At fifty-two minutes to midnight, Striga was beginning to feel impatient.
It was a feeling easily sublimated, but still, it said sothing that her usual cool head was already being threatened. The invincible heroine was not supposed to feel impatience. Strix Striga was unflappable. Strix Striga did not experience “nerves” before a battle.
Nevertheless, she was nervous, and she itched to rush to her beloved Rachel’s side. Rachel was in the lion’s den, facing down what would surely be the bulk of the enemy’s forces with only Agatha to assist. Venus knew they were coming—that she allowed Archon into her sanctum at all was a sign of supre confidence in her ability to repel their efforts.
Athena’s calculations were damnably vague against an entity like the egregore. Striga had to hope that her preparations would be enough, and that the Rachel of this tiline would prove stronger and sharper than all the Rachels that died before her.
If she didn’t… if the worst ca to pass… there was still one option she hadn’t told Rachel. One path forward. She prayed she would never have to walk it.
Striga sighed and turned away from the window. She’d been staring at nothing, really, though her superpower had diligently catalogued every detail her vision caught. After the first successful expedition to the World of Glass, the team had worked to set up permanent outposts that would be easier to navigate to and from.
This one was a skyscraper with a perfect view of the Spire. The Morrigan had rented office space in its Earth equivalent and connected it to the Ossuary as the foundation for a semi-permanent bridge between worlds—one of two, with the other raised in the Olympic Mountains, near where Archon had co out when she used Hastur’s device in the theater.
The elevator chid and opened right on ti; she’d heard it moving and Athena had supplied exactly when it should reach her floor. An utterly inconsequential calculation, but one that Athena perford anyway, automatically, purely for the sake of it.
Howl stalked into the room with Harlequin in tow. The ranger was drinking, as was her habit, and she looked particularly disgruntled about whatever it was she’d found while scouting. The clown was covered in slimy, oozing flesh scraps—and other, stranger detritus—but seed to be having the ti of their life.
“Rejoice!” Harlequin cheered. “Many monsters marauding made for rry murder! We slaughtered a slew and sallied out!”
“The wildlife was more aggressive than it should have been,” Howl translated gruffly. “Every scavenger for miles is being lured to that damn tower. Starving beasts as far as the eye can see, and farther. Their whole ecology is being warped around the nexus point.”
“Yes, but what about the passageway?” Ferromancer demanded, looking up from her array of consoles to glare at the other witch. “Did you find it?”
They’d placed sensory equipnt all throughout Glass!Forks and the interior of the false Spire. Ferromancer had devoted considerable resources to assembling a network of automated drones that flew between sensor clusters, maintaining them and performing upgrades as her study of the World of Glass continued.
Yesterday, she claid to have made a breakthrough. Sothing worth deviating from the original plan, which had Ferromancer infiltrating the Spire from the mortal side to assist Agatha and Archon from up close as the first line of assault.
Striga had been skeptical, but the numbers worked. The readouts made sense to Athena, and the mantle ca to the sa conclusion as Ferromancer: sothing was being hidden below the Spire. Sothing big. And, if the readings were correct, there was a single seam in its defenses—exactly the kind of seam that Howl specialized in breaching.
Howl looked at Ferromancer coldly, then turned her gaze on Striga and nodded. “It was there. It’s the worst kind of path, but it’s there, it leads below, and I can take you through it. But I don’t like it, Striga. It shouldn’t be there. It wasn’t there until a few weeks ago, I’m sure of it. Why? And why hasn’t Venus noticed and closed it? I sll a trap.”
“The trap is upstairs,” Ferromancer argued. “We’re being corralled to the top of the tower, teased with a promise of entry. She couldn’t be more obvious about it. If we open those doors, we’re playing her ga, and she’s had months to prepare. This is our chance to blindside her at the roots.”
