Chapter 5 – Threats

Life, Callum reflected, was what happened when one was busy doing other things. Under any sane rationale, it was not time to start a family. But time moved forward and made fools of everyone. He had been perfectly happy living with Lucy, learning about magic and tending his garden, and not worrying about the long term future. Now he had a lot more to worry about in the future, though he considered it a blessing rather than a complication.

He gave Lucy a squeeze, the two of them cuddled up on the couch reading their respective literature. Technically studying, though Callum was starting to reach the point of diminishing returns struggling through the notes he’d gotten on structural theory. It was late enough that his brain just wanted to turn off.

Lucy responded with a happy little noise and shifted her position against him, tilting across his lap with a thump and giving him a cheeky wink past her own book. He snorted and tossed his tome on the table, readying a counterattack that would keep them pleasantly distracted for an hour or so when her laptop chirped. It was the tone Lucy had set for an official business message from Lisa.

“Gonna let me answer that?” Lucy asked, eyes sparkling as she dropped her book to grab his wandering hands.

“I guess so,” Callum conceded, helping her back upright so she could grab the laptop. Lucy tapped the keyboard a couple times and the chirping stopped as Lisa’s face appeared on the screen.

“Hey Lucy,” Lisa said. “Oh good, Callum’s there too. This was unusual enough that we figured we’d pass it on right away. You know about Archmage Taisen, right?”

“I know that he broke away from GAR and stripped out a good chunk of the BSE,” Lucy said. “Unfortunately I don’t have access to his servers so I don’t know much.”

“Well, his organization before it became BSE was called Defensores Mundi, focused on the threats out of the portal worlds,” Lisa said. “So that’s what his new House is aimed at too, and they think they’ve run into something really nasty down in India. Nasty enough that they want Callum’s help.”

“I’m not exactly a combat mage,” Callum objected. “I mean, I’m glad that someone has that philosophy, I’m all for it. But I’m not sure what they expect me to do if real mages can’t manage it. My tricks go only so far.”

“It’s more a matter of finding their target,” Chester’s voice came, the picture on the laptop shifting as Lisa turned the camera to include him, too. “They sent over actual reports to try and convince you, so they’re serious about this. And get this — Gayle Hargrave added a note.”

“That’s not a name I ever expected to hear again,” Callum said in surprise. “I guess she’s doing fine, then.”

“They’re also not on the GAR servers anymore,” Lucy said. “Most of what I see in the GAR networks about the Hargraves is pretty uncomplimentary, but that hardly means anything.”

“Send it over,” Callum said. “It won’t hurt to see what they have to say.”

“It’s all on paper,” Chester said, and Callum shook his head. After dealing with the Guild of Enchanting and the way they had everything on paper, rather than digital, that should have been his first thought.

“Right, I’ll have a drone there shortly.” He told them. “At this point it’s almost worth it to just park an anchor by your property.”

“We should discuss that later,” Chester agreed. “I think we’ll need some more transportation work from you once you look over this Taisen stuff.”

“No problem,” Callum agreed readily. To some extent, he wasn’t even comfortable with charging Chester for the work anymore. They were friends – if mostly Lucy’s friends – and the godparents for his child. The Alpha still needed to cover material costs, but spending a few hours enchanting was hardly an issue. The scriber couldn’t do the teleportation cores he used, but the transmitter and receiver pads were far easier now that he had some infrastructure.

The nearest drone was actually parked on a rooftop in a town not too far away, as part of Callum’s efforts to have anchors placed where he could respond to anything in reasonable time. So it was only a few minutes to get it to Chester’s place and in range to grab the missive. It was a set of stapled reports with two letters — one from Taisen and one, as promised, from Gayle. There was no residual magic clinging to it, or any enchantments, so it seemed safe enough. He unfolded Gayle’s first, which was written by hand on some high-quality paper he didn’t recognize, with almost calligraphic lettering.

Mister Wells,

It has been some time since we last spoke, and I have had both time and cause to reflect upon everything that has occurred. I will confess I am not entirely convinced of the rightness of your view, but events have amply demonstrated that you have cause to believe as you do. It is those beliefs and your conviction in them that lead me to prevail upon you with a request.

Archmage Taisen, whom I have the great privilege of working with, has undertaken the task of defending the Earth from those threats that stem from the portal worlds – something that I trust you would find honorable. In this endeavor he has been investigating places we may have missed here on Earth, and in the course of that investigation has run into some trouble. That trouble has caused a great many injuries which I am still treating at the time of writing, and I fear the situation may soon escalate beyond injuries and any aid I could render.

