Mordite kills. I'm not saying that to be hyperbolic or to exaggerate the danger of the stuff. Mordite is literally concentrated, condensed, and caustic death to anything that it touches. Deathstone isn't the sort of thing you want around you. It's the stuff that sane people only deal with in theoretical discussions of precisely why you do not interact with mordite.
Only the most powerful of magic was even capable of containing the stuff. It was from the Outside and carried with it all the unfortunate complications that conveyed, namely that to even acquire fragments of the substance required to be both capable of and willing to engage with Outsiders. I'd only ever even seen a single piece of mordite when the Archive had brought it with her as part of my duel with Duke Ortega of the Red Court.
I didn't even know there could be that much mordite in our world without doing serious and irreparable damage to the fabric of reality. Stuff from the Outside wasn't supposed to be in our world. It didn't belong.
But clearly nobody had bothered to explain that to the pensioner of doom. He barely looked capable of walking without the aid of a cane, let alone wielding deathstone like his plaything, but any Wizard knew that relying upon appearances was a quick route to a painful death when dealing with the spooky side of the street. What people could do was what counted, and liver-spots was at the top of my "don't fuck with" list at the moment.
The craggy ancient being was twirling the black blade idly between his fingers, deft motion to them belied by their seemingly wizened form. Blue-green tendrils of deathly energy swam in the blade's wake, oily shimmering echoes of where the weapon had once been as the mordite unmade the matter it touched. The man hooted with laughter, a raucous cry of ecstasy and madness as his body whipped with snake-like fluidity, wrapping up and around a Warden's blade. His body popped and cracked as his bones twisted and dislocated within the loose skin, twisting into impossibly agonizing looking contortions of the human form. He slithered up and around the Brute Squad Wizard, cackling manically as he stabbed the black blade down through his victim. The wizard burst like a ripe melon, his body bisecting along the blade's path and rupturing into necromantic filth.
The old man crowed with laughter as the filth turned to ash upon his naked body, his eyes bulging with near sexual glee at the taste of death upon his skin. Magic seemed to warp around him, fire and frost tossed towards him swirling past him as though it weren't even present even as he sliced his blade through the chest of a Black Court vampire – bursting the creature's foetid body into ash.
He cackled gleefully as he charged the doors to the library, slithering his way through the air in a distended shadow of manflesh cloaked in the shimmering blue-green echoes of mordite. Everyone and everything in his path died, screaming in agony as they turned to ash. He showed no preference to wizards or vampires, murdering both with a casual glee that echoed with disturbingly genuine mirth. The air pulsed with a necromantic edge of so much collected death, a pulsing palpable wrongness that the wiry man seemed to be actually inhaling as we wafted up the trailing green smoke into his greedy maw. He was literally eating the congealed death collected upon the edge of his blade.
Wizard Dominic put himself between the skeletal man and the doors, holding his blade at the ready – his body wreathed in magical flame. He yelled at the man, his voice enhanced by magic to the point that I could hear him even over the magical battle between us. "You shall go no further, Koschei. Your madness ends."
The man laughed, his voice echoing with something altogether more disturbing than the metallic sounds of the Goa'uld. It was like listening to several voices speaking at once, each more hateful and mocking than the last. "Madness never ends boy. It just begets new madness."
"I will not allow you escape, bastard of Baba Yaga!" The fire wreathed about the Brute Squad Wizard lashed out, burning hands grasping for the skeletal man. They tried to reach him, only for the green glow around him to reach back, tendrils of death slicing through the fiery blaze.
The man tutted disappointedly, shaking his finger in rebuke as though Wizard Dominic had just been particularly naughty. He pursed his lips and blew a kiss skyward. "He does not know that you listen mother, or that you will punish his rudeness as fiercely as you wish that you were able to control my own." He crooned, sending a rude gesture skyward. "Or that I hate you more than any accusations he could offer."
He swatted another blast of flame in irritation, snarling at Wizard Dominic. "Can you not see that I am having a private conversation with my mother?"
"Die creature," Dominic stabbed for the skeletal man's heart, only to find himself held aloft in the lighting quick grasp of the necromantic being. The sorcerous flames continued to burn around Wizard Dominic, but their protective corona of flames just flickered and died on the man's ancient body. He gasped, stabbing hard into the skeletal man's belly. The ensorcelled blade penetrated the man cleanly, cutting across his midsection with surgical precision.
I've seen gut wounds before. They're never pretty. People have a lot of their innards kept around their midsection, including a couple of organs you don't generally consider until they stop working entirely. A broadsword to the gut should have spread about thirty feet worth of intestines on the ground. It didn't. The blade passed through the man's skin like a hot knife through butter, but as it passed the ancient flesh just knit itself back together as though there hadn't even been a wound to begin with.
