. Your words, it seems, had the hoped-for effect. The White Court promises support for your actions, and significant considerations for each city removed from Fomor influence, alas that they don't know what you'll use them for. Still, aid is aid, and as you assault strongholds across the breadth of a continent, it tells.
Far be it from you to say that monsters never learn. The first such locations fall easily, wards torn asunder by magic of the Ninth Circle, and the inhabitants cleansed. Large fires consume the remains once any prisoners are retrieved, and there are many of those. The Paranet takes them, no longer struggling with the burden thanks to your own contributions. But even with all your advantages, there are holes in any net, and a handful of your enemy successfully escape your attacks. After that, things become harder. Your focus on retrieving captives is obvious, and so the Fomor begin to build their defensive strategies around denying you them. Traps, hidden firing slots used at the height of conflict with the resident sorcerer. And it takes little time to learn to recognise the hallmark of your assaults, the sudden reaving of any magic set upon the place. But you learn quickly too, and last-minute divinations before assaults begin save the lives of dozens and scores of helpless innocents.
Through it all, Harry is a constant presence at your side, and what you see of the wizard in action impresses you a great deal. Like Lya, Harry is a practitioner whose danger grows in proportion to how prepared he is for a situation and you're able to give him hard information from your divinations. For each strike, you move under the protection of the most powerful ward against divination you know, a match to that upon your crown and there's more to his thanks for it than simple appreciation of protection. You don't comment on it. After what you saw in the Soulgaze, you can guess why. You've never had the patience for the complex work of enchantments, but as the days go by, you find yourself sketching out plans in your mind. Not for the first time, but never before have they been so detailed. Harry Dresden, for all his faults, is not an evil man. And his stalwart companionship and aid, no matter that the latter was given first under obligation, has been truly welcome. John is a skilled businessman, and highly competent partner in this world. But he's not what you'd call a friend.
Still, without him, passing the message to the Fomor of your terms would have been far more difficult. There are advantages to having a Freeholding Lord working with you. Predictably, the Fomor were unwilling to even approach the negotiation table at first. After a week of losing a major centre a day, that appears to be changing, but not universally. Where in some places your actions have sent your enemies hurrying back into the safety of the ocean, in others they've solidified a belief in their successes. Surely, if they had not done something right, a power like yours would have remained quiet. It's a difficult logic to fight, but there is one sure-fire way of extinguishing it; take it off at the head.
That sentiment is what leads you here, to the icy shores of Newfoundland, and what magic and more mundane analysis has told you is the heart of the Fomor's attacks on North America. You hired on specialists from Monoc Securities for this assault, strengthening your forces in expectation for the hardest fight you've faced so far. This is Fomor ground, down to the very bones, and that makes them far stronger than they've been anywhere else. This does have an upside, though. You don't need to hold back anywhere near as much. An odd sound fills the air above you, something you can hear only thanks to your enhanced senses, accompanied by a faint roar. Marcone's connections and certain clandestinely liberated funds – the cartel wouldn't be missed – had allowed you to acquire some alternate means of destruction. They were old models, apparently, but their weaponry was quite serviceable. And your divinations had confirmed that all of the Fomor's 'chattel' are safely below ground.
You ready the spell to tear the wards around the place down as the steady thumb of helicopter blades started to rise into the realm of mortal hearing. Beside you, Harry summoned his own power, preparing to hex what technology the building into useless scrap. Once that was done, you'd teleport the two of you and several personal servitors into the fortress's prison complex, to pre-empt any attempt to kill them. Then you'd move to engage the stronghold's Lord, and here you were being far more careful than you'd been before. You'd cast a protections against the deathly magics so often employed by the Fomor around Harry, granted every member of the attack the cunning and insight of magic in their weapons, and would summon shields of searing flame about them before you went in. The weapons of the Fomor were cold, darkness and death. You couldn't protect against everything they could do, but your wards would protect against most of it.
"Attack helicopters," Harry laughs beside you, the runes on his staff filling with green and silver fire. "Really?"
You shrug, watching the page of your grimoire fill with power of its own, less radiant but just as powerful. "They were an efficient purchase. And for somewhere this far from civilisation, I don't see any reason to pull punches." To one side, you saw White Court vampires and more Einherjaren crack open the seals on waterproof cases containing automatic shotguns, grenade launchers, and other tools of mass murder.
Harry gives you a grin too wolfish to be called a smile. "After you, then."
"Break!" You snap out the word in High Valyrian, unleashing the blast of disruptive magic into the air ahead of you, watching it tear the wards around the house apart.
"Hexus!" Harry cries a breath later, and you feel the rush of power from the man lash out at the coastal property in front of you, that was all but a castle in truth. Old stone had endured the passing of a century, now it would face fire. A word summons flame around you and the four modified servitors, a match to those guarding Naomi back in Chicago, and then you link hands, all facing outwards. Massive coughing sounds come from the approaching helicopters, streaks of fire lighting the night as missiles soar upwards and a curtain of rockets shriek down from the heavens.
And in the moment before the explosions start, you vanish with a word spoken in the tongue of your ancestors, into the heart of the fortress that anchors a plague of monsters upon a continent's shores.
