As we moved through the Tower, following Nanami and her warriors, their furtive glances upwards to check the high-ceilings for vampires felt forced. They were well-trained warriors, long familiar with the odd angles that vampires would often choose for an assault, but they were fighting their own instincts even as they followed their training.
My stomach churned uncomfortably as I realized that I was not using pronouns like "we" and "us" in referring to the Brute Squad Wizards – nor was I mirroring their own tense body language as we traversed the tower. I was walking alongside my brother at the center of the wizard warriors, silently considering our predicament as we approached the horrible sounds of the vampire army on the lower's lower levels.
I was not in pain, which was remarkable in and of itself given the recent, forcible dislocation of my limbs – especially given that it had been freaking mordite that had cut off my head the first time. Even supernatural creatures generally died when you decapitated them. I wasn't eager to test the limits of my newly discovered durability, but I was apparently at least partially immortal given that I had been able to touch mordite without lasting consequences.
Immortal, but clearly not invincible – if I wasn't careful I'd end up chopped up into bits and playing Bob for someone higher up the cosmic food chain. Re-attaching limbs was a fun party trick, but the Genoskwa had still broke me like a Kit-kat bar in the interim.
The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Chicago Detective or Dark God of Sorcery, fate had a way of running Harry Dresden through the wringer.
Archangel was entirely new to me. It wasn't a common destination, even for the majority of wizards who were allowed to visit, but I had been entirely opposed to the idea of going near it for most of my adult life. My own murderous warlock of a foster father grew up there, he'd learned how to do magic there. I'd only learned of its existence years later, long after I'd passed the White Council's tests to verify my status as an accredited Wizard, but I was immediately repulsed by the very notion of sharing the same space as a younger DuMorne.
I don't know if Pietrovich had ever been interested in meeting his "grand-apprentice" taught by the black sheep of Archangel, but I had been entirely opposed to meeting him. I'd never really put any sort of conscious thought into why I'd disliked the idea so much.
Given how far away Russia was from where I lived, and how little of a cause there was for me to need to go anywhere near it, it was sort of a strange thing for me to have such strong opinions on. It wasn't
like I had some sort of a standing invitation to go there.
As the Warlock who escaped the White Council's justice they'd hate me on principle – assuming that Wizard Pietrovich didn't want me dead just for having met the embarrassment to his name that was Justin DuMorne. I was basically the least likely person on planet earth to be welcome in a crowd of Vampire murdering badasses, especially after I'd volunteered them for a war with the Red Court without any prior notice. I'd at least earned a sign post on the front lawn with the words "screw off Dresden" scrawled in Cyrillic letters.
In spite of this, I had always been actively invested in the idea of not going to it. I know, my normal "Dresden" response to being unwelcome somewhere is to bull rush my way into that place, but not going there felt more like a product of my choice than a product of their prohibition. If you haven't guessed by now, I didn't have issues with my foster father, I had freaking subscriptions – if not libraries. Archangel was the place where Justin learned how to be a Wizard and a Warden of the White Council. The idea of walking the same halls he'd walked as a matter of choice had sounded entirely repulsive to me.
After having spent nearly a year cleaning up the mess left behind by my Egyptian predecessor in the Kingdom of Nekheb, however, conquering my fear of being near anything remotely related to DuMorne's touch felt more like a historical footnote than a point of personal victory.
I know that undoing the mess he'd made of Archangel's wards should have felt overwhelming to me. I'd spent most of my adult life having nightmares about the night I killed DuMorne and defeated He Who Walks Behind, but honestly – it kind of felt beneath me. Archangel was ancient by the standards of mortal Wizardry.
The great tower was a relic from before Russian unification, back when Russian wizards were more worried about Subutai and the Mongol hordes than they were about supernatural invasion. It had later been re-enforced as the White Council built strongholds to fight off Kemmler's minions, finally converting it into a monster of a nut to crack after WWII. Next to Edinburgh, it was probably the most powerful Wizarding stronghold on the planet Earth.
But if I was honest in comparing it to the defenses on Nekheb, it felt sort of mediocre. It was a primitive fortress made by primitive minds and built around a limited concept of human movement. Everything was just so… strikingly human. Goa'uld often spent their formative years swimming around in tanks of water, fighting with and consuming their weaker peers. They thought in three dimensions, always designing their facilities with the objecting of being defensible from all angles and limiting the potential points in ingress.
