The Power of a Name Dr Who-Multi-Crossover Series 4

by sbbigsteve

Series 4 - "Time Lord Vindicant" He took the Name of the Doctor. And the Name took him. Now he faces his greatest challenge as the Cracks in the Multiverse herald a threat that can devastate all Reality. To save the worlds and friends he cares for, he must unravel the mysteries of the Cracks and his origins. For only then will he know the true Power of a Name... His name.

5. Episode 2 - The Shadows of Undertown

Episode 33 - The Shadows of Undertown

You might be surprised to know there were ordinary days on the TARDIS. Oh yes, it is quite shocking knowledge, but it's true!

The day began like most. Rising after a refreshing six hours of sleep - I overslept a bit - I made a quick trip to Ankh-Morpork to get some breakfast.

Yes. Ankh-Morpork. One of the little benefits of being a guest faculty member of Unseen University is access to the proceeds of the kitchens, specifically the wonderful pastries produced in the Night Kitchen. I've even gotten Liara used to the occasions when I return wearing the wizard robes and hat.

But I am digressing. A warm and enjoyable breakfast for myself and my Companions and a good book on hyperdimensional physics was all I needed to make the morning swell. Liara was busy with a 20th Dynasty Chugmerian pottery shard, giving it the once over with her omni-tool - ever the dutiful xeno-archeologist - and Katara was indulging in morning calisthenics in the swimming pool. Waterbending calisthenics, so there were swirls of water moving about above the pool.

Now, you may be asking why I am establishing such a plain, ordinary, and oh so very boring morning for us. I should think the answer is self-explanatory.

It began when I clapped my book shut and enjoyed the last of one of Miss Sugarbean's delightfully delicious baked goods. As soon as I'd swallowed I clapped my hands together and said something I really should never say. "Well. It looks to be a quiet day. Anyone have a thought on where to go next?"

Liara and Katara looked at me with some bewilderment. "Well... is there anywhere we need to go?", Katara finally asked.

"Nothing on the beacons. Cracks not showing up on the scanners." I shook my head. "We are, for the moment, free and clear. Now, we're not technically on vacation anymore, but a stop somewhere fun clearly won't hurt. How about... the Crystal Mountains of An'ram? Hrm? Or the city-moon of Solaria, if you want something a bit more lively."

"I wouldn't mind a return to Kurl," Liara spoke up. "I would like another look at some of those artifacts. Perhaps when that nice Professor Galen was around?"

"Oh, even better!" I looked at Katara. "And you?"

"Um, well..." Katara shrugged. "I'm... not sure?"

No surprise there. Katara hadn't yet gained an interest in our travels. Well, a partial interest had developed, I should add. But it was one she was still processing and wanted some time to consider.

"Well, think on it while we meet with Professor Galen. Next stop, Kurl!" I walked briskly to the TARDIS control room, sometimes managing a run from simple enthusiasm, and started inputting the coordinates as soon as I got to it. The others were at my side by the time I pulled the lever.

Now, I know what you're thinking. And yes, obviously we didn't show up on Kurl. Today was going to be far more exciting - and dangerous! - than mere archaeological curiosity would have provided.

I opened the TARDIS door and stepped out into a smelly alleyway. I groaned and looked back to the others. "I know I carried that two," I sighed. "I know I did. " The TARDIS clearly thought I needed to be here.

The others stepped out with me. "Earth, 21st Century," LIara said. "Early 21st Century."

I nodded. The air was summer hot. I looked around at the trash, looking for a clue on where we were and other specifics.

Katara reached down and picked up several sheets of paper. "What's this?", she asked.

I turned and took it. "Ah. Newspaper. Don't think I've shown you these before." I took the time to examine it for any dampness before pulling the pages open. When I saw the name of the paper, it became clear where precisely we were."

"Chicago Tribune... oh bloody hell."

I didn't get a chance to say more before we were attacked.

Lithe forms erupted from a nearby building with screams from behind them. The figures that landed around us were feline in shape and form. Given the malevolent intelligence glinting in their eyes, I knew these weren't normal animals. "Malks," I said. "Why did it have to be..."

The first one leapt at me, claws out and fangs slavering. Liara caught it in mid-air with a biotic burst that threw it back. This gave me time to pull the sonic disruptor out and generate a kinetic surge that threw two more back.

"Behind us!" Katara's arms extended and water shot from the bottles on her belt. The water slammed into two more malks and sent them flying into the far wall.

Liara threw out a biotic singularity that caught another malk and held it in mid-air. "Can't you do the 'iron in the air' trick on these?", she asked.

"Wrong fae," I replied. "That only worked on the Elf Queen's people because their weakness to iron is related to electromagnetic senses. These fae have to make physical contact with iron." I had to switch to the deflector mode to knock another malk back. The impact nearly jolted the disruptor from my hand. "Alright, you lot. This is broad bloody daylight, what are you doing attacking people. I bid you to answer!"

Much to my surprise, one voice hissed from amongst the malks. "Who are you, mortal, to bid us to do anything?"

"I am the Doctor, malk," I answered. As I did so, I kept an eye on the TARDIS. The malks were starting to move to come between us. At least one was in position to pounce on any of us that tried to go in. Maybe another. This would make escape tricky. "And here I find you, in broad daylight in the middle of a mortal city."

"We are hunting, Time Lord." A slightly larger malk emerged from the ranks of the others. "And you will make fine prey."

I blinked at that. Malks, hunting in the streets of Chicago? In broad daylight?

The leader gave me no more time to consider that. He pounced as I brought my disruptor up with setting 42 active.

It was a good thing too. I do so hate getting sprayed with ectoplasm.

Because as the malk jumped, another voice rang out in the alley. You can guess what voice it was.

"Fuego!"

A lance of fire intercepted the malk in mid-air and blew it into chunks that swiftly transformed into ectoplasm.

I turned and saw three figures appear out of nowhere. The one my height had his right arm raised with a wooden stick in his hand still smoldering from heat. "Ah, Harry," I said. "Excellent timing as always."

"Same to you, Doc," Harry Dresden replied. "Now let's get out of here!"

"To the TARDIS!"

As we retreated the malks jumped. Liara caught some with another biotic singularity. A burst of light and sound acted to further cover our escape, courtesy of Molly Carpenter.

Two other malks pounced, looking to cut us off from the TARDIS. Katara caught one with a burst of water that sent it flying. As for the final one... I'm quite sure it didn't enjoy the result as thundercracks sounded in the air and bullets with at least some iron in them pierced its flesh. The malk screeched in agony and completely failed its pounce, easily dodged by the ever-superb footwork of Karrin Murphy.

Karrin and Katara were the first ones to the TARDIS, which opened for them. Molly came in after them and reached out. Light wavered around us. She was trying to veil us.

Granted, veiling against supernaturally strong psychotic killer fae cats, beings well familiar with glamours and illusions, usually doesn't work well. So they kept coming.

I sought to dissuade a pair with another kinetic burst that sent them flying backward. Harry's favored fire magic came to life with another "Fuego!", turning one into flaming ectoplasm. Liara's biotic energy pulsed and knocked several back. Karrin's gun barked out again and caught another malk square between the eyes.

The malks continued to gather. And if not for the TARDIS, I'm quite sure they would have ripped us apart.

We escaped across the TARDIS threshold. I snapped my fingers and shut the door. There was a thump, then another, as the malks slammed into it to try and force it open. "Alright, anywhere special, Harry?", I asked.

"Yeah. Not here," he answered.

"Right. Not here." I input some coordinates into the TARDIS and pulled the lever. We shifted out right after another thump sounded on the door.

For a moment we all just stood around, regaining our breath and winding down from the close call we'd just hand. I looked over the new arrivals. Harry was sporting a bruise on his left cheek and jaw. Karrin had bags under her eyes and a cut on her neck. Molly wasn't showing any signs of physical damage but looked fairly exhausted.

Oi, that didn't look good at all. I had a fairly bad feeling about things now.

"This isn't just about the malks, is it?", I asked. "Because you three look horrid."

"Well, gee, thanks for the compliment, Doc."

"So what happened to your cheekbone, Harry? Get into a fistfight with a troll?"

"You shoulda seen the other guy." Harry put a hand on the bruise and winced. "Flipping Winter Sidhe servant. I thought I was a step ahead of her."

"Well, she was female, and you have a certain weakness there," I needled.

Karrin barked out a laugh. "I see why Harry says you have a knack for timing, Doctor," she said. "We could use the help."

"Oh?" I tapped something on the TARDIS. "So the malks are a symptom of a larger problem." I looked to the others and sighed. "So much for a quiet day. Alright, what seems to be the problem?"

"Undertown," Harry replied.

I nodded. Undertown was essentially what the name said. Chicago's lakefront terrain lent itself to sinking, so the modern city was essentially built over older structures from earlier in Chicago's history. These older structures had become a veritable hive of underground tunnels, structures, and haunts, and most had been claimed by creatures of a supernatural sort. Very nasty ones too, like the malks we had just tangled with.

"What about Undertown?", I asked.

"Something's going on down there," Harry answered. "I'm not sure what. But whatever it is, it's got the creatures down there scared and running."

I blinked. "You mean that is why the malks were out during the day? They've been chased out?"

Harry nodded. "Yep. Something's been chasing out every malk, troll, ogre... just about everything in the upper to mid levels of Undertown has come to the surface to get away."

My first thought was sheer shock at the idea. And horror at what it meant for Chicago's citizenry to have that many supernatural predators chased to street level.

My second thought was realization. "You think something came through."

Harry nodded. "I've never seen anything this bad. Hell, nobody has. Something's got the entire Undertown spooked."

"And you think something came through the Crack before we closed it," I said.

Harry nodded. "So, Doc..." He grinned. "Think you're up for an investigation?"

"An investigat..." I widened my eyes. "You're... not seriously saying you're going to..."

"Yep," he answered. "If we're going to get to the source of this problem, we're heading into Undertown."

---

We all stood there for the moment while I processed what Harry was saying. All of the dangers inherent in the course of action he was promoting. My expression locked into a look of quiet contemplation tinged, perhaps, with the incredible amounts of surely healthy concern... okay, maybe fear too... on the risks of that course of action.

Liara and Katara exchanged looks. They didn't know what Harry was suggesting. I'd never had cause to talk about Undertown with them.

"You're going to go down into Undertown," I said, staring at him. "Because of all of the reckless, foolish things I can imagine you doing..."

"You don't have to tell me," Harry answered. "I know. But I've got to find out what's going on down there."

"Did storming Arctis Tor go to your head?", I asked pointedly. "Because..."

That prompted Harry to roll his eyes at me. "Oh, come on Doc, I'm desperate, not stupid. This is beyond insanely dangerous. I'd tell Karrin and Molly not to go if I thought they'd listen to me about it and not follow me under veil."

Molly tried to look innocent. Murphy simply let a smirk cross her mouth.

"Ah. Well, so long as you're being realistic about it." I clapped my hands together. I wasn't one to miss these sorts of things, after all. And the prospect that something had come through the Crack was concerning, to say the least. "Need to go get any gear before we make our foray?"

"Excuse me, where are we going again?", Katara asked.

I looked to them. "Well, I'm joining Harry on his madly dangerous expedition into dark tunnels beneath the city where horrible gribblies will want to eat us or destroy our minds or do other unspeakable things to us. Don't worry, you two can stay up here in the TARDIS."

Liara rolled her eyes, as if to say "Oh please, you know we're going". Presumably wanting to make sure I got that part, she outright stated, "I'm going. It can't be any worse than anything else you've subjected me to."

"You might be surprised," I sighed. And since Liara was going, of course Katara would. She felt better after our sojourn to Beach City, but I knew there was still a part of her that wouldn't mind kicking the bucket, so to speak. "Anyway, introductions. Harry, this is Katara of the Southern Water Tribe."

"Picked up someone from Korra's world, huh?" Harry nodded. "How's she doing?"

"Better," I replied. "Moving on... Katara, this is Harry Dresden, Wizard for Hire, and his apprentice Molly Carpenter, who has saved my life several times with her work on my suit's vest..." That prompted a beaming smile from Molly, who I noticed had purple highlights in her blond hair again, much to my approval. "...and Sergeant Karrin Murphy, a detective and one of Chicago's finest."

"Finest what?", Katara asked.

"She's with the police," Liara answered, already exchanging a handshake with the shorter Murphy. "I'm afraid I didn't get to see you during my last visit to your city."

"Hey, I keep busy." Karrin Murphy nodded her head at me. "Let me guess. He needs someone to watch him like Harry does?"

"Oh." Liara looked to me and smiled thinly. "Not so much," she said, although I could tell she was understating the case for herself.

I smiled in thanks to that and kept on the subject of Katara's vocabulary. "Yes, Katara's still not up to a lot of the lingo in various worlds," I explained.

"Sounds like some wizards I know," Harry said while accepting the handshake. "So, do you have the same elemental magic that Korra has?"

At first Katara seemed confused by the question, but she put it together quickly enough. "Oh. Yes, I'm a waterbender."

"Healing too?"

"Yes."

"Good. I've always been horrible at healing magic." Harry winked.

He was being kind to be kind. But soon enough, he'd know more. Given time Harry would undoubtedly realize Katara was hurting, if he didn't know the scope. If I could, I'd explain it to him. For now, I thought it best to get things started before I had any second thoughts about the basic course of action. "Anyway, on to business, I suppose." I clapped my hands together. "Were you preparing to head into Undertown yet?"

"Actually, I was trying to talk to the malks and get some information," Harry clarified. "But they decided ripping my head was a better use of their time."

"Ah." I nodded and let an amusing remark come to mind. And to my tongue. "Must be your charming personality."

As usual, Harry was quick to respond. "Yeah, can't imagine how they'll react to a smug Time Lord. Oh, right, they heard a couple of words come out of your smug Time Lord face and wanted to kill you."

"The burdens of being a charming, hyper-intelligent alien," I sighed with faux wistfulness.

After that habitual exchange of banter, I returned our discussion to business. "So, you're still trying to determine the best entry point to Undertown?"

"I don't want to be down there any longer than I have to be," Harry replied, affirming my supposition.

"Well." I nodded. "That's an understandable concern. So we need to find out where we're going in."

"And good luck getting anyone to tell us,,"

"I hate to say it..." And yes, Murphy clearly hated what she was about to say. "But we could ask Marcone. He's not going to enjoy having every supernatural monster in the city out on the surface. It'll cut into his business and make him look bad."

"Oh, doubly so, I imagine," I agreed. "As the Baron of Chicago, being unable to keep order will certainly make him look bad to his co-signers of the Accords."

"But he'll still try to get something out of it," Harry said. "And for all I know, he's the one who caused it to happen."

"Hrm... a remote possibility, I suppose. But thankfully, I believe I have an alternative." I started flipping switches on the controls. "Let's head back to your place, Harry."

"Can we stop and pick up my car first?", Murphy asked. "It's in timed parking and I don't want to give anyone an excuse to tow me."

"Sure. Alright..." I reached under the controls and brought out the telepathic circuit. "Let me drop you off and you can meet us at Harry's place."

