Chapter 4

The art of effective illusion is in large part based upon giving your target, the mark, exactly what he is expecting. A smart wizard can (and should) disbelieve at once any illusion that appears to be entirely too unrealistic for the circumstances. So if you have a room full of twitchy young renegades all with itchy nerves waiting for the other shoe to drop, then let it drop ... or at least appear to!

A good illusion needs a heat source, of which I had several; water vapor helps too, to make the illusion appear more substantially 'real', and you need just enough air (at least warm) to properly set the stage scenery. Have a strong Spirit source, like Miranda who was grasping my hand tightly enough to mangle fingers, is just frosting on the cake.

Since illusion isn't one of the top ten things that I do well, or even part of the next ten that I can stumble my way through adequately, I had to keep everything playground level simple and stupid. As magical kids in school, we enjoyed having space soldier vs. alien's battles on the playground, using simple light illusions for the effect of our ray gun blasts; child's play, literally. This was exactly the same, except on a slightly larger scale, managing a dozen or so light beams all striking me more or less at once ... and my magical shields utterly absorbing and ignoring the imaginary assault.

This illusion logically suggested that they had all nervously fired at me – utterly without result: probably a bad idea not to be repeated. With any luck at all this ought to make them ignore the idea of shooting at me for real the next time.

"Please put away your toy guns. This isn't that kind of party anyway. You're in trouble and I'm here to actually help, so lower the hog-legs please; even better, just set them down over on that table over there where no one will get accidentally hurt."

They complied with startling alacrity, but I did quickly translocate the three glass barreled weapons to the table closer to me so that I could make a quick comparison with the one Jake had. They were identical. Crap! Just how many wizard killing guns are out there loose in the wild waiting to take shots at us anyway? I just prayed that these kids, or The Mole, had some basic clue about the crapfest they were creating!

It took less time than I expected to explain the situation of why we were all here. They all knew of Crazy Irene, at least by reputation alone. The insane witch had made it her life's work to hunt down any and all renegades and permanently dispose of them, their families, and any nearby buildings next to her targets as well. The concepts of collateral damage and overkill were clearly foreign to her. The mere mention of her name was enough to get and keep their complete and undivided attention.

Everyone knew that she'd been on a crusade after The Mole for months, at the very least, but the news that she had now associated the Art School with him was a brand new and very frightening concept. All of the renegades and their families were now at risk and the artist commune was no longer a safe place for anyone. About a half dozen of the young wizardlings took off at once down various corridors to start warning everyone who was not already underground. Most of the renegades and their families spent most of their time down here anyway, safe below in various old runaway slave chambers down here in the warren of tunnels underground. The rest upstairs, working above on various trades or money earning jobs, not to mention their children in school all needed to get to safety as soon as possible.

This left the issue of The Mole, who was clearly not one of more junior renegade wizards on display here. Never named, save as 'The Mole', a title that clearly inspired awe and respect, if not outright obedience from the renegade community. Orders to the contrary or not, I needed to have a talk with this guy and it took a lot of fast talking and near outright threats to find someone, anyone willing to risk the certain ire of his Immense Magnificence. Pauline and Jake didn't know the route to his lair through the ancient tunnels and they had far more important fish to fry, namely collecting their young son from daycare, then packing a few bags and getting the entire family back here into safety. I couldn't blame their priorities one bit.

At length, after a lot of pointed glaring and scowling on my part, a young gal barely out of her teens named Marissa consented to be the sacrificial lamb and offered to take us to meet The Mole. It wasn't actually that long of a trip, but the convoluted pathway towards his hideout consisted of more twisting 19^th century tunnels, a modern sewer pipe, and another pair of magically sealed hidden doors, then at last another final hidden passageway into a fairly newly excavated round tunnel complex of hard rock and stone.

The Mole certainly valued his privacy and made certain that even friendly visits would be minimal. In distance travelled, his lair was probably less than a mile away from the commune shelter, but it seemed like a much further distance. If the size and lengths of the tunnels we bypassed were any sort of indication, The Mole had spent a substantial amount of time and effort creating his own labyrinth of additional protective passageways, the vast majority of which I was certain ended in rather nasty Arc-Tec traps.

At last, we had reached the warren of the legendary Mole, and I was just praying that all of my anticipation wasn't overhyped. Heroes, especially semi-legendary and reclusive ones rarely if ever live up to the stature of their press clippings.

The Mole, complete with the innocuously dull given name of Thaddeus Brown, appeared to be a character straight from Hollywood central casting. He looked every bit of early middle age, at least in his late thirties, complete with dull short brown side hair on a receding and otherwise nearly bald skull. This gave him the appearance of looking more like a chartered accountant than a legendary Arc-Technician. The reading glasses down near the tip of his nose didn't much add to the reality of his alleged fearsome reputation.