I beg you to take his request seriously. I know you, and I know Archmage Taisen, and I believe you have similar opinions on the rightness of the world. You will not regret helping him.

⁠— Gayle Hargrave

“Huh,” Callum said, and passed the letter to Lucy. “She doesn’t talk like that.”

“She’s a Hargrave,” Lucy replied by way of explanation, looking over Gayle’s missive while Callum cracked the seal on the envelope with Taisen’s letter. It was an actual wax seal, too, with Defensores Mundi and a shield-and-globe crest. The paper crackled as he pulled it out and unfolded it.

Unlike Gayle’s short, formal, calligraphic letter, Taisen had three pages of printed information. He was blunt, spending maybe a sentence and a half on courtesies before moving on to describing the situation as if it were a military briefing. Location, resources, incidents, all that, referencing the enclosed reports.

In a way it was straightforward enough. They’d traced rumors of disappearances and a spreading no-man’s-land to a place in the north of India, finding several abandoned towns that looked like they’d been overgrown for a lot longer than the rumors indicated. It was several hundred square miles of wilderness, and the mages combing the area hadn’t actually found anything despite sudden attacks coming from apparently nowhere.

The actual request was for Callum to investigate with his own particular talents. He couldn’t tell how much Taisen actually knew about the portal anchors and spatial perceptions, but at this point it was obvious what Callum could do. Which meant there was far too little he could surprise people with, and that was one reason he was working on building up his foundations with magical theory. He absolutely needed to have surprises.

“Are there any GAR records for that area?” Callum asked Lucy, showing her the written name of the region, which was not something he could pronounce. Lucy frowned and turned to her laptop, doing whatever magical search she had for the information from the GAR servers.

“Nope. GAR doesn’t even have a branch in India,” she said with a shrug. “At least not in the digital records.” Callum nodded. A lot of what mages did was on paper rather than electronic anyway, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a lot of off-the-books development. Though without a portal world feed, India would not be especially appealing to supernaturals.

At least, that was his impression, and it was dangerous to think that was the whole story. Any official consensus was suspect, especially one that conveniently rendered huge swaths of land uninteresting to the powers that be.

“Well, whatever-it-is seems to have wiped out several villages so it’s definitely on the list. I actually like this,” Callum said thoughtfully. “I don’t have to kill it, I just have to find it or find out what it is, and call in people who are good at this sort of thing.”

“You’re plenty good at it, but yeah,” Lucy agreed, putting her hand on her stomach. “Best not to take chances you don’t need to.”

“Right,” Callum said. “Plus I guess it’s not a bad thing to open diplomatic relations with a mage faction that doesn’t want to kill me.”

“Definitely,” Lucy agreed, leaning against him to peer down at the sheets still in his hand. “How do we talk to them? Oh, there’s the phone number.”

“It kind of amuses me that with all this magic, phones are still the easiest way to talk,” Callum said. He handed the sheet off to Lucy and picked up one of the stapled reports, thumbing through it. The text was a photocopy of some handwritten documents, though the penmanship was good enough that it wasn’t too difficult to read, but the contents were fairly bland. It used a lot of unhelpful phrases like proceeded to POI Delta and resonance levels normal, which he could guess the meaning of but did not serve to paint a vivid picture. The reports seemed to be only corroboration for what was in the letter, so he only skimmed them.

“Mister Wells?” The sound came from Lucy’s laptop as she connected her VOIP to the provided number. Considering that it was one of the magical phones, he wasn’t sure how she’d managed to make an internet version, but it worked so he wasn’t going to complain.

“This is Wells,” Callum said, dropping the reports back on the living room table.

“This is Archmage Taisen,” the voice said, a strong, stern baritone. “I assume from your call that you wish to discuss aiding my House.”

“More or less,” Callum said. “It’s not so much about your House as it is about dealing with monsters that threaten people.”

“Yes, young Gayle said as much. I’m glad to see she was right.” Taisen’s voice was neither warm nor cool, but Callum didn’t mind. He wouldn’t expect friendliness from an established mage right off. “Though I admit we don’t know much about your capabilities save for what you have used against us in the past.”