Wizard Dominic's eyes bulged as he stabbed the man again and again, cutting and slicing at the man's body with his blade only to have the injuries heal faster than he could cause them. The man laughed with increasing mania as Wizard Dominic struggled against his impossibly strong grip, ancient fingers cutting off the Wizard's air supply as the green patina of deathly energy wreathed about the skeletal man's body started to rot away Wizard Dominic's face and body. The Brute Squad Wizard aged thirty years in a matter of seconds, his hair and ears rotting off the side of his face before the wizened man drove the mordite blade into his gut to end Wizard Dominic's suffering.
I flinched at the force of Wizard Dominic's death curse, cascading red lightning ripping down from the ensorcelled storms of blood magic in the skies to scourge the skeletal man from the world of the living. Bolt after bolt of stolen sorcery collided with the cackling being, only to ripple and die as it touched him – leaving him to stand in a scorched patch of tile that stank of rot and ozone as he began the process of tearing down the wards keeping us within the library.
"I don't suppose you know who that is?" Thomas queried as I raised my hand to block a burst of gunfire. My arm burned with the recoil of the automatic weapons colliding with.
"Someone whose reputation I'd been sincerely hoping was exaggerated." I replied to my brother, knowing all too well that the rumors had, if anything, undersold the man in front of me. "Koschei the Deathless One."
Koschei was the son of Baba Yaga, the "Iron Toothed" Witch of Winter. To date, there was only one fairy I'd ever met who was capable of withstanding the touch of Iron. Mother Winter, the eldest and most powerful queen of the Winter Court. She was as much outside of Mab's league as Mab was outside my own. And Koschei was her bouncing baby boy.
"Well, that name is only slightly terrifying." Thomas groaned. "On a scale of one to Hitler, how bad is this guy?"
"Imagine if Hitler and Stalin had a baby then sent it to be raised by Darth Vader on Mouth Doom to play covers of Nickelback on the Accordion." I tried to pick up one of the dead Wizard's discarded blades only to pull my hand away abruptly as a shock of magical energy cascaded along the hilt, scorching my fingers painfully. I shook my hand reflexively in pain. "Ok, don't touch the swords. Message received."
"Nickelback?" My brother blinked.
"Oh, right it's 2000, you're not sick of them yet." I yanked my brother down as a vampire swept an axe through where he'd been standing. I raised my hand and immolated the offending vampire in a blast of silver flame. The left side of his body cooked away, leaving him just enough lung to scream as he crawled away from me with his remaining arm and legs. "They're a band. Trust me, they get old."
"No I… I know who they are." Thomas snarled, firing his Luger into the face of a Black Court vampire as it leapt forward to slice at him with filthy talons. It must have been a younger vampire, it still stank with the rot of recent death when the pistol rounds broke through the creature's eyes. The creature staggered, not quite dead, as Thomas grappled with it – ripping the beast's head from its shoulders with a burst of vampiric strength.
My brother groaned as he pulled the magazine from his luger, swearing in frustration at the lack of bullets. He grabbed the axe dropped by the immolated vampire, driving it down to separate the half-burned vampire's head from his shoulders. He breathed heavily, pushing raven hair back from his eyes. "I just wasn't expecting an eldritch abomination to have strong opinions on post-grunge alternative metal."
"I'm eclectic." I shrugged, "But Koschei? Big, scary, and dangerous – and probably the hardest thing to kill in existence. He's basically known exclusively for being impossible to kill."
"That doesn't exactly tell me anything I didn't already know… uh, actually what do I call you?" Thomas turned to me. "They never actually gave me a name for you."
"What, they just told you that I was dangerous and if I tried to get loose to fuck me to death?" I punched a vampire in the gut, casting a burst of kinetic energy as I did so that ripped the creature's spine from its back.
"Yeah, pretty much." Thomas swept his leg, dropping a Black Court soldier to the ground, setting me up to stake it through the heart with a bit of broken chair leg. "I mean, you're from the pantheon that we were basically created to cull. It only makes sense to have one of us on hand. I mean, you're basically the feast none of us has gotten to taste in centuries. One of you is supposedly enough to make the hunger go away entirely. I've never eaten that well. I don't know if anyone other than father has."
"Ah." I replied, uncomfortable with how open my brother was being about his feeding habits under the circumstances. "Good then that I'm off the menu."
"Apparently so." Thomas rubbed the scalded bit of flesh reflexively. "They neglected to mention that you were in love when I agreed to this job."
