Elemental Disturbance

by Voss Foster

  That sounded like a great plan. The kind that absolutely wouldn't get us killed in this dank shitty basement or whatever the fuck it was.

  Gutt had the blue light gathered around his hands, but he did something even I'd never seen him do before. Like, we were partnered a lot, and he used magic a lot. But seeing him focus his gaze straight forward, and watching the orange light ball up in front of his mouth was… damn.

  "You'd better get back from that door." I took a step away. I hadn't seen the whole mouth thing before, but I had definitely seen Gutt blow a lock before. Sometimes there was fire and sometimes there was shrapnel and often there was a very pissed off somebody on the other side.

  Once we'd stepped aside, Gutt blew out and the little explosive sphere sailed lazily toward the lock. It was a strange thing to see that powerful little bomb sort of bob along on the air, heading toward the lock. Normally he tossed it straight out and that was that.

  It finally burrowed into the keyhole after about ten seconds. And then came the normal crack and smoke and fire that luckily didn't ignite the door.

  I flung the door open and stood back so that Gutt could hit the…nothing. There was nothing and nobody and…hell. I'd have felt a lot better if there'd been a cadre of shapeshifters waiting for us. I would have felt better if we were more than a passing annoyance to them.

  Gutt didn't hesitate like Svenson and I. "Stay behind me." He nodded to no one and the lights burst out of existence, save for one orb that hovered above his head, casting just enough brightness to see a foot in front of us.

  And we crept out, straight into a stairwell. My heart thrummed so loud that it should have blocked out every other sound around me. But instead, everything amplified. I heard god damn dust floating past. Svenson's shallow breaths. The booming pound of Gutt's feet against each stone riser. The rustling of my own fucking hair was like waves against pylons.

  After two flights, I was a fucking wreck, completely on edge and sure that every tiny scurry against the wall was a shapeshifter, not a random beetle. But in better news, there were torches here. Lit torches, but also nice, thick, heavy, wooden torches. Fire was better than nothing. Five of them lit up this landing. I grabbed two and handed one to Svenson. "Hopefully we don't need it."

  Gutt kept the ball of light floating up above him, but it wasn't fully necessary. Our torches revealed more—although flickering shadows on the edge of my periphery weren’t soothing my fucking nerves—and they were regularly spaced as we climbed the next four flights of stairs.

  "Stop!"

  A loud but silken voice bellowed across the way. All three of us immediately whipped around and Gutt shot magic over my head, ruffling the edges of my hair. But he hit, enveloping the waxy, yellow-skinned young woman in pale blue light.

  We all three rushed her and pinned her against the wall. I saw the panic in her dark, doleful eyes, and then the teeth-gritting agony bloom over her face.

  Gutt snorted. "You can't change size. You're bound. Where are we?"

  More pain. Her knees actually buckled before she finally—apparently—stopped trying to change. So she started screaming, a loud, wavering sound that echoed through the stone halls. It wasn't a human sound. It wasn't a normal, natural, right sound. It wasn't pain or anguish or fear like I'd ever heard it.

  Gutt had that handled, too. He snapped and an iron slat appeared over her mouth, blocking her into a muffled shouting. Then he leaned down. "This is not going to end well for you, or any of the others." He snarled and growled, like some great beast. My spine straightened, freezing to a line of solid, unbreakable ice. He was fucking scary in that moment. "Where are the children? You can still point."

  She shook her head, eyes wide.

  "Then how do we get out?"

  She raised a shaking arm and pointed up the stairs, just like we'd been going.

  Gutt nodded, righted himself, and called up another batch of blue light to replace the binding magic he'd used.

  We headed up another flight, but at the landing there was a crash below. All of us whipped back around. It was the woman. It was the fucking woman that Gutt had trapped. Her arm was three times the size of the rest of her body, and completely free of the blue light. She'd punched the floor, cracking the stone down a solid two inches.

  As I watched, she continued to grow. Slowly, haltingly, her shoulder exploded, casting the blue light out like shrapnel that shattered to glowing dust against the walls and floor and ceiling. She reached to her mouth, breaking the light apart, and tore the iron from her lips.

