The Onslaught

Characters: Dresden, Molly, Morgan, Merlin, Ramirez, Lascial
Author's notes: The relationship between Harry and Lascial is a little ahead of its time. He has already started calling her Lash, and she is regaining a sense of humanity as a result. A thank you to Anon for pointing out some flaws in my plot.

I kept my eyes closed for longer than was necessary. Until I was sure that I still had to engage reality, I just wanted that moment with Karrin to last a little bit longer. Just to remember the feel of her lips once more. As time wore on though, the feeling began to fade. I could still see, hear, feel and especially taste the moment, but my subconscious was already forcing me to focus on more important things. I had met my subconscious and the abstract arsehole was ruining perfectly beautiful moments.

Giving up the struggle for current control over me, I opened my eyes and took in all of the events of my current predicament. Until I had properly focused, Lily was kind enough to hold off an active timeline. Looking round though; I saw that now she and Fix had disappeared from the space behind me they were previously standing in.

With no longer any supernatural force to hold it, I looked around the room and watched as people and objects were beginning to catch up with me, including the young, nauseated apprentice whose vomit had now reached his mouth as, in slow motion, he began to run towards the side of the room.

Turning back towards the Merlin, he still held that look of satisfaction, but was unconsciously tensing up his shoulder muscles. Good. A man can gain a lot of confidence in himself when he realises that his enemy is afraid of him. Why even now, I could feel my stored power beginning to flow back into me as my spirit realigned itself with my body. I felt the power in my staff and the protection in my duster and, for a split second, believed that I might make it through this.

Sadly, this confidence was short lived, as I turned back towards Morgan and failed to see any indication he feared for his life. Smiling at me, he continued to hold his sword upright next to his body and his legs had just started to break out into a run.

"I can help you, you know Harry"

I briefly swore and focused inwards into my mind. "Now is not the time Lash. Just because I'm in a bit of trouble here, does not mean I will take you up on your offer. Go away".

Rather than get a small chuckle from Lash, I heard only silence as she pondered her position. Inevitably though, her voice spoke out has she shared her opinions, "Don't forget that you're risking my life as well. I won't bore you with the details, but at least your conscious will be accepted with open arms after you die." I mulled that thought over and shoved it into a mental storage locker. "Do you even believe for a second that a higher power is going to accept me with open arms?"

I made a mental shrub and focused back on Lash. "Lash, I don't even believe there is a life after death. From what I've seen…and done, I can't believe that there is someone all powerful being out there looking after us."

For the first time ever during our non-consensual binding, I actually heard Lash verbally stumble. "But…but why would you risk your life then? What's the point in trying to live a morally just life if you see no reward at the end?"

"This is what you fail to understand. I don't live my life to hope for a much better one later; I live it so I have the opportunity to help others." I had probably just slapped her, "After we die, our bodies will fade but the memory of our actions will make a mark on this world. I want my image to bring a smile to those who might think of me."

After my little monologue, which I swear I had just pulled out of nowhere, my mind was clear of any more invading thoughts. She was probably just sulking in the back roots of my subconscious somewhere. Turning back to the problem at hand, I noticed that barely a few milliseconds had passed when I had started talking to her. One of the benefits of a conversation with Lash is that all my thoughts with her travel at warp speed.

I straightened by back, readied my weapons and focused on Morgan. It was lucky I chose that exact moment to do so, I time suddenly reverted itself back to normal and Morgan put all his weight into an overhead sweep with his sword. Sadly for Morgan, this was a powerful attack that many enemies of mine, most notable vampires, had tried against me. Since I was still here, they had quite clearly failed.

Now, purely on reflex, I waited till the last possible moment where the force of his sword outweighed the rest of his body and punched my hand towards his stomach. Though I had no hope of physically reaching him, I whispered the activating words into one of my rings and a weeks worth of kinetic energy flew out of it and into Morgan's stomach. Already overbalanced, Morgan was sent flying backwards in a front somersault, the tip of his sword missing my collar bone by a fraction of an inch. He flew through the air towards the Merlin's desk and landed in an untidy heap in front of him. Hell's Bells that felt good. I'd waited fifteen years to give Morgan a sucker punch and I had successfully done it…with style! Cue trumpets and cheerleaders.

It was official now. I was at war with the White council. I had attacked one of the head Wardens (even though it was technically in protection of my own life) and I would be branded a traitor and an enemy and would be punished accordingly….with a whopping big sword through the back of my neck.

Surprising myself though, I didn't care. Even as Morgan jumped up again and got sorted, I found it hard to worry about the rules of a council who had just tried to execute me. Even as Morgan began pressing for another attack, I glanced around the room. Sensing a disturbance that they would rather not choose sides on, the apprentices had already sprinted from the room in order to avoid the problem until it goes away.