Like Dorothy pulling back the curtain on the fictional Wizard of Oz, I'd drawn back the curtain on a humbug as well, or so I thought at first, until I caught a second look at his young daughter standing by his side. Then my blood froze and I was at a complete loss for any sort of words at all.

"Alice, I see that we have company. How unpleasant! Please be a dear and go fetch us some tea. Undoubtedly, there will be unpleasant news, or unpleasant events or other unpleasantness as well ... and that always calls for a good bit of tea and some biscuits for our guests too, my dear."

Alice to her side and rear profiles seemed a rather unexceptional young girl, perhaps about eight years of age and wearing a rather old fashioned dress bestowed with girly frills and bows galore, appearing every bit the young lady. It was when she turned to go fetch the refreshments that I then caught a glimpse of her face and sensed immediately that something was out of place. The skin seemed ok and the lips, nose and ears were in the right places and looked acceptable enough, but something seemed 'off' and wrong somehow. Then I caught a glance into her dark blue but inhuman eyes and then at once everything fell into place and I became agog with the wonder of it all ... once the terror began to abate.

No one had ever succeeded (that I knew of) in using Arc-Tec to make artificial eyes, let alone an entire automated construct, cyborg or robot. It was still pure science fiction ... but somehow The Mole had done it. I couldn't even conceive of a fraction of the magical and scientific challenges such a project would entail. Maybe some other genius had quietly done something similar in some massive governmental laboratory, with unlimited technical and financial resources, but Thad had accomplished the impossible on his own ... all the while alone underground.

Inconceivable, but it had to be true!

"Is Alice quite ... alright?" I whispered to Marissa as The Mole, Thad to his few friends, shuffled about moving things seeming randomly across his large wooden worktable.

"No, and she never will be either." She murmured back in a tone so low I could barely distinguish the words. "She and her mother were both killed by Irene about four years ago when they lived above, hiding but trying to live a completely normal life. Thad couldn't live without her and so he rebuilt her. He talks to her as if she were still his living daughter, and probably now completely believes that she is real as well. Just try to ignore her if you can ... just looking at her and seeing the way she interacts with people is just outright scary and disturbing in too many ways to count. She loves him too, so play nice!" She hissed, right as Alice returned carrying a well-provisioned tea tray with four china teacups and hot tea delivered from a silver teapot.

The civility of it all was very disturbing too, but I decided to get to the point, unpleasant, as it was certain to be.

"Thad, Crazy Irene is hot on your trail and has traced you to at least the general area of the artist commune. I didn't see or sense her there, but she's crazy smart and likely has had the drop on you for days now, if not weeks. More than enough time to plan, counter-plan and prepare for something viciously unpleasant. I'm not sure you're safe here, nor Alice, at least not for very much longer. Do you have a safer, more distant place to fall back upon? Miranda and I are foreign wizards, from Texas, and we'd like very much to be able to help you ... and perhaps even be able to handle Irene."

That was fudging the facts slightly, especially about Miranda being a GWA magician, but she was my apprentice and she was extremely keen and eager to help. I sipped the tea, which was excellent, and tried not to look into the soulless dark eyes of the reconstructed Alice.

"Most unpleasant news ... most unpleasant indeed, but not quite a calamity ... or even a catastrophe either and not entirely unexpected. I know all about Irene. How she thinks, how she'd act and how she'll finally strike at me now that she's traced me here to my new home. She's had a magical trace on Marissa for over week now, waiting for the girl to show her the way to me. I've been waiting too, for such a very long time as well, wanting for this all finally to be over. The awful unpleasantness finished for the last time! Now drink up your tea, we've still got a few more minutes to prepare."

"So you've been waiting for her, preparing a trap for her?" I stammered, scared that not only had Marissa now lead Irene to The Mole, but also that the underground sanctuary of the commune had been exposed as well.

"Quite so; Marissa was very brave when I told her what unpleasant things she'd have to do on my behalf, to allow her to be discovered as a renegade mage, captured and then carefully tell Irene under most unpleasant interrogation everything that I, we, wanted her to know. Laying the seeds for her to assault me in my own most secretive sanctorum, unaware that at last it is I that have been preparing myself for her! Oh, it has taken years, untold days without sleep or rest to prepare, but now everything is in readiness and my hated enemy approaches. Can you feel that evil taint upon the earth ley below us? She will be great and full with power, her insanity utterly unleashed, but I have not underestimated what I will be facing, and now I must go to make my final preparations for her imminent arrival. Just a minute or two to wait now, I think. Feel how the earth is beginning to vibrate with her approaching presence! Yes, yes! This will all be extremely unpleasant and vexing, but soon my beloved wife's spirit will be able to rest in peace! Yes, yes ... most terribly unpleasant! Alice, can you please look after things for me for just a few minutes? I shall return shortly."

