Guess what, I lied! This isn't the last chapter, but basically what happened in the previous chapter from Dresden's pov. I'd originally been planning to have Sai stay with him longer, and so I ended up having to leave some stuff out. So I thought I might as well write it all out into a small chapter of its own.

Chapter 11b

I didn't notice the ghost had slipped away before I saw him walking across the swimming hall turned to a battle field. I nearly froze at the sight, which is not a smart thing to do during a battle, magical or not, as a blast of force I just barely dodged reminded me.

I wasn't using my Sight. I sure as hell better not be using it, in a place like this – I had enough nightmare visions stored permanently in my mind to last for every night no matter however long a wizard like me might live… ("Like you?" I could all but hear Murphy's voice put in flatly. "Not too long.") …didn't need more of them.

Concentrate, my host, a voice continued in my mind, and I blinked, momentarily confused, before grimacing. Not Murphy, that one. Although quite right in this instant. Time to wonder about the ghost later, before Murph's prediction would come all too true.

The good thing about me being distracted was that it had distracted my opponent as well. She had clearly noticed me noticing something, and it was bothering her. Now, better keep her busy so she wouldn't notice the ghost, who might… well, I couldn't really think of any way a go-playing, overly emotional ghost might prove himself useful in this situation, but hey, he'd surprised me before.

I sent the ghost to take a message to the boy, the whispers went on, as I sent another blast of fire toward the woman, rolling aside from her reply of pure white light. She wasn't dodging mine, just stood there calmly, letting her shield absorb my attacks.

Now, there's a thought I should have had myself. What message? I asked.

About the summoning circle that must lie at the bottom of the pool. He can, perhaps, tell your apprentice about it.

I sure hoped Molly wouldn't be foolish enough to dive in there, imagining she'd be able to keep up her veil in the water. Straightening from my roll I gave the woman a slow look. This wasn't working out – I was exhausted to begin with and she… clearly had more power than I'd have wished for.

Certainly. This woman is strong enough to be a senior council member, my unwanted companion informed me, and I grimaced. Just peachy.

I glanced at the pool and saw that the crabtopus had retreated for now, and Mouse was keeping an eye on something else that swam just underneath the surface. Michael… seemed to be bumming a ride on the stingray. As for Molly, she was nowhere to be seen, which was exactly as it was supposed to be. That left me and…

…the woman who had started to glow a white light. I'd no clue what that was about, but I sure didn't like it.

As you shouldn't. Why don't you let me help you out here, my host?

Was that a rhetorical question or do you really expect me to answer it?

You need help to stop her, and to save all these people – not to mention so many others. If you just would…

No. No deals. I looked straight at the woman, even though the light enveloping her was nearly too bright to look at. "So all these people are just a lure to calling sea monsters from all over the world?" Get her talking. Maybe she'd slip something. Or be distracted. Or have a change of heart and start a seaworld business instead of an apocalypse and we could all go home and sleep for a week. Wouldn't that be nice.

…okay. Focus. What were you saying? Right, her plans. "That's it? The master plan to take over the world?"

"Of course not," she said with a ghost of a smile. "That question only shows how ignorant you are of what is really going on here – or what is at stake if I fail."

"Oh? Like, 16 people not being devoured by sea monsters? A 14-year-old boy not being orphaned? Yeah, right. Just about awful."

Her face lost the slightest trace of any emotion, turning into a blank mask. "As I said, you are ignorant, and there is no reason to enlighten you anymore at this point. Just don't presume you would understand my motivations, or what sacrifices I am making."

Couldn't help snorting at that as I circled around her, at the same time trying to take a look on how things were going for others. "Grand words. Easy for you to talk of sacrifices – don't see any of your relatives lying there." Good, there was Molly – okay, so I didn't see her, but I saw well enough the reactions her illusions were getting from the gunmen. Michael… was still hanging in there, literally at the moment. I caught only a glimpse of him as the stingray he was riding spiraled downward.

"Little you know. What happens here tonight isn't easy for me to do – but it will change the world. Yes, some will die for it… so that others would live. Isn't that the way it has always been?"

Okay, she was talking, alright, but saying nothing but general bullshit. As if she only wanted to stall. Let time pass. And if she really was that powerful, she clearly wasn't going all out at me. Why? I gave her a sharp look. What was that light around her?

She met my gaze without looking me into eyes – a neat trick any practitioner would know, to avoid the soulgaze. "Yes," she said quietly. "You are forcing me to improvise. But I can still make it work, even if this will be rushed, and with your limited knowledge…"

"Is that I-know-more-than-thee talk an obligatory part of being a wizard? Cause if it is, I missed the memo."

The light. It shone around her like a veil of…

I glanced down, and saw that the floor was covered in an inch of water. How the hell hadn't I noticed that before?

