I've been hung over before on more than a few occasions, especially in the weeks and months after Susan left me. I blacked out a couple of times when that happened, only to wake up to ear splitting pain. Hangovers hadn't bugged me much through my twenties, but as I got closer and closer to thirty a night of drinking became more of a commitment. It was the night of drinking followed by a day of recovery. I didn't drink to excess often, it was too dangerous for a Wizard to indulge and the sadness at Susan's departure had reduced to the degree that I didn't feel it was necessary.

I'd tried to get drunk after Lash died. It didn't take. Apparently "getting drunk" didn't come with the whole godhood package, or at least my variant of it. I was reasonably certain that there had been a number of the old pantheons famous for the habit. As a consequence, I was largely without a frame of reference when it came to describing a "god like hangover" but I was reasonably certain this qualified.

Ivy seemed to have decided to break out the extra strength stuff after my brief moment of consciousness on the carrier. I didn't "have" a hangover so much as I had "become" a hangover. My arms ached. My legs ached. My freaking hair ached. I was a whole summary of aches, pains and soreness that just happened to cohabitate headspace with one Harry Dresden. I was lying on the ground, bound in a metal-lined canvas straight-jacket overlaid with interwoven strips of linen marked with an intricate pattern of glowing hieroglyphs. I shifted up to a sitting position, the act of moving without the use of my arms made more awkward by the slickness of the floor beneath me.

I was sat atop a raised plinth, within the center of thirteen concentric circles made of different types of metal. I recognized the innermost ring as the light grey of Naquadah. There were runes, words of power, wards, and hieroglyphs from every system of belief with which I was acquainted and many more that were entirely alien to me. I did not recognize how the spell work interwove, exactly, but I was certain of what it was - a prison strong enough to hold a god. I tried to cross the threshold of the inner circle only for a physical barrier of magical power to prevent my movement. It was not painful to the touch, but entirely solid.

I reached out to my power, seeking my own well of strength only to find that it slipped through my fingers whenever I reached out to grab it. It wasn't like being within a set of Thorned Manacles, there was no pain preventing me from using my power. My power simply wasn't. Any attempt to access my own strength or the well of power from my mantle resulted in a sudden bright glow from the symbols wrapped around me.

I considered the matter briefly, reluctant to turn to my wizard's sight. Wizards have an innate ability. Call it the "true sight" or the "third eye" or whatever else floats your boat, but what it means is that you have the ability to see things as they truly are. It also means that you never have the ability to forget what you've seen. For all I knew, looking at how this prison worked could render me blind or insane.

Not knowing how it works could render me dead.

I groaned, activating my sight and observing the circles surrounding me. There was a simply astonishing light show of hovering motes of dancing light, wrapping around my platform in a complex dome of interconnected fibers of magical energy. It was, for all its apparent complexity, a simple enough idea. Put a physical barrier up on the inner ring with a series of increasingly unpleasant runes to discourage the occupant form trying to get past the external physical barrier. I didn't know what those inner runes did exactly, but I was certain it was capital "N" nasty.

What I couldn't understand was how they were powering the damn thing. Ritual circles required upkeep, the stronger the circle the more upkeep it required. Even beings of pure spirt generally required that the one ensnaring them within a circle keep direct line of sight to the being they are trapping. Spells to trap something made of flesh and bone as opposed to spirit and ectoplasm were even harder to maintain. It could possibly be powered by a regular ritual, probably something sacrificial, but it seemed unlikely. Animal sacrifice wasn't an efficient power source for ritual magic, even assuming that the White Council would go along with it, and human sacrifice would be off the table entirely - both for the Brute Squad and for Ivy.

But to ensnare a god would require godlike levels of power…. Which they had, didn't they? I sighed, looking down at how the symbols connected to the floor. I tried to summon my power and watched it seep down into the naquadah disk beneath my feet, spreading out to the runes around me. I marveled in the simplicity of it. The more power I expended the more thoroughly trapped I would be. I could exhaust myself trying to escape, burning more and more magical energy till I passed out, but it would just be re-directed against myself. The spell-work required was impossibly complex, but there wasn't much that I could actually do against it while I was inside of the prison.

It would be laughably easy to break from outside the circle, of course, if anyone were able to disrupt any of the ritual items or symbols. The icons seemed to have been chosen to be those least likely to be disrupted by accident, but if any of the crystals or stone icons were to be so much as moved out of place it would potentially give me an opening.