"I doubt they knew." I replied, keeping my voice neutral. Lash was a sore subject for me. I'd fallen for the Angel's shadow without realizing it, only realizing that we'd actually had something long after she'd passed into the hereafter. It was some small comfort knowing that Lash was in heaven, but increasingly as of late, I doubted that I was ever going to find someone else like her before I followed into the great journey after death. I was less confident in my own position in the afterlife than I was for hers.
It wasn't a topic I was keen to linger on, so I opted for the safer subject of what to call me. "You may address me as the "Lord Warden" or "Warden" if you prefer. I am the Wizard King of Nekheb."
"… You have got to be kidding me." Thomas let out a long, low whistle. "No wonder the Council hates you so damn much. You're bad for their PR."
"I've historically had a difficult relationship with the council." Why lie when the truth was sufficient? "They've tried to execute me more times than is strictly appropriate given how I actually do generally support their mission of protecting mortals and Wizards from abuse."
I picked up the discarded staff from a dead wizard. It was next to useless to me as a magical implement given how little I knew of the magic used to construct it, but as blunt instruments went – it was pretty decent. I put my full strength behind the inch-thick wooden rod, smashing its iron capped top directly into the back of a Black Court Wizard fixing to chomp down on a Brute Squad Wizard's throat. The decaying spine of the Black Court Vampire crumpled under the weight of the staff as I twisted it upward, impaling the vampire upon its wooden haft. I raised the kicking vampire up atop the wooden spear and spit roasted the monster with a furious shout. "Fuego!"
"Well I'm sorry, when I woke up today I wasn't planning on providing status updates on a supernatural prison break to an Ancient Egyptian god of Chaos." My brother ducked a green beam of energy that smelled of sulfur spat forth from one of the more magically inclined vampires, mauling a pair of Brute Squad Wizards.
"Hey, watch it with that "Ancient" crap, pretty boy, or I'll leave you with a matching burn on the other side." I replied to my brother's almost good-natured jibe. It was good to see that Thomas had been decently capable of snark even before meeting me.
The Brute Squad Wizard who'd seemed to be Wizard Dominic's second in command, a woman of Asian ancestry, looked up at me in utter bafflement. She'd crossed her arms in a vain attempt to ward off the supernatural predator, and seemed to be frozen in that gesture as her brain caught up to the fact that she wasn't going to die. I grabbed her by the front of her grey stole and cloak, hefting her back to her feet and shoving her blade back into her hands. She stood gormlessly in front of me, holding the blade in her hands, seemingly too terrified to actually use the weapon.
"See it from her side," I reminded myself under my breath. A naked evil space god just saved her from vampires, shoved a weapon in her hand, and is now essentially ignoring any potential threat she represents. I knew that I had no intention of killing White Council Wizards unless it was totally unavoidable
Being handed your weapon by an enemy is an admittedly perplexing situation, but really, she was taking far too long to get back into the fight. "Well don't just stand there, Wizard, fight something."
She clutched her blade, holding it towards me in a defensive posture, light on her feet to strike me at a moment's notice. I rolled my eyes as I rubbed my forehead with the palm of my hand. "Not me – fight one of the vampires."
Her eyes flicked to Thomas and back to me, arching her brow. I groaned. "For the love of, he's here with you. You guys invited him. He's killed Black Court vampires in front of you. What more are you looking for here?"
I immolated another black court vampire in a wave of white hot fire, not bothering to look away from the wizard as I let loose the tornado of fire. "I am a freaking god lady. Phenomenal cosmic power, itty bitty living space. If I was trying to kill you, I would have already burned you to ash while you were on the ground. So, you can stop wasting my time and leaving yourself exposed to attacks and let me go try to stop the immortal nightmare trying to break through your wards or you can get froggy and see exactly how good I am at smiting."
"What guarantee do I have that you won't join him and just kill us all?" Asked the Brute Squad Wizard.
"Oh for the love of – I swear on my power that I'm not going to attack you or anyone else from the White Council except in self-defense while I'm dealing with the nightmarish monster carrying the deathstone sword." I spoke the oath, and felt the wave of power wash over me and the Wizard. I must have used more power than I intended to, her knees actually shook as though they might give out when the oath hit her. "Now, are you going to stab me, or can I go and deal with the Deathless one?"
The woman didn't ever look away from me, not even as she spun and vivisected a Black Court Vampire that tried to catch her from behind. She kept her gaze upon me, though her blade lowered slightly. "I will take you at your word, Old God. But know that I am not foolish enough to trust you."