My heart momentarily collapsed when I scanned for Molly in the area where I had last seen her but only found the blood stained spot where she had been sitting. From the far corner where Ramirez had been patiently standing, he managed to catch my attention with a brief wave of his arms. He was holding Molly at his side, partially hidden by his grey cloak. It appeared to be as if he was restraining her, but he glanced at my eyes and gave an inconspicuous wink. He wasn't holding her against her will. I understood that he couldn't risk helping me and also be classed as a traitor, but he could protect Molly for the moment from the inevitable backlashes that might occur during the scuffle. Bit of an understatement, but it was disorganised, unplanned and dangerous. A scuffle.

I briefly nodded to him and he half dragged/half carried the wet eyed Molly out of the room. Suddenly reminding myself that a very angry Warden was heading towards my back, I turned towards Morgan quick enough so that I could bring my staff up on reflex and block the sword that could've sliced right down my body. I had a loud crack echo across the room as enchanted sword met enchanted staff and neither gave way.

Grinning, I quietly thanked Karrin for all those years of staff combat training and pressed in for an attack. Unintentionally holding back our magic's and deciding to expel ten years of built up anger, Morgan and I circled around each other, testing physical skill against physically skill and producing sparks across the floor and cracking sounds around the room. Spinning my staff around my head for momentum, I aimed it to the side of Morgan's skull and let fly, but he quickly parried away my blow and tried to lunge towards my chest. The benefits of a staff are that either end can be used for attack. Jumping to the side in an effort to dodge the blade, I used the momentum from Morgan's parry to bring the other end of the staff upwards and straight into his chin.

Small droplets of blood spat from his mouth as Morgan's head whipped backwards and he whirled around me a few paces to steady himself. Though I had managed to split his bottom lip, he shrugged of the bruise that will eventually follow and leapt towards me again. Weapon met weapon every as we both tried to rain down blows on each other, sounds of our fight and breathing shouting around the room, but in the end, Morgan had fought with a sword for decades more than me and I began to slow down and only just avoid his deadly attacks, which to be fair, were most of them.

Studying my flagging movements, Morgan suddenly threw his sword to the side to free up his hands and lunged towards my throat in one, fluid movement. I managed to swing a few blows at him, but he was now pressing so close that I couldn't build up any power to hurt him. I began to yell activating words to shoot fire at him, but he cut of my breathing and pressed his fingers into my oesophagus. I couldn't speak, so I resorted to bashing his shoulders with my free hand, but he became unconcerned by the blows. Morgan wanted to kill me with his bare hands and watch the life drain slowly out of me.

When dark spots began to cloud the edges of my vision, I could see no other way out. A pang of doubt crossed my mind before I mentally shook the thought away and looked straight at Morgan, staring directly into his eyes. Though I was afraid of what I might find from attempting a soul gaze with Morgan, I might have a chance to convince him that I'm not the bad guy. That I only tried to do the right thing. Before Morgan has a chance to realise what I was doing, so caught up in the current task of killing me, his eyes widened and I flew into his mind and was covered in darkness.

Very slowly, images began to swim into my vision, brief second flashes of things that Morgan had been forced to do in the name of the Council. One such image was of Morgan when he must have been a young adult, so full of promise that he had already been presented with a Warden cloak and wore it proudly. His straight hair had been cut at a fashionable shoulder length style and his eyes glittered with pride whenever he glanced at a Council member. He was standing before the Council in another one of the desolate warehouses that was used for the meetings. Kneeling in front of him was a scrawny woman, maybe only a few years younger than him and covered in rags of what must have been shredded clothes. She was breathing heavily and looking down at the floor, her eyes closed and waiting for her end. Morgan then drew his long sword out and held it above his head, before hesitating and standing still for a few moments. He must have been terrified as hell, because steady hands I was so used to today, were shaking with fear and his face looked above the woman so he could pretend she wasn't there. Closing his eyes and turning his head away slightly, he rapidly brought down his sword onto the back of the woman's neck and a rush of blood sprayed onto his cloak. As the image began to fade, he lowered his sword and stumbled to the back of the room, refusing to meet eyes with any of the Council studying him intently.

I wonder if Morgan even remembered that kid who he used to be. The innocent child who would hesitate and wonder if he was really doing the right thing before he killed anyone. For this moment to have been imprinted onto his soul, it must have affected him in a catastrophic way. I pitied that poor boy. He had probably been forced to kill that woman.

The next image I was shown must have been only half a decade ago. He had scars that I have already seen on him before, some of them caused by me, and he had flattened his hair in the formal way that people remembered him for. He was standing a little to the edge of a long table, capable of seating at around six people. The candles scattered along the oak desk only created the smallest amount of light, which only just managed to illuminate Morgan's face before being sucked into a wall of darkness that surrounded the table. Nothing showed beyond it.

