Chapter 12

Doing another up and over worked out more or less according to plan and the aversion field didn't trigger anything nasty (at least audibly) as we floated down to the main delivery area and the VIP parking lot. When in doubt, follow the big shots. Two guards were vaguely awake in the area patrolling the loading dock, but the ramp that led up to a large security door with a window was guarded by just a lone sentinel. To make it more appealing, the gun toting apes down at the loading dock did not have clear line of sight to this lone guard manning the VIP entrance. If that wasn't enough encouragement for me to think naughty thoughts, I noted that the decorative hedges on both sides of the pedestrian ramp were nicely overgrown and dense, marvelously suited for the pleasant task of hiding an entire squad of dead or incapacitated bodies.

Slightly chortling, I whispered for Miranda for us to trot on up just a bit closer and I'd take care of the guard, quickly and almost soundlessly. I had just the spell in mind!

Military service is useful for teaching a young impressionable man like myself, dozens to possibly hundreds of ways to do wickedly nasty things to your enemies, and the three month long military wizardry school I attended at the start of my service taught me one or two perverse tricks that I've used irregularly ever since. In the past, I'd largely relied upon translocation, the art of magically grabbing an object from point A and sending it to point B, and vice versa. Really clever and insidious wizards can innocuously steal all of the bullets from an enemy's gun and send them harmlessly in an instant to their hand, but that level of delicacy was beyond me ... not that I'd tried it recently. My best trick was just to take the entire gun and skip being unnecessarily clever. But I now remembered a very old trick that I'd never once used while being at the sharp end of things in magical combat. Instead I'd learned this magic the hard way, mostly on the receiving end in the playground or after school at the hands of my magical betters. The old burst the melon ploy!

It's easy to do, fast and (mostly) silent and isn't usually lethal ... unless the caster is in a really bad mood. I was, but decorating the whole side of the building with fresh blood wasn't remotely subtle. Besides, Miranda was still a young and (mostly) innocent girl and in my new role of providing appropriate instruction to the young and impressionable, I didn't want to cause any more mayhem than was appropriate. Odds were that in just another minute or two just about everything would go to shit anyway and then I could resort to the final expediency of an accused sociopathic pyromaniac, and start to do what I did best ... namely blow some shit up!

The 'Melon Charm' (yep, that's its official name) worked beautifully and I could swear that I briefly heard Sean cringe inside of my head. Done exactly properly, as I had done, the magician quickly forms a solid sphere of air completely around the head of the victim and then you suddenly implode it inward with a sharp sudden bang, just like popping a big soap bubble! Since I was in a bad mood, I wasn't particularly gentle. This had the very immediate effect of causing an instant brain concussion and immediate unconsciousness for hours, or until serious medical treatment is performed to release the internal cranial pressure. This poor bastard had about a 50/50 chance of dying from brain edema, or brain swelling from the bleeding caused by innumerable ruptured blood vessels inside the victim's skull, but - casualties usually do occur in wartime.

The more Deseret bastards I killed, the fewer someone else would have to deal with on a battlefield. Now if the spell had been performed perhaps a tad more excessively, the little prick's skull would have been crushed at minimum, or made to completely explode in a glorious spray of Technicolor grey matter and crimson over a pretty wide area. Just like if you'd dropped a ripe melon from a roof onto hard pavement. Splat! That's why it's called the Melon Charm. Perfect for that specialized instance when you really want to deliver a message to the survivors!

The VIP door into the facility was unlocked and a brief check revealed nothing more potent than a minor aversion charm on the door handle, probably to remind the rank and file dumbfucks that this entrance was reserved strictly for the use of their betters. Inside, was a long well lit hallway entirely unsuitable for either lurking or skulking, and I grabbed the first door that we passed on the right, which had the good fortune to be the security ready room.

Inside, this room was fairly large and had more than a few goodies worth investigating, once its sole inhabitant was dealt with. I bounced the inside contents of his skull with a bit too with more air pressure than was even remotely healthy, and from the instantaneous bleeding from his eyes, ears, mouth and nose, I was pretty sure that just about every blood vessel inside his skull had ruptured. He didn't have any long term plans left for his life anyway other than enjoying his coma next to his fellow guard covered up outside in the bushes.

Now, all alone in our private little military arsenal, I started to rummage through lockers and storage chests to assemble a few odd items that suddenly seemed fairly useful. We'd about exhausted our luck sneaking around unseen and it wouldn't work inside here anyway. Aversion spells really don't work well in brightly lit and narrow areas like highly classified government installations ... otherwise, there wouldn't be a secret left anywhere and professional spies would have it way too easy. Inside a well guarded facility like this, it would be easy to set up a protection spell that would cancel out major stealth or invisibility charms, let alone simple aversion spells like ours.