"Cool," I replied, turning my back on her and walking towards Koschei through the pitched battle. I suspected that she'd likely had about four or five pithy comments chambered after that one, Wizards really did love to hear the sound of our own voices, but I wasn't in the mood for the usual posturing. She was just going to keep rambling about how untrustworthy I was and how she'd find a way to defeat me someday. I'd been on the other side of that rant before – it was kind of boring to be on the receiving end.
I mean, realistically I was capable of kicking this woman's ass six ways from Sunday. But the theoretical threat I posed was entirely mitigated by my own utter refusal to execute that action. Not only did I not want to have to do that, I was actively invested in something that was likely going to save this person's entire world as she knew it. While I might not be able to save her life, if she wanted my help in averting total catastrophe she needed to let go of her well-deserved fear of my power and actually assist me in executing actions beyond my ability to explain that were ultimately to her benefit.
Was this how things had been for Mab when she'd come to me in my office equipped with the future knowledge I'd provided her? She had a road map for exactly how my actions would be necessary to averting global catastrophe, and my previous self used the opportunity to be glib and petulant with a cosmic force of Air and Darkness. If I'd known then what I now knew of the Winter Queen's capacity to defeat entire fleets of Goa'uld warships, I suspect that I would have been slightly less glib with the Winter Queen.
I cringed. Oh, hells bells. I was starting to empathize with Mab.
A particularly unfortunate vampire became the focus of my frustration as I ripped him away from a screaming Brute Squad Wizard, grabbing him by his arms and kicking down at the vampire's shoulder-blades. I ripped the arms from the Vampire's body at the shoulder, letting the creature flop in agony on the ground as ash and fetid blood seeped from his sudden case of bilateral amputation. Thomas crushed the vampire's head as he passed, putting the pitieous monster out of its misery.
"Empty night, Warden." Thomas blinked. "Did the Black Court do something to offend you?"
"Yes." I replied curtly. My eye twitched at the memory of Mavra's blackmail of Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, one of many matters left unresolved when I'd been thrust back in time. If I couldn't find my way back to the vampire, she would end the life and career of one the people who'd been willing to back me even before I'd become the Lord of Nekheb. These might not be directly from Mavra's scourge, but they were close enough for government work.
Thomas was family but as a rule, I hate vampires. Even before I was at war with them, I hated them. Vampires eat people. Some of them do it in more "civilized" ways than others, but all vampires are obligate murderers. Every one of them I killed made the world safer. My eyes flared with angry light as I cast fire at the vampires between myself and Koschei. There weren't many, the Black Court had wisely elected to give the Deathless a wide berth, but those few who remained found themselves wreathed in spellfire and dying in agony.
Koschei was ignoring the battle, leaning on his mordite blade as an old man might lean upon a cane. His back was bowed and his patchy hair dangling down as he examined the magics upon the door. Sparks of magical energy shimmered down from his hands as he rand them along the wooden surface, energy cascading across the curious barrier of green energy that shimmered along his body. He sniffed at the air as I approached, tilting his head in curiosity. "Odd, my adoptive sister usually doesn't allow her power to touch one who she hasn't latched her talons into so entirely that they can't think for themselves unless she permits it. And I was quite under the impression that she'd done away with your bloodlines entirely. And … no, it can't be…"
He tilted his head over his shoulder, grinning widely to expose a mouth full of sharp, rotting teeth. He sniffed the air again, his eyes bulging. "Mother…. You've met Mother and lived? My, my, my… How is she these days? Still living with my Auntie, I assume?"
"Your mother was well when last we met, as was your aunt." I replied, standing proudly. Well, I stood as proudly as one can do standing naked in stolen boots. "And your sister."
"Adoptive sister." Koschei snarled, his eyes seemed to protrude slightly from his skull as he emphasized his disconnection from Mab. "Mother seems to believe that she can just replace family when they're no longer useful to her. She thinks that the Mantles are enough to make them what she lost. They will never be family, not truly. They are just insulting echoes of my sister and niece."
"You'll pardon me if I decline to comment on the matter." I replied. "I try to stay out of family drama."
"Puppet, you're already part of my family's drama." Koschei tutted disappointedly. "Once you've met my adoptive sister, its already too late."
"Perhaps, but I don't think that anything I might say about her in this situation would improve my standing. If I agree with you, I anger her. If I side with her, I anger you. Better to avoid the subject." I shrugged. "Dare I ask what you are doing, Koschei?"
"I am finding my way through the door that keeps us in here puppet." Koschei smiled. "So that I might take my vengeance upon the Archive. And you – puppet of Winter – why are you here?"
"I was captured, as you were." I replied, mustering my power for the fight I knew was coming. There was no way I was going to let Mab's lunatic half-brother have Ivy.
