Chapter 120

The Drow leapt gracefully as one into an attacking stance, only for two to go down into dust as my Glock opened up on them. The other three found themselves hanging motionlessly in mid-air as Morgana held them in place while she studied them, despite their frantic efforts to free themselves from her mental domination of their physical bodies. She also sent five clicks on a hand-held radio which was the signal for our forces to uncloak and summon Mage Henry’s command into the Caitiff villages.

Another figure stepped into the anti-cloaking field and, giving us a formal Mage style bow, spoke. “My apologies, my underling overstepped his bounds and nearly caused an incident,” he said in harsh tones which in no uncertain terms could be described as an apology.

“Apology accepted,” Morgana replied, though she did not release the three Drow.

“May I ask why you are here?” the Drow asked.

“To give notice of what you can expect if you come to any terms with Oonagh,” Morgana replied.

“You believe threats worry us?”

“Not a threat, a certainty,” Morgana replied in cold tones. “We left you alone so long as you did not interfere with humanity and our allies. We now deem your actions a risk, particularly as we have an ally in House Skarlett,” she added, allowing them to infer that the Council had been aware of them for far longer than a couple of weeks.

“Your concern is noted,” he replied disdainfully.

“As it should be. Now, hand over the deposed Queen and her court to face our judgement for her crimes,” Morgana stated.

“That we cannot do.”

“Cannot, or will not?”

“Will not. You are not Sidhe, merely lesser beings,” he sniffed.

“With the power to destroy you.”

“A foolish belief.”

Morgana gave three more clicks on the radio and the massive anti-teleport screen came down covering almost ten miles in diameter.

Another Drow stepped into the range of the amulets. “Seven hundred and forty-two,” he stated.

“You appear to lack the numbers to threaten us sufficiently to accede to your demands,” the original Drow sneered.

“They weren’t threats.”

“Believe as you will. We will take it upon ourselves to hunt down the Mage community after we defeat you here,” he stated harshly before the pair of them did an about face and walked off leaving just us and the three dangling Drow.

“Interesting,” Morgana murmured as we walked back to our own lines.

“Confusing. They appear to be unworried about the fact that we know where they are, or what we might do. They also do not appear to have our numbers correct, if that’s what the other Sidhe was inferring,” I replied.

Several times crossbow bolts hissed out of thin air to hit our flicker shields none of them getting close but demonstrating that the Drow were all around us.

“Yes, John. Something isn’t quite right with their reactions. The whole situation has the feeling of trap about it,” she replied as we approached the command area and the waiting Bureau heads.

“Sniping all along our lines, but they appear to have the nous to stay outside the range of the amulets,” Mage Adelaide reported.

“Keep everyone in our lines,” Morgana ordered. “Simone, I need the gestalt ... all of them, to hit this place with a full scan. Arrange for the Council to guard your backs, please.”

“Yes, Morgana,” Simone replied with a frown as what Morgana was asking was unheard of.

It took half an hour to arrange and then the full weight of the Seers pressed down on Myrkálfar. The effect was immediate, the entire mountain erupted and collapsed with thousands of individual explosions as well as various traps and other deadly surprises.

“Trap,” I said with a grim smile.

“Trap,” both Morgana and Simone echoed.

“We’ve set about a little mind editing of the mundanes so they don’t notice the new ‘volcanic’ crater. We’ve also traced a tunnel under the mountain to this region,” Simone added showing us all a 3D mental map on a table top. “It may or may not lead us to Myrkálfar.”

“Divert our forces to this area. Open up the tunnels for my Teams. Oh, and let’s take out the Drow sniping at us, if you’d be so kind as to expand the anti-cloaking field over the area please,” Morgana commanded.

There were a series of sharp cracks as the suddenly visible Drow were brought down by the Mages with Null bullets as Seer team one lifted a huge chunk of frozen earth and rock out of the ground to expose a well-constructed tunnel.

“We’ve disabled the traps and fail safe devices we can get to,” Simone stated. “However, there are areas of Null in there so be careful, Morgana.”

“Thank you, Simone. Please get our people around the next site whilst we clear this out,” Morgana replied.

“Of course, Morgana,” she replied with a smile. “Er ... what do you want done with that lot?” she asked, pointing at the still dangling Drow from our earlier parlay.

“They haven’t suicided?”

“No, they keep trying to get free so they can get in amongst us ... according to their surface thoughts anyway. I can’t get any deeper,” Simone commented.

“Leave them for now, I doubt they can get free and we might have a use for them later if we need to send in an emissary,” Morgana replied.

Our teams were joined by Jacob, Adok, Nell and Daniel as well as the Gorgons, mostly to take advantage of the wolves’ sense of smell and the Nosferatu’s night vision as we climbed down into the tunnel.