It was time to turn to Plan B, relying now upon boldness rather than stealth.

In my experience of being in places where I really wasn't at all supposed to be on several occasions, I had learned that audacity has its own tactical quality and usefulness in a dangerous situation. I was inside a high security top level military R&D lab, past numerous levels of magical and physical security and now if I could look and act like I belonged there, calm, cool and collected ... just another pitiful pismire doing his shitty thankless job, then no one would think twice about me. The 'us' part was going to be just a tad trickier, but this was no place to leave a girl alone right in the heart of trouble.

"Miranda, I've got the ID badge and the bracelet from the second guard and he's more or less a vague physical match for me and I've found a fresh clean uniform that should fit. Not perfect but I bet hardly anyone looks closely at these things once they're inside, but to be safe I'll plant a Verity charm upon the ID, so watch close because this is a really useful spell that isn't really too tricky to learn. Most young magicians back home learn this spell early, so they can make a fake ID good enough to get served inside nightclubs and bars, but it does have other useful purposes sometimes ... like now!"

It wasn't tricky at all for her, and my young apprentice nodded that she'd picked up the basics right away. This spell was vaguely similar to the Friendship Charm I'd cast upon those silver dollars back in Chicago in that anyone inspecting the identification would see exactly what they would expect to see. The gnarly photo of the un-photogenic military security policeman would now appear to look just like me, and best of all, since this ID badge was mundane plastic, it would only betray a very light minimal magical aura, probably too weak to be noticed by a minor magician making only a casual visual examination of the card.

Now equipped with a spotless pressed uniform and a sidearm I hoped I'd never have to use, I now needed to convince Miranda that putting a mask over her head, a leather collar with a leash, and then handcuffing her to make her look like a newly arriving prisoner, was a sane and practical plan. I didn't convince her, but the brave hearted girl had a lot of trust in me anyway. Someday her new hero was going to seriously disappoint her and her shining white knight was going to take a nasty fall from his charger right into the doo-doo.

Unhappily, I thought it was safest to leave her Tommy gun stowed away in one of the storage lockers out of sight. Even in insane Deseret, they don't let the prisoners run around armed and I was scared that I was already hauling around way too much silver, with the balls and various coins in my pockets. Really powerful mages can sense the stuff like the smell of freshly baked bread, plus I hadn't seen any of the internal research station guards toting about anything other than small sidearms. I needed to stay 'normal' and unremarkable for as long as possible.

Boldly sauntering into the heart of your enemy's stronghold certainly beats skulking, every day of the week. My uniform (and charmed ID) showed me to be a corporal, the perfect natural coloration inside any military installation. It was perfect military camouflage, I was just high ranking enough as a junior NCO to be realistically authorized to go anywhere where any actual real work was performed and too low of any importance for anyone else to bother or even notice them particularly.

Roaming the wide brightly lit halls as boldly as brass wasn't too disconcerting and I tried to stick to the main passages but slightly inclining towards the direction where I thought the internal loading dock facility was located inside, probably somewhere off to our right. Miranda played her role well as my meek little prisoner and trotted along blindly behind me being led by her leash, all the while probably plotting some horrific revenge against me.

"Sean." I half whispered under my breath with my teeth firmly clinched. "I can't find any damned department or office signs anywhere! The doors only have number markings, that's all. I guess the riff-raff doesn't need to know much about what everyone else outside their own office or lab is doing, but I need a clue!"

"We need to go down, far down to the bottom level where that great magical energy is being created and channeled into power. Go straight ahead for now, there are wizards just ahead up there ... a checkpoint, probably for the elevator and that's where we'll want to go!"

"Into the Valley of Death rode the two heroic wizards!" I muttered and without missing a beat the scheming and nearly all-powerful Ùruisg replied:

"Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred."

"Fuck you very much!" I muttered as the checkpoint up ahead now came closer into view. It figured my insatiably curious visitor had read Tennyson. "Have you not any words of faux-Celtic comfort for us? A nice prayer perhaps ... even in Lithuanian would be just fine!"

"Bugger it, Lad! Your plan will work or you'll create a nice crater here in the middle of the facility and we can just float right down into the smoking abyss and down into the pit. Unless of course you'd like to pay for the official guided grand tour and give the nice man in robes up ahead one of your shiny Texas silver dollars for the admission fare?"

"Sod off, you damned little bastard! Someday you're going to tread on my last nerve and I'll banish your miserable scrawny hairy brown ass back home or else I'll donate you to the Imperial Zoo in San Francisco, as a megalomaniac example of a common domestic brownie with extreme delusions of grandeur ... and alcoholic tendencies!"

