Of the Hidden World
6th of July 2006 A.D.
Mindful of the time and of the fact that your mother is unlikely to be understanding of your detour if you take too long, and probably even if you don't, you ask to know about you restrain your curiosity as best you can to what you
need to know rather than what you would like to know: "So what's Winter like as an enemy?" you are rather proud of the little lilt of defiance in your voice.
I'm not scared of you any more.
Harry on the other hand seems less impressed. "Terrible, you should stay far away from them and not poke the ant's nest anymore than they already have. I could sit here and tell you that trolls are as strong as their stink and elves have poison arrows that the sidhe have strong magic over glamor and over the elements of the cold and the dark, but that's not really what makes winter a force to be reckoned with. They are methodical, calculating, cold, willing to bide their time because they know they have all the time in the world. You will think that it is a nice day to sail across lake Michigan for a bit of a lark and then... Boom! A kelpie comes out to eat you or it drags one of your friends under and as they grasp for breath offer to let them go in exchange for their lives. No matter what you choose... heads I win tails you lose."
Jump in sword first and carve them to ribbons, you think but don't say aloud, having been in the receiving end of enough cautionary tales in your life to recognize one. He'd probably say I would drown.
"Usun is there a way not to drown?"
"There are many who swim in dark waters and you might swim in imitation of them," he replies. "Lo there is power in those depths as in few places in this age of the world."
"Put a pin in that," you say as you turn your attention back to Harry.
"Winter's power over you, its power to use magic and affect you is greater when you are playing to their fiddle, so for instance if you were to take some deal Summer gives you, which they might." He sighs. "Lilly looked interested in you last night I'd like to think, I hope she does not try to drag you into their wars, but she is not Lilly anymore she is the Summer Lady and that means she is part of the game. You know white versus black and who cares if there are real people involved."
"So, don't take deals from any fairies even if they look warm and not cold, got it," you nod, crossing mental fingers behind your back. You got it in the sense of understanding, but that does not mean you are just going to blindly cross off a potential ally, even if they would be trying to use you. "What about Queen Mab>"
"Mab is like the wicked witch in every children's story, cold, powerful and cruel when it suits her," he continues. "Not that she doesn't have reasons for her cruelty, she absolutely does every time but well..." he trails off, uncertain about how much to say or perhaps how to say it. "You saw Slate didn't you?"
"The man on the tree?" you lick your lips nervously.
What would have happened if you had followed your first instinct and freed him? "Yeah, I saw him."
"That is what happens if Mab gets her claws deep enough into you, not that Slade was a saint himself far from it, he was the Winter Knight, do you know what that is?"
You nod. "Mortal agent of Winter, but if he is still that and he is too busy being tortured to fight doesn't that mean Winter is weak?" you ask, "Weaker than it should be at least?"
"Maybe and if you are Summer maybe that would matter as well, but you heard the hunt behind us? Weak or strong they are still vicious as they are clever."
"Much as I am loath to suggest such debasement Glorious Light of Darkness Born," Usum interjects into the quiet moment that follows.
"Perhaps we might do them some service in exchange for the feud being ended. Their sense of fairness binds them as tight as shackles of iron."
You take another bite of your lasagna and pointedly do not tell Harry the voice in your head suggested cutting a deal with Winter and called them naive in the same breath. "So where can I find them in Chicago?"
"Anywhere the cold and the dark is strong, faerie is the closest realm in the Nevernever to the mortal world... " He pauses and does the listening to Lasciel thing, he isn't trying as hard to hide it. "Undertown avoid Undertown, there's half built tunnels and forgotten tunnelsand tunnels that were here long before there was a city called Chicago here. I won't tell you where the ways in are because that is just asking for you to go pocking it with a stick, but there are all sorts of nasty things down there. There's vampires and ghouls and earth spirits and molds and fungi you won't find anywhere else and only about half of it is made by magic."
"What's the other half." He isn't doing a very good job on keeping you from being intrigued.
"Leftover radiation," Harry answers deadpan
Well you are pretty sure your immune system can fight off any mundane ailment and the decay of atoms seems pretty mundane.
"So you mentioned vampires..." you change the subject.