"Molly, go with Murph," Harry said. "I want you to be ready with a veil if she runs into trouble."

"I got you, boss." Molly looked to Murphy, who was quite evident with her displeasure at the idea she would need help. But she said nothing in opposition while gripping the circuit to bring the TARDIS to her car.

---

Harry's very tiny basement apartment was not meant for large crowds. Six people didn't have a lot of room to stand about there, and he didn't have anything near the sufficient sitting space. That was why it was best that Murph and Molly weren't present yet.

Well, that, and another reason.

We left Liara and Katara upstairs and descended into the basement of the basement apartment. This was Harry's workshop and was filled with all the various tools of his wizardly trade, plus the small workspace for Molly's training in the laboratory elements of magic as it was known for this world. The main table was taken up entirely by Harry's most ambitious project; a scale model of Chicago, aptly dubbed "Little Chicago", that added as a magical double of the city for Harry to do all sorts of things with.

Tracking spells, for instance.

"So, you think this will work?", he asked me.

"Anything that came through the Crack would have a temporal energy signature affixed to it," I explained. "At least, in my experience."

"Yeah, but it's been three years, Doc," Harry reminded me. "I mean, three years for us since we first buried the Crack in Undertown. Would something keep that kind of 'signature' for that long?"

"It's temporal energy, Harry," I sighed. "What do you think?"

I was surprised to see Harry smirk. "You don't know, do you?"

"Dresden," I sighed. "There are all sorts of variables that..."

"Just admit it. You don't know. It's not that hard."

"Harry..."

"Hey, Bob!" Harry looked to a shelf filled with romance books, burnt down candles, and one data disc centered around a human skull. "What do you think?"

Twin orange lights came alive within the eyes of the skull. "Think of what? Oh, hello Doc. Let me guess, this Undertown mess?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "Doc here thinks that maybe some sort of energy would still be stuck to anything that came through that Crack we found."

"The one you sealed three years ago? Hrm." Bob seemed to think it over. "Well, it does involve all sorts of multi-dimensional and temporal variables. There are good odds that some trace will remain."

"See, Harry?" I looked up. "Now, if you would please do the honors? I have the sample of temporal energy ready."

Harry nodded and went to the table, where he did his wizardly thing to activate Little Chicago. "All right Doc. Try not to blow up Little Chicago."

"Disasterous destruction is usually your handiwork, Dresden, not mine..."

I held out the sonic. First I used its energy manipulation capabilities to pull in a sample of Crack-based temporal energy - taken from a Crack I'd recently found on some 9th Century Earth in the Pacific Northwest - and then I pointed the sonic to Little Chicago and introduced the energy signature to the city. The energies of the model, connected by thaumaturgical magic to the city itself (I would call it a quantum link myself), interacted with the sample. A golden glow began to appear, mostly concentrated near the center of the city. "The railyard, at Roosevelt and Canal," Harry muttered. "It's not too far from the spot where the Crack was."

"Still is, technically," I murmured in reply. "At least, if it ever manifests in the base three dimensions again."

"So what's the plan?", Bob asked. "Blunder down into Undertown and get eaten by a bunch of trolls? Or maybe whatever's scaring them out into the streets?"

"No, Bob, the plan is to go in as quickly and quietly as we can, find out what the hell is going on, and then get out."

"Right. What I said."

"My, aren't we the cheery one?", I remarked wistfully to Bob.

"Hey, I don't take joy in being the downer, Doctor. But going into Undertown is always risky, and when you're not sure how far down you want to go? There's a reason mortals stay away from the entire mess, not to mention the lower levels. Things live in the dark down there for a reason, Doctor."

"And something's driving them up," I said.

"Oh yes. And whatever that is has to be even worse," Bob said. "I really think you should reconsider."

"Not an option, Bob," Harry said. "People are starting to get attacked by these things. I can't corral every malk, ogre, troll, and other Nevernever nasty in the city of Chicago all by myself, and SI doesn't have the manpower to do it."

"Alright, fine. But you'd better make sure Molly stays behind. I'll need someone to keep me busy after you get eaten alive."

Harry scowled fiercely at Bob. Before he could say anything the hatch above opened. Liara stepped down. "Um, Harry? There is someone on your communication device. A Captain Luccio?"

Harry made a face. "Aw crap."

I winced. "Ah. Always hard with the ex."

"Don't even start," Harry mumbled. He moved up the stairs and took the phone from Liara, heading back up to the living room in the process.

After this exchange, Liara stepped further down into the lab. "This is... surprising," she said.

"Oh my. Oh my." Bob's voice would have quivered if it were visible. "I had no idea. Quick, my skull, is my skull nice and polished?!"

I blinked. "Bob?"

Liara was staring. "Who... who's talking?"

"Oh, I am called Bob, my dear Asari maiden," Bob cooed. His voice's direction led Liara to look over to his skull. "And I am most delighted to meet one of your exquisite kind in the flesh, so to speak."

I narrowed my eyes. "Bob."

Liara seemed confused for the moment. And a bit irritated, I thought. "And you say that because..."

"Why, because your species produces such fine works of art! The sheer passion and energy of your works surpasses most of the torrid works of these silly mortal apes here on Earth!"

I put my hand against my forehead. "Bob..."

"Really?" Liara looked at me with some suspicion, but mostly curiosity. "What do you know of Asari culture?"

"Enough, oh quite enough!" Bob's voice reached new heights of giddyness. "Vaenia! Oh Vaenia! That alone testifies to the superb artistic acumen of your people! Such passion, such imagination!"

Liara blinked at Bob. And then she looked at me with arms crossed. "Doctor..."

I sighed. "It was a gift. Bob was helping me with dealing with the blocks on my old memories, so I got him a present I thought he would appreciate."

"Oh, I did. I did!", Bob chortled. "I would love to visit your homeworld some day, Doctor T'Soni."

"I see." Liara was still fixing a look at me. "I hope you realize there is more to Asari art and culture than that smut."

"Oh, I should hope so! Variety is the spice of life! I can only imagine the hotness of interspecies boinking you..."

"Bob," I snapped. "Please?"

"I just can't help myself, I'm quite excited."

My mortification faded when Harry re-opened the hatch. "Alright, Bob, Molly's on her way in."

"Right, boss." Bob's eyes went dim.

Liara looked to me. "He's hiding Bob from...", she asked in a low tone of voice.

"From just about everyone," I answered in a similar tone.

We went back upstairs at that point. Katara was alone in the kitchen space, preparing bowls of water for healing as Harry had requested, and Harry was at the door to welcome in Murphy and Molly. "This place is cramped enough as it is, Harry, maybe we should meet outside."

"With all of the supernatural nasties out tonight?", Harry asked. "And even worse, my landlord? Oh no. We'll survive in here just fine." He went to a chair and plopped into it. "We have a complication."

"Luccio?", I asked.

Murphy and Molly looked intently at him. "Your Warden boss?" Murphy was being delicate in not referencing Harry's short relationship with Anastasia Luccio, Captain of the Wardens of the White Council. Said relationship had died upon the discovery that Luccio, among other members of the Council, was being mentally influenced by a traitor within the ranks using a slow and subtle form of psychic tampering.

"None other." Harry sighed. "It turns out the White Council is interested in our little problem with Undertown. Some researcher wants to go down and investigate the disturbances. And they've assigned your's truly to lead the expedition."

"Well..." I crossed my arms. "That's a complication. But not an undue one."

"I don't know." Molly frowned. "Wouldn't more people make it harder for us to sneak around?"

"That's one problem, yeah," Harry replied. "But it gets worse."

"Really?" I had a sudden bad feeling about what Harry was about to say. The sort we Time Lords get when the future possibilities turn fairly grim. "And that is...?"

Harry frowned at us. "Because the team's been formed by Grigori Cristos of the Senior Council."

At that, I could only groan.

This mission had, indeed, gotten more terribly complicated than before.

---

For those of you unfamiliar with the particulars of Harry's little cosmos, allow me to explain.

Wizards like Harry are part of, and governed by, the White Council of Wizards. They accept only the most gifted and attuned of magical talents into their ranks and are the only faction to represent mortalkind in the supernatural sphere (Well, until Gentleman John Marcone signed the Unseelie Accords and claimed Chicago as his territory), a fairly important distinction given how many factions of that sphere see mortals as food or playthings (or both). The White Council thus serves a fairly important function in protecting ordinary people from the extraordinary. Furthermore, it is the authority that codified the Laws of Magic, the seven rules that all mortals with magic must follow - whether they are members of the Council or not - on pain of having a Warden come along to chop their heads off.

And no, they don't care how old you are. Black magic is corruptive to the soul and addictive and such. So a dumb thirteen year old boy violating the Fourth Law because he thinks the Jedi mind trick looked cool is as likely to get a blade to the neck as a maddened fifty year old screaming "Ultimate Power!" while trying to flash-fry a room full of victims.

But I digress. The White Council and its law enforcement and military branch, the Wardens, are ruled by the Senior Council. They're an elected gerontocracy. The oldest wizards always get first in line to their posts.

Thus we get to Cristos. About a year ago in Harry's timeline, there was a murder in the ranks. Aleron LaFortier, a rather dogmatic man who once tried to have me beheaded for violating their Sixth Law (time travel, if you must know) regardless of my status as a non-magic caster, was found stabbed to death. Warden Donald Morgan was also found with a bloody knife in his hand. Morgan, a man who was to Harry what DTI Agent Gariff Lucsly was to me (albeit worse, as Lucsly wasn't champing at the bit to slice my head off... well, not usually anyway), fled to pursue what he considered to be a fairly obvious frame-up. He fled to Harry. Harry did his usual thing - namely running around ruining days and setting fire to buildings and generally being a giant pain in the arse to friend and foe alike - and ultimately revealed that the secretary of the Senior Council, Wizard Peabody, was a traitor using the inks on his paperwork to expose wizards to a substance that let him undermine their free will.

Yes. Paperwork as a weapon, wielded by a bureaucrat. Let that terror sink in, eh?

The entire affair ultimately ended with Peabody and Morgan dead, Harry sporting a new scar on his face, and Morgan left uncleared.

Oh, and Mr. Cristos ascended to LaFortier's seat on the threat of secession from the White Council with up to one third of its membership. Given the losses against the vampires already incurred, such a division would have proved fatal for the White Council.

That alone didn't explain our immense concern over his involvement in this expedition, though. There was the question of the faction behind Peabody. The faction that had used him to leak information to the vampires. The ones responsible for the attempt to harness a shoggoth, who tried the Darkhallow ritual to make one of their numbers a physical god, for the squabbling in the White Court of Vampires that turned into a massacre, an attack on Arctis Tor, et cetera. Harry called them the Black Council.

And he was certain Cristos was one of theirs.

"Well, that's an unwelcome complication," I muttered.

"British understatement again, Doc?"

"Not now, Harry." I put my hands together. "I don't suspect this is something you can foist off on another Warden?"

"I'm the Warden commander for North America, remember?", Harry reminded me. "And I've got like three guys under my command. All of them are wrapped up in other business."

"Right. Of course. And how big is the team?"

"Four." Harry held up his gloved left hand and brought up four fingers. "Two Wardens and two researchers. I can vouch for Warden Yoshimo, she's got a good head on her shoulders. But I don't know the other Warden, Enfield. I think he's a newbie."

"Right. And the researchers?"

"Ceyde Orhan and Francois Levellieur," Harry said, and his pronunciation of "Levellieur" was a mangled "Leveler" with the "e" of "er" dragged out. "Orhan's apparently some expert on predators of the Nevernever and their habits. And Leveler... Levei..."

"Levellieur", I offered, pronouncing the end properly.

"Showoff," Harry snorted. "Franky is some scientist who studies... ah hell, I don't know, faerie herbs or something. A Nevernever botanist. What I do know of him is that he's got some excellent defensive magic from all the times he's gone into Faerie. Has some deals with a few lower-ranking Summer fae to explore their fiefs in Summer for services rendered."

"Ah. So a Nevernever Zoologist and a Nevernever Botanist, then." I sighed. "Well, we shan't want for experts, I suppose. Not that they will be of much use if we run into something from my end of the Multiverse."

"Well, Doc, that's why we've got you, right?"

"Indeed." I smirked. I stopped talking for the moment so Katara could treat the bruise on Harry. He let out a small, contented sigh when she pulled the water away and his facial wound was gone. "Where are they going to meet us?"

"Near our entry point to Undertown," Harry replied. "I already gave Luccio a rendezvous. We've got maybe an hour before the team arrives from Edinburgh."

"Ah. That should give us time to make some preparations then, shouldn't it?" I stood up. "Given circumstances, I think extensive precautions are called for."

"You'll get no argument from me, Doc." Harry stood from the chair. "What do you have in mind?"

"Get your gear," I suggested. "And meet me in the TARDIS." I looked over the others. "You're all still going?"

Murphy smirked and crossed her arms. Molly giggled. Liara rolled her eyes in a "Of course" way. Katara... well, she was busy healing the cut on Murphy's face, so she didn't say anything, but I already knew that answer.

"Right. All for one, one for all, everyone into the catacombs where things will want to eat us." I nodded and went to the door. "I'll see you all in the TARDIS shortly."

---

I won't bore you with the preparations made. It's not very exciting, mostly just tinkering and finding things, that sort of thing. Important, yes, but it usually disrupts the flow of a good narrative.

Harry took up the telepathic circuit this time. When we emerged from the TARDIS it was near one of the railyards in the heart of Chicago. The sun was starting to decline in the sky; being summer, we still had quite a few hours of daylight left, but that mattered little where we were going.

A rental van pulled up nearby and pulled into the nearby vacant lot in the yard. Figures came out of both sides and started to put on packs of equipment. Two were in gray cloaks like Harry's, a tan-skinned young man and a slightly older East Asian woman. Unlike the younger man, she bore a sword slung over her back. The other two were in long coats full of pockets with belts having even more.

As they drew closer, I could make out a blue stole on the neck of the shorter figure. A copper chevron was switched onto the collar of her field coat. Her complexion was fairly light but with the trace of Mediterranean bronze consistent with someone of Near Eastern origin, her hair graying dark brown and with light brown eyes. Given the names Harry had provided, she was presumably Ceyde Orhan. She was definitely middle-aged, but with wizards and their healing factors age wasn't always evident. She could be closer to one hundred than the fifty years of age her appearance would suggest.

That left the other man, in the more robe-like coat with a cord of silver braid on the cuff and a red stole on his neck. He was closer in height to myself and Harry, maybe ten or so centimeters shorter. Or a few inches for Harry, I suppose.

Harry blinked. "Huh."

"What?"

"Levellieur's stole," he said with his voice low enough to be almost inaudible. "Red means he's been on the Council for a century. Orhan's got blue. She's a normal member like me. Doesn't have the seniority."

"I see. And?"

"Anastasia told me Orhan was the lead researcher for the mission."

I nodded. "She's one of Cristos' people then."

