It's not Goibnu's, but it'll do.
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Beta'd by Sesparra
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"Right, here we go," I said, plodding through a slipspace portal back into the living room. "One Warden, lightly used, mint condition."
Luccio didn't quite stop giving me the hairy eyeball when Yoshimo came through behind me, but she did slide her sword back into its scabbard from where she'd halfway drawn it at someone opening a portal into the middle of the living room, through a threshold and one that looks very distinct from a Way… which, to be fair, was a little alarming, even if I didn't think that you could open a Way from the Nevernever into an area behind a threshold without being, like, Old Man Vadderung or one of the Mothers or someone from the same ZIP code.
"Warden Yoshimo," said Luccio. "Report."
"I was attacked by the host of Saluriel," she replied, eyes still slightly out of focus and slightly bloodshot. "He's more skilled at hypnotic compulsions than I suspected, and he managed to capture me and remove me to a secondary location. The young lady, ah, tracked us down somehow, and dispatched the Denarian with my sword."
"My daiklave is, ah, in the shop," was what I said when Luccio turned her gaze on me, doing my best to hide my confusion over what a daiklave was despite her piercing gray eyes and the keen mind behind them.
After a moment, she just sighed, muttering something about Americans and Dresden being a bad influence which… I mean, she wasn't wrong? Inasmuch as the guy was solid in a fight and the kind of investigator that always had another trick to pull out… he wasn't exactly the kind of person that I'd trust around kids, because Mom would kill me for it if for no other reason. Either way, when she took Yoshimo out back to talk, neither Ramirez nor I followed
"Hey," said Ramirez. "The Captain worries a lot, but she means well. And… thanks for saving Yoshimo. This is her first gig with the Wardens, and I don't know that Shiro or Ancient Mai would have taken it well if she'd have died."
Shiro I understood, but what the hell did Mai have to do with Yoshimo? She lived in the US, not Japan. "Eh, don't worry about Shiro," I said, shrugging one shoulder carelessly. "He's… kind of intense at first, but he's not the kind to make a big fuss over something like that. Go out and hunt down whatever killed Yoshimo, yes, but not hold it against the Council, not unless someone there was, like, actively sabotaging her or trying to get her killed."
"That may be, but…" Ramirez shook his head. "For a vanilla mortal to get that old, while wielding one of the Swords… he's better than just good, and the farther up that path, the more… volatile they tend to be. Nothing against him, it's just once bitten, twice shy, you know?" He shuddered. "And Mai… well, she's her own damn warning."
I chuckled, then slapped Ramirez on the back. "Have a little faith, man. You're in the right house for it and everything."
As I turned to go up to my room, the Forge glimmered, and as the light receded, a new pedestal rose, and atop that pedestal appeared what looked, at first glance, to be an ingot of gold, but upon a closer look lacked the sheen and malleability of gold, replacing it instead with far more metaphysical weight.
Truly, the amount of shit that Nth metal could pull out of nowhere would put a fully fledged wizard of the Council to shame… which, to be fair, made it right at home in comicsland where it came from.
It was surrounded by what would have seemed to be an excessive number of similar bars, if I wasn't unfortunately aware of just how many things would appreciate being made out of this metal. Hell, if I could get my hands on Halsey or someone with that kind of medical knowhow, I could probably just build a body for Aine out of the pure stuff, even if that would be inefficient.
If I had the Shroud on hand, I could probably make something that could fill the same roles…
Actually, come to think of it, why was the Shroud in Chicago, specifically?
That was what had brought the Denarians and, in turn, the Knights to the Second City, originally, the Churchmice had been conveying the artifact to Chicago before one of them… LeBeau, maybe… had run afoul of Dierdre and been carved up like a hunk of roast beef at a buffet. But that still didn't answer the question of who had ponied up for them to come into town, and why.
There was a very limited number of people who would both be able to have the Shroud stolen from Turin and who would want it delivered to Chicago, although I couldn't tie a reason why they would want the Shroud in the first place to any of them.