Striga didn’t trust Ferromancer. She never had, really, but until recently she’d thought the witch under control. Cooperation was beneficial to the machinist, even setting aside the sword hanging over her neck. And yet. She’d started to notice subtle changes in body languages, little quirks of microexpression that differed from the established pattern.
Ferromancer was hiding sothing. She’d almost certainly discovered the anomaly in her data days or even weeks before bringing it to Striga. Had she been compromised by Venus, or was she working a different agenda? Were her actions being driven by simple opportunism or a deeper corruption?
Athena couldn’t identify any traces of ntal subversion, and its model was clear that Ferromancer would prioritize self-preservation over all other goals. Who, then, could guarantee the witch’s safety while promising sothing that was worth angering an entire conspiracy of dangerous, knowledgeable opponents? There were few nas on that list, and fewer still whose ends for humanity were not transparently incompatible with Ferromancer’s own desires.
“Ferromancer,” Striga asked calmly, “will this lead to a loss for Venus? Do you truly believe that?” She held the witch in her steely gaze. Athena purred like a kitten, putting all its focus on analyzing the other woman’s response.
The machinist had known that gaze before and nearly died to it, and so her arrogance bled into solemnity. “Yes, Striga. This is how we beat Venus, I’m certain. I’d stake my life on it.”
Nervous but firm. Fear and resolve. Even speech, even eyes. Not a twitch, not a flicker.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Truth.
Whatever her true loyalties, Ferromancer fully intended for Venus to fall. Acceptable.
“Down, then,” Striga announced. “We pursue the unknown. I need to know what she’s built below that tower.”
Inside, the heroine was still torn. Was she choosing her curiosity over the safety of her precious Rachel? But this path could lead to victory, and she couldn’t allow sentint to corrupt her reasoning; that was exactly how Venus would seek to undermine her.
Though she grumbled, Howl didn’t fight the decision. She led them to an alley near the Spire where space folded when you approached from just the right angle. The quartet traveled through a tunnel of stars, like an aquarium tunnel that passed through an ocean of starlight. In those scintillating depths, great shadows swam.
Striga noted it all clinically, feeding the data to Athena and not allowing herself the privilege of wondernt or delight. It was another phenonon of the World of Glass to be studied and deconstructed, nothing more.
On the other side of the star-path, they passed into the center of a great machine. It was structured like a heart, chambered and with circular tunnels curving up and away in just the right places. The walls were sleek tal, steel or titanium or sothing more exotic, and great tubes of wiring connected from the walls and floor and ceiling to a crystal pillar in the center of the room which glowed with golden light. There was more machinery at the pillar’s base, including what looked like a console of so kind.
Athena took it all in and ca to an imdiate conclusion, which Striga voiced. “This is where she’s been storing all the conceptual energy that she’s harvested—and not just from this tower, from all of them. That pillar in the center, it’s a battery.”
Howl shivered. “I can feel it from here.”
The air crackled with power. It washed over them—only the faintest traces, surely, the stray radiation particles flying off a nuclear reactor; nothing compared to its true potential. Still it slithered over skin and crept inside hearts, singing to them. It was an imnse well of magic.
“Let’s break it!” Harlequin cheered.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” drawled the voice of a woman in red sneakers and a pointy, star-speckled hat. Stringy hair, beady eyes, chewed lips. A cosplayer’s replica staff.
Mordacity, the wizard. Mordacity, an erstwhile acquaintance turned enemy and rival.
“Shoot her,” Striga ordered calmly.
Bullets and arrows bounced harmlessly off an invisible barrier. Striga strode forward with Harlequin, their fists and her spear finding an equal lack of success. The wizard laughed at the duo, even as Ferromancer cycled through weapons and Striga put a shock of power behind her strike. There was no sign that their attacks were even straining Mordacity’s shield.
As Striga drew her spear back again, ready to call upon Minerva’s aid for a shattering stroke, Mordacity raised a hand and showed Striga a lazy grin. She said, “Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that ol’ Venus hasn’t spotted you yet?”