"Yeah." Harry nodded and stepped up toward them. He offered a hand and began to speak in Latin (unnecessarily, I might add, given the Gift of the TARDIS). "Wizard Orhan. Wizard Levellieur." He mangled Levellieur's name again, but not so badly as before. And the Frenchman - or Belgian perhaps? Possibly Swiss too.- didn't seem to mind. Likely used to it getting mangled. "Wardens." He nodded to his subordinates. "Good to see you all. Welcome to Chicago."

Yoshimo nodded. "It is an honor to work with you again, Warden Dresden."

"Hopefully we won't be fighting vampires and shoggoths this time," Harry said warmly.

"It's an honor, Warden Dresden." Enfield's voice was on the high side, and it was positively brimming with enthusiasm and awe. He offered his hand warily, as if Harry might decided to lop it off. "It means a lot to me to get to meet you finally."

"Thank you, Warden Enfield." Harry accepted his handshake. To me he looked more nervous than flattered. It wasn't hard to imagine why; another young Warden he was responsible for. Who might be killed on his watch.

Ah, the burdens of command.

"Warden Dresden." Orhan's voice was accented and warm. "A pleasure. I hope we can work well together. I will be reliant upon your knowledge of Chicago's Undertown. It's been a few decades since I last surveyed it."

"Ah. Yeah." Harry nodded. "Honestly, Wizard Orhan, I normally stay out of Undertown unless business compels me to go down there."

A small smile crossed her face. "How wise of you. It's not a place to be trifled with. I can see why Wizard Cristos recommended you."

Harry feigned enjoyment of that particular endorsement. He looked to Levellieur. "How good are your defensive enchantments?"

"Well enough to protect the five of us," Levellieur replied. He eyed me and the others. "But who are these people? I was not informed you were bringing more down, this is quite improper."

"Oh, my apprentice Molly Carpenter and Chicago Police Sergeant Karrin Murphy," Harry answered.

I cleared my throat, faking impatience. I had other reasons to do that though, given the stunned looks on the faces of the wizards. "Warden Dresden, bringing a mortal authority into this situation is highly questionable...", Orhan began.

"Oh, she's with me," I said. "Wizards Orhan and Levellieur, Wardens Yoshimo and Enfield, my greetings. I'm the Doctor. My Companions Dr. Liara t'Soni and Katara."

Levellieur's reaction was muted shock. Orhan gasped. "Warden Dresden, I... is this wise? Bringing the Time Lord of all people?" She looked at me with surprise, horror, maybe a bit of fear. "We may be attacked by vampires simply by having his company!"

"I doubt there are any vamps downstairs," Harry noted. "And they're pretty keen on honoring the truce. Besides, it's possible the threat in Undertown comes from something that's his field, not ours."

"Indeed," I confirmed.

"This is unacceptable," Levellieur insisted. "I can shield five in an emergency, but this many? It risks the entire..."

"Liara?", I asked. Liara rolled her eyes and brought her hands up. A biotic energy field surrounded the three of us and Murphy, who had taken up position closer to me to sell the point. "Cooperation makes this little excursion into the bowels of the city underground more likely to succeed, Wizard Levellieur. Safety in numbers."

Orhan looked tremendously displeased. "This is highly irregular," she insisted. "And dangerous. The Doctor is not a party to the truce. The Red Court may consider our deaths worth the price to eliminate him. Not to mention that he is not a signatory to the Accords and does not acknowledge any authority of the White Council. One of his followers even attacked the Merlin!"

"Oh, Korra wasn't my 'follower'," I protested. "Not yet anyway."

Orhan was clearly not buying it, but Levellieur raised a hand impatiently. "Listen. We can protest to the Council later, Wizard Orhan. Right now, we have work to do. We should get into Undertown as quickly as possible and discern this mystery. To emerge at night may invite others to attack."

"I'm with Wizard Levellieur," I said.

"Feel free to complain to Wizard Cristos when we're done, Orhan," Harry said. "But I want the Doctor along. And as the Warden Commander on sight, I'm pulling rank on this to guarantee your safety, if nothing else."

Orhan's cheeks briefly flushed red. But she restored control. "I was hoping to establish a good working relationship with you, Warden Dresden. But this does not bode well for that." She shifted her field coat. "We should begin. Please, lead the way to the nearest viable entrance."

"Yes ma'am," Harry said. He looked at me and we exchanged knowing glances.

It was bad enough that we were going deep into Undertown chasing an unknown force and the supernatural predators it was driving out. Now we were going deep into Undertown chasing an unknown force and the supernatural predators it was driving out in the company of an offended wizard working for a possible traitor to mortalkind.

Fun fun fun.

---

We slipped into one of the receiving terminals for the railyard and went into its basement, which inevitably led us to a wall that had a gaping hole in it. Thus we entered Undertown.

There was no light to be had down here. None but what we generated with electric torches (shielded from magic disruption by a quick application from yours truly) and a sort of magic lantern that the two wizard researchers were carrying. The artificial lights cast a slight yellow pall over everything. "Why does it smell?", Katara asked with her nose curled.

"We're probably near a trunk of the sewage line," Harry answered. "Plus there's all the mold and mildew. Waste from anything that came here for shelter. That sort of thing."

I had the sonic out and scanning for two things. One was to keep the fix on the temporal energy signature that Little Chicago had found roughly on this spot. The other was to see if there was anything coming at us. From in front of us, at least.

We emerged from the moldy tunnel into another moldy one, this one with standing, quite stagnant water. "Lake water," Harry muttered. "Must have a hole along the river that feeds in." He motioned to us.

We took a started down the north way, as the other seemed worse off with a collapsed floor and such. I held the sonic screwdriver out and Liara had her omnitool actively scanning. She was making a map of our journey while looking for anything of note.

There was a crunch under our feet. I looked down and was treated to the macabre sight of bones. "Well, that's comforting," I murmured.

"They don't look like people, though," Katara noted.

"They're not." I finished my scan. "Animal bones. Rats primarily, some cats and dogs. Something down here was making a meal of them."

"Could be a rawhead," Harry warned.

"I concur." Orhan knelt down with few plastic bags. She took samples from the bone pile. "But there is some abnormality about this."

"Oh?", I asked.

"The bones are undamaged," Levellieur observed. "But are clean of any other matter. Perhaps whatever dwells in this part of Undertown does not care to consume bone. But to leave them undamaged in the process of stripping them clean?"

"There is a predator on a frontier world in my galaxy that can do that," Liara said. "It eats another creature whole, processes the soft flesh in a primary stomach, and passes the bones out with no physical damage."

Orhan looked at Liara with some interest. "Fascinating. The creature's digestive fluids are capable of stripping the soft matter from the bone, then?"

"Yes." Liara made a displeased face. "The results were unpleasant to look at, though."

"Yeah, I'd think so," Murphy remarked. She had her gun at a ready position with the flashlight attachment lit up and illuminating some of the bone pile.

"Unfortunately, I know of no creature that digests the same way in all of our records," Orhan said. "So unless this creature somehow wound up here, we still have an unknown force on our hands."

"And that's why I invited the Doctor along," Harry said. He actually resisted the temptation to say "I told you so". Quite pleasing, that.

Orhan glared at Harry. "Yes. Well, hopefully there are no vampires down here."

"It's not like I did them much harm," I insisted.

"Coming from the man who once destroyed half of their major accounts in Brazil and left a high noble of the Red Court dangling helplessly from his balcony a half hour before dawn? You wounded their pride, Doctor. Repeatedly." Orhan shook her head. "Those creatures have such terrible pride. As do you. See to it that pride doesn't destroy you."

"Quite philosophical of you," I noted. "So, shall we..."

"Wait." Harry held up a hand. "Do you hear that?"

I strained my senses and focused on the dark. Indeed there was a new noise. A distant clacking sound that reminded me of crabs. And it was getting closer.

Everyone turned toward the sound. Lights directed forward and to small shapes skittering across the ground.

"Shellycobbs," Harry said.

Orhan stepped up and held her hand out. "Levellieur, Doctor T'Soni, be ready with your defenses. But no one attack. Not until..."

"Mortals." The voice was soft and sultry, coming from further in the shadows. Murphy moved her gun over toward its source as a figure came into view. A young lady from appearances, with greenish skin. Easily noticed greenish skin because she was completely nude.

"A nixie," Orhan stated. "Be wary of its temptations."

"I have no desire to ensnare you," the nixie protested. The creature's beauty was literally inhuman. And as I thought about it, I knew she was even more dangerous as a creature of Winter. "But I do desire to know what mortals are doing in my home."

"Just passing through," Harry answered. "We're investigating why so many of Undertown's residents are coming to the surface."

"Ahhhh." The nixie nodded. "Mortals. Always so curious." Her voice was keeping the seductive tone to it. I noticed Enfield start to waver a bit in his stance. That was not the best way to react to things like the nixie. That was prey reaction.

The nixie seemed more interested in Liara though. "How peculiar. A mortal not of this world. This... intrigues me. Would you like to keep me company?"

"No, I would not," Liara replied.

"A shame." The nixie's eyes glittered. "Were circumstances different, I would demand it of you. But there are greater things afoot. I would prefer you find them and eliminate them."

"You could start with an explanation of what has you worried", I pointed out.

"And what would I get in exchange," the nixie purred. She looked over Liara again.

"I have a better offer," I said.

"Ah?" The nixie focused on me.

And her expression changed. Ever so slightly. Now she actually looked nervous. I wondered why.

Oh well. Best to use that, I suppose.

"Whatever is hunting further down has destabilized the entirety of Undertown," I pointed out. "Right now we're the ones coming through here. But what happens when it's an ogre? Especially an ogre of Summer? Or some other creature that is your natural foe. You could find your home overrun by things you can't hope to face. Give us free passage and we can not only confirm the nature of what's wrong, we can also thwart it, or at least give you sufficient notice to defend your abode as you see fit."

The nixie seemed to consider this offer for a moment. "You swear that you will provide that service? To destroy the source of this disruption, or to provide me with the knowledge of it?"

Orhan took my arm and pulled me back. Harry as well. "This is beyond our purpose," she warned. "We're not here to fight, simply to investigate."

"Then this is the deal to make," Harry pointed out. "Because even if we got through here despite her, the knowledge we're coming in and knocking over everyone's living space is going to turn an awful lot of supernatural nasties against us, very fast. We do it this way, we get by without a fuss, and we meet our obligation in the debt by telling our friend here what's going on. If we don't beat it, I mean. And the rest of Undertown doesn't get pissed at us."

"Warden Dresden and the Doctor have the right of it," Levellieur agreed.

Orhan put her left hand on the side of her face to massage her temple. I was noticing it was a bit of a tell for her. "Agreed." Orhan cleared her throat and stepped forward. "I, Ceyde Orhan, swear upon my power that, in exchange for free passage through your territory in the course of our investigation, we will provide you with the results of that investigation. And, should it be within our power to do so, we will eliminate the cause of the strife in Undertown."

"Wizards? You all swear this?"

Harry nodded and repeated the same. Levellieur did so as well, followed by Yoshimo and Enfield.

That satisfied her, and for obvious reasons. For a wizard to swear upon their power meant an oath that they could not lightly break. Not without actually losing some of their magical talent.

The nixie turned toward me. "What of you, Time Lord? You, who has treated with my Lady's Queen? Would you give the same oath?"

I nodded. "My Companions and I will either inform you of what is wrong, or eliminate it, should you grant me and my Companions free, undisrupted passage through your territory and that of Undertown."

The nixie frowned and nodded. "Very well. Well bargained, Time Lord."

I didn't smile widely. My wording had been careful to keep this creature from going after my Companions during our trip. Now the nixie couldn't follow us and ambush to capture Murphy, Liara, or Katara for whatever she might choose to do.

The nixie moved back into the shadow. "Come," she said. "I accept your terms. I will lead you through my territory."

Harry and I exchanged looks. That was a bit odd. Granted, the nixie was openly considering this part of our arrangement of free passage, but it was quite helpful to us when the language of our deal didn't necessitate such an act. I could see this bothered Harry. Just as it bothered me.

Oh, maybe it was just the nixie wanting us to deal with whatever was going on, but fae usually don't act so favorable.

We were on our guard for the rest of the trip through the tunnel. What we reached at the end was a decline of mud and stone that would make our return trip rather slippery. "Below are three ways through the old mortal structures," the nixie explained. "All will take you to deeper tunnels. Good hunting, mortals." With that the nixie returned to her tunnel.

Molly looked down the tunnel with the aid of the shielded torch I provided her. "Why do we always end up with mud down here? It looks like we're going to fall and break our necks."

"Wait." Katara stretched her hands out and made a sweeping motion. The mud gurgled to either side and remained there while she wheeled her arms around.

"Great idea." Harry held up his blasting rod. "Fuego." The resulting beam of flame worked along the base of the mud wall.

"Pyro," announced Orhan in a strong voice. Flame erupted from her hand and worked along the other side. Age and experience gave her that advantage over Harry; she didn't need the focus of a rod or staff to summon the flame with such control and such ease.

The flames were not powerful, which was good given that we didn't want them consuming the oxygen in the air. But they were strong enough to dry the mud into place over the next minute. This left us with a much safer descent. The decline was angled just low enough to allow us to walk without becoming unbalanced. Now that it was dry, anyway.

At the bottom, as the nixie had described, were three potential tunnels. One led to the southeast, one directly north, and one to the northwest. I held out the sonic and scanned for the same temporal energy signature. The north and northwest tunnels were the best choices by that regard.

"So..." Harry noticed my results. "Rock, paper, scissors?"

"I suppose that would be about as arbitrary as any other method," I surmised. "But perhaps more deliberation is in order." I looked to Orhan. "Wizard Orhan, do your own means provide a more definitive target for us?"

The scientist magus shook her head. "I am afraid not, Doctor. There is too much magic here. We may be near a leyline."

"I'm pretty sure we are, if our bearings are right," Harry remarked.

"I see." I looked to the north. "I'm getting stronger temporal energy sources from our northern-most options."

Levellieur shook his head at me. "That presumes these sources are linked to our purpose."

"Well then, Wizard Levellieur, by all means, do tell me what else this could be coming..."

I didn't get to finish the sentence. An inhuman screech came from the southern tunnel. We all turned toward it. "Okay, what bloodcurdling horror was that?", Molly asked with faux flippancy. A look at her body language said she was rather more frightened than that.

"I don't recognize it as any known creature," Orhan answered. "Perhaps..."

A figure loped into the light of our accumulated means of illumination. It was sleek and black and rubbery-looking, with clawed paws for feet - quadrupedal - and a tail with a bit of fur at the end. A horrific face looked at us, light reflecting from the eyes of a bat... over the muzzle of a canine.

"Is that a... wolfbat?", Katara asked.

"No fur," I remarked. "But it's quite... defend yourselves!"

My warning came in time. We all moved just as the creatures leapt from the dark. More of the same "wolfbats", a pack, came at us from all angles. Orhan and Enfield were protected by the magical barrier that came from Levellieur's rune-carved staff. Yoshimo called out a spell and powerful winds threw her attacker off course, causing the wolfbat - for want of another name... maybe batwolf would be... no, then it sounds like something Bruce Wayne might think up after taking certain hallucinogenics - anyway, causing the wolfbat to sail right into her sword as she drew it. Dark blood flew and the creature was sliced neatly into two with a shriek of pain and rage.