Thad shuffled off down a nearby corridor, muttering to himself all the while. Irene was certainly utterly insane ... and now I was pretty certain that Thaddeus too had more than a few mental software circuits misfiring. As for Alice being capable of dealing with anything that Irene could bring to bear against us, well that was just delusional and quite laughable.

Dust was softly falling from the ceiling now and gradually the strong earth vibrations seemed closer and more powerful. The notion that Irene could tunnel through solid earth with her enormous Earth powers wasn't quite as laughable an idea as it might have seemed. I couldn't have done it and I couldn't begin to fathom the sheer amounts of raw applied magic energy that would require, even before an expected combat against another talented magician (or several) was likely to occur. It seemed pointless ... and yes, rather insane. That was Crazy Eyes Irene for you. Then I could sense that she wasn't coming alone.

"Miranda," I muttered pushing her back protectively behind me, "review for me please briefly the lesson we discussed a few days ago back on the train about dealing with earth elementals."

"Fuck..." she muttered, taking another step backwards toward the opposite chamber wall across from where the rock was now shuddering. "Ok, first they're stupid, really almost close to mindless; even the bigger more powerful ones. They have a will and a sense of purpose, but that's about all. They're relatively easy to summon, but hard and next to impossible to keep focused upon a task. They have the attention span of toddlers in a toy store. Secondly, being big and stupid, they're hard as fuck to kill, at least physically and don't seem to feel pain. Also conversely, alone of all of the other elemental races, the Law of Oppositional Elemental Force doesn't really apply to them, so I should just use anything and everything against them until something works."

"Got it in one, now get back a bit more and concentrate on finding something other than just this earth ley to work with ... anything!"

Miranda was a bright kid and unlike me paid attention to her magical lessons. For fighting fire or water elementals it was simple – just use the oppositional element against them as each was virtually immune to its own element used against them. Air was slightly trickier; in theory earth worked best against them, but that could be tricky, requiring good technical wizardry to pull off. Earth was simple; just use anything available, even earth itself. In practice, nothing worked really better or worse against them than anything else. Improvise ... that's what my own teacher had taught us.

The wall now in front of us was showing more signs of instability and immanent failure and I grabbed a hold of Alice's shoulder to try to push her back behind me to join Miranda in relative safety. Unaccountably, she remained immobile firmly in place, and then took a step forward apparently to protect me!

"Alice, please be a dear and step back with Miranda behind me. I think your father is quite right and thing are about to become appallingly unpleasant ... probably for everyone."

The robotic child just took yet another child-sized step forward and then her eyes and hands began to glow. Clearly she possessed several imbedded layers of Arc-Tec defenses, I noted, and watched with amazement as the fingers began to morph into long immensely sharp glowing curved metal digging claws about six inches in length. No doubt fully capable of ripping through magical shielding and carving flesh or earth elemental golems like soft clay. For just a moment I thought that this entire fiasco wasn't going to be quite as nasty as I had anticipated ... then I took a good look at what was starting to batter it's way though the shattering stone walls of the room.

For starters, we faced a pair of giant earth elementals: nasty ones too, too primeval and stupid for any sort of notions of elemental royalty or faux nobility, just a big pair of hulks about the size and stature of large bears.

Very nasty, yeah, things were about to become extremely unpleasant down here!

For lack of anything else clever that I could think of doing, I just firmly attached onto the massive earth ley below us and tried to force the growing aperture of crumbling earth back into a cohesive barrier. This might have worked if I could have channeled enough force to push the brutes back enough to have clearance enough in the newly carved passageway to seal it up semi-properly. Instead, I had to start playing tug of war with Irene for sole custody of the ley nearly immediately. Here at last in her own element she had me at something of a disadvantage. Right away, I had to make a rather hard choice: either commit myself 100% to fighting her for control of that ley, but leaving everyone else essential helpless against the pair of rather large elementals. Or, relinquish it, letting her keep sole control of the ley and just concentrate on taking out her advance guard first; now and quickly, then dealing with her later. This latter option was the safest and most responsible one, for now, but I was sure that I was going to regret this decision later.

The intruders burst their way in through my hasty barricade and into the large chamber and began bellowing some sort of earth rumbling challenge at us, but Alice was already on the move! With the quickness that no real mortal child could hope to match, the small construct ducked under a slow but powerful blow of the left-most elemental and darted under its swinging paws and began raking her magically enhanced claws deeply into the underside of the creature, quite exactly as a badger would gut the innards out of greater sized opponent. The elemental didn't really feel pain, or have much in way of actual internal organs, but what Alice was doing seemed to attract its complete and undivided attention. A moment later the young girl was clambering up the back of the creature and digging in for keeps with her feet while her hands flailed like twin windmills, carving and tearing away at the mass of the elemental's unprotected back.