“So all those Drow I sensed were nothing but a trap?” Adok asked.

“Yes. Mental projection I believe. They’d clearly planned it as part of their defences,” Morgana replied. “A Mage would have detected it, but a Mage wouldn’t have got inside either.”

“Even the scents were there,” he added somewhat bemused.

“I believe they know we have the help of the wolves and planned likewise,” Morgana shrugged.

“There is no fault to be found here, Adok. These Drow clearly planned for the races of Earth and our abilities; this makes them a most dangerous foe,” Jacob surmised.

We scrambled down over a few broken rocks to find that the tunnel twisted and turned so as never to give an attacker a clear view and no cover either.

A series of bolts hissed out of the darkness and passed straight through my shield to slam into me, though fortunately not penetrating my armour.

“They’ve got some sort of shield-breaker formed,” I announced.

“Not Null?” Arch queried.

“No, Mage Arch. Not Null but an adaptive ward designed to swiftly merge with a shield and pass through it,” I replied, “Fortunately our armour stops them.”

“Won’t last,” Rinku added.

“Yes indeed. So, defensive advance. Cover each other and kill anything that tries to stop us,” Morgana ordered.

We leapfrogged forward, the stationary squads covering the advancing ones, occasionally firing into the darkness, though as far as we could tell, hitting nothing. The first real attack came out of the ground as cloaked Drow who were covered in some form of camouflaged cloth leapt in amongst us from the uneven floor surface. It was a vicious and brutally short fight as the one thing they hadn’t counted on was the power of the Gorgons who had turned half of them to stone even as they moved to strike us down. We all defended well, though several Mages were wounded and had to be treated as the Drow weapons were capable of penetrating our armour and were coated in a vicious fast acting neurotoxin to boot. Fortunately Mages can, given respite, heal themselves and our healing Mages were also swiftly in amongst the wounded to assist.

The last Drow crumbled to dust from the jaws of Adok as we carefully took stock.

“Just a probe,” Nisha stated.

“Yes, they’re learning. I suspect they’d hoped to at least take some of us down,” Arch nodded.

“We’ve had a lot of practice,” Rinku stated with a grim smile.

“Wonder what their numbers are?” Róisín mused.

“Won’t know till we kill them all or they surrender,” Morgana replied. “I was prepared to leave them alone, but that depended on them handing Oonagh over.”

“There are a lot more of them ahead,” Jacob warned.

“Let’s go,” Morgana nodded and led us forward.

We were met by a huge gate behind which Drow were sniping at us with their crossbows. The gate itself was magically strengthened, but before it was a Null field preventing any spells from crossing it to hit the gate.

“No way any nulled stuff will be getting past that, my Mage,” I stated as I ducked down, having observed the situation. “It will cancel out any Null we can use before it hits the gate.”

“Magically reinforced by wards,” Adsila confirmed. “Conventional weapons won’t even touch it.”

“How big is the field?” Morgana asked.

“Large bubble just in front of the gate, wards are buried deep,” she replied.

“Can anything get past the edges of the Null?”

“No, full cover in the tunnel, why?” she asked.

“C4 on the wall. Bring it down. We can’t go through but we can damned well go around!” Morgana ordered.

Several Mages darted forward to throw large satchel charges to the sides of the tunnel within the Null field before dodging back and pulling out radio transceivers.

“Now!” Morgana ordered.

The explosions hammered down the tunnel though we were well shielded and were holding a shield right at the edge of the Null field. It was easily enough to collapse the walls and we got lucky as one part of the gate had been smashed off its hinges. Arch, flanked by Jemima, launched his team forward, firing from the hip into the gap. The Drow poured out to try and hold it. Róisín, with her shotgun, charged forward at the head of my Team as I drew my rapier and cutlass to help pile into what was fast becoming a melee. Morgana held the other two teams back but urged the Gorgons forward along with Jacob and Adok, but held the Nosferatu back to exploit any gap that might appear. It was clear the Drow were excellent fighters, but struggled with some of the more ‘dirty’ tactics that Mage Roxanne had placed into our training. They were however very dangerous even if wounded and, even if down, would attempt to take down an attacker. Mage Clara finally created the gap we needed by throwing a grenade into the hole created by the gates, toppling them and enabled me to forge into the gap and into the area they had guarded, followed closely by Róisín. Her pump action shotgun barked out a continuous spray of iron buckshot as I kept a veritable swarm of Drow at bay. I was swiftly joined by Adsila using her two short bladed knives to push back the Drow even further.

We’d just got them on the back foot when one of them managed to get through my defences to punch through my armour with a stiletto. The last thing I remembered was using the cutlass to slash open her throat before things went dark and I collapsed.

“He’s back, Mage Morgana,” came a quiet thankful voice.

“Thank God!” Morgana replied as I struggled to open my eyes.