I had my sonic disruptor up in time to catch one as it went for my back, knocking it up into the air. A quick swap of settings from 42 to 4 caused a yowl of protest as the creature went up even higher before slamming into a wall overhead. I turned to help my Companions and found Liara knocked one away with a biotic field. Katara's water whip had sent another off course and into the north tunnel.

Harry opted for force instead of flame. A bolt of said force, accompanied by his usual "Forzare!", sent one flying into the one Katara had knocked away. Molly grabbed Murphy and veiled the both of them, causing their attackers to collide in mid-air. The veil dropped and Murphy's gun barked out, filling one of the beasts full of holes.

With a couple of exceptions - namely the ones put down by fatal injuries - all got back to their legs and began to circle. "These things are tough," Murphy said. "What are they? Faerie monsters?"

"Nope. They're something else."

"Fomor creations," Orhan guessed. "It has to be them."

"Fomor?" Harry's voice betrayed his bewilderment at that judgement. "You sure?"

"Yes, Wizard Dresden, quite sure. I have seen their like before."

I remained quiet. The Fomor, a collection of various mystical monsters and beings and the like, were primarily aquatic and stayed to themselves. For now, anyway. They would become a greater threat in the years to come if my recollections were right. "They sell these things to others, don't they?", I inquired. "Who would be using them in Undertown?"

Murphy was siting her gun on one of the beasts. "You don't think these are the problem, are you?"

"Unlikely... watch out Murph!"

Harry's warning caused Murphy to shift her position. A wolfbat sailed through the space she had just vacated. One claw ripped into the fabric of her sleeve and the flesh underneath. Murphy cursed as she finished her movement, which gave her a good shot on the creature. A bullet to the head improved its disposition quite efficiently, if rather messily.

A cry resounded. We all looked to see Yoshimo on one knee, blood gushing from her side. Two wolfbats were dead at her feet and a third had just raked its claws through her shoulder, leaving one arm dangling uselessly from the shock of the wound. Another attacker moved to pounce before being intercepted by a singularity thrown by Liara. "They keep moving back into the shadows!", Liara shouted. "I can't get them all!"

"At this rate we..." Harry growled as one slammed into his back and slashed at his shoulders. His duster's enchantments absorbed the blow, mostly, leaving only kinetic force to interrupt him and possibly cause some bruising. He turned and let loose with a point blank burst of flame. "Fuego!" The wolfbat exploded and sent charred viscera flying everywhere. "Damn thing..."

"We need a new strategy," Levellieur suggested. I agreed, which was why I was working on one.

Before I could say so, Molly spoke up from inside her veil. "They're bats, right?" Molly looked to me. "Doctor, your sonic stuff.. I mean, it's sonic, sound, right? Can't you...?"

"...scramble their sonar sense?", I finished for her. "Already on it, just need to make a final modification." I made a few changes to Setting 28 and had it ready. "Wide arc sonic blast coming up, everyone close your ears!"

Had I more time, I might have calibrated the attack on sonic frequencies not likely to effect Human (or Asari or Time Lord) auditory senses. But the wolfbat pack was gathering in number. We had to drive them off. I held the sonic up and closed one ear. Agony and nausea washed over me from the unprotected ear as I triggered the sonic disruptor. I went down to my knees in pain.

The wolfbats screeched in even greater agony. They fumbled about as the sonic disruptor's attack figuratively "blinded" them. They still had eyes, true, but although capable of seeing more than their non-chimerical cousins, those were still bat eyes. Presumably the Fomor could not quite manage to mix lupine sight with a bat's sonar and had to go with improvements to bat vision. And so, with the darkness around us save for our few lights, their ability to coordinate their attack was vastly impaired.

Well, beyond the fact they were in terrible agony from the sonic disruptor.

The shrieking was joined by yelping. I watched them intently, trying to ignore the pain in my ear as I did, until they retreated back from whence they came. Only once they were long gone did I stop. I remained on my knees as my left ear still buzzed painfully.

Harry walked up to me and extended a hand. "Are you alright?"

"Oh, some damage to the eardrum," I mumbled. My head was still spinning a bit. But I needed to stand and we needed to get going. So I accepted Harry's hand and let him pull me to my feet. "Should heal in an hour or two."

"Good to know." Harry looked over to the others. Murphy was nursing her cut with a bandage already. A small first aid kit was on the ground beside her. Further on Orhan was keeping a light on Yoshimo as Katara gathered water from her bottle to heal Yoshimo's wound. "Freaking wolfbats. Jesus. The Fomor are crazy."

"More than you know, Warden Dresden," Orhan said. She looked at us with concern. "It's clear to me that the dangers will only multiply the longer we stay down here. We should keep going."

"North or northwest, though?", Murphy asked. She looked at where Liara was comparing our journey so far to a map of Chicago on her omnitool. "If we take the north one, we'll end up going under the North Branch, northwest keeps us on this side of the river and off toward West Town."

I scanned again. "Temporal energy traces are about the same in either direction."

"I say North," Harry said. "More openings out of Undertown that way."

Several others agreed, while Orhan and Enfield voted Northwest. I didn't vote because I considered the idea silly; either direction would work. The vote turned out solidly North.

Of course, that meant Orhan promptly walked into the Northwest trunk. Harry growled something about "arrogant pain in the ass wizards" under his breath, once again showing the man's capacity for self-realization could be amusingly low. I followed behind.

The corridor narrowed as we went, forcing us to walk in narrow file. This was especially nerve-racking given the lack of maneuver should something nasty set upon us. I felt the hairs on my neck stand up and could feel my hearts pounding in nervous anticipation while my senses strained to detect any sign of real or potential ambush.

Thankfully none came. The corridor spread out again into what looked like an old structure. It stank of all sorts of nasty things. The faded remnants of what had once been wallpaper were on the wall nearest to me, as well as old fixtures for candles. "19th Century", I observed. "Old house."

"Must be an old building that sunk down into Undertown," Harry observed. He walked around with his silver pendant casting white light everywhere. His light shined down upon a table. An opened can of non-perishable food was visible with a crushed aluminium can. "Looks lived in."

"Yes..." Levellieur looked around. "Perhaps transients?"

"In Undertown? Not mortal ones," Harry guffawed. "Not this deep."

"Well, maybe." Murphy was still looking over the map with Liara. "If there's an access tunnel near here they might just come straight down."

"If they're desperate enough, but most of the homeless in this city have a good sense about staying the hell away from Undertown," Harry answered.

Orhan's magical lantern shined toward once had been the front doors. Beyond it was another tunnel. "We should continue," she said. "There is nothing..."

"Wait."

We all turned to see Yoshimo staring at one wall. She looked pale, and it wasn't from the blood loss of her bandaged wound. I stepped up to her and noticed the faint writing. Someone had used what looked to be faded black marker to etch out what they assumed was a warning.

It sent a chill through me as I read it.

"'One shadow, you're fine, two shadows, you're dying?"" Murphy stepped up beside me. "Just what the hell does that mean?"

"Something very bad," I said, my voice tight with concern. I held up the sonic screwdriver.

The sonic's tip was now blinking repeatedly. Temporal energy residues were building up.

Our prey had come to us.

"Harry..." I swallowed. "Harry, count everyone's shadows. Levellieur, Liara, get ready for..."

"Um... Doctor? Warden Dresden?"

We all turned to face the source of the shaky English accent. Enfield was standing to one side, over the tattered remnants of blankets that had formed a sleeping pile on the floor, having set light to a surviving candle in a wall fixture. The candle light played over him, giving us a good look at him, and sending out a shadow along the floor toward us.

...no. Not a shadow. Shadows.

Enfield had apparently noticed the shadow stretching out to his right and front, not at all in line with the one being cast by the candle that was facing us. "What..." He swallowed. Sweat was forming on his forehead. "What is that? What creature of the Nevernever could this be?"

I swallowed as Harry spoke. "Doc, you know what this is, right?"

"Yes," I sighed. "Oh yes, I'm quite sure... Levellieur, I need you to put a barrier around Enfield. Right now. No questions."

"I'm not sure I..."

"Levellieur, now," I demanded. "You've got to..."

Levellieur pulled up his staff and formed a tight energy shield over Enfield.

When the shadow surged underneath it as it formed and enveloped the inside, I knew he had been too late.

"What the hell...?!" That was from Molly.

From within the darkness now contained inside the shield, a human skull now pitched forward against the field.

A chorus of surprised cries, curses, and the like came next. "Goddess!" "Hell's bells!" "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!"

"We've got to go. Now," I said. "We need to get back to the surface."

No one budged. Katara was the one who asked, "Doctor, what is it?"

"They," I corrected. "The Vashta Nerada. The Shadows that Melt the Flesh."

"Dammit," Harry muttered. "I hate it when I'm right. They are from your side of things."

"Then you know how to face them, Doctor?", Orhan asked.

"There's only one way to survive this," I answered. Even as I said that, our light sources showed the form of a shadow creeping across the ground towards us. "Levellieur, Liara, shields for everyone! We have to run!"

---

The Vashta Nerada. Of all the things to be on the loose in Undertown, why did it have to be them? Why couldn't it have been something easier to deal with? Like, say, Cybermen? Or maybe Autons? I hadn't run into Autons yet. They'd be fine.

"Molly, light! As much light as you can!", I ordered as we ran from the underground house. At that Molly held up her wand and concentrated, creating bright light all around us. Levellieur's staff was giving off an eldritch blue glow similar to the dome of energy around the wizards; Liara's biotic field was active and ready to shield.

Thanks to Molly's light I could see the shadows about us. Moving ever so closer, in defiance of the natural shadows formed by us moving through our powerful light source. More of the Vashta.

"What the hell are these things, Doc?!", Harry demanded.

"Think of microscopic piranha, they feed on soft tissues and flesh! Light makes them visible as shadows!"

"And how do we destroy them?", Liara asked.

"I... honestly have no bloody clue."

"What?!"

Harry's surprised shout came only a moment before we came to a literal dead end. "There's no way out of here," Murphy said.

"Doctor, can you summon the TARDIS?", Liara asked, keeping her cool even as the host of black shadow came upon us. Levellieur's shield caught it and Liara's biotic field backed him up.

I reached into my pocket to pull out the TARDIS remote.

...just to find that it wasn't there.

"My remote is missing," I said. "Someone took my remote!"

"Star and stones, this is ridiculous!", Harry shouted. "Seriously?! How did you lose..."

"I didn't lose it," I barked in retort. "Someone took it, Harry."

"But who could have?!" A look came on his face. "The nixie? She got close to you."

"There were too many eyes on her," I answered, but then again, with faeries you never could be too sure. I was suddenly feeling very happy that I had long ago encrypted the remotes so that they only worked with my data.

Not that feeling happy could last. "Doctor..." Liara's voice was still strong, but I knew strain was getting to her. "We can't keep this up forever."

"Hold on." I pulled out the sonic and my sonic disruptor. "It's tricky, but I think I can generate a remote command signal to the TARDIS with..."

There was a loud cracking sound beneath us. I looked down.

Undertown was a hodgepodge of man-made structures, tunnels created by supernatural creatures, and the soft swampy land along the Chicago River. Here we found ourselves dealing with something from the former.

Namely, wood.

Old, soggy, rotted out wood.

Old, soggy, rotted out wood trying to hold up nine people.

The wood splintered further and cracked. Molly cried out as the timber under her gave way and she fell through. I heard a cry from Levellieur as the same claimed him.

Thus weakened, the whole platform gave way and we fell through into the darkness.

I tried to roll with it. Hard when you're surrounded by wooden debris. It kept me from belly-flopping, at least.

As much as I wanted to check on everyone, the fact that the Vashta Nerada were above us, and undoubtedly descending, forced me to focus on that. I tried to think of how their senses worked. They were hunters in the dark, so we couldn't blind them obviously. Sound? Smell? Body heat?

A dome of ethereal blue energy popped into place over our heads. Levellieur was on his knees. "I can't keep a field this big up for long," he warned.

I brought up the sonic disruptor and activated a lightbeam setting, illuminating a wide arc in front of me. We had landed into another structure, but this one was... different. Cleaner, if not clean. More lived in. The walls seemed taken care of.

Oh, and the equipment laying around. Chemist gear on one table, for instance. A microscope.

We had landed into some sort of... lab?

"Look!"

Yoshimo was at one wall and clearing off dust. Beneath her hand I could make out a Nordic rune of some sort. "A protective sigil," she identified.

"Yeah." Harry swept his pendant over the nearest wall. He looked no worse for the wear in terms of our fall. "Another one. These must be emergency wards, help me find the activation rune!"

While Levellieur struggled to keep the Vashta Narada out, we scrambled about the room, finding more and more runes. Molly let out a shout when she got to the far wall. "Here, boss!"

"Molly, activate it!"

"Uh... one moment." She turned and put her hand on it. I saw her concentrate. "I'm not sure I can..."

Every sigil in the room lit up with violet light. Energy surged up the walls and then into the air over our heads. Levellieur cried out and pushed with his dome, forcing the shadow mass of Vashta back up past what became the ceiling of the energy field.

Moments later warm light appeared around us. The room came alive with energy. "Looks like we turned everything on," Murphy noted, holstering her gun.

"What is this place?", Katara asked.

Orhan stood over one of the tables. "A lab. Whomever it belongs to, they are a powerful practitioner."

"I wonder how long this place has been empty?" Molly looked over a table. Vinyl records were stacked there. "Hey boss, do you know of any wizards who lived and worked in Chicago before you?"

"I know some have," Harry said, looking over a cabinet of what looked to be very old chemicals. Alchemical ingredients presumably. "But what wizard would put something this deep into Undertown? The place wasn't any nicer back then."

Orhan was moving a hand over the sigils. "The power contained here is vast. The threshold of this place has become dissipated, but the sigils will still sustain the protective field for at least another four hours."

"That gives us time to come up with a plan." Harry looked to me. "Okay Doc. You know these things. How do we fight them?"

I thought on it a moment. What I knew about the Vashta Nerada. Finally I had to shake my head. "I don't know," I admitted. "I know of no weaknesses."

Harry shook his head. "Not what I want to hear, Doc. There's got to be something. Maybe if I hit them with enough flame..."

"They're a cloud of microscopic piranha, Harry," I reminded him. "Even if they're vulnerable to fire, you'll never kill enough before they start eating you or any other person here."

"Okay. So you're saying a stand up fight is a no-sell?", Harry askked.

"I am." I looked back up. The shadows were visible against the cubic of energy where they should not be. "We need to find a way out of here that goes around them."

"Don't forget our oath to that nixie," Molly said. "I mean, if we can kill them or get rid of them..." Molly's face lit up. She had an idea. "Hey, we got them to chase us, right? Why not lead them into a Way and then come back by another Way?"