Jaffa soldiers lived their lives with the expectation that enemies might appear from under a cloak of invisibility or some fairy devilry. Humans from Earth, even Wizards, were too comfortably confident of their "predator" status in the predator versus prey dynamic, and it seemed painfully obvious after having spent so much time warring with Chronos. It was a place made to fight wars on foot against creatures that hadn't figured out how to fly into the stars.
Koschei's path wasn't hard to follow. The Brute Squad wizards cast light from various charms and foci as they examined the bodies, revealing the true extent of Koschei's violence. The mad Prince of Winter's tantrum had left a long trail of destruction and dead bodies.
My stomach churned at the mummified aftermath of Koschei's blade, men and women contorted into rictuses of unimaginable pain. They stood in place where he'd slain them, their petrified corpses still emanating the horrific green energies of Koschei's blade from the wounds inflicted on them. Black runnels of liquid poured down their desiccated faces, the rotted remnants of their eyeballs.
"That's just… nasty." Thomas retched at the smell as we passed a particularly fetid corpse. Koschei had apparently elected to kill this victim with magical decay rather than his blade. The man had burst into rotten meat, bones and organs spread across the wall where the putrid flesh ruptured.
"Entropy curse." I replied curtly, the ambient magic still poignant enough that the hair on my neck stood on end. Entropy magic was nasty stuff, rather than destroying someone directly it used magic to re-align probability in a way that predisposed the victim to die. Generally, the entropy involved was more of a metaphorical one, the victim would have a nasty one in a million accident that caused their death. This entropy curse seemed to have encouraged every micro-organism in and on the man's body to breed out of control – normally harmless quantities of mold and fungi weaponized against him.
It was a guess, but my guesses with regards to magic had been growing increasingly accurate as of late. The pulsing ball of belief just at the edge of my consciousness rumbled at my closeness to the new spell. I felt a fleeting sense of excitement at being around new magic worming its way past the mental barriers I'd erected between me and the well of power. I didn't like that my nascent mantle reacted so positively to entropy magic. Nanami burned the body, her lip curling in disgust at the tendrils of entropic fungi chewing through the stone floor.
The Brute Squad Wizards were competent soldiers, but they were hamstrung by my presence. I'd given them my word not to do them harm, but they would have been insane to take me at my word. I was an albatross around their neck, preventing them from moving freely. They were afraid to even talk openly around me, defaulting to coded Latin and keeping their discussions to the absolute bare minimum. Given that I was entirely fluent in Latin and had a firm grounding in the code word euphemisms favored by the White Council, it was an astonishing waste of time.
I'd never been overly good at speaking the battle language of the White Council, even normal Latin wasn't my thing, but I'd read Ebenezer's missives explaining it in the early days of the war before it had been abandoned entirely. Too few living Wardens had been fluent in it to justify using it as a primary method of communication. Consequently, Lash had also read them and had apparently included the coded battle language of the Wardens in her parting gifts to me.
"He's too confident, Ma'am." Spoke one of the younger wardens, his face scrupulously looking away from me as he addressed his superior. "I don't like it. And I don't like how friendly he is with the vampire. I thought that the Archive brought him specifically to keep the Old God subdued."
"There are a lot of factors at play Warden Pedro." Warden Nanami replied, her voice a practiced mask of civility and calm. "But I feel confident that the Old God isn't here to help the Red Court."
"How can you be sure, Ma'am?" Warden Pedro's lisped "s" sounds and swallowed "h" sounds slipped past clenched teeth as he unintentionally reverted closer to his natural accent. Spain or Portugal, it was hard to tell which.
"If the Red Court knew that he was here they wouldn't have the Black Court know about it. The blood of the Old Gods is necessary for some of their more potent rituals, they would never willingly risk losing it to brood of Drakul." Nanami replied, pulling a silver key from her pocket reflexively as we approached the end of the hall. She needn't have bothered. Koschei had apparently ripped the door from its hinges, smashing the enchanted silver device upon the ground. It sparked and spattered violent purple energy against the wall, a caustic pool of shimmering rainbow eating through the marble floor with voracious speed.
She pocketed the key, muttering darkly in Japanese, before replying to Waden Pedro. "And we can't risk them getting him either. The curses the Lords of Outer Night could cast with even a sample of his blood might be enough to change the tides of the war."
