by John Conroe
“Or the blow to the head put me in the right frame of mind, so to speak,” I said.
“And the gist of the conversation was that the queens’ power comes from draining the elementals of their realms to the point where the elemental dies,” Chris said. “How powerful were these elementals that you met with?”
“Well, one was, I think, a mountain. The other was a volcano, not like Yellowstone, but still, a freaking volcano. I couldn’t tell about the pond or the wind. And they were just the representatives of the others. There may be dozens,” I said.
“How does the power draining work?” Stacia asked.
“My impression is that we have a pact of sorts. They share what I need and I take care of the land.”
“The other two realms are actually bigger than Middle Fairie. How could they exhaust so many elementals, and on what?” Stacia asked.
“The elementals in the cave told me it was battle and conflict.”
“That’s what they said?” Chris asked. “Exactly?”
“Conflict, battle, competition, survival were the four words used.”
“Well, the two courts fight among themselves but enough to exhaust all elementals except the largest? Where would they be directing that much power? This planet would show signs of that much raw energy being used for battle,” Stacia said.
“Stacia is correct. I calculate that the planet Fairie would have noticeable damage commensurate with a limited nuclear exchange. It has no such damage. However, this solar system does show an inordinate amount of debris,” Omega said from the laptop on Chris’s command and control table. “The asteroid field around Fairie is unusually crowded.”
“So the massive force available to the queens was directed outward, at a space-borne threat?” Chris asked, more in musing than expecting an answer. “One of the things bothering Tanya and me about your fight with them, Declan, is that they didn’t throw back the same kind of force that you exhibited. Why? Because maybe they didn’t have it to waste?”
“Here in Middle Fairie, they would have less power, but you’re right: When we squared off with Morrigan in the Winter lands, she should have crushed me,” I said. “That’s always bothered me too, although I don’t mind the not crushing part.”
“She mind controlled all the locals to attack us, but that was it. They must have powers similar to yours, Declan. I mean, you gained more Air and access to Water since coming here. They’ve been doing this for eons,” Stacia said.
“So maybe that answers the question of why the Vorsook have left them alone. Maybe they beat back the aliens so badly that a cease-fire was established. And even some exchange of trade secrets,” Chris said. “But now their firepower is seriously diminished. And Middle Fairie’s is intact, right?”
“I suppose, but why didn’t one or both of them take Middle?” I asked. “Why allow me to come here, then pressure me into accepting the land’s pact?”
Chris frowned while Stacia looked thoughtful. “We need to talk to people who know more about all this realm stuff. Like Stocan in Idiria or at least one of his people. Hmm, maybe now they’re more your people?” Stacia proposed.
“That’s a good idea, but our protocol is to head back to Earth before returning here,” Chris said. They both looked at me. Awasos raised his head from where he was lying in wolf form, also staring my way.
“What?” I asked. “Oh. You’re wondering if I’ll go back? What are we talking? A couple of days? A week?”
“What do you think?” Chris asked carefully.
“At least a week,” I said, thinking it through. They both looked surprised. “I think I need to attend some of my new classes. There’s a lot about this stuff I don’t know.”
Stacia exchanged a look with Chris. “How’s your… clarity level? Feeling dizzy? Drunk?”
“Well, I’m a little light-headed but nothing like before,” I said. “Actually, I feel pretty decent. Thinking isn’t muddy.”
“So the battery thing worked?” Chris asked.
I looked down at the battery in my vest. It was full. “Omega?” I asked.
“Prototype battery achieved full charge three hours ago.”
“Okay, that’s not expected. I mean, we thought they would charge fast here, but I don’t feel any different from when it was still charging.”
“And how is the realm? Still demanding constant attention?” Chris asked.
I looked inward, waiting for a flood of anxiety to hit me. Nothing. “Fine. Like it’s waiting. All systems go. The storms and quakes have all ceased. Things seem to be getting back to normal.”
“Think your… chat with the powers of the realm have stabilized your relationship?” Stacia asked.
“Maybe. It just seems like things are on an even keel. I feel a tiny bit of concern about leaving, but nothing like before. We should charge up a few more of these big batteries, though. We’ll need lots of power to reopen the gate when we want to come back.”
“Well that’s your thing, Merlin,” Stacia said. “Get to it.”
“Aye, aye Captain Lupus,” I mock saluted but she just smiled and nodded like the captain thing was her just title.
“Omega, anything to report?” Chris asked.
“I have drones tailing the remaining elves. They are retreating at a fast pace from the border, seven active, three wounded. The rest died from gunshots along with the goblins.”
“Yeah, about that. You’re packing now?” I asked. “Fallen angel with a gun?”
Chris smiled and opened his vest to display a big black plastic gun in a chest holster. “Your aunt Darcy is a smart woman. There are times when a gun is extremely efficient. Tanya usually makes me take one or two. Glock 10mm.”