"Because, Padawan, there's no guarantee we'll arrive back here at all," Harry replied. "We could up in the middle of Siberia or the Kalahari."

"Not to mention that we have no idea where this place links up in the Nevernever," Orhan added. "There may be untold dangers on the other end. And introducing these predators into somewhere like the lands of the Faeries can cause the Council negative repercussions."

"Oh." Molly's expression saddened.

"It was a good idea, in practical terms," I said. "And we could investigate what this place is linked to in the Nevernever if it's our last resort."

Orhan gave me a hot glare at that.

"Hey, over here."

We all looked to where Murphy and Liara were standing at one wall. Murphy was using her heavy flashlight to strike the floor. "It's hollow."

Liara held up her omnitool. "It does appear that there is a passageway, yes."

"Well, that's good news," Harry said. He walked up and started examining the wall. "Must be a pressure plate and a mechanical release, maybe some sort of latch?"

I stepped up and started scanning with the sonic. "I'm not detecting anything of that matter. This portal isn't meant to be opened by mechanical means."

"A magic door. Well, that's a pain. No way of telling what magic sets it off."

"Are you feeling any defensive magic?", I asked.

Harry and Orhan knelt down to examine it. Katara and the other wizards moved in closer to us. "I sense nothing." Harry looked to Orhan. "You?"

"No," Orhan concurred.

"Well." I took in a breath. "Liara, do you feel up to doing the honors?"

Liara tucked away the energy drink she had taken a sip from. She'd been quite ready for my request. "Stand back." We obeyed and I readied my sonic disruptor to emit a field. Liara brought her arms and biotic energy began to surge around her. A powerful bolt of the dark matter slammed into the ground. Masonry cracked and broke under the assault. Most fell through the resulting hole. As soon as the rumble was over I used the sonic disruptor to carefully nudge the debris out of the way.

"Good show, Liara." Harry brought up his blasting rod. "Let's go in."

Under the passageway was a set of stone stairs. They were initially a straightforward series of steps, but soon they turned into a corkscrew that brought us to what must have been some of the lowest levels of Undertown.

Harry stepped aside once we were evidently on the bottom floor. From the corner of my eye I noticed his eyes focus on me intently before looking away. I didn't react to that and simply stood away as well, permitting Orhan to pass. Everyone began to spread out on the lower level to investigate where we were. Already I could see tables strewn with notebooks.

Once everyone was away and looking into things, I took a few steps and stood beside Harry. "Interesting place, eh?"

"Yeah." Harry took in a breath. "Your remote. No way you could have just dropped it?"

"No," I answered. "My pocket is made to not allow that."

"Dammit," Harry muttered. "I was hoping that wasn't the case."

I felt a chill. We had both arrived at the same conclusion. "Someone took it," I said.

"Yeah. Most likely choice. That nixie was fairly close to you."

"Yes. But I was focused upon her out of safety's sake." I shook my head. "No, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the nixie. We had the commotion with the wolfbats, or after our fall... there were plenty of opportunities for someone to take it while I was distracted. Especially if they had magical aid."

"Could have been Enfield. But knowing our luck..."

"No." I shook my head. "Yoshimo, Orhan, or Levellieur."

"Not Yoshimo," Harry insisted. "She's one of the good ones."

"You're certain of that?"

"Dead certain."

I nodded. I had reasons to believe Harry could be wrong about people, especially given the true nature of the major threat looming over his world, but this was not the time to veer him off track like that. "Alright. Orhan or Levellieur. So now we have to..."

"What do we have here?", a voice called out. We all turned to see Liara crouching toward what was clearly the center of the room. Light from her omnitool, and now Murphy's flashlight, shined over a silver ring in the middle of the room.

"A circle," Orhan said. "It's a summoning circle."

"More than just that," Levellieur remarked. "Look at the design patterns around it. This circle can be used as a focus for other magic."

Harry and I walked up. Harry looked down at it. "Look at those sigils."

"Summoning, binding, teleportation..." Orhan shook her head. "Whomever made this was a master level wizard."

I noticed Harry's face begin to go pale a little. "And it's not been empty for long."

I followed his eyes. Molly and Katara were standing at a table with food cans on it. Said food cans were not new, not at all, but they were clearly of graphic design from the last decade. Molly picked one up and shined light on it from the focusing crystal in her hand. "This expired in 2007," she said.

"Four years ago," muttered Murphy. "Still, that's a long enough time for this place to be abandoned."

"Whoever it is left some clothes." Liara motioned to us from one set of shadows. A couple of light sources moved over to where she was standing over a small table with two sets of clothing, tattered beyond recognition, were laid out.

Well, almost beyond recognition.

I swore I could hear the gulp from Harry's throat as his eyes focused on the two largest pieces of clothing left.

Robes. Black robes.

And I realized what he was thinking. "You don't think it could be them, do you?", I asked him.

"Stars and fucking stones, I hope not. But the timing fits..." Harry ran a hand over his face.

"Timing?" Orhan looked at him. "Warden Dresden, what are you talking about."

"This... could have been a base for them. For two of the Kemmlerites who came to Chicago several years ago," I explained for him.

Orhan paled. "You are serious?"

"I hope I'm wrong," Harry muttered. "Because if I'm not, we just stumbled into a safehouse for Cowl and Kumori, and there's no telling what gifts they left us."

"Well." Liara sighed. "That sounds relieving. It's not like we're not already..."

Before Liara could finish there was a clattering sound from further down the chamber. Lights pointed that way as snarling, guttural growls came our way.

A creature stood tall near one portal to another room. Naked, emaciated muscle, a horrific and ugly visage with horned cheekbones and massive jaws, with the only thing upon the creature being a pair of what looked like rune-carved shackles. Even hunched over it was taller than any of us. At full height, it must have been over two and a half meters tall. Possibly even approaching three meters.

"Holy crap," Harry said.

Gunfire rang out and Murphy put several rounds into the ghoul as it started to advance on us. It howled in pain and went down, spewing black blood everywhere.

Said black blood began to immediately flow back into the creature.

"Harry, this is one of those ghouls we fought in the Raith Deeps, isn't it?", Murphy asked. I could sense the fear in her voice.

"Yeah, Murph, it is," Harry said. "Throw everything at it now, before it regenerates!"

Orhan and Harry unleashed fire magic. Murphy slammed a new clip in and opened up. Liara threw a destructive biotic bolt at it and Katara threw out several shards of jagged ice from her water supply. Yoshimo mustered a powerful gust of wind. I got the sonic disruptor up just as the flaming mess of the ghoul staggered a step forward. The kinetic blast was full power and tore the damaged arm off.

Said arm immediately began to work its way back to what was left of the ghoul after that bombardment. As did all the other pieces.

And then there was a sound coming from another of the doors. One light focused on it as another ghoul, looking like the first, emerged.

And a third.

"Holy crap," Harry said.

I swallowed. "Harry, look at them. They're emaciated and weak. Probably just awoken from some sort of magic stasis. The energy they use to regenerate has to come from somewhere, if they're weak enough..."

"...we can overwhelm them," Harry agreed. A wolfish smile crossed his face. "Levellieur, you're on defense! Molly, time for you to DJ us another rave, keep them as disorientated as you can! Liara, hold them back! Everyone else, pour your fire into one at a time!"

I nodded and directed another kinetic burst at the ghoul we were hammering. More chunks flew free of its form. It hissed and howled, its fangs slavering, its intent to devour us clear.

As firepower continued to pound that first ghoul, Liara and Molly went to work on the other two. Molly brought her wand up and light erupted around the ghouls. They flailed around, blinded, and starting actively sniffing as they swapped to that sense. But neither got much further before a biotic wave smashed into them and knocked them backward.

All the while, the first ghoul was being destroyed, piece by piece, as those literal pieces did not move as they would have done. I had been right. They were starving, and that meant they didn't have the energy to reconstitute.

But there was something wrong. I could sense it. Not with the ghouls. But...

That was the moment when a powerful blow struck me in the head. I was unconscious before I hit the ground.

---

I awoke in a dark chamber illuminated only by the light of several candles. I rolled on my side and felt old dust on my face. The smell of it was unpleasant, that sort of old decay smell you get from such materials as they crumble, threatening to choke you and such. I tried to move my arms and could not; my wrists were bound at the base of my back. My ankles were similarly restrained.

"You're awake. Impressive."

I followed the voice to a figure in a dark robe sitting by himself beside a ritual circle. "I have just completed the final touches," said the figure. "I had hoped to be done with this before you awoke. That would have made this easier."

"Would it have?" I frowned. "Would it be that much easier, Wizard Levellieur?"

When the older man looked my way, I could see the glint in his eyes he had hidden so well before. Not out of control, but still on the cusp of madness. "Quite," he said.

My mind raced. I began to put two and two together. "You wanted us down here. You wanted us to find Cowl's old hideout."

"Not all," Levellieur answered. "Just you."

"Me?"

"Shh." Levellieur put a finger to his mouth. "I must concentrate now."

"Where are the others?!", I demanded. "What have you done with them?"

"Undoubtedly they have gone to nourish our experiments by now. Without my support or your's, the tide of the battle is against them. Now, shush, Doctor."

"Bloody lunatic, what are you..."

Levellieur hissed at me. A surge of energy washed over me. Kinetic force, pure magic, threw me backward against the ground. It had been directed at my head. Not enough to do anything dangerous, but more than enough to leave me disorientated for the better part of a minute.

When I could focus again the lights in the room had grown. Energy surged in the air. Levellieur bowed at his circle and a dark robed figure stood within. "You have done well," he said. His voice was raspy. A reptilian sort of rasp, I mean, that no good villain goes without.

And when you considered his chosen look and the decorum, it wasn't hard to figure out whom I had been brought before.

"Cowl," I muttered. "You're working with Cowl."

Levellieur looked my way. "He recovered more quickly than I expected."

"Then your expectations are flawed," Cowl said. "The Time Lord is a more robust being than is apparent."

"Well, I see my reputation precedes me," I said. "So, this was your game? You get Cristos to send his agents since you figure I'll be showing up? Is that it?"

"It was not hard to surmise that the presence of the flesh-devouring shadow would cause Dresden to seek your aid," Cowl responded. "They have proven difficult to control, but clearly have their uses."

"You provoked them into attacking everything down here. To get me?"

"Quite so." Cowl folded his arms. "You are an unacceptable complication for the future. A variable I cannot leave to chance. Ordinarily I would have you destroyed, but..."

I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. No, he didn't want me dead. What he wanted was arguably far, far worse. "You want to expose me to your little agent," I said. "Get it inside my head."

I couldn't see Cowl's reaction under his hood. But I could just about hear a short, raspy little chuckle. "My my. How interesting. You clearly know more than Dresden. Yet you have not told him?"

"Not meddling with history is a responsibility of a Time Lord," I remarked.

"You will soon reconsider such quaint restrictions." Cowl gestured toward me. Levellieur nodded and walked up to me.

I shifted as much as I could. But there were no sharp surfaces around me to use to cut my way free. I kicked out with my bound legs and drove Levellieur back for a moment. My second attempt was evaded, though, and a third as I tried to squirm away and buy time failed as well. He was surprisingly strong when he grabbed my shoulders and pinned me to the ground. He put a leg across my chest and shoulder and used his body's weight to keep me pinned. His hands went up to my temples.

And I felt it. A cold, slimy sensation in my mind. A force attempting to slip through my mental defenses.

"He's... strong," Levellieur said. "He's resisting."

"Yes," Cowl answered. "But he can't resist forever."

I let out a howl as pain filled my head. But I kept my mind focused. I kept a wall in my head, in the very essence of my being. Something cold kept trying to work through it. It sought holes, cracks, any weakness at all to get in.

I'm no stranger to psychic intrusions. But this was... alien, in a way I had never experienced before. Both more subtle and yet more direct than, say, the mental machinations of the Queen of the Elves. I didn't know how long I could resist something like this.

But I had to keep it up. I had to stop this thing from getting into my head. If I failed, I would become one of them. A host of Nemesis and thus an agent of the Outsiders. And with my mind and knowledge at their disposal... Harry's world would be completely doomed.

---

From what I later heard, after Levellieur knocked me unconscious with a directed kinetic spell of some sort, he bought his escape with a second spell that sent those closest to me, Harry and Katara, flying. "What the hell?!", Harry cried out as he hit the ground.

A couple heads turned. "Doctor!", Murphy shouted while Levellieur lifted my unconscious body in a fireman's carry. He ran back toward the circle in the main lower chamber. For a moment Murphy hesitated. The situation wasn't quite so obvious, after all; Levellieur could be pulling me to safety from an unseen threat. It was after that moment passed that she finished the tactical equation and realized what was going on. She brought her gun up and fired it. The bullets slammed into a blue field formed around Levellieur and dropped as if they had hit a solid steel wall.

"What's going on?!" Liara was busy trying to hold back the two super-ghouls who had joined the fight. "Doctor?!"

"Levellieur!", Harry shouted. He scrambled to his feet. "Let him go!"

Levellieur had gotten to the ring, at a distance of about forty meters from where Harry was. He looked back and snarled. "The end is nigh. Teleparta!" His magic surged into the circle and generated the teleport spell. We disappeared.

Orhan turned away from the burning remnants of the first super-ghoul to attack us. It was still reconstituting but sluggishly so. I had been right. Her shock was joined by terror; from what I later heard, she had been at Morgan's trial. She had heard Peabody's defiant war cry in the moments before he threw a mistfiend - a creature infused with deathstone, which kills anything with a single touch - into the midst of the White Council. She defaulted to her native tongue when gasping, "No".

"Wizard Orhan, look out!"

Orhan barely got the warning before one of the super-ghouls, having slipped from Liara's biotic restraints, clawed at her. Molly had kept the creature blinded. This saved Orhan's life, allowing her to dodge a blow that would have otherwise claimed her head.

"Forzare!" Harry threw out a bolt of force that sent the super-ghoul flying.

"Unh..." Liara strained to stand from being down on one knee. "They're strong. I don't know how much longer I can hold it."

"We don't have time for this," Katara insisted. "We've got to find where Levellieur went with the Doctor."

Yoshimo's sword sang in the air as it sliced a limb from the ghoul trying to kill Orhan. She used a burst of wind magic to throw it back into the initial ghoul. Murphy unloaded another clip into it. "I'm down to two clips, Harry!", she shouted.

"Katara's right." Harry was heading back to the circle. "Even if we win this, we won't be in any shape to help the Doc. We need to follow them."

"How good are you with teleportation magic, Warden Dresden?", Orhan asked.

"Uh..." I can imagine the consternation on Harry's face. "I can brew potions to teleport."

"A deficiency you should rectify." Orhan fell back to join him. Katara sent ice shards into the legs of the super-ghoul trying to attack her again. This pinned it in place for Murphy to shoot in the head. Not that it'd work, but it'd have to regenerate from that. Freed from the fight, Orhan knelt down beside Harry. "The magic is sophisticated. Moreso than Levellieur's usual skill."

"I'm betting it's Cowl's," Harry said. "Does it have any connections? Or does it just go wherever?"