I looked at the woman, standing in the water, water that shone that same light that enveloped her, and I realized it wasn't light around her, but a thin veil of water, reflecting the light. Whatever it was she was doing, she'd been doing all the time, through that water.

She looked at me, nodded, and with a little movement of her hand raised that veil of water around me, too.

A freaking water mage? Water's the trickiest of the elements. By its nature it disperses magical energy. Flowing water is the worst, but even this might yet put a serious dent in my magic, especially if the water level kept rising.

The veil's brightness intensified until it was nearly unbearable. It made it difficult to see through it, I could only barely distinguish the woman's shape outside of it. I could feel the exhaustion of the previous day and the way too short night creep on me, and stumbled. It wouldn't be all bad, just to float in the water and close my eyes for a moment, would it…

Hell. Needed to get out of here. Fire. That's my thing. I gathered all my will as well as I could and prepared to call fire. Let's see if I couldn't evaporate this veil soon enough.

And that was when things went from amazingly messy to spectacularly screwed-up.

.

"Defend them!" I heard the sorceress calling as I hit a handful of ghouls with a quick forzare. "I will deal with him!"

"Yeah, defend them from the ghouls so that you can feed them to your monsters, gotcha," I muttered. Just how fucked-up can a day be?

Good thing Michael was there already, between the ghouls and the kidnapped people. "How about asking for a tiny miracle?" I yelled at him, reaching his side. "Like those two taking each other down?"

He gave me a Look and said nothing. Figures. A holy knight could be entitled to a miracle now and then, I thought to myself, but never mind that now. Mouse was already by my side. Molly and the kid had disappeared, having finished propping the sleeping people up against the wall. Just as good. Water or no bloody water, us three would be enough to make this bunch regret crawling out of their stinking caves.

The gunmen as well joined us, but seriously, you'd think she'd have got herself people actually trained to fight the uncanny. A single bullet does little to stop a ghoul, as they were soon finding out. Well, at least we had a common enemy now – though better to remember that if they were still standing once the ghouls were gone, they'd turn those guns to us.

Goddamn Cowl. I knew the moment he appeared things would go straight to Hell. Nice to see you can count on some people.

…Cowl… and a bunch of ghouls. Was he the one who'd sent them? Trying to get his hands on the kid in order to… track his parents and so the woman? Intervene in some other way? No matter what, one thing was sure; the kid was lucky not to have ended in his hands.

Three of the ghouls were aiming straight at me, the one in the lead a prime specimen of its kind, what with its face currently consisting mainly of a gaping maw. Couldn't help noticing the meat stuck between its teeth. Nor smelling it, unfortunately.

I planted my feet firmly against the floor, raised my staff, and right when the beast made a leap at me, waved with it upward, calling "Tornarius!" Its own momentum turned against it, the ghoul plummeted backward, hitting its two followers. They slid back on the wet floor, but not as far or with as much strength as I'd hoped for. Turning the enemy's own force against him takes less energy than just hitting them head on, but apparently all this was really beginning to take its toll on me.

I had any way gained a moment's break, and glanced toward Cowl and the woman, shit, what had he called her? Not Luna, definitely… damn, I shouldn't let names slip my mind like that. Though I doubt it was her real name. Whatever the relationship between those two, I bet Cowl wouldn't be giving me info like that for free.

She was once again enveloped in that shining veil of water, reflecting with obvious ease the attacks Cowl aimed at her, but I couldn't really see her doing much attacking at all. I had no time to wonder on that though, for at that instant the serpent decided to return, rising from the pool in a huge blast. It went through the ghouls as if they even weren't there, and I had just in time a shield up to stop it from striking at the sleepers. A black lightning struck at it, and it retreated again.

"Stop wasting your strength!" I heard Cowl calling. "The simplest way to stop her is to destroy the sacrifice! Surely that is a lesser evil than allowing her to succeed?"

"Lesser evil my ass," I mumbled, and blasted another ghoul this time all the way into the pool where it disappeared with a shriek that was cut satisfyingly short. But yeah, this wasn't going to work out in the long run. There were more dead ghouls than living now, I was sure of it, but the crabtopus was crawling out of the pool, and I bet it was only a matter of time when other things would join it. And the water just kept on rising, and I could feel its wear on my magic more and more strongly, all the time.

Right then a door banged open. Four figures appeared through it, uniformed, the first of them a very familiar small blond woman with a gun in her hand. Murphy. Now that's the real cavalry for you. I'd all but forgotten they were coming – though I wasn't sure if it was for the good or the bad that they were here now. Though they sure would be more efficient than these gunmen we had, one of whom was lying in the water – ouch, face down, I realized only now – and the other, out of ammunition, basically hiding behind our backs.

