Book 2: Chapter 5- Archmage

Chapter 5: Tier What

The next day before dawn Georgina escorted Andy to the Mythic Council. They had been expecting him since before Veronica was kidnapped and now it was Andy who would be seeking an audience with them.

The Mythic Council sessions convened in a chamber carved into the living rock of Mount Tessera south of Andy’s territory. The walls hummed with old magic, deep, layered, the resonance of centuries of mythic creatures gathering in one place to argue about jurisdiction.

Andy walked through the entrance into a circular chamber. Vaulted ceilings stretched up higher than any he had seen on Earth. This chamber was large enough for multiple gigantic mythic creatures in their true forms. Seats were arranged in a tiered amphitheater that descended toward a central floor, which were, surprisingly, designed for humanoid occupants. In Andy’s opinion this represented a design choice that communicated a set of assumptions about who would be standing on the central floor and what shape they would be when they stood there.

Andy did not care. Andy presented in his equine form anyway.

He stood on the central floor with four hooves planted on stone that was older than most nations, his horn extending fifty centimeters of spiraling crystal that caught the ambient light of the chamber’s magical luminescence and refracted it into prismatic splinters casting rainbows across the nearest wall. He was the only creature in the room standing on four legs.

“The unicorn petitioner,” announced the functionary at the entrance, reading from a crystal tablet with the careful diction of a person who had rehearsed this introduction and was now discovering that the introduction did not match the reality, “appears in… equine form.”

“This is my form,” Andy projected. His telepathic broadcast filled the chamber, bouncing off stone walls with a clarity that made several Council members flinch. Andy had not adjusted the volume. Andy’s volume control had been unreliable since the northern boundary, which was four days ago, which was four days of a horn operating at frequencies that ranged from “grieving” to “furious” with occasional stops at “telekinetically launching fruit at trees.” “The other one was a costume.”

A pause. Formal proceedings had encountered a situation the formality was not designed to accommodate.

Larger than he’d expected. Twelve seats in the upper tier, occupied by creatures in humanoid form whose magical signatures registered on his truth sense as old, powerful, various. He recognized Georgina in the third seat from the left: composed, silver-haired, her horn-crown catching the chamber light with the quiet authority of an ancient unicorn who had been evaluating candidates since before Andy’s species existed on Earth. She met his eyes. Held them. Her expression communicated nothing, which for Georgina meant she was communicating everything and choosing to do it through silence.

Kessaroth occupied the center seat. Georgina’s briefing had included the note “he takes humanoid form for Council sessions, do not be alarmed by the size.” Andy was not alarmed by the size so much as adjusting his understanding of what “humanoid” meant when applied to a Tier 6 dragon. Kessaroth’s humanoid body was built like a human and a Godzilla had a baby. Broad. Dense. He was dark-scaled at his joints where the glamour thinned. His eyes were vertical-pupiled, the color of molten copper, tracking Andy with the unhurried attention of someone to whom the passage of time meant little.

To Kessaroth’s right was another humanoid. Damp. Her chair was damp. The chairs adjacent to her chair were damp. There was a faint sheen on the table surface extending approximately one meter in every direction from the woman’s position, and her expression was gentle, apologetic, and suggested that she was aware of the dampness and had long since abandoned any attempt to control it. She was, Andy noted with truth sense, genuinely kind. Based on her general… dampness Andy assumed this was the Tier 6 Kraken, Thessaly.

A sphinx occupied the seat to Kessaroth’s left. Andy knew it was a sphinx because–well it looked like a sphinx (lion body, human face, the particular expression of a creature that considered knowledge a competitive sport and was currently winning). She was compact enough to fit in the chair much like a housecat would, watching Andy with the evaluative intensity of a professor who had already formulated the exam question and was eagerly awaiting the student to realize the test had started.

“Esteemed Council,” Andy projected. He had practiced this. He and Gustave and Teeth stood in the clearing while he practiced and they talked down to him until he was no longer flustered by their criticisms. “I am here to report the kidnapping of Ranger Veronica Flint, she has been discovered to be a bonded Conduit, by the organization known as the Harness. She was taken from Ranger Patrol Route 7-North four days ago by three coordinated extraction teams using heavy-duty binding arrays. The Harness left a recorded message indicating they have ‘acquired’ her for her Conduit abilities. I am requesting Council intervention. You may be unaware the Harness has been kidnapping magical beings, both enlightened and not and is draining them of their magic.”

“Requesting” cost him. He was not requesting. He was demanding. He should have said ‘demanding’.

What followed was not silence. Twelve powerful creatures processing information and speaking telepathically with one another in unison created a soft buzzing that his horn picked up like radio static and projected straight into Andy’s brain. His ears twitched.

Kessaroth spoke first. His voice was low, unhurried, and gravely it reminded Andy of tectonic plates rubbing against each other. “The Harness is known to us.”