"But – but they fed on him already…" Warden Pedro's worry mirrored my own. Of freaking course, I would end up being the vampiric happy meal version of a fast track to dangerous amounts of power. If Jaffa were the intended food source for the Red Court it only made sense that an ascended Goa'uld would be an outright smorgasbord. I really needed to get back my weapons and armor.
"Yes… hopefully there weren't any Black Court Elders among them. It seems likely that they were just fledglings bred for this specific assault." Nanami ran her fingers across a palm sized stone figure of a bear. The head was worn smooth from people rubbing it as she had done. Given that it was the summoning stone for the Wizarding answer to the elevator, I suspected that it had probably been a much larger carving at one point. "But yes… they're going to be nightmares if the Genoskwa doesn't kill them before they flee."
"What if they devour the Genoskwa as well?" Pedro asked as he stepped onto the platform with Nanami. The stone circle had no physical connections to the elevator shaft, its elevation fixed in place with ensorcelled pieces of ruby that connected to the walls with thin tendrils of magical power. It looked too delicate to support the weight of our group, but the ramrod sense of pure magic I felt just standing in proximity to them told me how deceiving those looks actually were.
Nanami gave him a sidelong glance of incredulity. "Warden Pedro, you're new to our ranks so I'll forgive your inexperience. Warden Morgan trains you to hunt Warlocks, not true monsters. But exercise some common sense. Our other inmates were an Old God and the Prince of Winter… the Genoskwa isn't going to die because some fledgling vampires. They'll possibly wound him, but a primal beast of the Forest is heartier prey than you suppose him to be."
She spoke a nonsense word that must have been the magical command to activate the lift, and we plummeted down at break-neck speed. By all means we should have left the ground if not for enchantments affixing our feet to the stone. Thomas whooped excitedly, grinning from ear to ear – his face flushed from adrenaline and his eyes shimmering silver pools. "Oh, hell yes!"
I was somewhat less thrilled about the ride given my own state of undress - The tapestry I'd been using to cover myself whipped up and into my face, forcing me to grasp at it to keep it from flying up as we plunged down the stone tower. Thank god it was summer – I don't know if I would have been able to tolerate a Russian winter without pants.
The silver doors on each level of the lift transpired to be transparent from the inside, presumably to protect the Wardens from ambush. If that was part of the spell spoken by Nanami or a side effect of the key she held I couldn't say for sure, but it was deeply useful under the circumstances. It allowed me to assess exactly how collectively screwed we were as the lift fell down.
I caught glimpses of the battle as we whipped down the great spire of Archangel. Brute Squad Wizards and Russian Soldiers were fighting vampires off by the hundreds. Waves of rubbery black bodies and pearly white fangs fell upon the forces of Archangel, overwhelming modern weapons technology and arcane might with sheer numbers. Magic of every flavor in creation was being used by masters without peer, combined illusions and destructive power ripping gibbering bat-like monsters limb from limb. Individually wizards were dangerous, but get them working together and we become a force to be reckoned with.
"How much longer is it?" I shouted over the thunderous clatter of battle, flinching as a sorcerous green bolt of something collided with a transparent barrier over the silver doors protecting the lift. "We've gone down at least forty floors."
"The keystones are in the subterranean part of the fortress near Simon's workshop." Nanami shouted back. "The Archive will have fallen back to it, she was interrogating the prisoners when the Vampires attacked. It's easily defensible and more warded than anything short of the Library. That's where Koschei will head."
"Why does he want the Archive?" Asked Thomas. "Other than clearly being totally bonkers. The guy is playing with half a deck at best. I mean – revenge I get, but leaving your enemy to be devoured by a vampire army feels more than adequate."
"He isn't going to want her dead." Nanami replied, shivering. "She isn't that lucky.
"He doesn't want the host, he wants the Archive." The Asian Warden waved her hand, brining the stone slab to an abrupt stop in front of another set of silver doors broken to pieces and sizzling with the corrosive magics of mordite. Her lip curled in disgust. "Up till now the Archive has been seasoned enough to take him in a one on one fight. Now… now he will likely have his bride."
"Bride?" Warden Pedro practically screamed the word in horror. "She's not even old enough to have lost all of her baby teeth."