Marcone was more likely to go through Monoc and thus Vadderung to get a relic or other magical aid, especially since, if I was right, he already had at least one of the Choosers of the Slain on retainer at this point. Maeve was… erratic, even before she lost it in her last year or three, but she'd be more prone to seek out Sidhe relics if she really needed them, and someone like the Wardens or Forthill would go through more official channels on their end to get access to the Shroud or something of the like than resort to a messy and, more than likely, unnecessary smash-and-grab involving vanilla mortals, setting aside the fact that the Wardens were only here for the Denarians.
Out of anyone, that fit Marcone's style the best, but I still couldn't see any reason for him to try and steal the Shroud of fucking Turin, especially since it would paint a target on his back, so that left… what, the dregs of the Vargassis, maybe?
I couldn't make heads or tails of this, and that made me worry about there being some sort of angle I couldn't see.
With the power of Goibnu's art and the speed of his craftswork, I could probably build my way out of any kind of surprise attack or something of the like, but I didn't like relying on my ability to adapt- I'd seen how far that had gotten everyone before, and that kind of cavalier disregard for the possibility of preparation actually improving a situation almost always got blood spilled that could have been avoided.
Fortunate, then, that I'd been gifted with the kind of material that put just about every substance known to man to shame, as far as raw versatility and metaphysical weight go.
For a moment, I was tempted to work the metal in my bedroom and then take a nap, once the rest of the Jawas who weren't going to school were adequately occupied, but even aside from the safety issues that come from doing metalwork and having a lit forge in a carpeted room, I'd been an older sister long enough to know how futile an idea that was, so I pulled open a portal back to the Future Witness, which was becoming easier and easier as I continued opening these portals, and ambled through.
"Captain on deck," said Aine, a playful smile dancing across her lips as I gave her a level look.
I felt as something within me drained away, a reservoir I wasn't entirely conscious of until now, and Lasciel appeared at the third point of an equilateral triangle with Aine and myself as the other two corners. "My host," she said, almost pouting, "aren't you going to introduce us?"
Aine didn't flinch, but she did give Lasciel an unreadable look before turning to me. "Who is this, then?"
"Right," I said, running a hand through my hair at the prospect of having to explain being semi-possessed by a fallen angel and then going on to explain using magic metal and the power of ancient secrets out of the history of the Sidhe after having to put down a Denarian and carry Yoshimo out of the motel room on top of last night being a shitty night for sleep. "So, uh, Aine, this is Lasciel, and…"
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Anastasia Luccio was still not sure what to make of Molly Carpenter.
On the one hand, the girl was fourteen, which was… probably under the ages at which the non-supernatural armies accepted soldiers? She hadn't exactly kept up to date with mortal governments, on the whole, but she remembered hearing it in conversation between two of the Wardens with non-wizard family that had chosen to fight for a living. Even if she'd made a study with the blade since she was old enough to hold it, she lacked the stamina and physical strength to truly make best use of one, and she'd certainly not had enough time for an apprenticeship either.
On the other hand, she had the bearing of one accustomed to command, as well as enough skill at tracking to find Warden Yoshimo and the Denarian holding her, training enough with a blade to fell the Denarian, and a personal realm that she could use as an intermediary for travel faster than any Way that Luccio'd ever seen or heard of, and that was ignoring the fact that she could wield the sword of a Warden to its fullest extent.
Were it not for her being the daughter of Excalibur's bearer, she would have suspected that the girl bore the coin of one of the Fallen who preferred arcane power, like Lasciel or Namshiel.
One way or another, she knew she'd be surprised by the girl again and again, going forwards, so with that in mind, she followed Yoshimo back into the house, stepping over the former circle on the ground with deeply ingrained delicacy before summoning a flow of water to wash the chalk off the concrete of the shed's floor, then a gentle wave of heat to dry it before reentering the Carpenters' house.
Inside, Ramirez was staring blankly at a pile of neatly folded squares of cloth, perhaps a shade or two different from the color of the gray cloaks that were standard issue for the Wardens, rubbing his finger across a loose corner.