Three words that contained an entire history of institutional failure. Known. Not “being addressed.” Not “under investigation.” Known. The way you know about a crack in a dam that you have been monitoring instead of fixing.

“Known,” Andy repeated. His horn flared. Prismatic splinters on the wall intensified. Several Council members adjusted their posture in the specific way that definitely suggested judgement and distaste.

“The Council has been monitoring Harness activities for some time,” said a Council member Andy didn’t recognize, a woman with silver-streaked hair whose magical signature tasted like autumn. “Their operations fall into a jurisdictional gray area that–”

“They kidnapped a Conduit,” Andy projected. “They kidnapped MY conduit. I am under the impression that conduits are rare, and not only that they have been kidnapping and draining other magical creatures. There is no gray area. There is a woman in a fortified facility north of here being tortured along with who knows how many others and the Council has been MONITORING.”

Monitoring. Same word the System had used. This triggered something in Andy he had been prepared for– anger. He had worked on defenses against this. But, in that moment it still overcame him.

The Sphinx, Anuctani leaned forward. “All seekers who petition the Council must first–”

“No,” Andy projected.

She paused. Sphinxes did not get interrupted. Sphinxes posed riddles. Seekers answered riddles. Similar to culture on Earth, that exchange was ancient. Formal. A tradition that predated the Council itself. Anuctani’s expression shifted from evaluative to something Andy’s truth sense classified as deeply offended and curious.

“My girlfriend was kidnapped,” Andy projected. “Skip the riddle.”

She stared at him. Andy stared back. A unicorn who had spent the last four days grieving, running laps, accidentally launching fruit, and teaching himself telekinesis through the sheer force of needing to hold a book (and for some reason he wasn’t quite ready to process he was refusing to use the hands he’d worked so hard to get). He was not in the mood for riddles. He was in the mood for answers, for action, for someone in this room full of ancient powerful creatures to stop MONITORING and start DOING.

She closed her mouth. Her expression hardened into what Andy’s truth sense registered as grudging respect combined with a degree of personal affront that would take a solid century to fully process and ten times as long to forgive.

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Thessaly raised her hand. Water dripped from her fingers onto the table. “I have intelligence,” she said. Her voice was gentle, warm, a voice that made you want to tell her things, and the things she was about to tell Andy were, he suspected, the reason she had raised her hand before anyone else could redirect the conversation. “The Harness has been expanding operations northward. I have tracked their shipping routes through the coastal networks. They have a facility in the Kethara Range that has tripled its magical output in the past month.”

“That’s where she is, my intelligence confirms this.” Andy said.

Thessaly’s chair made a small wet sound as she shifted. “I can provide detailed routing intelligence. Supply lines. Guard rotations. Their facility has vulnerabilities that a direct assault would miss, but a small team could exploit.”

“A small team,” Andy repeated.

“The Council cannot authorize military action without a full vote,” Kessaroth said. His words were careful, measured, the language of a creature who was constrained by the institution he led. His copper eyes met Andy’s, and in the look: sympathy. Real sympathy. Sympathy that acknowledged the situation was wrong and the institution was slow and the space between those two facts was where people got hurt. “A full vote requires sixty days.”

“Sixty days.”

“The process exists for–”

“Sixty days,” Andy projected, and the horn’s frequency shifted, and the prismatic light on the walls went from scattered to coherent, a focused beam that tracked across the stone like a spotlight operated by someone who was finished being diplomatic. “Veronica has been in that facility for four days. In sixty days, what will be left of her? How many more will be captured?”

Nobody answered. Nobody had an answer.

Georgina found him outside the chamber.

He was standing at the overlook where the mountain path opened to a view of the valley below, the forests spreading green and gold to the horizon, his territory somewhere in that expanse, small, distant. A kestrel hung in the updraft off the cliff face, wings trembling, hunting something in the scree below.

“Walk with me,” Georgina said.

She was in humanoid form, still. He’d yet to see her otherwise. Horn-crown elegantly posed on silver hair. She possessed the composed authority of a creature who had been ancient when the Council was young, and who had watched Andy Snodgrass pass a Purity evaluation by being exactly, honestly, himself. She walked with the unhurried gait of someone who had been walking for millennia and still appreciated the slow moments in life.

Andy walked beside her. Still not in humanoid form. His horn, still protesting from the Council session, easing slowly toward something quieter.

“The Harness has been operating longer than the Council admits,” Georgina said. No preamble. No diplomatic framing. She spoke as she always spoke: precisely, and truthfully. It was, as Andy was discovering, not in a unicorn’s nature to lie. “We have failed to act. This is our failure. I do not say this to excuse it. I say it because you deserve to know that the institution that should have protected your Conduit chose procedure over action, and the cost of that choice is being paid by Veronica. Not by us. By her and the others the Harness has taken.”