"With the magic field around this lab, it cannot go far." Orhan put her hand over the sigil. "I can feel the energy of the teleport. I believe I can follow the path. But to teleport us all..."

"Yeah." Harry nodded. "I wouldn't have the raw power for that either. And anyone who gets left behind is ghoul bait."

"I hope you two have a good plan!", Liara shouted. She was starting to fall back as the third super-ghoul forced its way out of another biotic stasis field. "I can't hold them off."

Murphy quickly agreed. "Harry! Think of something or we're dead!"

Let me say this. I love to tease Harry about his intelligence. I play up the idea that he's the brawn and I'm the brains whenever we work together, and he's just as quick to make mock threats about leaving me to get eaten or ripped apart by whatever supernatural bruiser we're facing. It's just how we work.

But don't let that gruff, action man exterior fool you. Harry only gets wiser and quicker with each passing adventure, and he was already on the smarter side of the curve when he started out. He's no slouch in the department of gray matter, regardless of what Karrin Murphy or I might say. He's actually quite brilliant.

I just never tell him that because the man can be insufferable enough already.

So, with everything going on, Harry did as I expected. He came up with a Plan.

"Orhan, I think I know how we can teleport everyone," he said.

"How, Warden?"

"We use the energy flowing upstairs," Harry answered. He took out a piece of chalk and began drawing on the floor. "Just need to draw a few of those sigils from upstairs down here and we can create a thaumaturgical link strong enough to put more energy into the teleport."

From what I heard, Orhan was quite impressed with this. "Well, that is a very good plan, Warden. But you realize that by siphoning the energy from the sigils upstairs, we will weaken the field keeping out the Vashta Nerada?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "But if we can get to Levellieur and the Doctor, I'm betting Levellieur stole the Doctor's TARDIS remote. If he has it, and we can save the Doc, then the Doc summons his TARDIS and we can get the hell out of here."

"Presuming he's still alive and that we can get past whatever other defenses Levellieur has before the field fails and the Vashta find us."

"Yeah."

By now Murphy's gunshots had ended. "Harry! I'm on my last clip dammit!"

"We need to do this now!", Liara added. "I can't hold them!" By this point she had gone to projecting a biotic field over the corridor leading to where the ghouls had come from. The two intact ghouls, and the stumps of what remained of the main one, slammed angrily against her field. Yoshimo tried to use what defensive magic she knew to reinforce it. Katara was busy trying to get what moisture she could out of the air for more ammunition to use. There certainly wasn't enough water for her to form an ice wall thick enough to stop the ghouls.

"We have to do this right!", Harry shouted. "Or the links won't work! Grasshopper!"

At his command Molly got into position. She started to draw another sigil, one that neither Harry nor Orhan had done, with all the careful deliberation of the older wizards.

"I'm going to start drawing in the power," Orhan announced. "I cannot be disturbed."

"Right." Murphy took up position beside her.

The two intact ghouls slammed into the biotic wall together. Liara let out a groan and collapsed. The biotic field failed completely.

At that point, it's hard to believe they all didn't die.

Thankfully, Warden Yoshimo had been ready for them. She drew in her own magical power and put her strength into a gust of wind magic more than potent enough to send both superghouls flying backward. When the stumpy remains of the first came at her anyway, her overtaxed body still had the strength to cleave it in half again. It didn't rise again. The superghoul's cells had finally run out of the energy reserve they needed to regenerate.

Liara stumbled back to her feet by this point. "I can't do anymore," she rasped.

"Liara, over here!", Harry cried out while drawing one of the last sigils. "Katara, Yoshimo, on us!"

Liara stumbled backward. Yoshimo was so exhausted Katara had to put a shoulder under her and carry her along.

By the time they arrived Molly had drawn the last of the remaining sigils. She got into the circle, which was fairly crowded. "Boss, we're not going to be able to cast any magic, right?"

"Not without disrupting the thaumaturgical link Orhan needs. So nope, no magic Padawan." Harry sighed. "So be ready in case..."

"They're coming again!", Liara cried out.

The two intact super-ghouls, mad with hunger, charged on them.

Katara's hands whipped out. Small, compact, and very deadly shards of ice slammed into the lead ghoul's head and eyes. It shrieked as it was blinded. But it still kept coming.

Harry brought up a hand and made a fist with it. He didn't utter a magic spell this time. Rather than call upon actual magical power that would interfere with Orhan's gathering spell, he went for power already stored, the power in his force rings. Force sufficient to flip a car slammed into the second super-ghoul and sent it flying into the far wall.

But the blinded one kept coming. Even as Orhan finished her focusing chant, even as the magic energy gathered and prepared to shift them through time and space itself to where Levellieur had gone, it was coming. All it had to do was get to the circle and it would be teleported too.

And someone would die.

That is why Murphy unloaded the clip into it.

The thundercracks are easy to imagine. The gouts of black blood and flesh as bullet after bullet tore into the head and chest of the super-ghoul. Not that the bullets would put it down it. It still had too much energy to regenerate.

But the bullets could and did slow it down.

Long enough for Orhan to shout in Classical Greek as her way of activating the teleport spell.

A final burst of magical energy surged from the sigils in the chamber above into the matching sigils around them, and thus into Orhan's working. Said energy did its work. The seven of them where whisked away to safety in that surge of energy.

Upon arrival they were met by another empty chamber. "Keep the lights low," Harry whispered. "Grasshopper, veil us."

"Right boss." Molly began to concentrate. A veil covered them, warping what little existing light was coming down the distant corridor. "I need everyone to stay close."

"We still have to find them," Katara pointed out.

"Yep." Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a single hair. It looked like a human hair. But it wasn't.

It was a Time Lord hair.

"Now, give me a moment," Harry said, "and I'll have the tracking spell up and running."

---

Given approximate timing, this was about the point that Levellieur began the process of trying to infect me with Nemesis. I tried to shift under his weight and couldn't; for all of my Time Lord body's strength, I could be out-leveraged like anyone else.

Maybe I could have escaped if I could have concentrated. Worked out of his leverage. But I couldn't. I needed everything to resist Nemesis. I felt the construct remain in my head; a constant wall, without cracks, without any flaws, holding back the cold alien force trying to push into my very essence. The wall was the important part. It had to keep Nemesis out.

But Nemesis was sentient. And it was clever. It shifted around the periphery of my mind, sifting through stray thoughts, stray memories. Things recalled by the experience I was undergoing. I am not the first to attempt to hold your mind.

I couldn't stop the thought before I thought about the Borg. The Collective trying to force its way into my mind.

Wouldn't you like to undo that?, Nemesis purred. You could save Janias and Cami. You could make it where they never left you.

No. No. That would mean I...

Ah. Katherine. Poor, brilliant Katherine. Nemesis continued to sound like the reasonable voice. I could help you undo that too. She could still be here. With you. Being brilliant.

That touched a nerve. And more thoughts. I was too focused on keeping Nemesis out to deal with them.

You fear yourself too much. You should let go. Become that which you must be. We could accomplish so much together. I could help you solve the mystery of the Cracks. I could reveal your memories to you. You could discover what you once were. With me. Together.

I didn't respond. The wall was all that mattered.

I could give you your life back.

I did nothing.

I could help discover who did this to you.

At that point, I slipped.

Nemesis had struck me effectively. That was knowledge that I wanted. That I needed. It was something that was still gnawing at the very core of my being.

Who did this to me?

Why?

Why did they want me to become a Time Lord? Why did they want me to have a TARDIS? Why had they left me with the Doctor's iconic suits, destroyed so long ago?

Why did they take away my life?

A crack formed in the wall of my mind at the distraction.

And Nemesis surged right into it.

---

So, what was happening while I was dueling Nemesis in my head?

The cavalry was coming, of course.

Granted, they were having a spot of bother in that function at the time.

"Well." Harry sighed. "This sucks."

The group was faced by a great stone portal. The magical sigils on it were dull even against the lights being gently played over it. The tracking spell was pointing right at the portal.

"The door must be opened with the right magical code," Orhan explained to those without the education in magic. "Or an energy backlash will strike us."

"Yeah?" Murphy looked around. "Think you could crack it?"

"It's designed to channel any residual magic into all of the code signs. I can't tell which ones were actually used."

"Maybe we should dust for fingerprints."

Harry shook his head. "Nice thought, but it wouldn't work. Levellieur didn't have to actually touch anything."

Molly swallowed. "Um, boss? Everyone? We need to hurry."

"Well, obviously Molly," Harry said. "But we need to do it right."

"You don't understand." Molly shook her head. "I... I think I can feel him in there."

"You can feel the Doctor's mind?", Liara asked.

"Yeah. I mean, we've touched minds before, I can remember it. And he's... something's attacking him."

Orhan frowned. "Psychic attack. Levellieur is a known authority on mind magic. He must want something from the Doctor."

"Or he's just trying to tear his mind to bits. Or enthrall him." Harry glowered and looked around. "If the wall's thin enough, we might be able to bash through it with enough force."

"Presuming the walls aren't enchanted against just such an attack," Orhan said.

"If the wall is thin enough I could blast it down with biotics," Liara offered. Her energy drink bottle was slung back to her belt now empty. "But it's going to take everything I have."

"Perhaps there is a way to give your body the energy it needs magically?", Yoshimo asked. "Then you could..."

As they spoke, Katara watched Murphy move along the wall. Her flashlight was moving up and down the blue-gray stone. "Murphy?"

A sharp cry, from both of us, echoed in the air. "Dammit," Harry snarled. "Whatever we do, we'd better do it fast."

"Harry, over here."

Everyone turned to Murphy, who was going around the next corner. "The voice is strongest over here," she said in a lower tone.

Harry followed her to the corner and ran his pendant light over the wall. He would have been quite surprised to see the split in the masonry where the wall met the floor. "it looks like structural damage," he noted.

"The building is supporting more weight than it used to," Yoshimo observed. "But that opening is too small."

Harry nodded. "Too small for most of us anyway. But I think there's someone here who just might wiggle through."

His eyes went to Murphy. She was checking her sidearm. With a click she held open the chamber. A single bullet was within. "Last one," she sighed.

"Well, Murph, that just means you'd better make this one count." Harry grinned at her warmly.

"Alright." She narrowed her eyes and looked to the others. "If he makes one comment about my ass, please kick his."

In the chuckles that followed, it was probably the first time Harry realized that with Enfield dead and Levellieur and myself gone, he was the only male left in the group. "Sometimes, Murph, you're just no fun."

"You're such a pig, Dresden," Murphy sighed, already getting onto her belly. She started sliding into the cap between the wall and floor.

---

With my momentary distraction, Nemesis surged toward the crack that formed in my mental defenses. The wall around my mind shuddered and weakened. The crack began to grow.

The more you resist, the more control I will have when I gain entry.

I knew it was a lie and made that thought clear. My reward was a renewed assault. Nemesis had leverage and it was using it. It filled my head with promises. Promises of finding out why this was done to me. Why I was taken away from my old life with such thoroughness.

I ignored them of course. The only thing Nemesis cared about was furthering the goals of the Outsiders. If I fell to it, they would use me to create even more chaos and mayhem and to eventually break through the Outer Gates.

But it wasn't easy. Nemesis made sure of that. I fought a desperate battle for my mind to keep Nemesis out. I couldn't let him into my head. I couldn't risk that; he could contaminate me.

Why do you resist so fiercely? We are not unreasonable. There are other Earths for you to enjoy. Cease your struggle and you may go to them when our work is complete.

Ha. The Outsiders are certainly the font of charity, aren't they?

I continued to resist as before. It hurt. I don't think I can quite describe just how badly it hurt. There were few beings I had matched wills with as potent and insidious as Nemesis. This wasn't just power versus power, like when the Borg tried to assimilate me. Any stray thought at the periphery of my mind could actually be a carrier, meant to bring a sliver of Nemesis in when I touched it. That was how he operated.

But the thing about Nemesis, I was beginning to realize, was that he had flaws others had not possessed. He didn't have the same relentless methodical drone of the Borg. He had emotion... of a sort, anyway. He was alien in a way even they weren't.

So alien... but also so very sapient.

I could sense he was starting to get frustrated. That made me chuckle inwardly. Poor Nemesis was biting off more than he could chew, eh?

I will prevail. I have suborned countless beings over the eons. I have claimed powerful wizards, ancient creatures, and Faerie Queens. What do you think you are compared to such power?

What am I?

I have been many things. Traveler. Wanderer. Hero. Villain.

I've done small things and I've done great things. I have filled entire civilizations with hope and resolve. I have made empires and tyrants tremble in terror at my passing. I have made children laugh themselves to tears and I have made the suffering smile.

All of those worlds and places I have visited. Alien vistas the kind of which few Humans ever get to enjoy. I have seen stars born, I have seen stars die. I have seen living beings Humans would never imagine existed. Creatures of sound and light and shadow (even living candy, I kid you not), talking ponies and living gemstones. Grand cities made of crystal and light and steel and every other thing you might imagine. I have seen them all.

And I have not been alone.

I introduced an entire Multiverse of wonders to two young slave girls yearning for freedom together. I watched a princess grow up into a brilliant young woman who reveled in going on adventures across space and time at my side. I saved a little girl's life and taught her how to rise above her anger and hate to be something better, teaching she used to save me from my own dark impulses. I helped the guardian of an entire world recover from a terrible experience and showed an inventive young woman the futures she could bring to her world with her genius. Even now I am sharing the wonders of Creation with my Companions, with a being yearning to again know the wonder of new discoveries, and a young lady who has lost everything and is trying to fill the void in her heart.

Janias and Cami. Katherine. Nerys. Korra and Asami. Liara. Katara. All of them, my Companions, whom I would move universes to help.

And others I have met on my journeys. Others who have meant so, so much to me. Comrades who have helped me save lives. Ordinary and extraordinary, but oh so... Human? Well, not just Human, but I think you get the point. People who have put themselves in danger at my side. Beings I am proud to call friends.

This does not impress! Do you think such thoughts can sway me? Do you think I can be beaten by this?! Nemesis was starting to lose his patience. I will have you!

Nemesis didn't get it. It couldn't understand.

These people, my Companions, my friends, they serve to remind me of who I am. All of the time.

Who am I? Nemesis wants to know who I am to resist his power?

Yes, Nemesis had taken very powerful beings before. But I'm not a Faerie Queen. I'm not a wizard (well, unless I'm in Ankh-Morpork). I'm not even a Dragon.

I am the Doctor.

I am a Time Lord.

And my mind belongs to ME!

And in the heat of that moment, with Nemesis furiously struggling to widen the crack in the wall of my mind, to surge in and claim me, I did something that ageless creature never imagined I would do.

With every part of myself, with every corner of my hearts, my soul, I surged forth. The walls parted and the very essence of who I was slammed into Nemesis with such ferocity that it recoiled.

What is this?!, Nemesis shrieked. You cannot be this powerful! There's nothing that can be this powerful!

"I am the Doctor," I rasped aloud. It was the only answer I could manage to give in the situation.

I was starting to see the room we were in. Levellieur's hands on my temples. We were both screaming as Nemesis recoiled from the connection. Back into the diseased remnants of Francois Levellieur's mind.