“I hope you’ll understand if I prefer not to elaborate too much,” Callum said. “But from what I understand you just want me to see if I can locate your problem without alerting it. While I can’t guarantee success on that score, I think I stand a good chance and I’m willing to try.”

“Excellent,” Taisen said. “We should discuss how to coordinate. It’s one thing to find them; it’s another to relate that information back in a useful way, quickly enough that we can act on it.”

“Lucy?” Callum prompted.

“We’ll provide an electronic device,” Lucy said. “We’ll be able to communicate with you through it, or stream video from anything we find that’s interesting. Maybe even GPS, depending on what things are like.” She glanced at Callum, and he shook his head slightly. He could give them a direct portal, if he had anchors at both locations, but he didn’t want to commit to that before finding out what things were like.

“I won’t commit to being in your command structure as such,” Callum added. “But I’m not stupid, and I’ll do my best to keep you properly informed before I do anything unless some extreme emergency arises.”

“Understandable,” Taisen said. “I would prefer you stay out of any action anyway; confusion during combat, no matter well-intentioned, can be deadly for those involved.”

“Agreed,” Callum said. “When do you want to start?”

“In three hours, by preference,” Taisen said. “I see no reason to delay more than necessary to get my squad prepared.”

“Very well,” Callum said, checking the clock. “Tell me where you want me to send the electronics.” Three hours was cutting it a bit close, and maybe running a bit late into the evening, but he could probably get to India in time and hopefully he’d be able to comb the area relatively quickly. He agreed with Taisen: there was no reason to put off dealing with a problem.

Taisen recited a string of numbers – GPS coordinates – and Lucy hastily recorded them, fingers tapping her laptop keys. Then she looked up where that actually was, bringing up the map so they could start moving their drones. Callum nodded.

“Got it,” he told Taisen. “Expect a delivery soon.”

“I would warn you that our compound is warded,” Taisen said dryly. “But you’ve already shown how little that matters. I would at least ask that you leave your device at the guard post out front to prevent stirring up some people who are very much on edge.”

“No problem,” Callum assured him, and the connection went.

The staging base was in Nepal, which was not very far away from the target. At least for given values of far; with flight foci or Callum’s gravitykinesis, a few hundred miles was practically next door. Even halfway around the world was a fairly short jaunt now that Callum had more practice with transporting the drone. He still had to be careful not to send it too far out and thus launch the drone into space, but he had a better judge of how to use the insane Alcubierre movement.

When he reached the area, the mage’s redoubt was fairly obvious. Aside from the usual wards and glamours, it was clear that an earth mage had formed the small fortress, building it into the side of a sharp slope. It had much in common with the stone outpost he’d seen next to the dragonlands, where things were barely structurally sound and certainly not properly leveled or plumbed. But he wasn’t there to criticize their building prowess. At least not to their faces.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“He needs to train his mages on how to design a proper building,” he grumbled to Lucy. “This is just shameful.” She just laughed.

There were a number of smaller constructions along the ward line, basically single rooms that seemed to anchor the wards, which had to be the guard posts Taisen had mentioned. There was a mage in one of them and, while there was room to wiggle past the wards and drop one of Lucy’s boxes into the guard post itself, he decided to be polite and just teleport the box onto the ground just outside the wards.

It was a ‘donation box,’ according to Lucy, since it had a bad penny – an anchor – inside it. He’d taken all due precautions with the anchor, starting with using his personal brand of warding that would block off passive senses. He’d also put a potent vis-eater enchantment on the inside, and had small squib charge attached to the portal in the nexus. Perhaps it wasn’t perfect but it’d be awful difficult for anyone to use it to track him.

The rest of the box was taken up with a tablet, battery, transceiver to link up with their intranet, and higher quality audiovisual equipment than the tablet itself had. The speakers could be surprisingly loud, which was useful when trying to get people’s attention. Like the guard at the post.

“Delivery from The Ghost for Taisen,” he said, and watched through his perceptions and the extra screens Lucy had set up in what was originally meant to have been a basement office, and was now dubbed the war room – something he had made after dealing with vampires, but hadn’t used until now. There were a dozen screens on the wall for when Lucy’s surveillance was fully active, though only a few were on at the moment.

The guard’s head snapped around as he spotted the box on the ground, and to his credit he didn’t seem at all confused by it. A chain-like telekinesis form reached out and grabbed the donation box, pulling it into the guard post through a hole that momentarily appeared in the wards. That was something Callum wished he knew how to do, but his were only a very simple on or off.