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Horde Thief
Chapter 14
Marcone was true to his word, though a touch surprised by the skill with which you assessed the first contract draft that he handed you. It wasn't an unfair one, but there'd been a few points where the language was insufficiently precise for your tastes. You'd pushed for a few concessions from the original suggestions, small things really, but very specific. From Marcone's reaction, the one he hadn't wanted you to see, you could have asked for more. But alone in the world as you were, it was wiser to make him like you instead of being greedy. You knew what you were worth in breaking the siege of the Fomor, even if he didn't. Surprisingly, he didn't seek any further information on you beyond the basics, apparently content to let you prove your capabilities in the field. What he did do, though, was immediately hold to his final word on explaining how he'd known about your singular encounter with the Fomor.
That explanation took time, and even with your understanding of what magic could do, the sheer utility of this realm's technology was staggering. The watcher that had seen you hadn't been a person, but a camera. Your first thought had been that it had been a construct of some sort, but as Marcone had explained more, you'd realised that was wrong. They were like the system of magically connected mirrors that you'd been starting to build up across the Imperium as viewpoints for the Inquisition, to keep any eye on trouble spots. Except that these cameras could record what they saw, not just transmit it. It was hard to hold back the desire for devices like that, given how powerful a tool they could be for the safety of your citizens. Odd how you were still thinking about them sometimes, but things like this were technical, without connected emotion.
After that explanation, conducted by Marcone himself in an impressive piece of dedication to his word, he'd handed you off to someone dressed as a clerk who wasn't just that, citing other matters drawing his attention. Truthfully too, as far as you could tell, but overseeing the underworld of a city couldn't be an easy task, especially with the complications of supernatural forces for which there was no real law enforcement. That rankled, and you'd recognised a similar exasperation on his part. How could you get anything
done with monsters and mages creeping out of the dark to meddle and nothing to keep order? Marcone had mentioned Dresden in that conversation, with an honest but strained compliment. They might not get along, but at least the resident Wizard of Chicago had finally started to do the job that 'other factors' had kept him from for almost a year and a half. But he didn't have Marcone's resources, and that had limited his effects.
Still, things had moved swiftly from that point. A week later, you'd been the somewhat bemused owner of a full set of precisely forged papers, a set of plastic cards that were the primary means of monetary transfer in this realm linked to a healthy account balance, and an elegant manor house by the large, local body of water by the name of Lake Michigan. You'd politely declined a driving license, lacking the faintest clue where to start in the use of the chattering mechanical contraptions. They were more efficient than relying on your magic to ferry you around, though, so you'd invested in a few functional vehicles and a driver. Marcone had given you everything he'd promised, and as each piece slotted into place, you'd reciprocated in kind. The Fomor hadn't known what hit them.
You'd started on the fifth night, targeting locations that Marcone's intelligence network had identified as logistical strongpoints for the Fomor. After confirming the veracity of that information with your own magic, you'd executed a relentless series of lightning-quick attacks against them. Three buildings had suffered unexplained fires that night, with another collapsing and the final target exploding in a major gas leak. The plan had been for it to be another collapse, but the location had also been one of the main storage points for Fomor 'chattel' and it had been hard to control yourself once you'd seen how the Fomor treated those they captured in person. Plundered memories could only prepare you so much.
Those had been a key weapon as you moved forward the next night, though, giving you precise information on more areas that the Fomor had set their abhorrent gaze on. That night you'd gone in more conventionally, or more obviously that way from the Fomor's point of view, and with support from Marcone's organisation a time or two. You'd not been sure what to expect when you'd asked for it, but warriors wielding automatic weapons as easily as the swords they carried and dressed in studded leathers, hadn't been it. You weren't quite sure what they were, but a proper look at them when you'd been observing the last target of the night with a deeper sight had told you a few things. They weren't human, not exactly, and they were old by even draconic standards. In that attack you'd faced true Fomorian magic for the first time, what you'd had explained to you as entropy magic. It had been frustrating to have spells torn asunder by the froglike sorcerer, but a twist of time's threads behind a wall of Marcone's soldiers had removed it from the board.
This was the ninth night, and if all went right, it would also be the last one. The Fomor had pulled in their foul tendrils since the second night of attacks, aware that they were facing something that their chaff couldn't fight, but unwilling to give up what they'd taken in their siege so far. More 'chattel', the word igniting a smouldering rage in your stomach, and other resources. They were retreating, that was clear, but if they were able to escape then they'd just be back in a few months' time. Marcone had asked you to destroy their presence, but after seeing more of them, the foulness they inflicted on their captives not out of malice but superior certainty, you wanted more than that. You could have just left things as they were, it would have upheld your side of the bargain, but you weren't the type of man to leave a task half done.
The final stronghold was a concealed fortress, one that Marcone had never found. It was well guarded and warded, too. But wards in this world weren't made of overlapping parts, they were singular constructs. And no matter the number layered across an area, they were still singular constructs. You'd realised that early on in your offensive, and it had informed your strategy tonight. Which led you here, crouched under a glamour in the cold, spring night. Around you, the soft clicks of final weapons checks were trailing off, and you smiled fiercely.
"Are we ready?" You murmured into the odd pin fixed below the collar of your robes.
"All of the groups you requested have reported readiness," the clipped voice of Marcone sounded in your ear, crisp through the earpiece Gard had given you. You couldn't express how much you wanted this technology. The uses for the Inquisition alone. "We are ready, Mr Targaryen."
"On my signal, then." You replied, and withdrew your grimoire. You couldn't use your more destructive magic here safely, not until the Fomor's prisoners had been secured, but you didn't need to. The tome of wrought metal pages had grown a great deal since you'd first held it, and you flipped to the last page, careful not to make a sound. On the page, there was the shape of a spell, and on seeing it something in your draconic nature rebelled. It was an unravelling of unparalleled strength, that could shatter the most powerful enchantments without pause. Lya, the thought of her no longer so sharp now, certainly not in this moment, had told you that it would destroy any magical creations it touched, and could do the same to even artefacts, though the cost of such transgression could be devastating. You'd just have to hope that there weren't any of those in the empty strip of land that was your target. Energy poured into the page, investing the shape with the might of a spell of the Ninth Circle, and then your voice set it free.
"Break!" You snarled, and a ray of arcane unlight speared from the page, invisible in the darkness. It hit the edge of the wards at the limits of the spell's range, and bloomed into a space that wasn't just devoid of magic, but actively hostile to it. The wards around the property on the lakeshore wavered as a section of them were ripped bodily away, and then came crashing down without a sound. You had no time to marvel at the lethal power of the magic, though. You flipped the book closed, a flurry of gold from your cloak consuming it, and clenched your hand to activate the mic again.
"Now." Lights flickered to life in the property, the Fomor reacting to the sudden annihilation of their magical protections. And under a sky shrouded by dark clouds, men that weren't quite mortal rushed forward beside soldiers of Valhalla. With them came a dragon, lost so very far from home, and with righteous fire blazing in your heart.