Law of Shadows

“Your opponent’s greatest weapon can be turned against him.”

- A memory of the Old Ones.

***Carinthia***

***Sely***

Magnus and I enter the dining room and find everyone’s eyes fixed to the TV screen. The commentator’s voice booms through the room, announcing the eruption of the Yellowstone volcano. He describes the evacuation methods which the humans are using. Some of the shown scenes look like they are directly from one of those end of the world movies.

“How bad is it?” Magnus asks from behind me.

Fiacre shakes her head. “They don’t know, but several scientists are already prophesying that it’s bad. We’ve to expect at least a climate change or a small ice age. The elders haven’t announced their own position on the new situation.”

Tina sighs. “I guess we have to anticipate yet another gathering soon.”

Magnus points at the other clan-head. “You! Why are you even here again? I thought that you went back to your clan. Can you leave them without leadership for that long?”

She smiles and doesn’t look troubled by Magnus’s rude questions. “Fiacre helped me to connect your reality marble to mine. It’s literally just a five minute walk if I want to come here. I intend to make full use of it and spend as much time as possible with my sister and my nieces.”

I take Magnus’s hand and guide him to the head of the table. There, I urge him to sit down. “I think Tina has proven that she is an ally. I am sure that by now she could have caused us harm many times if she wanted to.”

Magnus doesn’t look pleased, but he sits down. I offer him some of the excellent food. Oilell is indeed an exceptional cook. “We’ve seen to it that our new clan-members got suitable areas around the mansion for their own use. The singles live in Fiacre’s former house for the time being. The others are staying in the mansion’s upper floors. Once they get the materials, they’ll build their own homes inside the reality marble.”

Fiacre takes a sip from her wine. “That’s something I wanted to talk about about. Do they really have to live in my house? I know that I’ve moved out, but the place is of sentimental value to me.”

I nod. “The mansion is big, but not big enough to have people who we don’t know living so close to us. Yes, they swore a blood oath, but that still doesn’t mean that we should trust them blindly with all our secrets. I am just trying to establish a working relationship while we keep our cards close to our chest.”

I take my own seat at the dining table. After I realized that Magnus doesn’t intend to do anything about our new additions, I took control of the situation and tried to sort out how Leila and the others can serve the clan. “Magnus, I’ve made a character sheet for everyone. If you have the time, I would like to speak with you about their skills. Since I’ve absolutely no idea about your finances and holdings, I can’t allocate any meaningful tasks to them.”

Magnus chews on a piece of Oilell’s marvellous beef fillet and swallows. “Are you sure that we should give them any task that’s related to our finances or our safety?”

I clear my throat. “I didn’t mean that we have to go that far. Though I think that Leila and the others need something to do. We can’t have them lie on their backs and wait until something happens. It’s better for people to have responsibilities. Otherwise they have too much time on their hands to think. And then they get stupid ideas.”

The corner of his mouth tugs upwards. “I understand. We’ll take our time to find some tasks which are loosely related to holding the territory. That doesn’t give them immediate power, but it should occupy them.”

Oilell nods. She looks like she is very pleased about the development. “That’s very good. You guys have no idea how complicated it is to keep track of all of Magnus’s worldly affairs.”

That’s when an explosion rocks the mansion.

Magnus is up and out of his seat before I can react. Though I have to admit that my speed slowed down drastically since the pregnancy started to affect me. I sigh and forfeit the food to find out what’s going on.

We follow Magnus to the entrance hall. As soon as Magnus peeks around the hallway’s corner, he is greeted by a hail of gunfire and spells.

I didn’t see what’s going on, but it’s bad enough for Magnus to pull a fist with dice from his pocket. He tosses them into the entrance hall, which is followed by a set of explosions.

“What’s happening!?” Annia calls out from next to me. She is holding Kath who looks more than frightened.

“Fae!” Magnus answers with grim determination. He pulls a card from his pocket and crushes it in his hand. There is a flash of light and suddenly he is holding a gatling gun. He steps around the corner and I cover my ears. This time he answers the gunfire with a storm of bullets. I hear screams, but they quickly fade away while the opponent’s bullets are repelled by his shield.

I pull Annia and Kath away from the battle. “Fiacre! Get them down to Lindwurm’s pond!”

Tina and Cecilia had already thrown themselves at whatever is waiting in the entrance hall, so I follow them without a second thought.

The entrance hall is a battlefield and there is a large hole in the ground. Several fae are trying to enter the reality marble through the doorway. They are doing their best to shield themselves against Magnus’s suppressing firepower. For every fae who manages to get into the entrance hall, there are two whose shields fail. Once that happens, the bullets literally tear them apart.