There were other people surrounding the table but all of them had their heads bowed and there bodies were shielded by a black robe. Judging by the shape of some of the robes, I didn't believe for a second that all of them were human. Seated along the table were six people I was well acquainted with, all of them at some point in the past having tried to kill me for some obscure sense of justice.

On one side of the table was a hell spawn, a creature of darkness, a demon called Chaunzaggoroth, but to me, I called him Chauncy. He was a scaly creature, with opposable pincers rather than fingers and a long, beaked nose. This was actually a fashionable look in the deeps, so the only way I could identify him, was from a pair of wire framed spectacles that sat upon his beak. Many years ago, I had been reading an obscure bit of text and discovered the name of a knowledge demon. Names have power. Just knowing his name, I had called him up several times in the past for information and was provided with it in exchange for parts of my name. Like me being able to call up Chauncy, with my name he could have called me down. He actually had the nerve to try and bribe me for a full name several years back, but I exorcised him and haven't called him since. While he wasn't the most powerful demon in hell, he made up for it in information. You'd be surprised how many of humanities secrets pass briefly through the deep. I glanced down to see where the summoning ring was that was keeping him contained, but I saw nothing. He wasn't attacking anyone, just seating there, smiling. Fear and worry rushed through me as I wondered what kind of dark meeting was this that has a demon agree to play nicely.

I focused on the relaxed person sitting next to him and understood why the man wasn't even leaning away from the demon. Hell, they were probably related in some way. Sat next to Chauncy, was a fallen angel, member of the Order of the Blackened Denarius, a society of thirty fallen angels cast out from the gates of heaven and forced to live with the mortals. While they no longer had the full angel weapon kit, the fallen were some of the toughest opponents I have faced and have easily shrugged off my spells in the past. I had already met more fallen than I am comfortable with, but this one I hadn't seen. All I recognised was the glowing Sigil on his forehead, written in the script of the angels. Long, dark hair covered most of his face, but I swear there were, what looked like spines, protruding from the edges of his hair line.

Sitting across from him and also at ease, was the Faerie queen of the Unseelie court of Winter, Queen Mab. She ruled with an iron fist (theoretical iron of course because the touch of real iron would probably kill her) in the winter realm of the Nevernever and, at this current moment, has every right to be angry at me. It had only been a few hours since my assault on her castle of Arctis-Tor (basically her capital) and I had got away scot free. Right now, meeting her again would produce a similar effect as getting thrown in with the lions and it's not going to be her blood coating the walls. While she always had a certain aura of suffering, her focus now was on the fallen sitting across from her. Though she tried to hide it, gears were turning in Mab's head as she curiously studied the creature. Maybe the Denarians were so powerful that even a faerie queen had very right to fear them.

At the other end of the table were two more people who, (surprise surprise), I had pissed off at some point during my short lifetime as saviour of the world. On the left, sat a vampire sorceress of the Black court, the smallest, but probably one of the toughest after the weaker members of is faction were wiped out centuries ago and the strongest ones were left to carry on. Mavra herself was probably the strongest and smartest vampire I had met, mainly because she was one of my few enemies who didn't try to kill me by just chucking foot soldiers in my way. I flinched upon remembering the time when she used a flame-thrower on me and I nearly lost the use of my hand. Sitting across from her, though I couldn't see his face, was the Red King, current ruler of the red court, the largest and not-as-powerful-as-Black-but-still-darn-powerful, vampire court in play. They were the ones currently at war with the White Court, so I and all the other Wardens had been forced to sit through a two hour long presentation on the Red King. Rather than recognize him by sight though, we were trained to detect his scent of dirty evil, and this guy was currently leaking bucketfuls of the stuff.

Though everyone at this table, would skin me alive if I ever met them face to face unprepared, they were nothing compared to the shock I felt when I stared at the person sitting at the head of the table. My throat tightened and my stomach lurched, when the Merlin began issuing statements to the other attendees about certain plans in action and possible outcomes.

Since no man, woman or thing currently surrounding the desk were trying to maul each other to death, they must have had something in common. For The Merlin to even consort with these creatures, he would have to offer something in return. Information.

I quickly stared at all the people around the table again, but all of the pieces had begun to fit together. The attacks the vampires made on the White Council had to have information from the inside to cause so many losses to our ranks. They knew where to hit us. They knew our defences. They knew our weaknesses.

Though I believed my allies when they said Mab was crazy, she would need a bloody good reason to not attack the vampires after they broke through their borders and ran amok through Winter territory. They were let in. Now I came to think about it, there wasn't any mention of faerie attacks when the White Council went into the Nevernever to escape. After such a violent intrusion, no faerie soldier came to investigate the racket, because they were told not to.