Under other circumstances I would likely have been geeking out about the sheer audacity of creating something this complicated. I closed my wizard's sight, looking around the space to see if there was anything or anyone that might be potentially enticed into making a favorable mistake.

None were forthcoming. Instead I was greeted by silence and the sunlight of a Russian summer, casting shimmering shades of color through the stained glass windows of Archangel. The tall images of Saints and Angels couldn't help but feel vaguely mocking as they smiled down at me. I was not overly fond of the stabbing sensations that bright light were causing at the moment, nor the implicit insult that putting me under symbols of God were likely meant to represent. It just couldn't help but feel like a calculated decision to rub salt into the wound of my defeat.

I squinted through the brightness and took in the space around my prison and realized that I was in the center of a richly furnished library. The walls were covered in books older than most countries and scrolls that wouldn't have seemed greatly out of place in the Great Archives on Nekheb. I let out a long whistle as I looked up at the ceiling, examining the elaborate scenes from Greek and Roman mythology. If I really did end up stuck here for the next three years I wasn't going to run out of stuff to keep me interested any time soon.

It was impressive to say the least. Obviously constructed before the fall of the Russian Aristocracy, it had somehow managed to survive the communist revolution with no obvious damage to the baroque architecture. But that was the privilege of being staffed by Wizards, I supposed, one got to miss out on trivial things like social revolution. I could have fit three football fields in the gilded marble space, with enough room to spare for a decent concessions area.

My prison was only one such prison, twelve identical circles set up at regular intervals around a tall wooden pillar marked with great deeds of Jesus Christ's life. Two other circles were currently active, only one of which was occupied by a living being. My brow quirked in curiosity at the occupant. Easily over nine feet tall and covered in a thick mess of hair, he glared at me through beady eyes fixed within an unusually simian face. One of the Forest People? Where would they have even found him?

I'd had some contact with the Forest People before. I didn't talk much about it with people, in part because it was poor form to discuss my clients and partly because nobody was going to believe that I'd met Bigfoot. Well, more accurately I was hired by "a bigfoot." I wasn't entirely sure how many of the Forest People there were, you didn't find them unless they wanted you to. Strength of a River on His Shoulders had hired me to look after his son a couple of times. He was a good kid and I was fond of both Irwin and his father. They seemed like decent people.

River Shoulders always gave me a sense of serenity and grace, moving calculatingly as though he were afraid of what might happen if he were to act impetuously. He had a cautious deliberation to him that was actually comforting to be around. This guy, however, did not. He was like the nega-bigfoot. I wasn't sure if it was just a side effect of having been trapped in the circle for too long, but something about how hungrily he was looking at me gave me the creeps. I'd seen Ammit look at people like that before, generally before I had to give her a lecture on why cannibalism was unnecessary for keeping good order and discipline.

His voice was harsh, a fetid anger in it as he addressed me. "You're awake. I wondered if you would just die. The last one did, he tried so hard to get out that it killed him." He grinned at the memory. "It didn't last long, but I enjoyed it while it did. You're less pathetic than I'd assumed."

Not like River Shoulders at all then. I narrowed my eyes, looking the hairy beast from misshapen head to extremely shaggy toe and putting as much concerted effort as I could into broadcasting that I wasn't impressed by his wall of muscle. This was my first day in the metaphorical prison yard, and I couldn't afford to seem weak to the other inmates. I put an extra ounce of self-satisfaction into how I rounded the metallic reverberations into my throat in imitation of Enlil. "And you are more arrogant than one ought to be while trapped in a cage."

"I've seen them come. They all come. They keep them till they can figure out how to kill them, and then they go. I've outlasted them all." He paused for a moment, chewing his lip with a rotting tooth before spitting a black bit of ugly phlegm on the floor of his prison and thumbing in the direction of the circle that wasn't apparently occupied. "Well everyone but that thing. But it doesn't do much other than just be there."

The remaining circle contained a simple iron cooking pot bound with chords of interwoven silver and what seemed to be a long braid of woman's hair. The bigfoot snorted, "Not very talkative, but it was here first. Not a peep in two hundred years of living together, I wouldn't waste time trying."

"You've been here for two hundred years?" I blanched. "In that spot? Without letting you move?"