"Bring friends!" He giggled, being now entirely too smug for himself. Someday that smarmy little shit was going to get me killed! I was sure of it ... but it wasn't going to be dull when it happened! Sometimes the most useful thing a wizard can ever do is to die in such an appalling and regrettable manner that the story of his death is taught in schools as an object lesson and practical warning to others. More than one teacher had hinted that would be my own probable fate someday, but I was in no hurry to be immortalized in magical history just yet.

I gave a vague smile and waved my ID casually at the direction of the wizard seated at one of the two desks in front of me, which together blocked direct access to the elevator heading down. This was a strong talented wizard I noted, and if he actually touched or carefully examined my ID my cover would be blown, but I didn't dare reach out for any external magical sources while he casually looked me over. There was a pair of extremely strong Earth and Fire Leys right under this hill and research facility, and they were probably the reason this location was selected. Air and Water Leys weren't too far distant either and these could be channeled, eventually, with proper preparation time. I hoped I wouldn't need them. I was slowly gaining a better mastery of air magic and enjoying the thought of being a terrifically powerful air wizard someday, but winds and tornados weren't going to do me much good down here!

"Newly arrived prisoner, Great One." I declared with a decent bow and more than hint of genuine sincerity. "The officer stated that she was to be delivered down to The Pit, to join the other one who arrived earlier last night."

Nice and meek, I thought. Chockfull of 'Don't get mad at me, I'm only following orders!' The Deseret wizard pondered this notion for a moment and this gave me a moment to indirectly examine my possible foe without at all appearing to take my eyes off of my shoes, like a good obedient piece of enlisted dog-turd.

The wizard wore a rather formal black wizard's robe with silver piping around the collars and sleeves. If my 'Know your enemy!' lectures were correct, this identified him as member of the minor Deseret magical aristocracy. A member of the ruling class but nothing really special. The silver five-pointed stars on the lapels of his collar marked him as a wizard of the Fifth Circle. Chump change, probably a medium to strong Adept level magician. Meah ... I could handle him in my sleep if my cover was blown, even if he got the jump on me.

His assistant at the desk next to him looked to be a mundane Army captain and the poor sod was definitely much lower down the political totem-pole than the wizard. From what I understood, any magician ranked higher in the Deseret hierarchy than even most generals. He kept his face firmly glued to some bit of paperwork and never even raised his eyes to me once while I stood there.

Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, the magician just shrugged and activated the elevator doors, opening them for me and then he briefly stepped inside and cast another very minor charm, which seemed to unlock the controlled and very restricted access to the highly classified bottom floor Pit stop. I gave him another bow, as I assumed I had his leave to depart.

"Bottom floor, of course. You know the way?" He commented, with no particular interest in my answer either way, but I felt obliged to reply.

"No, Great One, I have never had that honor ... and I would not wish to delay my duty."

"Take the left turn and leave her with the Commander of the Pit, or whoever is Guard-Captain at the moment at the entryway. Don't dawdle! If you take the right turn, your duty will be quite instantly and permanently delayed so restrain your curiosity, should you be unfortunate enough to have any."

I bowed again on general principle, but the Great One had no further interest at all in me and didn't even bother to watch as Miranda and I entered the elevator and took it down. There were at least ten normal levels below us containing various research labs all handily labeled S1 through S10, and then there was a nice and shiny red button below that labeled 'Pit'. How convenient! I didn't dare check for any magical protections around that button with the magician still close at hand, so I just trusted to fate and pressed that button and nothing awful happened to me, other than eventually, about two minutes later we arrived in someone's clever recreation of hell.

Really, the only thing that dark and sinister carved stone hallway was missing was the proverbial 'Abandon All Hope' sign.

The growing sense of enormous, and virtually inexhaustible magic filled me as we grew closer, descending down into the bowels of the earth, and as I could more easily sense its power, I also could sense the awful wrongness of it. The exact same sort of malignancy that I'd sensed in that vile house in Chicago. Second verse, same as the first ... but bigger, badder and bolder.

When the doors opened I risked taking a look down the right hallway and saw about twenty yards downrange a seriously large and heavy steel door that glowed by malevolent protections and guarded in front by two veteran looking magicians who were already giving me the beady-eye glare of doom. I gave them a brief bow and gave Miranda's leash a sharp tug hard to the left. The bastards were watching me like a hawk just begging for any pretext at all to fry me to a pair of smoking boots. They were positively bursting with fire energy and itching for an excuse to create another pile of soot. Of course they couldn't burn me ... but I wasn't ready yet to let them know about that little fact.