Levellieur fell backward and off of me. I turned and shifted my weight to try something I'd only practiced a few time. Curse my long legs; you can't imagine how hard it is to get them curled up enough to get your arms under them.

"Levellieur!", Cowl hissed. "Levellieur, stand! If he cannot be taken, he must be destroyed!"

I went to work on the bonds around my ankles first. The knot was fine and taunt, but not impossible. I managed to leverage it loose enough to pull a loop out. My fingers worked the delicate string carefully, undoing every tangle it found.

I'd say it took about, oh... ten seconds. Altogether.

As a result, I didn't have time to even begin to get my wrists free. Levellieur-Nemesis was getting back to his feet. The hairs on my neck began to stand on end. I could feel the energy currents in the air; Levellieur was summoning his power for a magical attack. He probably intended to make my head explode or something swift and final like that.

As I was still on the ground, I had limited tactical options. So I kicked out with my feet. Levellieur screamed in pain as my kick smashed in one of his knees. The gathering power of his spell dissipated from the lack of focus.

I used the moment to get to my feet. I felt a presence strike at my mind. This time it wasn't trying to get in. It certainly wasn't Nemesis.

It was Cowl.

"You might have been useful," Cowl said. "But instead you will have to die."

My mind was still racing from my duel with Nemesis, so I fought off the psychic attack before it could pin me. But it did slow me down for a moment.

Long enough for the panicking Levellieur to throw a quick and dirty evocation my way. A fireball, to be precise, much like the little suns Harry could summon to intimidate defiant young apprentices and terrified Mafia hitmen.

I couldn't move in time. It struck me directly. The thermal energy washed over my chest and threw me back into the wall. I cried out as I slid to the ground. My chest felt like it was on fire. I would have expected that to be true, but to my surprise only a bit off smoldering fabric around where the fireball burned its way through my jacket was actually lit up. The vest should have lit up.

Well, if it hadn't been enchanted by Molly Carpenter, anyway.

Levellieur stood over me and extended a hand. Energy gathered again.

Well. I wasn't in the best situation now, was I? He was too far away to kick again. Hands were still bound. The fireball had still hurt me, even if my vest had kept it from incinerating my heart like Levellieur/Nemesis had intended.

But Cowl and his ally or master or whatever he was to Nemesis... they had forgotten something.

The something that became abundantly clear when a crack of thunder echoed in the room. Or rather, something like the crack of thunder.

Blood and brains erupted from the back and left side of Levellieur's head. The magical energy at his hand fell away into nothing as his body collapsed lifelessly to the floor.

Cowl growled audibly. I calculated the trajectory and found what I was looking for. There was a crack where the wall to my left met the floor. It wasn't a big one on this end.

But it was big enough for a certain Chicago police detective to get off a shot.

"Thank you, Sergeant," I said aloud.

"You're welcome," Murphy answered.

I stood up and looked to the obvious door into the room. A single sigil was painted on the inside. I scrambled into my pocket for my sonic screwdriver - not easy with my wrists still bound - and went over to the door. I looked back at Cowl. "Say, you want to talk to Harry?", I asked. "He'll be here any moment."

"You are already dead," Cowl said simply. "All of you. This conversation has become pointless."

He disappeared. I looked back to the door and ran the sonic screwdriver over it. Energy was energy, after all; the magical mechanism that opened the door was triggered by energy that came from magic, and my sonic screwdriver could fake that energy easily enough.

The stone door rumbled and slid downward into the ground. Katara came across first and embraced me. "You're okay!", she shouted.

"You had us worried," Liara said, smiling and stepped up beside Katara. She waited for the younger woman to get her hug in before giving her own.

Molly rushed in and got a hug after Liara. "You're alright! I... I felt him attacking your mind, I was worried..."

"Ah, he's not the first," I answered. "And he bought off more than he could chew. Now, if you could please help me with this?"

When the others appeared at the door I was reaching into the pockets of Levellieur's suit, my bonds already snapped by a pen knife Molly had been carrying with her. Most of Levellier's pockets and pouches had the kind of equipment you'd expect for either role he was playing here. But I found what I was looking for. I reached in and took out the TARDIS remote. "There you are," I murmured. "Now..."

"We need to go," Harry said. Beside him Murphy appeared a bit bedraggled and worn, with small wounds and scuffs on her visible skin from where she had wiggled herself through that small hole. We exchanged smiles. She had saved my life right and proper, after all.

But when I spoke, it was to address Harry. "Oh?"

"He used the teleportation rune on that big circle," Harry explained. "For all of us to follow, well, we..."

I immediately seized on what they had done. "You used a quantum link with the sigils powering the force field."

"Yeah. And now..."

"...now the field will fail shortly, if it hasn't already, and the Vashta Nerada will eat us all," I finished for him. "Well, that's quite fine, because now we can get out of here, go tell our nixie friend what's wrong, and think up something to deal with the Vashta." I held up the TARDIS remote and stepped out into the hall. "Everyone ready?"

"Obviously," Orhan sighed.

Oi. No appreciation for drama there, eh?

I turned and focused on the remote, ready to call the TARDIS to us.

After a moment, Yoshimo asked, "How long does it take?"

And by that point, I was feeling rather bewildered and completely embarrassed. "Alright, that's just humiliating," I sighed. I focused on the remote again. Nothing happened. I held it up and looked at it. I narrowed my eyes and scanned it with my sonic screwdriver. "Oh, that annoying bugger," I sighed.

"Huh?"

"Levellieur didn't just steal it, he used raw magic to damage it," I explained. "Looks like he was trying to force the mental lock and call in the TARDIS himself."

"Can't you fix it?", Molly asked.

"Well, if it's not too damaged," I answered. I held up the sonic screwdriver. "I should at least get one remote call out of it, this will just take a minute or three. Maybe four."

I was starting to work on it when Harry cut in. "Uh, Doc?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"Think you could turn that into ten seconds or less?"

I looked up. I didn't need to inquire as to why he was asking. The reasoning was obvious.

All of the lights shining down the side they were facing were meeting black. And not darkness.

Just black. A large, oppressive shadow moving toward us all.

"Aw, come on," I complained. "This is getting ridiculous." I turned and checked. Liara was out of energy drinks and looked worn down; even with the drinks, she clearly would have trouble maintaining the kind of biotic field we'd need. Orhan and Yoshimo looked ragged as well. And Levellieur had been our other defensive magics man, so that was out.

In other words, I couldn't guarantee that I would fix the TARDIS remote before the Vashta Nerada were upon us.

Which left just one course of safety.

"Alright, time to run again!"

---

As usual, things didn't look so good.

I mean, look at our situation. Worn down from fighting nasties and dealing with the treachery of the late Wizard Levellieur. Trapped in an unknown hideout deep within Undertown, with no known way to escape, and the TARDIS remote broken.

And, oh yes, the great cloud of Vashta Nerada behind us that wanted to eat us to the bone.

As I said, things didn't look so good.

We were running down stone corridors as quickly as our legs could carry us. Liara was taking the lead with her omnitool up. Teleporting had essentially ruined the map she was establishing; it wouldn't work until we got somewhere familiar to the device. But it still provided us with a rough idea of what was around us.

As we ran, I continued to run the sonic screwdriver over the remote. Levellieur had damaged it to an annoying degree in his attempts, prompted undoubtedly by Nemesis, to take control of the TARDIS.

"I'm not sure how much longer we can keep this up, Doc!", Harry shouted.

"Well, by all means, go ask the Vashta if we can take a breather," I retorted.

Harry snorted at that. But he was right.

And, being Harry, he decided to act.

As we ran across a support beam, Harry unloaded into the ceiling with his kinetic rings. Given the age of the structure, the effect was immediate. Debris filled the hall behind us, blocking up the corridor.

Of course, the effect was larger than that. We had to keep running further just to avoid getting burried in the same rubble.

I smirked at him after the rumbling died off. "Well, that was good. You only nearly buried us."

Harry's riposte was immediate. "I didn't see you thinking of anything, Mister Time Lord Smartypants."

I gave him a chuckle went back to work on focusing on the repair of the remote. I was making good progress...

"That's not good," Liara said.

I looked to the debris wall, as black shadow began to seep through the rubble.

"Aw come on!", Harry protested. "Flipping shadows!"

So we continued to run and I continued to work. Not easy to do together. And to make matters worse, I was pretty sure we were going to run out of space eventually. This hidden home for Cowl couldn't be that large, after all.

And as much as we tried to run, the Vashta would catch up to us. We were in their element; the dark.

If we were going to survive, I had to act fast.

I kept the control balanced delicately in the fingers of my left hand while my right continued to hold the sonic screwdriver toward it. I was operating the remote's repair function, using the sonic to... do something really complicated and not at all interesting, but it would make it work.

Probably.

Yoshimo howled a spell in defiance of the Vashta, a powerful wind attack. It blew the shadow back a bit, but just a bit. They were microscopic after all. Such things don't provide a lot of cross-section for someone to push them with air.

My sonic made a happy little whir. "There... alright, good," I said.

"What's good?", Liara asked. "You fixed it?"

"Almost," I said. And looking ahead, I saw our problem. "But that's not the tricky part."

"What's the tricky part?", Molly asked.

Yoshimo reached the rubble first. The entire passageway had been sealed off. "Aw hell," Harry swore.

I didn't have to ask Liara. She brought her arms up and created a biotic field that stopped the Vashta Nerada in their tracks. Here we had an advantage; the Vashta, being what they were, didn't exactly have a lot of mass to press against the dark matter field holding them back. If they had been smaller I would have suggested Liara try to outright capture them.

An excellent idea, that.

Of course, Liara had been running, moving, and throwing around biotics for hours. The energy drinks replenished the calories, yes, but she was still burning through the available energy in her body at a prodigious rate.

The Vashta started seeping toward the edges. "Clever bastards," I muttered. They were exploiting the brick nature of the structure, looking to slip through those cracks. Liara's shield covered them for the moment, but maintaining that was an inefficient use of her energy.

"Doctor, you got that?"

"This is very delicate work, Katara," I answered. "If I do the wrong thing, the remote will be permanently disabled."

"Tick tock, Doc, Tick tock!" Harry held up his left arm and the shield bracelet focus he kept on it. Blue magical energy formed along Liara's purple-tinged biotics; he was supporting her with his own forcefield.

Orhan held up a hand. Blue energy weaved around both fields, slipping into the cracks in the walls and barring any potential for entry.

Of course, they couldn't do that forever.

No pressure, eh?

"Doctor..."

"Shh, almost there..."

I don't envy the others. Yoshimo was either too weak or too inexperienced in that form of magic to join their protective field. Forcefields weren't Molly's expertise and a veil would not avail us (ha!). Katara lacked the water to seal them off with ice. Murphy had nothing left. Harry, Orhan, and Liara were the only things between us and being devoured by the Vashta Nerada.

Well, me too. I just had to get done in time.

Its very delicate work, working with the remote I'd made. As I had warned them, I couldn't rush it. It had to be just right.

"On the right wall, look!"

Katara's warning allowed Orhan to siphon off a trench between bricks that the Vashta were about to enter.

"Doctor, any time," Murphy urged me.

"Almost there..." Another circuit was fixed. Just a few more...!

Ah. Last second escapes. They're so exciting in retrospect, but when you live them? It can be quite terrifying, honestly. And that's exactly what I was going through. I had to get this done in time, or some of my best friends, and my Companions, and myself obviously, would be reduced to eight piles of skeletons in some blocked off tunnel deep in Undertown.

Liara groaned a little. Her biotic field began to slacken. It contracted.

"We're losing it!", Harry warned. His voice quavered from the effort he was putting forth.

Another circuit. Just another...

Orhan gasped and fell away. The weave she'd made dissipated.

The Vashta begun to slip around Harry's field.

And I finished the final circuit repair.

"Here we go!", I shouted. "Everyone on me!" I moved forward to just behind Harry to make sure everyone was taken in. And I concentrated.

VWORP VWORP VWORP.

As that sound began, Harry had to release the magic field. It had been a working far beyond his usual protective dome shield, so he had kept it only as long as he could. With it down the shadow of the Vashta Nerada surged forward to devour us.

Right as the TARDIS materialized around us.

Orhan and Yoshimo gasped in surprise. Because of the number of people around me, the TARDIS materialized in a way to put us in the library.

Now, that was all fairly dramatic, wasn't it? I mean, the last minute escape and all. Completely and totally dramatic!

...unfortunately, the effect was ruined by the fact that the TARDIS just dumped us into the middle of the library.

Above the swimming pool.

So as soon as the materialization finished, we were standing in mid-air, and we all plunged into the water in a fit of flailing limbs and cries of surprise. I got a bit of water in my throat before I recovered and forced myself to the surface. I spat the water out and took deep breaths. Around me other heads bobbed to the surface. "Well, that was unexpected," Liara moaned.

After a moment Molly, with what was left of her makeup and such running, began to laugh at the comedy of it all. The laugh was infectious; I joined in too, and Harry, and Murphy, and soon even Orhan was laughing like there was no tomorrow.

Maybe it was just the survival high. But it was a good laugh.

However, our work was not done. "You know," I began, "we still have to do something about the Vashta Nerada."

"What do you suggest, Doc?", Harry asked.

I began to tread my way over to the stairway at the side of the pool. "Oh. I have some ideas," I said, smirking. "Some indeed."

---

I didn't bother drying off. We didn't have time for it. I went straight to the control room and snapped my fingers, opening the door.

I was not surprised when the Vashta Nerada surged in.

They, however, were probably surprised by the forcefield that met them on all angles, containing them to the doorway.

"Well, now that you're here, we need to talk," I said. I reached over and flipped a switch. A receiver came up on the TARDIS communication console and directed towards them. "I know you lot can communicate with the right tools. This waveform translator should suffice. Now, first off, you're not going to get to eat me or my friends, am I clear?"

For a moment there was no response. Then a long and mechanical sound came from the receiver. "OUR FOREST. WE MUST HAVE MEAT."

"In case you didn't realize, this is not a bloody forest," I countered. Behind me the others were gathering, trying to dry off while they observed my one-on-one with the Vashta. "You're causing an awful lot of trouble. And you killed a nice young man who had quite a future ahead of him."

"MEAT. WE MUST HAVE MEAT."

"Oh, aren't you single-minded. Is food all you think about? No time for the weather? The little pleasantries that make life interesting?" I shook my head. "Now, you listen up. I'm going to be nice." I frowned. "Despite poor Enfield, I'm not going to drop you lot onto an asteroid to starve. I'll put you on a planet, nice and quiet, plenty of beasties for meat. But only if you agree to never touch another sapient creature again."

There was silence from the creatures.

"Well? What will it be? Forsake Humans and other species of similar intelligence from your diet, or no more meat for you? Don't dawdle. I'm tired and I'm sore and I'm soaking wet, that's not a good combination for you to try my patience with."

After several more moments of silence, the communication receiver rumbled. "AGREED."