"They've got us here to kill us. Comfort isn't exactly a priority." Replied the Bigfoot. "Once they figure out how to kill you they'll do it to you as well."

The sheer existential horror of being trapped in place for three years without food or drink or even being able to lay down to sleep was nightmarish. It had been a long time since I'd felt hungry, thirsty, or actually needed to sleep – those were now indulgences rather than necessities – but I found them to be crucial acts to ground me to my own humanity. I didn't require food for sustenance or sleep for fear of falling unconscious, but I couldn't taste if I didn't eat and couldn't dream if I didn't sleep. I didn't know if I'd be able to go two weeks without going mad let alone three years.

Not that three years seemed likely overly likely given what was due to happen over the next couple hours – but wow, that was messed up even if it didn't violate one of the Laws of Magic to accomplish it.

I was reasonably certain that I would have the opportunity to escape in the chaos once the Red Court invaded, I didn't think that the timeline had altered enough that the fall of Archangel had been averted. I could, I supposed, warn the Brute Squad of their impending doom in the hopes that I might save them along with the White Council's foremost expert on fighting vampires. With them in still on the Council's side it might be enough to stop the war before it even started.

But assuming that I was even willing to risk the possibility of unmaking a portion of realty through the near inevitable paradox that would be the result of giving a warning to avert the approaching disaster, it would eventually beg the question of how I came to knew the Red Court was due to invade. It would be assumed that I was involved, or at least complicit in allowing, the attack. The Red Court had been present at my coronation, and though there had been no emissaries between our nations since it was widely assumed by the galaxy that I held some sway over the Red Court. Some of the wilder oral traditions of Nekheb claimed that I was able to bend vampires entirely to my will – that I'd given some of them the power of the gods.

No, I would bide my time. An opportunity would soon arise to escape in the chaos of an invading Vampire army, I just needed to be sure to exploit it when the moment arose. In the meanwhile I just needed to stay alive and alert. Once I escaped, it would become an entirely different ballgame. I would be risking life and limb to save my companions. The most immediate threat to both of which was standing right in front of me – unless, I supposed, he could be turned into an advantage.

I looked at the Bigfoot, considering my options. "I would have your name."

It snorted. "And why should I give it to you?"

"Because I'm going to offer you the opportunity to escape." I replied. "And I don't intend to do that until we've been properly introduced."

The Bigfoot laughed, it was a harsh sound that grated against the back of my teeth, setting my stomach against me. "You aren't the first to have offered me something like that. I'll give you the same counter offer I gave them. I promise to kill you, slowly." It grinned, exposing its blackened gums. "And eat your body after."

"I'm offering you freedom." I growled, my eyes flashing. "The two of us working together have a better chance of getting out of here alive."

The Bigfoot's laughter continued unabated as he wiped tears of cruel mirth from the corners of his eyes. "You are standing in that circle. Do you not think I know what that means? Do you think I don't know why I'm here? Do you think I don't know what sort of creatures end up in these circles? I've seen the things they bring into these circles. I've seen centuries worth of them. I am them." He made a gurgling noise near ecstasy as he mimed crushing something between his fists. "I know how we think, little god, and I know the worth of your people's word. I remember your people's time, and their fall. If they bothered to go up and grab one of you – then I'd be an idiot to do anything that benefits you."

Not an advantage then. I was really going to need my circle to end up broken before his.

"Smile foolish god." Replied the bigfoot. "We have visitors."

The doors to the library yawed open, clear sunlight piercing the prismatic shimmering patters of stained glass. Candles flickered to life around the library with a subtle rush of invocation as the Wizard Pietrovich entered the library. The man's black leather shoes clicked across the tile floor, walking through the interlocking patters of blue and white marked with three foot wide gilded circles. He seemed almost bored by the presence of magical prisons as he grabbed a chair from the wall, dragging it in front of my prison. He sat upon it, pulling out a moleskin notebook and a silver fountain pen from the jacket of his charcoal grey suit as he did so.

He made an attempt to address me in the language of the Goa'uld, managing to mangle both grammar and syntax beyond any credible recognition. It was even worse than my early attempts at Latin, which was saying something given that I'd been studying via correspondence courses. I got the sense that he'd never had cause to interact with it in anything but a written format and had made a best-guess-estimation at the language. If it was a calculated attempt at intimidation, it had failed spectacularly.