I was just about to call out to her when I saw movement in the corner of my eye. The kid was running across the freaking battle field, water splashing high as he went toward Murph and others. A ghoul spotted him, the very same I'd just spun through the air with the help of its own velocity, and turned to pursue. I pointed my staff at it, but before I could get my mouth open another ghoul threw itself at my face, very nearly taking out my eye as I fell backward to dodge it. There was a flash of silver – Michael's sword – and the ghoul was in two pieces on the floor. Rapid series of shots echoed in the air, and I gathered myself up to see Murphy emptying her gun into the attacking ghoul.

I watched the ghoul go down in front of the stunned boy who had stopped to look back. That's Murphy for you. Whoever came up with the phrase 'little but fierce' must have… no, they can't have known her or they'd never dared to put 'little' in there.

I had no time to keep watching what happened next, for the remaining ghouls redoubled their efforts, but at least the kid was now in Murphy's care. If everything else was going to hell, at least she'd get him out of this situation.

That's what I thought, anyway, until I saw them standing by the pool and the kid diving in.

What. The. Hell.

I saw Murphy and one of his men, O'Toole was it, firing into the pool while others aimed at the stingray that was attacking them. Yet another ghoul came at me, I hit it down, but couldn't tear my eyes away from the pool. The circle? That idiot boy couldn't possibly think he might…

…there was a shriek that was nearly painful to hear, and at that moment the water simply disappeared. Even my wet clothes were dry again. The monsters were gone with it, too, just like that.

A ghoul made still a surge, growling – Mouse stopped it, growling louder. Cowl said a word, too quiet for me to hear, and the ghouls fell back.

Seriously, what the hell. Even if the circle was broken, it shouldn't have canceled everything just like that. The summoned monster, at the very least, should still be here.

All things considered, shouldn't you just be happy they're gone?

I had no time to answer that, for Murphy walked briskly to me. "Harry. What is going on?"

What was going on? How the hell was I supposed to know that? I blinked. Then, suddenly, face to face with her, I remembered something. "Oh, right." She gave me a questioning look. "It's Shakespeare. 'Though she be but little, she is fierce.' How did I forget that?"

The look she gave me was a very interesting mixture of annoyance, exasperation, and concern. "You," she stated in a calm, level voice, "are even more out of it than usual. Just tell me who's the kidnapper. And hey, you might want to sit down."

Sitting down was out of question. I wasn't sure I'd get up again. "That…" I blinked. Where was the woman? My eyes scanned the hall, but there was no trace left of her. Cowl was still there, though, and I saw the ghost rising up from the pool. Some level of my brain took notice of that with relief – if the kid were hurt, the ghost wouldn't be that calm.

"Where the hell is she?" I said aloud.

"You mean she's gone?" Murphy said with a frown. "What about him? Who's he?" She gestured toward Cowl with a look that clearly stated he was just moments away from having his rights read to him. I'd like to say Murph's just got good intuition about people, but dressing like an evil Sith overlord wasn't really helping Cowl's case.

Not that it needed help. He didn't bother saying anything, just waved his hand, and he and all his remaining ghouls were gone through another portal before anyone could react.

Murphy didn't spend time staring after him. She waved at her men, who arrested the one remaining guard and headed to check the condition of the people still fast asleep. I saw Michael in a corner with the kid's parents and Molly who was leaning heavily on her father. I'd have to check on her soon, what with her being my apprentice and all, but first things first.

I walked to the edge of the pool where the ghost was still floating – still stubbornly visible to me against all sense – and looked down. The kid lay there, by the edge of a circle drawn into the bottom tiles. It was a complicated structure, that circle, and I'd have to study it more carefully later, but now my eyes were drawn on a graffiti someone had drawn on the wall of the pool, right behind where the kid was lying.

Mama never told me there'd be days like this.

I watched the kid a short moment in silence as he slowly began to gather himself up. "I bet she didn't," I sighed then, and sat finally down, deciding how I'd get up again was going to be somebody else's problem.

Notes:

(1) Been a while, but I had two persistent typos in this chapter: sigh instead of sight, and stuff instead of staff.

I wasn't using my Sigh. (Well, not yet at that point, maybe.) I raised my stuff/pointed my stuff… etc. (I sure am using my sigh here.)

(2) About water magic, I came across an interesting quote about it by Butcher himself: "There's water magic all /over/ the place, but part of its nature is that it flows in accord with the natural world, permeates it, and doesn't call attention to itself. Harry uses water magic all the time without realizing it, as do the Alphas, and Listens-to-Wind is probably the premier water mage of the White Council."

Uses water magic all the time without realizing it? Now I'm curious of exactly what that means.