Avē Imperātor, moritūrī tē salūtant!

Beta'd by Sesparra

Harry Dresden was used to not being the biggest fish in the proverbial pond, but even he would admit that, relatively speaking, he was weightier than a lot of others.

That made it all the more terrifying to be at the mercy of Nicodemus Archleone. He wasn't even particularly directly powerful, not that Harry could feel, but he'd surrounded himself with people much more capable of direct applications of power, like little miss bad hair day or the demon bear, and worse yet, he was cunning.

Cunning enough to see through his attempts to delay his own execution by getting Nicky to talk about his mother, who he'd apparently been friends with, and demand an answer to whether he'd submit himself to Nicodemus' authority directly.

Unlike the last person who had tried that on him, Nicodemus didn't strike Harry as the kind of mind he could trick, scheme, and munchkin his way past.

"F-final answer, Nick," Harry said, shivering under the constant downpour of chilly water. "Fuck off."

"Ah." There was some mild disappointment in Nicodemus' tone, but only as much as if he'd caught a particularly young child with their grubby little mitts in the cookie jar. "I suppose I've had enough breakfast."

Harry's composure failed him as Nicodemus approached, showing all the care that someone would when going to get their keys at the start of a day, and he started to struggle against his bonds, casting about for his magic regardless of how he could feel the flowing water washing away almost all the power he could bring to bear, leaving him with barely enough to light a candle, let alone make his way out of this mess- and that was before he took the manacles stabbing into his wrists into account.

There was… something else, though.

Almost seeming to flit around the periphery of his mind, there was a spark of… something, a mote of a power not weakened by the grounding effect of the water. As Nicodemus raised the knife to his throat, Harry marshaled his will as best he could, under the circumstances, and, using what little of his own power he could use without it being drowned out, he tried to bridge the gap between himself and the distant star.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, before Nicodemus could slit his throat, there was an echoing sound that it took Harry a moment to register as a gunshot, between the cold miring his thoughts as much as his magic and the imminent threat of Nicodemus.

There was another gunshot outside, then a third, and once his ears stopped ringing, Harry could hear the sounds of a scuffle through the door leading out of the cavernous room.

Almost more importantly, though, he could feel the mote of power descending to him, catching on his soul and igniting into a blaze of pure, unadulterated mental energy that was now at his disposal.

So distracting was this power that Harry very nearly forgot Nicodemus' presence, and it's possible he would have forgotten him entirely if not for the tired "Bother. What now?" that escaped the man's lips as he turned to the door, knife still held at Harry's throat.

There was a thud against the door, and then a pool of blood started growing underneath it.

The first thing that Harry saw when the door opened was the body that had, as he suspected, ended up against it. It was wearing tactical gear, had a rifle in its hands, and was completely lacking a head.

Stepping over the body almost delicately was a figure clad in some sort of futuristic bodysuit, like if the Fantastic Four went to Tron, with a lab coat thrown on over top and a military-looking helmet covering their face, seeming to be gently lit by a soft silver light without a discernible source. In one hand, they held a gently curved sword that looked, despite the blood covering it, absolutely pristine, and in the other, a pistol big enough that he shuddered to think of the size of round that monster fired.

Behind the figure, Michael's friends, Shiro and Sanya filed into the cavernlike room, swords bared (and, in Sanya's case, a firearm halfway between coach gun and rifle in his off hand), and following in their wake was Susan, holding a dinky little holdout pistol.

Now that the gang was all present, maybe things could really get exciting.

"Archleone," I said, raising my sword to point at him.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, ma'am," he replied, sounding for all the world like a used car salesman and not the genocidal maniac who had survived the fall of more than one empire.

"That's rich, coming from you," I said. "Now then, put the knife down."

He looked down his nose at me. "And whyever would I do that?"

"Do you know what an orbital strike tastes like?"

Nicodemus blinked, caught off guard by the seeming non-sequitr. "I beg your pardon?"