I nodded at the wisdom of our womenfolk and climbed up to my feet. Actually felt pretty good. Looking around, I found the spare wooden and crystal magic batteries piled in an open plastic bin with some of my extra crafting supplies.
Most of the cave floor was rock but there were some patches where the rock was covered with loose dirt. I smoothed those out and then drew circles ringed with the proper runes, using the five-inch bushcraft knife that Mack had me testing out. There are benefits to having your own junior master bladesmith as a roomie.
I laid out a total of six big batteries in the charging circles, verified that they were absorbing power, then went to find something to eat. We had all kinds of freeze-dried stuff for long-term storage, but we’d also brought a pretty big stock of homemade food in several coolers. Aunt Ash had made me a big tub of New England clam chowder, packed in its own pot. I put the whole thing on the little propane camp stove and went looking for bread and butter.
Turning around to check on the soup, I found ‘Sos, in big-ass wolf form, lying under the table that held the cook stove. Of course. I went back to the supplies to find a big bowl and when I came back, Chris was sniffing at the pot. This time, I came back with a total of four big metal bowls, totally not surprised that Stacia was sitting in a camp chair, feet up, about two feet from the soup.
“You know, you could have just heated some up yourselves,” I said.
“Nope. Your aunt put a ward on the pot. Only you can open it. Like she doesn’t trust us around food,” Stacia said.
“Doesn’t trust you around my food,” I corrected. “What did it do?”
“Electric shocks,” Chris said. “It was easier to wait for you to wake up.”
“Although another half hour and we were thinking of just punching a hole through the pot with a knife,” Stacia said.
“Culinary thievery,” I said, stirring the soup. The bread was a recently baked sourdough with a thick crust and soft insides. I sliced the whole loaf into thick slabs, buttered it, and did the same for a second loaf. The soup was now hot so I ladled it into the bowls, set a piece of bread on top of each, and handed them out, with one on the ground between ‘Sos’s paws.
“Couldn’t you have just heated it with magic?” Chris asked.
“We don’t usually use mag
ic that way unless we’re actively looking to change the flavors. Aunt Ash does something with her gingerbread cookies that must involve magic, but she won’t tell me what. Other than that, we avoid it in the kitchen for food. Teas, yes, but food, no. The results, as far as flavors go, can be really unpredictable.”
“Teas?” Chris asked.
“Herbals, chaga, anything medicinal, that sort of thing,” I said. “Magic will increase the potency of whatever effect the tea was designed for.”
“Yeah, that makes sense, but that’s why I thought you might cook with it… to increase the flavors?”
“It’s easy to increase, say, chaga’s healing powers, or chamomile’s relaxation powers, but with flavors, you might increase one and wipe out another. Say with this chowder. The clammy goodness factor might disappear and instead we would taste clam shell or salt water. Too unpredictable.”
“But your aunt can bake cookies with it?” he asked.
“She’s very secretive, but my educated guess is that she uses tiny amounts of controlled magic on select ingredients, like the ginger or the molasses, to enhance that one flavor. Then I think she bakes the cookies the normal way,” I said.
“What about potions?” Stacia asked.
“Like teas. A potion has a particular job and the magic gives it the ability to perform that job. They mostly taste like shit though—no matter how you flavor them.”
“Good to know,” Chris said, then lifted his bowl and drank down the last part of the chowder. He immediately headed to the pot and started ladling more. Stacia held out her empty bowl and he filled that, too. Me, I was only half done. On the floor, ‘Sos chuffed and without missing a beat, Chris refilled his empty bowl.
I made it to the pot for seconds just as they all were ready for thirds. Full after two bowls and two slabs of bread, I watched them finish off the soup and all the remaining bread before Stacia pulled a Ziploc baggie full of dried meat from her gear.
“We dried up some of the stag,” she said, offering me a piece. I was really full, but a gift of food from a werewolf you’re dating is not to be turned down.
“Hmm, pretty good,” I said around a mouthful. “What next?”
“I’m thinking of the stash of mini candy bars I tucked in here somewhere,” she said.
“No I meant what do we need to accomplish next before heading back to Earth?”
“How about sending a few drones through a mini gate into Idiria for a quick scout? That’ll give us intel to go with our debrief back home. Help us plot our next visit, which we agreed should be Idiria,” Chris suggested.
“Works for me? Stacia? Omega?” I asked.
“Fine,” Stacia said, bent over a plastic bin of supplies. I admired the view while I waited for Omega.
“Drone reconnaissance would be safer, of course, as well as energy efficient. Using a small gate may also prevent detection or hinder it.”
“Okay, no time like the present,” I said.
I moved over to the section of the cave where our Earth gate was set up and drew coordinates and power runes for a grapefruit-sized portal into Ashley’s old quarters at Idiria, specifically the garden.
“Just don’t put it anywhere near Ashley’s apartment,” Stacia said when she handed me two mini Almond Joys and a little Reese’s Cup package.