  Gutt turned and bounded away. "Move! Now!"

  I didn't need telling twice. It was a hell of a lot better than jumping at every shadow and creak. Running, even up stairs, I could do. I took them two at a time as much as I could, trying to keep up with Gutt's massive stride. I kept an eye on Svenson. His time behind the desk was showing, as he lagged farther and farther behind with every step.

  I stopped at the next landing to wait for him. "You have to go—"

  "Get your ass moving and stop worrying about me." He passed me, still going up the steps. "That's a fucking order and one I shouldn’t have to give an agent as good as you."

  Well hell. He was right, and he was now ahead. The shapeshifter down below was now a solid twelve feet tall, completely free of the bonds, and still bellowing. Just…sound. No words or message or anything like that. I ran away from it, passing Svenson by again, and we continued up and up and up. My thighs and calves ached, knees felt like I had no cushioning and cartilage left to take the shock of my steps. Everything in me rattled because I needed to move. I needed to get the hell away from the potential giant we had no way to combat or seal off or anything.

  The next landing was massive, and a double door stood open on the far side.

  I headed for it past Gutt. "We can't just climb forever. We'll get ourselves killed."

  "I know." He shook his head, but we all three moved into the room behind the double doors. Gutt dropped the ball of light and the blue barrier. With a curving sweep of his arm, he slammed the doors shut. Another arm wave and the doors glowed a brilliant green, right along the outside edges and the space between. Within a few minutes, those spaces had disappeared, melding everywhere the light touched. The center of the doors fused into a single seam, and the stone floors and walls bound themselves to the outer edges of the doors. It was all held together, a single, solid wall.

  Gutt dropped to one knee. I rushed straight to him. "What are we looking at? Talk to me?"

  "It's not overload. I'm okay. Just tired." After a few seconds, he righted himself and nodded. "That binding magic of Bancroft takes a toll."

  "All right. I'd tell you not to push, but…"

  "Yes, I'm the magical practitioner, you're armed with a torch, and we're fighting shapeshifters." He nodded, rolled his shoulders back, then turned his attention to Director Svenson. "Did you survive? Are you hurt?"

  "Sore. I'm an old man, not a field agent." He was leaning over, hands on his knees, face a deep scarlet.

  I turned away from him. "Gutt, when you're back up to it, can we remote transport out of here?"

  He turned in a circle, looking all around the room. I took it in, too. As much as I could in that short time, anyway. Bedecked in crimson and gold, with large casement windows and a domed ceiling. A massive, intricately woven rug in the same colors covered most of the stone floor. It was mostly empty of furniture, but there were books. Incredibly old books. Bound in wood, or simple scrolls, and all but a few of them covered in so much dust it was difficult to make out too many details. They lined the walls. The Kingdoms had some impressive libraries, and seemingly a lot of them.

  "I don't see why not." Gutt finally stopped and sighed. "We need to go."

  "You shouldn't." A mysterious voice. I raised my torch up high, ready to swing away at whoever the hell else needed it. For a few minutes, there was nothing, but then something rustled along the rug. It grew up and out, a sickly yellow man slowly rising into a moderate si
ze. All the shapeshifters had that sort of waxy skin, but I'd never seen it with so much age applied to it. He looked like a literal melting candle with facial features stuck into it.

  I moved straight into position, just behind Gutt. And he threw the blue light out to catch this newest shapeshifter.

  The old melty bastard laughed, examining his now bound fingers. "I see you did your research. That said, I don't plan to attack you, so if you could remove this ridiculous binding? It didn't work downstairs, so why would it suddenly work here?" He actually waited, as though he thought maybe Gutt would do that. But then he shrugged and expanded himself out. I could tell that it hurt him, just like it had the woman down a few flights below. He shook in place, but then his body expanded, bubbling out and through the blue barrier. The light exploded away, and soon he stood nine feet tall. Perfectly proportioned, as before, but he was now halfway up to the ceiling, and he all but blocked out the casement window behind him. "I was hoping to have this conversation with you at a size that would be more comfortable for everyone, but I don't feel like breaking out constantly. You understand."