Lash's gift for words came in useful once again as the rolling sylalbles and soporific tones of Russian escaped my lips. "I think, perhaps, that it will be less painful for both of us if we don't rely upon your command of the Goa'uld tongue Wizard Pietrovich. Or would you prefer that I called you Simon?"

Simon Pietrovich stiffened in his chair. If someone knew the true name of a Wizard, complete with the intonation and intention that they put behind it, they could do some pretty horrific things. I had not invoked his name, even if I'd been able to cast out of the circle I didn't actually know it – not in the proper way to actually use it for anything other than casual conversation – but I'd been in the supernatural world long enough to know just how disconcerting it was to have something big and scary know who you are. Given how he'd had the audacity to send people to ambush me, I felt like a little bit of reciprocity wasn't out of the question.

He didn't show any overt discomfort, his voice studiously unaffected by my use of his name, but I knew that it had surprised him. "I had not realized that you were conversant in Russian."

"And I hadn't realized that you were stupid." I replied. "Senior Council members are generally smart enough not to start wars with powers who haven't offered them any apparent insult."

"You broke the curse laid upon your bloodline." Replied Pietrovich. "That is not a Council matter and it cannot be allowed. Even if I were looking to involve the rest of the Council, you have stolen one of our own. You flaunt his corpse and cowl, war was declared long before I chose to end the conflict. They would not blink if I told them even a shadow of why you cannot be allowed to live. The Council would not allow a man possessing a body of knowledge so dangerous that its mere scraps and abandoned notes produced the monster Heinrich Kemmler."

"I don't suppose that you'd be willing to believe that I am not your enemy?" I replied.

"The Archive has verified your identity to my satisfaction and clarified the necessity for your undoing. I have learned not to question the head of the order." Pietrovich replied. "It's funny really. I wonder if I had been able to steal the pet spirit of Kemmler if it would have betrayed its maker as utterly as the Archive has turned itself against your life's work."

"I have to wonder why you're talking to me at all then." My lip twitched in irritation as one of the ensorcelled wrappings rubbed uncomfortably against a day's worth of stubble. "If you're just planning on killing me without even trying to listen to anything I have to say."

"I am curious." Pietrovich replied, a hungry look in his eyes that I couldn't quite place. "I have never spoken to someone who was a man before he became a god. If you would prefer to spend the next three years languishing in silence – that is also an option." He looked at the bigfoot. "I don't imagine that you'll greatly enjoy the quality of your company."

The bigfoot suggested something anatomically improbable in response. Simon's lip curled in enjoyment. "One day, creature, your time will come. It might take centuries to bleed you enough that you are reduced to mortality, but it will come."

He turned to me. "You, of course, will not wait quite so long. Your demise will come much sooner, I fear."

"You can't be serious." I said in deadpan disappointment.

"I am deadly serious, Lord Warden." Replied Wizard Pietrovich.

"Do you realize how freaking cartoonish it is for someone to make threats that overblown in that accent?" I replied. "You sound like a Bond Villain – and not one of the good ones. What was the name of the guy from Goldeneye? The one who kept talking about how invincible he was?"

"Boris." Replied an all too familiar voice from the door as the eldest son of house Raith, my freaking brother, walked into the library. He was dressed more appropriately for a drunken rave that for… well, basically anything else. His tight leather pants and mesh shirt managed to show off the impressive array of muscles that it always galled me that he didn't have to work out to maintain. His face was worked into the eternal expression of vapidity that he'd maintained for most of his life before I'd met him – a defensive precaution to protect himself against his father's tendency to kill any son who demonstrated either competence or initiative. He apparently had at least enough initiative to have learned Russian and not bothered to inform me of that fact, given that he was addressing me in it. "And I liked that movie."

I hadn't seen a look of hate as pronounced as the one on Wizard Pietrovich's face at the interruption to whatever he'd been planning to discuss with me. It was the sort of face I might have pulled if someone suggested putting my dog to sleep because walking him was too much work. I didn't know if I blamed him either. It wasn't clear if he'd just put less effort into the act when he'd first met me, or if I just remembered his façade more fondly through the lens of memory and fraternal love, but Thomas was a lot more irritating than I recalled.