"Thomas is fine, but the rest of his kind are not, they are predators, whether they feed on lust or fear or despair so keep away from them if you spot them. I know where some of their businesses are but you should probably keep away from them anyway."
It takes more arguing than it rightly should, but eventually Harry explains that he does not mean that the lust eating vampires run the bingo halls for retirees. No, they instead, quite sensibly given their diet, try to run the sex industry and everything adjacent to it they can sink t heir claws in. After all if you can convince the prey to walk into your den there in no need to chase it down.
To be honest you are not sure what to think about the Raiths. On the one hand they are monsters that feed on people, on the other hand they are also people and if they do not feed they die. Is it fair to call someone evil just because they choose not to martyr themselves? Thomas had seemed fine enough so that he had worked with dad which means that unless you had met the one Good Vampire in the universe there are probably others like him, or maybe just a little worse... or a little better. You resolve to treat the white court as people with demons in their heads which you would be a hypocrite to call monsters out of hand.
Harry must have caught something on your face because he scowls. "I am serious Molly, these people eat people up and spit them out hollow as sure as the Reds do, they just leave the body more presentable for funerals."
"I can stop them feeding on me," you reply, sure as you had been when you pushed off the fear of Mouse.
"There's more ways than magic do that to someone," he insists, leaning across the table a little. "Vampires don't care how smart you are or how strong-willed you are, they are old and dark and when the rest of us were living out lives they were learning how to be better vampires."
You might have found that intimidating once, but now looking at him all you can read in his eyes is worry, fear and behind that the shadow of old pain.
He had given this advice before, you realize suddenly,
and it had ended... badly.
"I promise I will be careful, I can't really promise more since well..." you point helplessly to Mouse now imitating a great shaggy futon in front of the fire. "They might notice me first."
That being a point he can hardly deny he sighs and nods. "Come talk to me or talk to your dad if you have any trouble, any trouble at all."
You agree then change the topic again to something less fraught. "What about people who aren't dangerous, people I can talk to?"
That is how you find out about Bock's Ordered Books, an occult shop that handles the real thing including some books written by still living wizards on the nature of magic and McAnally's Pub which is neutral ground not just between the magical factions of Chicago but the whole world though some pacts Harry says he does not have the time to get into. He calls it 'a good place to duck in for sanctuary'. Inwardly you think of it as a good place to meet people of all kinds safely.
Lastly, almost reluctantly he mentions the Alphas, not because there is anything wrong with them, from the way he talks about them they seem to be good friends in a pinch, but well... they are good friends to
Harry Dresden in a pinch. A pack of werewolves to keep the city safe at night sound cool as hell and they are all students at the University of Chicago, only a few years older than you.
"I... er... might talk to them, you know introduce myself so there isn't any trouble," you say when he is done. There's not much point in trying to be sneaky on this one.
Unlike the vampire thing this time Harry does not push, maybe expecting the Alphas to be the responsibility ones. From his descriptions you kind of doubt they will.
So it is that with a spring in your step and a renewed surge of essence at your fingertips from all you had learned you bid farewell to Harry Dresden, though you do not go far before you find trouble.
Gain 1 Essence
Three cars over from where you had parked you notice the white Ford something or other had been damaged, the sheet metal of the hood actually dented.
This might have been the car whose alarm you heard when you got in to talk to Harry, though Mouse's barking had covered it. Looking more closely. It is the first time since Splatercon you had seen so much of it, but you do not feel as queasy as you maybe should. Unfortunately that is not the only memory of Splatercon that comes back to you. Next to the car, bloody and bruised, but still warm to the touch is a heavyset man in the uniform of the Chicago PD.
"Shit," you mutter under your breath at the sudden suspicion, confirmed when you turn him over. It's Detective Green otherwise known as that asshole who was questioning you at the convention, who Harry practically had to blackmail with the press to leave you alone.
What do you do?
[] Call an ambulance for him and leave, you are not going to leave anyone to die on the street, but that does not mean he is your responsibility
[] Fetch Harry, there is a beaten up cop fifty yards from his door, that is probably not a coincidence
[] Use your Crown to find out how he got this way
[] Write in
OOC: Well this was longer than I had anticipated , but I got it to where I wanted it to break for a vote. The plot thickens. 