  Gutt tossed another bundle of light, but this time it simply bounced off his chest and shattered on the floor, along with any hope that any of the three of us could possibly have had.

  The shapeshifter sighed, so large the wind of his breath blew across the room, ruffling nearby pages and blowing off little clouds of dust. "My name is Gileal. I am the twenty-seventh ruler of Fulak since the Great Betrayal. And I assume you didn't merely stumble upon us, otherwise my guards would not have brought you to our dungeons."

  That took me a second or two, then there was another blast of cold. Didn't expect quite so much chill on a desert mission. "We're in your Kingdom?"

  Gileal nodded. "You were brought in after we were alerted to your presence." He was halfway whispering, which kept his voice quiet enough to not be a nuisance, but also left it slightly thin and hoarse. "Who are you? What are you?" He held up his hand, I guess to stop us all before we even started. "I'm aware that we're dealing with one troll and two humans. But what function do you serve, and why would we be involved in whatever you've put yourself into?"

  A few seconds of silence from all of us. Then I stepped up because one of us was going to have to at some point. "The children. The elemental children that your people have kidnapped. We're here to rescue them."

  Gileal nodded, slowly and thoughtfully. "I see. I was not aware that the Sekari traitors had come so far around on their opinions of humans as to hire them out. It does seem a foolish move."

  "We're not working for Al-Sekar. The children your people took lived in our country." I pointed down the line, from myself all the way across to Svenson still holding his torch ready. "We are from the Office of Preternatural Affairs. We protect all of the elves and elementals and trolls and everyone else in our country who originated in the Kingdoms."

  More nodding from our nine-foot-tall ruler. "The elemental children fall under your purview. Duty demands that you intervene. I do see your point. But perhaps you don't see ours." Slowly, as he spoke, his voice took more and more of an edge, growing just a little louder and a little louder until it was just south of being actually uncomfortable to listen to. "Perhaps, as the Sekari traitors intended, our existence and our story was hidden from you. Perhaps you stand there and wonder why I speak of them as traitors."

  "The treasure. We're up to speed."

  Gileal's eyebrows raised, just slightly. "Interesting. Then you understand the crimes they have committed, and why they must pay the cost of the past three millennia in blood and flames." He shook his head. "It has taken us so long to prepare. So long waiting for the chains of the seal to wear away. Protected against the elements, so subject to far less erosion and wear than any of us would have preferred. But we were able to wait, and when the chains began to wear away, we slipped out. We saw the unified Kingdoms, everyone ignoring Al-Sekar's crimes in the name of peace and unity."

  Gutt lowered his hands, banishing the magic that apparently wouldn't do us any good anyway. "What is the treasure that was stolen? Why is it so important?"

  "What is the treasure? What is it?" Gileal laughed, and he lumbered forward, shrinking back down so he could look Gutt straight in the eye. He jabbed his fingers into the trollish chest as he spoke. "The treasure is everything. It is the first and the best among us. The source and the core of everything in our existence. Life here is a pallid comparison with the treasure stolen."

  Gutt didn't respond, didn't get angry. Nice and calm, because he was used to being poked and prodded and theoretically intimidated. "But the nature of the treasure is not something that's clear. No one seems to know what the treasure actually, physically is."

  Gileal backed up, chuckling like a madman, and went to a shelf on the right side. He plucked a scroll with painted wooden handles from the shelf. His chest expanded abnormally, twice the size it should have been to keep proportions. Then he blew and all the dust flew from the scroll as his chest finally deflated. These shapeshifters were like scary cartoon characters. Even when he wasn't shifting and bending like Claymation, Gileal just looked fake. He was just a little bit shy of making his way out of the uncanny valley. That was unnerving enough, but I also knew he could step on me and kill me if that was really something he felt was necessary.

  And depending on how we handled ourselves here, he might decide it was quite necessary.

  Gileal carried the scroll back over and held it open. "The treasure is the body of Echeni. The first among us. The best among us. The mother of shapeshifters."