"Do. You. Know. What. An. Orbital. Strike. Tastes. Like?" I did my best to convey my disappointment at Nicodemus for not understanding the concept despite the polarization of the visor in my helmet while still trying my best to give the VISR systems a relatively steady position to scan the room for the Shroud, which was a little bit trickier than it seemed given how hard it was to convey that kind of intent through body language.

"Ah. That is what I thought you said." He frowned. "I have no earthly idea where I would have found out."

"Would you like to?" Sure, I knew that the Future Witness didn't have her MAC capacitors charged, and that I wouldn't be willing to write off the chunk of Chicago that would either be collapsed by the impact or flattened by the airburst, but he knew jack and shit about it, which meant that I could reasonably bluff him over it. Besides, I was reasonably sure he couldn't detect Weave magic, and there, I had many more options.

I could all but feel the askance looks from everyone else, but I didn't have time to reassure them even if Nicodemus wasn't within earshot, what with having to quick-chant the incantation for Otiluke's Freezing Sphere and load the resulting round into my pistol without anyone noticing.

Harry, particularly, seemed to be freaking out, and he started wrenching at the manacles more desperately from where they were secured over his head. So desperate was he that I could see the links of the chain binding the two cuffs together starting to pull away, although I was likely the only one who could, given how everyone, including Nicodemus himself, was looking at me like… well, like I'd just threatened Nicodemus with an orbital strike.

Then, Nicodemus' mouth split open into a truly unnerving smile. "No, you wouldn't, would you, Carpenter? Not here, not in the middle of Chicago, where there are so many who would be killed by the airburst?"

"What gave me away?" I asked, mentally calculating angles and distances in my head. I couldn't afford to catch Harry in the blast, not with how he'd already been worked over, but there were a limited number of places I could actually land the spell and both catch Nicodemus within the effect without hitting any of us, and even fewer where Dierdre would also feel the spell, especially with her prowling around the edge of the room like a wolf, if that wolf were made of razor-sharp metal.

The Forge flared with brilliant light, revealing two pillars. Atop the first grew a leafy plant, pulsating with gentle violet light from the heart-shaped nodule hidden behind most of the leaves, and the second held what looked to be a joke book.

Neither of them could do anything for me in the here and now, though, so I returned my attention to Nicodemus just in time to catch his reply.

"It's the artifact you carry," he said, gesturing at the pocket where I'd put the Starsphere. "Do you have any idea what it is that you're drawing your power from, girl?"

I raised an eyebrow inside my helmet. "A fragment of a…" I frowned, feeling out the magic within the Starsphere as best I could. Before, I hadn't been able to puzzle out much, but now, with the exposure to the Sword Coast's enchanted items, I could sense more. "An ancient shield, no?"

Nicodemus sneered. "If that's all you know of it, then you don't deserve to be able to keep it."

"Come and take it, then," I said, sending moon-silver light racing up the length of my sword. As good as Nicodemus was, he wasn't good enough to outfight me, Shiro, and Sanya, with just Dierdre for backup, so the only problem was-

And then Harry's chains snapped and he hit Nicodemus like a freight train.

Okay, maybe freight train was exaggerating things a little bit, but given how Nicodemus moved like a ragdoll, chest smashed in like he'd been kicked by Sleipnir, I felt confident in saying that Harry had figured some new trick out.

Of course, the spray of blood from Harry's throat was more pressing, and I barely spared the time to nail Dierdre with the spell, conjuring a sphere of intense, almost Cherenkov-blue light around her that almost instantly started precipitating frost, before dismissing the pistol and dashing for Harry's collapsing form.

I didn't quite manage to catch him before he splashed down into the pool that he'd been bound in, water still coming splashing in, but I managed to haul him out and get him onto his hands and knees by raw force, dismissing my helmet to yank one glove off with my teeth to start pressing the gash in his throat together.

He gurgled, trying to speak, and I shook my head. "Hang on, Dresden, I need a moment to work here, and you really shouldn't be talking with a cut throat."

It took a moment to get the divine power flowing through this mortal body, my hand glowing with moon-silver radiance as I held the two flaps of flesh that Nicodemus had severed together. Fortunately, it began sealing itself relatively quickly, and that freed me up to monitor the room at large.