Pietrovich 's eye began to twitch, clearly steeling himself to have to interact with the foppish incubus. Even I had to remind myself that his incompetence was an act as he glided over to Pietrovich with a silly grin on his face. "He's rather pretty with all those stars in his eyes. It's like looking at a human planetarium."

"Raith." The Wizard replied. "How are you here without an escort?"

"You mean those two guys who kept following me? I just assumed that they were there to clean up after me. They're right behind, you know." Thomas replied, his face scrupulously blank of any relevant thought. "I mean they weren't very good at escorting. I was hardly walking fast at all."

The escorts in question entered the room soon after that pronouncement, red-faced and panting. Thomas had very clearly sprinted ahead of his guard using his enhanced speed, taking care to run just slow enough that they'd be able to keep up and no accusations could be leveled that he was trying to escape them. It was the sort of calculated insult that the White Court loved. "You see, right there."

Pietrovich held up a finger to silence the two Brute Squad Wardens that tried to explain themselves, unwilling to engage in any admonition of inability in front of the vampire. His hard expression told me that they were in for the ass chewing of their lives later. "Raith, your presence in this hall is tolerated because the Archive has vouched for your necessity and your relevance to the order. But do not continue to try my patience, the laws of hospitality only extend so far."

"And you've been incredibly hospitable." Replied Thomas. "But I thought you'd want to know about the Russian."

"We're all Russian here." Pietrovich snarled through clenched teeth, clenching the fountain pen so hard I was certain that it was in danger of snapping in half.

"The Russian Colonel, I mean." Thomas tapped his alabaster finger against pale lips. "Oh what was his name? Zukka, Zukak, Zunwalt?"

"Colonel Zhukov?" Replied the Wizard.

"Yeah, that's the one. Well it turns out that he's not thrilled that he can't just take the other three till the Archive is sure that they're not going to require more permanent solutions. Apparently he promised some big wigs that they'd be able to interrogate them – or dissect them or something. It was sort of unclear, his accent got kind of harder to understand, angrier he got." Thomas shrugged his shoulders. "The Archive thought you'd be able to calm him down. Apparently getting orders from a six year old girl and a room full of foreigners in grey cloaks isn't doing much to help his temper."

"Ungrateful little… if not for our intervention they would still be taking orders from a President who was little more than a puppet of the Vampire Courts. He will wait a day, a week or a year if necessary." Pietrovich pocketed the pen and moleskin, rising from the chair.

"Yeah, dad was pissed about that." Thomas' genuine smile broke through his façade of ineptitude. "He thought he had that one in the bag."

"His successor is more agreeable." Pietrovich glared at the vampire, seemingly trying to will my brother out of existence. He waited at the door, clearly expecting Thomas to follow.

"I thought I'd check out the library, see what there is to see." Thomas replied innocently.

"You will not be left unattended in this space." Pietrovich shook his head twice in a violent denial of the very possibility. "Nor allowed access to the books within it."

"Certainly as a guest you would not deny me the magnificent view?" Thomas purred, indicating the magnificent array of paintings and decoration. "That is well within the acceptable remit of what a guest might request of their host."

Pietrovich rolled his eyes skyward, looking up to a stained glass portrait of Jesus on the Cross as though actively praying for the clarity of mind not to just kill the incubus before him. He exhaled twice before speaking. "Reveal yourselves."

Ten wizards who had been beneath veils appeared within the space, standing around my brother at regular intervals with swords drawn. Thomas didn't flinch, not exactly, but he got very, very still. The sort of frozen momentum that humans can't quite do. His obvious escort had apparently been a distraction, something to lull him into complacency while his real escort kept him under constant threat of annihilation.

Pietrovich smiled as he spoke a second command. "Return."

The wizards vanished in another instant. Wizard Pietrovich smiled, "You may, of course observe the art within the library. You will not, however, act in any way that would be interpreted as dangerous to our cause. You will not touch any books or ritual implements, nor will you attempt to access either. And in future, I would not presume that you are as clever as you believe yourself to be. I will see to the Colonel's frustrations."

As the doors closed behind Wizard Pietrovich, leaving my brother alone with his veritable legion of escorts, he elected to do the single thing that he could accomplish to insult the Wizard without breaking his rules. Namely, he grabbed Simon's chair, flipped it backwards so that he could cross his arms over it, and sat down in it facing me with a wide grin as he asked. "So are you more of a Roger Moore kind of evil god or a Sean Connery kind of evil god?"