Striga paused, the request half-ford in her mind, and narrowed her eyes. “You claim to shelter us from her vision. You want to converse. Why? You ran from before.”
The others, noticing this uneasy detente, held their fire. Harlequin leaned against the wizard’s barrier, tapping patterns over its surface, while Howl and Ferromancer kept their weapons pointed at Mordacity.
“Who is this?” Howl asked. “And why… why do I feel like I know her from sowhere?”
It was rare of Howl to sound so bewildered. At the question, Harlequin tilted their head and seed to consider it as well, then lapsed into a perturbed frown. Striga could feel it in herself, that strange sense of recognition, though she understood it to be the fault of Mordacity’s pervasive web of dreams.
Ferromancer only pretended confusion, and in that mont Striga knew she had been betrayed to the wizard. Her spear flicked around and cut through empty air—the traitor had been teleported behind her new patron’s barrier with only a heartbeat to spare. Ferromancer stumbled back, eyes thrown wide with panic, clutching at the stomach that Striga had nearly opened with her blade.
Howl took a step back in shock, then turned her gaze on Ferromancer—seeing the way the other witch practically hid behind her patron—and curled her lip. “You traitor,” she hissed.
Mordacity laughed. “See, it’s shit like this, Strigs. You’re so damn violent, and then you get other people all eager to jump in. Hear a girl out, won’t you? I’m here to talk.”
“Then speak,” Striga said curtly. To Howl and Harlequin, she explained, “This is Mordacity, a magic user of a third kind. I was made aware of her existence only recently, and I still don’t fully understand what’s capable of or what she wants… but I know it stands in opposition to my own ends. I believe she desires the throne of the King, which I would leave bare for all eternity.”
That drew sharp reactions from the witches. Mordacity rolled her eyes. “How high and mighty. Well, I’m not here to argue the long-term. In the short, we share a common enemy; we both want Venus dead. I can help that happen, but not if you kill my artificer. I don’t have ti to find a new one at this late hour, and you don’t have the tools to disable this worship engine without nuking the western seaboard in the process. So unless you want to face Venus with all of that backing her up, let the tool monkey work.”
A claim like that demanded investigation. Go, Athena. Tell what you see.
If Striga called on Minerva’s full attention and struck the pillar with her spear, could she drain its power before it destabilized? Was Mordacity lying about the consequences of trying to disable it without Ferromancer? If she was lying, and it was easier than she suggested, then why wait until Striga was present to threaten her plans?
Inconclusive. Were the risks acceptable, then? Negative.
If the team assigned to the seal were called away, they could examine the pillar and devise a sorcerous solution. Could they do it in ti? Could they do it without compromising the integrity of their replacent seal? Was it worth it?
Athena followed the chain of probabilities, constructing worlds based on limited data and trying to string them together to create a cohesive understanding. It strained her senses to extract every byte of information it possibly could from the situation, the machine, the expression on Mordacity’s face. Secondhand impressions from Ferromancer, whose tells were more obvious thanks to a more detailed model of behavior.
Not enough ti. Not enough data. Too many unknowns.
If Mordacity was telling the truth, interfering would sacrifice too many of Striga’s pieces. If she was lying, Striga still had no guarantee of success. That left one option.
“We’re going back,” she said suddenly. “We can still—”
At the stroke of midnight, the world shuddered. The pillar blazed gold, the energy amassed in it surging upward, called by its mistress. The crackle in the air intensified, the worship gathered here scraping against Striga’s skin.
Mordacity grinned. Striga swore.
“So much for that!” the wizard said cheerily. “Well, you’re about to have company, so have fun keeping your dear friend Ferro safe while she works on the engine. I’m off to delay Venus for as many monts as I can. Wish luck!”
Then she was gone. In her absence, alarm klaxons blared through the chamber and warning lights lit up all along the walls. Venus knew where they were.
User Comments
0 comments from readers