After the Order of the Blackened Denarius had first showed up on the doorstep of my fate, I had immediately looked up information on them through the use of the Archive, a young girl who was used as a depository of knowledge in the White Council. Little Ivy told me that even though she remembered having the information; it was like someone had cut out the data and left a hole in her memory. Ivy was an extremely powerful wizard so only an equally powerful wizard could, I suppose, edit her. The strongest in fact.

This was the Black Council. The hidden organisation that had consistently made life harder for me and my friends in pursuit of chaos and insanity and the great Merlin was part of it.

I focused back on Morgan to compare his level of shock to mine, but all I saw on his face was a smile. The smile of a man who liked what he heard and had probably heard it many times before.

Sensing my gaze, Morgan turned around to face me and the rest of the memory began to fade to blackness. I was no longer looking at Morgan's memory, but instead looking at his soul and his looking back at mine.

"You're dying dresden." Morgan smiled, "Though I can't yet see it, I can still feel my hands closed around your neck and draining the life from you"

I too could feel the soulgaze coming to an end and as my body called out to my soul, my vision became slightly blurry as the edges and I could feel traces of pressure around my windpipe. I fell to my knees and began to try and grasp the invisible hands that were beginning to shut my airways. Glancing back up at Morgan, I saw a glowing shape standing behind him.

"I can't believe it Dresden. I've been waiting for this moment for years but I still want to slow it down. Savour it." The glow behind him drew up its hands and circled around his neck. "Say your last goodbyes, as this is going…" Sensing something behind him, Morgan span around to meet his attacker but was half a second late. The hands clasped his neck and his back straightened from the surprise of him being attacked in his own mind.

Struggling, but losing energy, Morgan fell to his knees and revealed the angry form of Lash with her hands circled around him. She still wore her white satin dress, but had tied her normally long flowing hair up in a bun, which revealed the lines created on her forehead from sheer sense of effort. Probing quickly through my mind, I found an empty space were Lash used to dwell in. She had jumped from my mind to Morgan's. It wasn't completely unreasonable as technically she was a soul too so why shouldn't she be involved as part of the soulgaze.

Without opening her mouth, Lash turned in my direction, "Go Harry! I will keep this fool distracted."

I started to feel more of my physical body in the real world. I some point I must have falling over, because my cheek felt the slightest traces of cold stone. Are you coming back with me?"

Looking deep into my eyes, Lash smiled again, "You gave me my life Harry. Seems only fitting that I return the favour."

As the image of her and Morgan struggling together faded from my vision, I briefly nodded to her before releasing the effort it was taking me to continue the soulgaze. Turning back to her task, she leapt on top of Morgan and held him close in a bear hug, chanting out words of power that started to seep hellfire from her body and onto Morgan. He threw fists at her body, but they just went straight into her and bounced back out again. I heard a panicked scream from Morgan before being pulled out of the soulgaze and hitting my head on the floor.

Dots swam in front of my eyes before I realised that Morgan had released his hold. Crouching over me, he held his hands to the side of his head and was yelling towards the ceiling. Deciding it would be safer to not be next to Morgan right now; I repositioned my centre of balance and very skilfully rolled backwards away from him.

As I watched him scream while quickly righting myself again, red drops of gas began misting from his eyes and mouth. Random arteries over his body exploded in little bursts, splattering his grey cloak with flecks of blood that just ran straight off it and into a puddle around his knees.

Of all people in the world, I was sure that Morgan would kill himself before he let a member of the Fallen take over his soul, so for him to be physically wounding himself right now, there must be one hell of fight going on inside him. With Lash now asserting her control over Morgan, she might as well have been forcing him to kill himself. At this thought, I realised why she wouldn't be joining me. Lash needed a host to survive, so if Morgan dies, she dies.

I thought sombre thoughts as I carefully approached Morgan and collected my staff which I had dropped on the floor. When I straightened my posture again, all the fight went out of Morgan's blood soaked body and he went as still as a statue. His eyes glanced at me and instead of the dark, white surrounded pupils I had associated with fear, they were golden coloured and practically shining like the sun. Lash winked at me through his eyes and then the body of Morgan fell to the ground with a sharp thud and did not rise again.

The room was silent for the moment, which wasn't that impressive since it was now just me and The Merlin left, but it was a significant silence. I briefly remembered the times that me and Lash had shared and began to feel rather alone now that she was gone. Sure, during the years I had known her she had been trying to convince me to take up the coin and join the dark side, but I had become used to it. Looking back on it now, it seemed kind of humorous when she would try and seduce me at the most inconvenient of times and I had abruptly turned her away. Harry Dresden had even managed to convince a fallen angel to protect those she cared for instead of herself. I was proud of her and I missed her already.

Turing back to the matter at hand, I looked at the sour-faced Merlin, slammed the butt of my staff on the stone and gave him my very best intimidating glare, that had faced down faeries, vampires and warlocks without even raising a finger.

The Merlin smiled and stood up.

Next Chapter: For the People