"Good," I said. "I'm the Doctor, by the way. You'll want to remember that if you ever get tempted to change your diet back." I turned to the TARDIS controls and began inputting new coordinates.

I almost sighed with relief that we were done... but we weren't yet, of course. No, we had a bit more to do. Unfortunately, when you considered how eager we all were to rest.

---

After dropping the Vashta off to their new home, far out of our hair, I returned us to Cowl's old base. Just for a quick scan. I looked up from the scanners. "No sign of temporal energy," I sighed, feeling relief. "That was the entire cloud... horde... swarm, i suppose?"

"Swarm works," Harry said. "But you're sure?"

"Quite. The temporal energy levels have become negligible." I tapped the screen. "Even if small bits broke off from the cloud, they'll be too small to pose a threat to the kinds of creatures that usually live down here. The rotten wood is too weak and soggy for them to procreate with, so it's just them, probably eating the occasional roach or something."

"Well, I guess I'd better put the word on the street then," Harry remarked. "Get all of those fae creatures and the like to go back home."

"Or rather, to where they want." Orhan was brushing her drying hair. "I can foresee quite a struggle between old occupants and newer ones."

"Just so long as they stay away from mortals," Harry answered.

"Yes." Orhan put the brush down and looked to Harry and to me. "Warden Dresden. Doctor. I am thankful to have had you along with us. Levellieur's treason would have killed us all down there."

"It's quite all right, Wizard Orhan." I offered my hand. "An honor and a privilege."

Orhan nodded at me and accepted my hand. She did likewise with Harry. "Now, Doctor, if you would be kind enough to return us to the surface, I must be going. I have a report I need to write."

Ah. Paperwork. The horror.

---

We returned the TARDIS to the surface, where Orhan's rental van was waiting. Nighttime had fallen at the point in time I chose. The lights of the city illuminated this area with some gaps, enough that Murphy, ever the police officer, was keeping a watchful eye on things.

Orhan and Yoshimo, patched up by Katara's ministrations, went to the van after giving their goodbyes. We made sure they were safely off before returning to the TARDIS. "When you asked me to travel with you," Liara began, looking directly at me, "I was promised wonderful sights. But it seems I spend more time running for my life from alien horrors."

"Oh, you get used to it after a while," Murphy said. Her hair was not so disheveled as before, but it was still damp. But she'd had the foresight to know her clothing would get damaged or the sort, so she had already changed into a spare blouse and lady's trousers by this point. So was everyone else save myself and Harry, actually. "Then you start doing the really crazy stuff, like following scruffy wizards into the strongholds of Faerie Queens."

"I do believe we are being disrespected, Harry," I said jovially.

Harry laughed at that. "I'm used to it from Karrin. She's always short with me."

Murphy's head whipped about to face him. "What was that, Dresden?"

I couldn't resist joining in. "I think she's a little peeved, Harry." What can I say? The Vashta Nerada plus the Black Council people had clearly had an effect upon my survival instincts.

Murphy's eyes glared at me too. Playfully. Well, I think. "I should bash in your knee caps and get you both down here before the lack of oxygen up there starts inflicting brain damage." She eyed Harry again. "More brain damage in your case, Harry."

Harry replied with some line that sounded like he had indeed suffered brain damage. I suspect it was from a movie, because so much of his wit vocabulary is tied up in those pop culture references he so loves.

Molly was giggling like crazy at this point, and even Katara was smiling thinly.

"Well, before we kill each other," I began, "I would recommend Harry and I go dry off, change clothes, and then..." I admit I had a twinkle in my eye at this point. "...how about that favored tradition of yours, Harry? I've yet to try Mac's delectable home brews."

"Oh, Goddess, a meal sounds great right now," Liara sighed.

"Good idea, Doc." Harry nodded. "I've got a change of clothes back at the apartment."

I shook my head at that. "You really should have seen this coming, Dresden. I guess this is why I'm the brains of this duo."

"Hey, don't get cocky, or next time I'll let the monster rip that smug Time Lord face right off..."

---

While we waited for Harry to change clothes back in his basement apartment, I did the same in my wardrobe room. I had just put on a new shirt - I decided to give the odd green one a try instead of my usual blue - when I heard a knock at the door and turned. A snap of my fingers admitted Molly. "Ah, Miss Carpenter." I began to button the shirt. "I haven't mentioned it yet, but you and your mother have saved me from injury, even death, several times now."

"Oh?" Molly allowed herself a proud smile. "That's good. Mom will be happy that the vest has helped you so much."

"Indeed." I turned and picked up one of my normal vests from another hanger. "In fact, I'm alive tonight because of it. It absorbed Levellieur's fireball quite handily."

Now Molly was beaming with pride. Her expression turned sad, though, when she noticed the vest where I had discarded it. She held it up and surveyed the damage. Not just the burn mark, but rather... "Oh. Uh... I need to talk to Harry, I don't think that was supposed to happen," she said. The pride disappeared.

"Hrm?"

"My defensive enchantments. They're gone," she answered. "I mean... they're completely... that fireball. It was really hot, right? Maybe it was so powerful that the enchantments drained themselves completely in stopping it." Her brow furrowed. "But I don't think that's how they're supposed to work."

"Well, it was one of your first tries, and it did work well several times." I stepped up and gave her a pat on the shoulder. And then I turned it into a hug, because the young woman needed it after another harrowing adventure and her current disappointment in her handiwork becoming undone. "Thank you very much," I said to her.

"You're welcome."

I ended the hug and reached over to my rack of vests. I pulled out a mostly-similar exact copy. Well, entirely similar, save the lack of a burn mark and that this one had never been enchanted magically. Molly stared at it. "That's... that's the same..." She pulled it open and looked at the plates of light kevlar stitched on the inside. "It's..."

"Matter replicator," I confessed. "I couldn't duplicate your magical enchantment of course, but the rest?"

"This is... wow." She looked it over. "How many did you make?"

"A few," I confessed.

"Well..." Molly smiled at me. "Can I take some? I'll get one done for you by the end of the week, then I'll work on the others? Whenever you come back, I mean?"

At that I nodded. "Sure. That works for me."

"Great!" She showed some enthusiasm as she took four of the vests and ran out of the room with them.

I finished getting dressed. When I returned to the TARDIS control room, Harry was waiting at the door for Molly to come up the stairs. Murphy and the others were patiently waiting... well, save Liara, who was looking rather hungry. I walked up to the controls. "All right everyone, time for a post-fight-for-our-lives meal?"

"It's time to introduce you to Mac's best, Doc," Harry answered.

Indeed it was.

---

I materialized the TARDIS in the alley next to Mac's and we all headed out. I came last to make sure the TARDIS was secure.

I was just about to round the corner and join the others when a voice called out to me. I turned, recognizing it. "Wizard Orhan?"

Ceyde Orhan stood beside the TARDIS in her black robes with blue stole. I could barely make her out given the relative lack of light in the alley. Suspicion gripped me as she took a step forward. "Doctor." She nodded again. "I thought it best to speak with you. To make some things clear."

I narrowed my eyes. Through everything, I could have almost forgotten that she, not Levellieur, was the wizard connected to Gregori Cristos. The one he had appointed to lead the mission. My hand started to creep toward the sling on which my sonic disruptor rested.

"That will not be necessary, Doctor," a rich voice called out. From the shadows of the alley a second, taller robed figure emerged. He took his place beside Orhan. "You are in no danger here."

I blinked. "Rashid?", I asked.

Rashid of the Wizards' Senior Council, otherwise called the Gatekeeper given his primary job, gave a nod I could just barely perceive in the shadow of his hood. I could see the glint of a false eye, too bright to be the usual steel eye he showed, in said hood. "I am pleased to say that our meeting here is under more pleasant auspices than the last time I spoke to you in this alley," he answered.

I nodded. The last time I had seen the Gatekeeper, he had come to try and warn me from the path I had been on at the time. The path that turned me into the Time Lord Triumphant. "That's quite relieving," I said.

"Indeed." He inclined his head slightly. And then he focused again. "And I am relieved as well."

"Oh?" I already figured what he was relieved over. "I take it you can see I'm clean of a certain malignant influence."

I thought I saw a smile curve on the old wizard's mouth, regardless of the shadows. "Yes. I was concerned the Enemy might one day try to claim you. Indeed, I was worried your prior behavior was a sign of such a thing, but that night I saw you were not taken and I stayed my hand."

"Thank you." I shivered involuntarily despite the summer warmth of the night. "I can't imagine what the adversary would have led me to do. And if he had attacked me back then..." Now that was a sobering thought.

"Yes."

Now I was quickly putting two and two together. "Orhan's not Cristos' agent, she's your's."

"Wizard Orhan is indeed a member of the faction that elevated Gregori Cristos," Rashid answered. The fact he was saying such confirmed for me that he had likely cast some sort of sonic-dampening magic, ensuring no one could hear us out here. "She believes in the legitimacy of those wizards' cause in the politics of the Council, and not without reason. But nor is she blind to the manipulations her people were subjected to."

"I lost friends to Peabody's mistfiend," Orhan explained. "I lost an apprentice to him. So I understand the anger my peers feel. But I know enough to see we have been used."

"Cristos." I nodded.

"Yes." Her expression was sad. "It pains me to think it. Poor Francois."

"Levellieur." Suddenly a fact came to mind. The common connection of Rashid to the two wizards. "He was one of yours too. All three of you, traveling so frequently in Faerie."

"Yes." Orhan nodded. "Francois was a righteous man. I dismissed his changes as the result of the war. Of losing his own apprentice among the Wardens in the horrible slaughter in Palermo. If only I had known..."

"I bear blame for his fate as well," Rashid assured her. "The greater blame. Do not let it concern you."

"That's what makes the adversary such a terrible thing," I said. "The way he turns us against those we care for."

"Hence why I am especially pleased that you defeated his attempt to infect you." Rashid nodded. "Go and enjoy the fruits of your victory, Doctor. Enjoy your time with your friends."

There was something about the way he said it that set me on edge. I wondered if he knew what was to come. If my calculations were right... I shuddered. I knew what was coming to this world. Things were about to get worse.

"Also, if I may..."

I looked back up at Rashid. Orhan was already retreating back into the shadows of the alley. "Yes?"

Rashid gave me a nod. "I have a feeling, Doctor, that this journey is bringing you to the point you have long awaited."

For a moment I thought about what he meant by that. And then I drew in a breath. "You think I'm... close to recovering my memories?"

"Perhaps," he said. He turned away from me. "Allah be with you in the coming days, Doctor. I believe your greatest challenges are soon to come."

"Thank you," was all I managed to say. It was appropriate enough.

Especially given how right he was. Not just about me, either. Those words could describe a number of those I knew.

Including Harry. Because I knew, even then, that changes were coming to Harry's life. Changes he had never imagined.

...oh, bugger all this ominous stuff. My stomach was growling and there was a seat in McAnally's with my name on it.

---

I finally had to admit defeat. And you lot know I don't do that easily.

"It is better than Timbiqui Dark," I gasped, having just taken a swig of McAnally's finest.

"And you wasted it on a bunch of pixies!", Harry retorted. Around us it was a typical night at McAnally's. Mac himself was at the bar preparing another order for some newcomers. He gave us a nod at our corner table. I'd tipped him well, after all, and my credit was always good (That it was due to Time Lord technical trickery that effectively printed electronic money, well, that was something I didn't advertise).

The atmosphere of Mac's is usually light. I mean, there is some raucous behavior, but Mac was well-armed both physically and, when it came to the supernatural, with the sign that declared his bar to be Accorded Neutral Territory under the Unseelie Accords. That is, the supernatural world's equivalent to the Geneva Conventions considered his bar to be a sort of miniature Switzerland, just with less chocolate and cheese and more steak sandwiches and ale.

"Pictsies," I corrected. "And you were quite happy enough to see the Nac Mac Feegle come to our aid against the Elf Queen's forces. Admit it."

"You could have picked something else!", Harry protested, but with more than a bit of joviality to the protest.

"So... this is that time you two ran off with him to another world or cosmos or whatever?" Murphy asked.

"Second time we did, actually," Harry corrected. "First time was a couple years ago."

"Korra's world," I elaborated. "I only came for Molly and her veils, but Harry and Michael insisted on accompanying her."

Murphy shook her head. "Oh, that's just not fair," she said with a fake glower. "So you've all gotten to go on crazy interdimensional adventures with the Doctor, but not me? Let me guess, even Thomas got to go, didn't he?"

"Nope," Harry announced. "Just me, Molly, and Michael. So far."

"So unfair." Murphy took a swig of her ale and reached for her steak sandwich. Liara was sitting beside her and wolfing down her second. "Hey, how can you put down that much food and look like that? Alien biology?"

That remark didn't give away much, since Liara was currently wearing her holobelt. "Biotic metabolism," she answered. "The more biotics I use, the more my metabolism consumes. As you can imagine, I've been eating more since I started traveling with the Doctor. Sometimes I think he pushes me more than the Reapers did."

"Reapers?" Murphy blinked. "Like farming things?"

"Evil ancient AIs in spaceship bodies shaped like cephalopods," I replied. "They used to wipe all of the Milky Way's interstellar civilizations from existence every fifty thousand years. Well, until Commander Shepard came along." I took a bite of an exquisite steak sandwich. "With a little help from me at the end. But mostly Shepard."

Liara smiled softly at that. "We would have lost Shepard if not for the Doctor getting involved," she clarified.

"Sounds like a tough guy," Harry said before taking another bite.

"Gal, actually," I clarified.

"Ha!", Murphy snorted. "You walked into that one, Harry."

"Yeah yeah, I'm a male chauvinist pig, et cetera," Harry droned through a mouthful of steak sandwich. Manners have never been his strong suit, I fear.

"So, like, this Commander Shepard, she's really badass then?", Molly asked.

"The Reapers were actually scared of her," I said. "So yes."

"Wow, it'd be awesome to meet her, wouldn't it boss?"

"Molly, no," Harry said. "We're not joining the Doctor for any adventures. We've got enough work here in Chicago."

Molly frowned at that and gave a pout. But when all we could do was laugh, she ignored it and went for her sandwich again.

I looked over to where Katara was watching us. There were tears in her eyes to go with the faint smile on her face. Camaraderie couldn't help but remind her of the close friends, the family, she had lost. She noticed me watching and used a motion of her hands to waterbend the tears from her cheeks. "I'm not new to desperate fights and a lot of running, but Liara's right." She gave me a little grin. "Adventuring with the Doctor can be harder than anything we've done before."

"Oi, I'm getting ganged up on, am I?", I laughed.

"It's tough love, Doctor," Liara said. She held up the half-finished bottle of Mac's ale before her.

"Oh, tough love is it?" I took a drink myself. Ah, such fine ale. "We'll have to do this again some time, Harry. Tough love or not!"

"Next time, let's leaving that 'nearly dying' part out," Harry answered.

I nodded in agreement. "Agreed!"

And we all brought up our bottles of ale and clanked them over the table in agreement.

I think that is how I shall end this tale. We had gone down, faced the shadows, and come back to enjoy the evening together. What better ending could one hope for?