Sanya and Susan were taking turns to harry a frostbitten Dierdre, whose bladelike hair was starting to smoke and crack where it blocked the fire from his gun, and otherwise was still covered in hoarfrost. Susan was mostly remaining at a distance, swiping out with what looked to be a leg torn from the table that Dierdre had been sitting at before we had entered, while Sanya was closer in, the silver-white radiance of the Sword of Hope seeming to slow the tendrils enough that he could deflect, dodge, or attack them, presenting the image of an inexorable force and slowly forcing the Denarian to retreat.

Shiro, in contrast to Sanya's almost metronomic advance, was moving like a dervish. Fidelacchius' glow daunted Anduriel, leaving Nicodemus more or less human against Shiro, and for all the centuries of practice the First of the Denarians had, next to Shiro, he looked like a child challenging the master of the art.

Still, for all that Shiro was a superior swordsman, he was only mortal, and aging at that, whereas Anduriel was more than connected enough to Nicodemus to prevent him from tiring.

For every bloodless gash that Shiro left in Nicodemus' flesh, as gradually sealed up by the Noose as they were, Nicodemus got closer and closer to landing a hit on Shiro in return, his flamberge slicing through first Shiro's armor and then his clothing.

I saw the moment that Shiro decided that he wasn't going to make it home- he turned a sad smile to Sanya, who couldn't see it, and then, to Nicodemus, he offered defiance.

"Tell me, Nicodemus, what is it like? Not being able to trust another human being, not even the flesh of your flesh, lest they succumb to the power that could be theirs if only they claim it? To be so far beyond the grasp of death that you wear the hangman's necklace to flaunt it in all their faces?" Shiro shook his head. "It's almost sad, seeing a man so far beyond faith in his fellow man."

Both Shiro and I could see that hit home.

Harry's throat had mostly closed up, at that point, so I gave one last push of healing, then slapped my pistol into his hand and moved.

I was very close to too late- Shiro had allowed his guard to fail so that even Nicodemus' sloppiest strike would have gutted him like a fish, leaving the Sword of Faith in his hands to break.

Close, though, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and I made it just in time to be impaled through the stomach in Shiro's place.

"And look at that," purred Nicodemus. "The girl thinks she can give of herself to stop your death."

"Go to hell, Nick," I said, and as I backhanded him, sword and all, across the room, I let the tight hold I was keeping on the divine power, the power of a cornerstone of Faerûn impressed into the shape of a mortal, loosen.

And that's that!

Perks Earned:

Field of Heart-Shaped Herbs (MCU Vol. 2, 300 CP): Out of all the Wakandan secrets that lie within the borders of the reclusive city, this one is the most potent secret of them all. It is also the most dangerous. It is a small but potent field, its soil infused with radiation from the ancient Vibranium meteor when it fell to such an extent that it would affect any plant life growing within it, like these herbs. The herbs are taken and ground up so that it may be imbibed, and when the imbiber is buried under a light covering they will find themselves on a spiritual journey to talk with their ancestors... and then rise a greater warrior. Strength and speed that reaches the lower levels of superhuman, durability to survive explosions with minor injuries. Perfect coordination and balance with agility that far outstrips Olympic athletes. It would not be too farfetched to say that the results of this herb match even the ones derived from the Super Soldier formula that made Captain America... and now you have a small field of these plants. Be very careful. After you leave, this can either be a property or a Warehouse Attachment.

You're Welcome, By The Way (MCU Vol. 2, Free): You might have noticed that as time went on, a lot of the people here have become... snarky, for a lack of better words. Snippy, bantering, sarcastic, call it whatever you want because they'll call it whatever they want as well. The point is they're not the only ones now. That is, they don't have a monopoly on sounding high and mighty. Mainly because you can keep up with them. Tony Stark's sharp tongue will have competition, the Avengers' humor will have another player, I think you're getting the drift. It doesn't always have to be active, but you can sound like such a magnificent bastard. Why wouldn't you want to do it all the time?

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