Alice, quite apparently, had the situation with her intruder well in hand ... hehe. I supposed I could have just done the plain and simple thing, which was to forcibly banish the remaining creature back to it home plane of existence, but that would have meant another duel of wills against Irene, to break her summoning hold over it first. The same tricky dilemma all over again, so it seemed. Subtlety wasn't going to work, but brute force still looked like a very viable option.

With such a powerful earth ley below us, and being a decent bit underground already, there was enough magical back splatter with enough ambient available magical earth energies available that I didn't need to fight Irene over the ley or need to get too overly creative searching for other energy options. I just let my will vacuum up the resident goodies available and just proceeded to blast away at the remaining intruder with earth bolts.

Miranda was making herself useful by shaping smaller bolts to cast at both of them as well, but she covered hers with a thin façade of spirit energy first. To further shame me, demonstrating her reliance upon technique rather than raw sheer force, she was coating the spirit over the earth energies with a circular spinning pattern, giving the bolt a rather spiral sort of launching ... and a rather significantly deeper penetration than my own more powerful, but blunt attacks had achieved. That's my girl!

I do catch on to new tricks pretty quickly, sometimes anyway, and after trying the same trick of spiral coating my earth bolts with a spirit armor penetration coating, the two of us had the faltering beasts blasted down to chunks of rock and gravel in less than a minute. The pair of elementals crashed down to ground nearly simultaneously, becoming nothing more than piles of pulverized and chipped rock, and this gave us a respite of a good three or four deep breaths time, to almost relax before Irene crashed her way into the chamber, howling with her desire for battle.

The crazy earth witch was insane; howling at the moon, chewing on the carpet batshit crazy even, but I'd never even suspected that even as powerful with earth magic as she was, that she had the raw ability (and the innate talent and vast technical ability necessary) to transalterate herself!

I've mentioned how tricky it is to alter with magic the physical universe around us. Sure, I've done it before, but I'm sure it was done with Sean's assistance. The art (it's not a science) of changing oneself into something else ... and possessing all of that creatures abilities and attributes, is another entire level of 'what the fuck?' It's a legendary ability that not one wizard in a thousand possesses ... allegedly. Or maybe it's just both absurdly rare and a very private sort of indulgence, and the sort of thing that you keep quiet about, kept secret from the wife and kids, like the naughty magazines locked away in your bottom right desk drawer.

Whatever sort of earth creature it was (and I haven't the vaguest clue) it was enormous, nearly the height of this chamber room when she stood more or less upright, like a giant earth hulk with huge claws for hands and rock shattering giant pincers to the sides of her colossal ground devouring jaws and cavernous maw. Just guessing mind you, I'd say that this earth hulk represented the upper reaches of the elemental earth pecking order. They weren't intelligent or self-aware enough for having a real sort of leadership or power hierarchy, but this thing looked like it could easily devour any other elemental (or minor mountain range) I'd ever even heard of! Irene was big and colossally huge, probably at least sixteen or even twenty feet in height if she'd enjoyed enough ceiling space to stand. Even compressed, sitting in a squat just inside the now vastly enlarged entrance passageway, it was obvious that she could menace the entire room.

She didn't bother with either human speech or any sort of rumbled elemental cry of challenge. We were too insignificant for her to bother with that sort of thing. Instead, she just widely opened her earth-shattering jaws wide and unleashed an earthstorm against us. The force was massive, much like a sandstorm blasting against us with a gale or hurricane force wind composed of blown earth, pulverized rock and sand blasting relentlessly against my shields. They held and could probably continue to do so for a while, but Irene had other cards to play, including the brute force approach too.

Her earth hulk body was massive and her arms moved quite slowly and with some measured deliberation, it appeared. This was very misleading however, as she could turn and move her head much more rapidly, swinging her pair of four foot long magical tusks as an elephant could ... and with unsettling quickness and accuracy.

Alice had launched herself forward again the moment the sandstorm had abated and she had managed an insubstantial swipe or two against the virtually invulnerable hide of the monster before a casual swipe of the glowing tusks crashed against the young girl, hurling her with considerable force against the stone wall to my right. A mortal girl would have been crushed, but Alice was constructed of rather stronger stuff than flesh and after a moment to regain her feet, she bravely resumed the attack, but apparently somewhat damaged, bearing a noticeable dragging limp that slowed her movements. To be at all effective, she needed to be able to reach a flank, or better yet the rear of the hulk. That meant that I needed to distract Irene, at least for a moment or two.