"Hells Bells." I felt like throwing up. "I know that Kissy face the Deathless has a reputation for not taking no for an answer when it comes to dating but this is extreme, even for a fairy."
"Not if you're the right kind of monster…" Thomas spoke the words softly, as though afraid to allow himself to be the one who said something that ought to have been obvious. "…not if you think of women as chattel. Get them young enough, break them to your will, and by the time they're old enough to actually use them they're too well trained to fight back – it's the sort of thing my Father would do."
I shot Thomas a sideways glance, knowing all too well that it was the sort of thing his father did do. Lord Raith maintained his dominance over the daughters of his house by pitting his hunger against theirs, forcing himself upon his children both in both the physical and metaphysical sense of the word. Thomas didn't fit his father's preferred pallet, but he'd been privy to things I wouldn't wish upon anyone. He'd grown up with many more relatives than I had, but nothing even remotely resembling a family. And there was a frankly horrifying degree of lore surrounding the Winter Prince to support his supposition.
I sprinted after Koschei's trail of destruction, pumping my legs as fast as they could take me. Thomas managed to keep up with me, just barely, but the Brute Squad Wizards weren't even close to being able to match our raw speed. Human endurance can only go so far, and neither of us was so limited. My muscles didn't burn as I forced them to move faster, though I knew they ought to be burning with exertion. Instead there was a purity of purpose to my movement that felt almost independent from any sense of physical limitation. There was a little girl to save from a monster – nothing else mattered. The well of belief thrummed in anticipation tendrils of power caressing my mental barriers in loving anticipation of what was to come.
"Do we have a plan?" Thomas asked.
"Kill the bad guy. Don't die while doing it." I replied.
"No, I mean a good plan." My brother shook his head. "You know, the kind we survive."
"Keep the bastard busy long enough for the Archive to do whatever it is that she's planning." I shrugged. "She captured him the first time, I figure she knows how to do it again if she needs to."
My vampiric half-sibling massaged his forehead with the heel of his palm. "You're gambling your life on someone who hates you having a plan to kill your enemy?"
"Well, technically I'm gambling your life." I sighed, massaging my recently twice severed neck. "I'm reasonably certain I can't be killed by conventional means."
"Good for you." My brother replied acerbically, though not altogether without mirth. He seemed to have accepted my ruse of fairy godmother remarkably well. It wasn't entirely fair of me to play off of my brother's loneliness, or for me to appeal to our shared connection with Margaret LeFay. He'd been so isolated for so long that even the poisoned word of a Dark God was enough for him to play along, at least in the short term.
Koschei had done a number on the prison, breaking open the cages of some creatures and slaughtering others without apparent rhyme or reason. I don't remember if I was even consciously casting the magic that ripped the ghoul in half when the half-starved beast flung itself at me, but I do remember snapping my fingers to set the two halves of the ghoul on fire. Thomas' eyes darted to the roasting monster and back, only registering the threat after I'd dispatched it.
It was the shared noise of gunfire and cruel laughter that let me know we'd found him, the rumbling rata-tat-tat of Kalashnikov's growing quieter and quieter with each horrified scream as Koschei slew the Russian Soldiers. I held up my had to stop my brother as we reached the battle, poking my head around the corner to take a peek and nearly earning a shot to the face for my trouble as bullets ricocheted around the narrow stone corridor. Kincaid had barricaded the corridor, mounting a defense with the aid of Russian soldiers and a number of spellcasters. Spellcasters who, to my horror, seemed to be wearing the brown robes of apprentice wizards.
It shouldn't have been a surprise to me. I mean, wizards took their apprentices with them and there were a lot of wizards in Archangel. It stood to reason that when Archangel fell that there had been a decent number of apprentice wizards who'd been cut down in their prime. But I hadn't had to see the bodies the first time around. Koschei ripped a soldier's arm, his wizened hands impossibly strong. Bullets pierced his flesh, but only seemed to irritate him as they passed through his body. The soldier surprisingly had enough fight left in him to stab Koschei through the eye before the old man snapped the soldier's neck, casting him to the floor as he twirled his blade lazily through the air – slicing a fire spell cast by a horrified apprentice wizard.
"Archive! Must we still play these games after all these years?" Crooned Koschei. "I'm getting tired of waiting for you to stop playing coy, little bird. Such a naughtly little bird, I'm just going to end up breaking all your toys."