"Captain," he said, almost hollowly, "was that an abnormally fast debrief or is the Carpenter kid just built different?"
"We were perhaps half an hour, why?"
"Oh good," said Ramirez. "Captain, Molly Carpenter offered us these three cloaks and said she's got more for the Knights when they get back in. Said she made them since she went upstairs and is now… she said she's gonna go pass out after making them?"
Anastasia frowned, then, for just a moment, opened her Sight.
She ignored Ramirez, and Yoshimo hovering at his shoulder, focusing almost entirely on the squares of cloth. At first, they just appeared to be more real than real, like many of the Sidhe works she'd seen, but the longer that she looked at them, and the more deeply, the more subtle aspects revealed themselves. The topmost one seemed to unfold itself, rising up to be a hooded cloak while still remaining a neatly folded square of grayish cloth, and around it the air stirred, a hint of ozone wafting off of the cloth of the garment as it seemed to dampen, just a shade, before drying itself.
Then her eye caught on the corner that Ramirez was still absently toying with, and the sheer intensity of the power in the metal that revealed drove both her eyes and her Sight closed.
She'd Seen Esperacchius in its full glory once, when she'd fought the Stygian Sisterhood with Shiro's mentor, decades ago, and though the whole sword glowed with silvery fire, there was a patch of the blade, just on top of the hilt, that seemed to be a star brought to the earth, so intense was its radiance. That was what the metal resembled, the sun made manifest, and as the sheer visceral impact of the experience slammed her Sight closed, she knew, somehow, that she couldn't find a better material for armor if she spent a millennium trying.
"I'm not entirely surprised," said Anastasia, "considering that those cloaks are nearly as powerful as the Swords, in their own way."
"Holy shit," said Ramirez, "you're saying that these are like our Warden blades?"
"Not our swords," Yoshimo replied, preempting her response. "
The Swords. Excalibur, Durandal, Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, Hrunting, Asi, Fragarach… the blades of myth and legend." She gave Ramirez a look that implied no small degree of disdain for his intelligence. "Three of which are in this house right now."
Ramirez did a passable impression of a fish that had just been removed from the water and smacked with another fish. "What?"
Anastasia sighed. She'd thought that her latest apprentice was adequately prepared for this mission, but apparently she'd not been as good a mentor to him as she had been to the previous ones… or perhaps this mission was just too much for most fresh Wardens, and Yoshimo was the exception, she couldn't be sure.
"Ramirez, come with me." She jerked her head at the door. "I have some things that I evidently didn't explain well enough. Yoshimo, put one of the cloaks on, see if you can't feel the magics on them out."
"You aren't worried about them being… dangerous?" Yoshimo asked, giving the cloaks an askance look.
Anastasia chuckled. "Oh, indubitably, but not to the wielder. Whatever else is the case for miss Carpenter, we can trust her to be willing to at least work with us, and this is an extension of that."
"Aye aye, Captain," said Yoshimo, reaching for the bundles of cloth without any further complaint.
When she got into the shed, Anastasia momentarily lamented that she'd been so thorough with cleansing the circle from the concrete, but there was no use crying over spilt wine there, and it was the work of a moment to erect a new one.
"Now then, Carlos," she said, her voice holding less of the unquestioned authority of the Captain of the Wardens and more of the gentleness that a good teacher would always need, "let me tell you about the Swords of the Cross."
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And that's that!
Perks Earned:
Nth Metal Ingots (Injustice, 200CP): Now this is valuable indeed some of the most valuable material on earth, in fact. This set of ingots, when cast into a proper form and utilized in machinery, can negate gravity, allowing for its user to fly if worn as a belt. Furthermore, it possesses extreme strength and power, making it highly suitable for use in weaponry or armor. You gain about ~1 ton of the material, which replenishes weekly.
This is the last chapter of GI for… six weeks, or so, I think? I've got another CF fic coming out (which you can start to read… elsewhere…) and after that Incense is making a bit of a comeback.
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