  There, right in the middle of that scroll, amid text that glowed too bright for me to actually read it, was a picture in stolid black lines. A woman, nude, wrapped in bandages, with scars and marks covering her body.

  "Your treasure is a person?" I tried not to let my voice quiver, but…well, it didn't work.

  "It is her body. Echeni fled for the afterlife long before the Great Betrayal. But she sprouted from the womb, and no one had seen her like before. Skin like yellowed candle wax. Wide, dark eyes that seemed to know the world from birth." He closed up the scroll and carried it back, still waxing on. "Many ostracized her, some stayed and cared for her, raised her even when she destroyed buildings, unsure of her own power. She learned to control these abilities, so that those afterward wouldn't suffer the same struggles." He turned and locked his eyes straight on me for some reason. I was his target now. Yay. "Her very body, every inch of skin and bone and every drop of blood, is imbued with immense power. She is able to keep us healthy, and to keep our society running smoothly and cleanly. She is our medicine. Our doctor. Our queen. And the closest thing to a goddess we could ever have hoped to encounter."

  All right. So they were slightly crazy. Or really crazy. But if this Echeni corpse thingy was actually some source of great power, even after her death, then we had a brand new wrinkle. It didn't change the fact that we needed to get these kids back, but it did mean everything was way more sensitive, and we were the only ones involved who knew, now.

  Negotiating pants had to go on. "Gileal, we need to get out of here and back to our people."

  "Certainly not." It wasn't an offended tone, or angry, or even prescriptive or authoritarian. It was completely casual and conversational. "If we escort you out before this is done, then you'll all wind up dead trying to stop us. And even without Echeni, we are highly unlikely to lose in this encounter. As you know, we are well-armed for our retribution."

  "You don’t have any issue with using children for this? A lot of them aren't even from the Kingdoms. They were born in the Mundane. They weren't a part of anything that happened in Al-Sekar or in Tarwald or anywhere else. They're just innocent, scared kids that you're sending to slaughter." Appealing to humanity. Maybe he'd gotten so obsessed with revenge he hadn't stopped long enough to see the reality. "They're kids. Just kids."

  "With blood that connects them to the traitorous Sekari. Shapeshifters may be long lived, FBI agents, bu
t even I am not so old that I remember being walked through the portal and locked in to be hidden from this world. I wasn't born. I wasn't a part of this. But yet I suffer for it. These children will suffer a thousandth of the pain we have endured." He nodded, but finally broke eye contact. "They've been sedated. If there is pain, they won't be conscious for it. We learned the dangers of conscious elemental children well enough, leaving too many survivors behind. We learned."

  It was cold, and Gileal pretty clearly knew it was cold, too. There was some weakness there, and maybe it could be exploited if I had enough time. But something he said finally struck me hard, right in the chest. They've been sedated. Not they will be. Not that was the plan. If they'd already been sedated, then they weren't just setting up for an attack soon.

  It was coming now.

  I pivoted everything in my head. Adrenaline forced it around faster, and I was able to respond and redirect, even though my stomach bubbled and churned around the thought of those kids, how close we were to losing them all. It was time for a major league bluff. "You want to kill the king and queen of Al-Sekar."

  "All Sekari should pay. But the royal family carries more blame than the rest."

  "They aren't where you think they are."

  "We know of the new palace that was built, thank you."

  "So do we. I'm telling you, that's not where they are."

  Gileal was on me in a second, thrusting me back against the magically welded doors. His eyes were wide, and his hands grew broad and thick, fingers wrapping tight over my shoulder. "You've hidden them? Then you will reveal their location if you value your limbs."

  He was dragged back and away from me, grating soreness into my shoulders. I noticed red under his fingernails, so that was my blood and totally okay. And I noticed the golden rings around his wrists, connected to a glowing tether in Gutt's fist. And Gutt was not happy, scowling and baring his fangs as he wrenched back on the king. "Your highness, I may not be able to seal your magic, and I may not be able to best you in physical combat, but I'm also not completely impotent. I was a prison guard before my time in the Mundane, and I'm very proficient at controlling unruly parties. So if you threaten any of us again, I'm capable of stopping you."