"Ah, but were you?" The man's eyes spun unnaturally within their sockets, twisting and bouncing. "No… no…. Winter's puppets don't find me by accident. They find me because my sister's replacements never learn from her mistake." He cackled giddily looking up to the sky. "When will you give me what is mine by birth, mother? How many times must I kill my sister before she dies? How many agents must perish before I am given my kingdom?"
In the blink of an eye he was upon me, writhing serpentine limbs wrapping around me and dragging me to the ground in a binding constriction of pink flesh and jagged bone. Thomas and the female Warden tried hacking at the man with their weapons, ensorcelled blade and iron axe beating at the ancient being. But as they had been when Wizard Dominic used them, the weapons were useless against Koschei's protective magics. I screamed "Forzare" and directed as much offensive energy as I could muster towards the Prince of Winter, only to have that weird, green energy siphon it away before it could cause him any damage.
I watched in horror as the mordite blade came down towards me, powerless to stop it as the blade came down towards my neck. And then suddenly, I was revolving out of control. I could still feel my body, I could feel the constriction of the Koschei's coils wrapped around me, and yet, I was tumbling across the ground painfully. The world ceased to whirl abruptly as I collided with the base of a wide bookshelf, my still spinning vision struggling to reconcile the impossible tableau before me.
I was staring at my own headless body on the ground as the Deathless One liberated himself from me, looking from his blade, to my body, and back in frustration. He stabbed the body several times in irritation, causing painful jolts of agony as the mordite pierced my chest but no more than I would have imagined coming from any other blade. He glared at my decapitated head, pointing at me accusatorily and shouting as he jumped up and down in fury. He stomped the tile hard enough to shatter it as he screamed, frothing at the mouth as he continued to stab me with the blade. "Cheater! You cheated. No fair! No fun! Cheater!"
"Fuck off!" I snarled, gritting my teeth and willing the fist of my left hand to punch up at the man stabbing my decapitated body with not only my own enhanced strength, but an extra helping of magic to push my fist faster than should have been strictly possible. My fist collided with Koschei's crotch, landing with a resounding "thunk" of fist meeting flesh. Immortal and unkillable though he might be, I knew enough about Koschei's lore to know that at least some parts of him functioned like a normal man. At least I hoped it was the case.
It wasn't strictly in line with Marquees of Queensbury Rules, but it did abruptly discourage Koschei from stabbing me as I flopped over my headless body and crawled towards my severed head. The process was disorienting as hell, our bodies aren't really designed to be piloted from a third person perspective. Luckily Thomas caught on to what I was trying to do and picked up my head from the ground, nervously placing it back upon my body as I reached up to press it down upon my neck. There was an abrupt sensation of searing pain as my head met my neck, followed by a glorious feeling of wholeness as my neck knit itself back together.
I cricked my neck to the left and back to the right, loud popping noises echoing from my spine as I re-aligned my vertebrae. "Well, that was unpleasant."
Thomas shook his head in amazement. "You're sure that the other guy is the "Deathless One" right? Because that seemed pretty deathless to me man."
"I killed a god of Death to get the gig." I replied, approaching Koschei with renewed confidence. Mordite didn't kill me. It didn't even particularly seem to bother me. "I guess that had more bonuses than I realized."
"Cheater!" Koschei was still screaming in fury. "I won't play with a cheat." He stabbed his blade into the center of the warded door, and spoke a single word in a language I didn't recognize that sent a wave of greasy power out across the room. I gagged at the weight of it, putting myself between Thomas and the spellwork as I rose my defensive shield. I didn't know exactly what was going to happen when Koschei's magic met Pietrovich's wards but I was positive it would be explosive.
And if nothing else, you can trust Harry Dresden on the subject of explosions.
A wave of fire and force washed across the library, setting the place ablaze as yard long shards of wooden shrapnel burst out as thought they'd been launched from a claymore. Wizard and Vampire alike were caught by surprise, rendered into roasting hunks of bloody flesh. I had to fight the natural urge to stop fighting and rush over to the shelves, the tomes in Archangel were old enough that some of them had probably been rescued from the Library of Alexandria. But if I stopped to save them, it would let Koschei get even further from me.
Even as the flames and shrapnel had pelted inward, Koschei had flung himself down the corridor, impossibly fast body skimming through the air on the green-blue cloud of death energy. I was not able to pursue him, however, as I found myself suddenly lifted into the air by two massive, hairy hands. The Bigfoot had stopped vomiting snakes and had apparently decided to make good on his promise of violence towards me.
And for the second time that day, my head was ripped from my body and tossed across the room. It was really amazing the sorts of things you got used to over time.