Several fae jump down into the hole, but three try to evade our counter-attack by going up the stairway. They throw spells at us and I have to duck out of a fireball’s path. “Magnus, take down the doorway! Stop them from getting more people through!”

A fae jumps at me, but I pour magic into my muscles and drive my open palm into his chin. There is a satisfying ‘crack’ and he goes down. He tries to get back to his feet, but I already placed my hands in a praying position to cast a spell. Five flaming strings of fire appear between my fingers when I pull them apart. I loop the strings around his neck and place a foot on his chest. Then I pull with all my might to tighten the loop.

The firestrings sear through his flesh and his head departs from his body. Then I use the strings as a whip to lash out at another opponent who came too close. My firewhip lights up his shields, but it doesn’t harm him.

Cecilia takes him down with a lance of violet light which leaves red spots in my vision. The fae’s shield doesn’t even react to the ray of light as it cuts a hole into his chest and the wall behind him. Apparently, his shield recognized only physical attacks.

Magnus grunts and steps in front of me, but he swings his gun slightly to the left, aiming at the doorway’s door frame. Splinters fly as the wood is torn apart and reveals the shining metal of hidden runes. In the apartment behind the doorway are dozens of fae, but when the next one tries to get through, his body simply comes apart. It’s as if some pieces of his body tried to go forward while others went sideways.

A crack appears in the air and my view of the apartment shatters like a mirror. What’s left behind is a wall with a door frame.

Magnus loosens his finger around the gatling gun’s trigger and silence descends upon the hall. The whole attack didn’t take more than twenty seconds, though it felt like an eternity to me. I point up the stairway. “Three escaped upwards! We have to warn-”

My good intentions prove unnecessary as one of the three fae breaks through the wooden balustrade on the first floor. Leila follows him with an amazonian warcry on her lips. She is holding a spear of blue energy in her hands and drives it through the fae’s chest even as they fall.

She lands on her feet, pinning the fae to the ground. There is a sizzling sound and his body twitches in erratics spasms. Finally, he lies still.

“Are you alright? What about the others?” I ask.

Tom appears at the upper end of the stairway, holding a fae at the neck. The fae is bent sideways in an unhealthy angle and his head is caved in. “Don’t insult us by taking us too lightly! Three fae against ten Old Ones isn’t even a mentionable battle.”

Leila pulls her energy spear out of her dead opponent. “How did they even get in? Are there more?”

Magnus closes his eyes as if he is listening to something. “There are twenty-one of them in the basement. They just broke down the door to the dungeon. I can sense no others within my domain.”

I pull a grimace. “I don’t understand. They didn’t even try to take prisoners. Though that could’ve been the job of those who are still waiting in the apartment.”

“They aren’t waiting. If anything at all, then they are busy collecting their pieces. I rigged the apartment to self destruct if the doorway gets compromised. There is also the issue of how they managed to activate the doorway. I thought it was completely safe,” Magnus grumbles and carefully approaches the hole in the floor. He aims his gatling gun downwards, wielding the weapon easily like no human could. Normally, the humans attach those things to their vehicles, but Magnus seems to think that it’s meant to be carried around.

Tina also approaches the hole. “It’s dangerous to underestimate someone who is after your hide.”

Magnus looks up to Tom. “Get your non-combatants and the child. Order them to follow Fiacre into the woods. North-east of here is a pond. Meet her there while we wipe out the vermin. Sely, you go with them.”

“Like hell I will!” I answer quickly. “Don’t you remember our promise!?”

He rolls his eyes and jumps down into the hole. We follow and are joined by Leila, Tom and three others. Together with Tina and Cecilia, that makes nine people. Our group quickly advances down a narrow corridor which has a lot of similarities to the badly maintained passageways in Magnus’s labyrinth.

Leila’s voice reaches us from the rear of the group. “Why did they go down here? With twenty-one people, they would have had a better chance at taking us by surprise. Instead they wasted their initial advantage to get a head-start at raiding the mansion’s cellar.”

Magnus shakes his head. “I can’t think of any logical reason.”

Suddenly Oilell appears in front of us. “They are trying to get to the orb!” She disappeared during the fight, but it seems like she spent the time doing reconnaissance.

Magnus’s expression turns confused. “Why would they want that old thing?”

I quicken my steps. During my free time I did some research about the Bathomeus. It shamed me when I knew nothing about my new clan, so I corrected that little problem. “Why!? Because it was used to cause the last Ice Age during the war with the fae! They want to use it as a weapon against us!”