“Of course not,” I said, immediately wiping out half my runes. “They might be… ah… watching that or something.”
She stood watching me, the crinkle of candy bar wrappings her only sound. I looked up and caught her smirk. “You were so gonna put it right in the apartment, weren’t you?”
You can’t lie to a werewolf, especially one you’re sleeping with. “I’m trying to get the area nearest the city’s administration offices,” I said. “It’s not easy.” So you tell the truth—but don’t make denials that’ll get you caught.
“Hah! No denial? You are a book, O’Carroll, an open book,” she said. “Lucky for you, you’re my favorite book.”
The new coordinates went down in the dirt and I powered up the portal. Six Omega drones shot through it and then I closed it.
“Two-point-three seconds, Father. Drones are spreading out. Feeds coming up on your monitors—now.”
Chris’s command center lit up and we had a six-way split on the monitor, showing us each drone’s POV.
“Wow, that’s some really white stone,” Chris said, reminding me that he’d never seen anything of the Middle City.
“They keep it really clean,” I said, sitting down in a camp chair to watch. Suddenly my lap was full of girl as Stacia settled herself for maximum comfort.
“Even elves don’t look up above themselves much, do they?” she said, snagging my last Almond Joy from my hand and eating it in one bite.
“It appears that only trained people and a few rare individuals are aware enough to scan above their heads,” Omega said.
We spent the next two hours checking the city, finally sending two of the drones to check the perimeter of Ashley’s apartment. With everything clear, the tiny drones began to infiltrate the apartment itself.
The drones had mini FLIR thermal cameras as standard equipment, and that’s how Omega spotted the pucks that were inside the apartment. They glowed as the drones zipped around the apartment. We wouldn’t have seen the cold-blooded insect-like Tinks at all except two of the pucks suddenly turned in mid-flight and shot over to a nearby pillar of stone. The Tinks flushed out, flying to get away, but the pucks caught and killed them with swift, brutal efficiency.
“Omega, can you zoom in on that central puck? Good, now can you shift to night vision?”
The bright orange, red, and yellow display changed to a greenish hue and now I could see the features of the puck in question. “That’s Pancho, right Stacia?”
“Yeah, you’re right. The leader of Ashley’s puck clan. Those must all be hers. Aww, they’re still guarding her place, waiting for her,” Stacia said. “Hey, maybe we can make contact?”
“How? If I recall, he doesn’t like me that much and you not at all,” I said.
“Maple syrup,” she said, hopping off my lap and bounding over to the supplies again. “Ashley told me that they love sugar and especially maple syrup,” she said, victoriously coming up with a little plastic mini jug of syrup.
“So what? We just pop that through a gate, into her apartment, and they’re supposed to know it’s from us?” I asked.
“Yes. They’ll smell our scents on the bottle,” she said, throwing it to me. “Just make a gate. Shouldn’t take but a few seconds if you rewrite the coordinates you had down first,” she said with a grin.
I glanced at Chris, but he just smiled and held both hands out, palms up. “It’s what we get for picking scary smart women.”
She snorted. “As if you two were allowed to do the picking,” she said.
His smile slid away as he thought about that but I was already moving to the portal zone. I changed the coordinates to bring the opening right into Pancho’s area, fired it up, and tossed the little jug through before slamming the gate shut.
On the monitor, we had two views of the pucks’ reactions. It was fast, a blur of furry bodies flying away from the jug that just popped into the air over their heads. They actually made it to the perimeter walls before the plastic bottle hit the floor. Stacia had taken the cap off and the bottle hit right side up before falling over, dark syrup pouring out.
Nothing happened for a second, then one of the adults zipped over the bottle at high speed, almost reaching the far wall before swooping around for another pass. Next, it hovered in place, wings blurring like a humming bird, buzzing closer to the bottle of liquid sugar.
Finally, it landed and sniffed the puddle forming on the ground, touched the pool with a finger, and tasted it. It turned and squeaked at Pancho.
“It’s identified the syrup,” Omega said.
“You understand it?” Chris asked, sounding completely unsurprised.
“I have constructed a working vo
cabulary but have not yet cracked all the nuances of their language. It seems to be almost equal parts vocalizations and complex body movements, with a strong possibility of pheromone content as well. My drones do not always have a complete view of them,” our AI said.
Pancho had now flown over and was conducting his own investigation of the syrup. After tasting it, he concentrated on smelling the outside of the bottle. Suddenly he stiffened, then leaned down and sniffed deeper. Straightening up, he looked weirdly like a little furry human who was coming to a sudden realization.
He squeaked loudly, his arms pointing in multiple directions as he spun in place.
Every puck in the room suddenly took off, turning back to inspect the walls, ceiling, and floor. One was suddenly hovering in front of one of the drone’s cameras, and it let out a hellacious squeal. Four others, including Pancho, immediately flew over to join it.