He tutted angrily as Kincaid looked up from over the barricade and shouted. "If you do not back the fuck up I'm going to blow you to hell Farnsworth!"
"Bark, bark, goes the Hellhound. And he's found a new mistress!" Koschei's lips smacked wetly as he pursed his lips. "Does the Black King know my beloved has stolen his best toady?"
"Look moma's boy, I don't have time for your shit today. So if you're not going to take the hint, I'm going to have to make sure the message sticks." Kincaid aimed a terrifyingly familiar weapon at Koschei that was just a bit too modern for the Fairy Prince to realize what was going on.
I, however, was a child raised on action movies. I knew a bazooka when I saw one, and that was a freaking bazooka. I blanched as I got a look at the long green tube in Kincaid's hands, shoving Thomas behind me as I raised a shield to protect us. We were still thrown back by the concussive force as the rocket propelled grenade collided firmly with the fairy prince, filling the corridor with metal shards and searing heat.
Koschei the deathless, however, was no more vulnerable to the bazooka than he had been to anything else thus far. His patchy hair was singed and his already tattered clothing had been shredded and burned, but his now soot-stained body wasn't any the worse for wear. He stood in place, apparently dazed by the impact, stumbling around slightly as he tried to get his bearings after having his bell rung by the blast. Even immortals got dizzy from time to time.
"What kind of a fairy is able to take an anti-tank round?" I groaned, realizing simultaneously how outclassed I was and how few options I had at the moment.
"That kind, apparently." Thomas cringed.
"Just grab my head when the time comes." I sighed, bounding round the corner and shouting. "Koschei! I have come to slay you!"
The Winter Prince turned to face me, his ancient rictus quirking into something resembling actual joy as he spoke in his caustic sing song voice. "I don't play with a cheater, but the cheater still wants to play with me. What to do? What to do? There are so many toys and you're the only one who would even begin to know how to play with them. But you'll just cheat!"
I sent a blast after blast of fire at him that he just cut in half with his blade, hissing disappointedly as he twirled the mordite weapon. "You see – cheating. You can't help but try to cheat at this game. And there can only be one cheater."
He stomped his foot as he flung himself upon me, driving his blade through my belly. I grabbed him in a bear hug, forcing the weapon further into me and holding his wriggling body in place with a continuous effort of air magic. He snarled and spun, cursing me as bullets bounced off him. I could feel the projectiles rip through my flesh, but I ignored them – dragging the Winter Prince to the ground. "The game is no fun if both of us are cheating all the time. The game only works if at least one of us is playing by the rules."
We grappled on the floor, our constant wrestling match complicated by the blade I'd firmly wedged in my body to prevent him from using it. And then something happened that shouldn't have been possible. My eyes met his, and I felt the beginning tugs of a soul gaze. I practically ripped my head off my neck for the third time that day as I spun my face to break eye contact. I didn't want to see what was in Koschei's soul.
I scrambled away from Koschei, letting the blade pull from my belly and spread starlight across the tile floor as I flung a ball of fire towards the Winter Prince. I was disgusted to have been so close to seeing inside of the monster's soul.
Koschei crowed with hateful amusement as he cast a bolt of green lightining into Kincaid's defenses. "Yet another cheat! I see why mother has taken an interest in you. She does so despise fair play – nearly as much as she despises me."
"Consider it mutual, you creepy son of a bitch." Kincaid snarled from behind the barricade, "See how you like it when someone does it to you!"
He flung a long metal rod down the hall like a spear, aiming slightly above my head. I grabbed the rod reflexively, instinct more than rational thought leading me to trust that Kincaid's intent was to help me. I was not the closest alligator to the canoe, and Koschei was one hell of a reptile.
I laughed out loud, feeling the sense of unbridled power wrapped within the coiled runes and enchantments of my Wizard's staff. I slapped the mordite blade arcing down towards me with the haft of my quarterstaff, using the momentum of the deflection to piston the tip of my staff up and under Koschei's head. The foul magics of the mordite blade sputtered and hissed against the protective rules along my Wizard's staff, green tendrils seeming to flee from the torrent of furious starlight shimmering out from the smoky wooden surface.
I focused my will, using my newly recovered foci to direct my substantial well of magical power into a pinpoint of directed force towards the man's jaw and shouted the words of power.
"Maximo forzare."