Frankie Joyfield was an old woman. She’d stopped paying attention to her exact age decades before, though she’d calculated it from time to time. She was in her 160s, possibly closer to 170. She lived in a quiet corner of the world. She had her forests and her spirits and her lover. She had time to meditate and read. She had bright young minds to cultivate. She had everything she needed in the Sleeping Bear Pack, being far too old and jaded for the ambitious games that the young played. She had power and authority in herself and didn’t need anyone else to stroke her ego.
This mess disturbed her peace and quiet, not to mention the proper order of the world and basic human decency. However, Frankie had also lived long enough to understand that the basic human was basically indecent, merely covered in a veneer of civility and good intentions until pressed into desperation and distress. Some people would surprise her, but Frankie had grown very cynical about good intentions, having watched the genocide of her mother’s people and most of their culture and then watched again as that same genocide was brushed under the rug and never talked about.
When Riordan had shown up, covered in death and drowning in spirit, Frankie had felt that this was going to be one of those memorable times of her life again, the sort that derailed all plans and intentions and left her fighting the tides of fate or fortune. Some such moments arrived and passed like bomb blasts, leaving the wreckage of life behind them. The people who passed through such times were changed instantly and then spent an unknown eternity trying to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. Natural disasters and one-off attacks fell into that category, leaving marks on those affected by proximity to the event.
Other cusp moments were merely the beginning of something new but unexpected. They took the course of future events and bent them off of their expected paths for everyone tied to those elements. These could be harder to spot without experience. New technology such as the internet was one, or any major war. They were prolonged in exposure and effect, having widespread impact but less explosively. Frankie had felt that cusp when the ability to track and exchange information in the mortal world reached a point that the old ways of secrecy among the magic-users were becoming increasingly unviable.
And then there were those moments that Frankie called ripple events. Like a stone quietly dropped in a pond, the disruption appeared local and important only to a few, but the effects traveled quietly over long distances, touching many lives bit by bit. Shifting things just that tiny amount into something new. These tended to center around an individual or group whose story and influence spread. Morgan’s Code, the code of conduct that kept magic-user politics civil even into the modern age, had come from one such man. The great prophets and saints of history also fell into that category.
These kinds of moments weren’t always clear cut. An influential individual could cause a disaster or a war. A disaster could give rise to new technology and opportunities. Seeing the future was a horribly messy affair. Frankie had once spoken about the issue in-depth with someone who possessed the time affinity. He said that the future was made of branching probabilities and that any serious attempt at divination needed a data set or other such anchor to see how the future might follow from there. That worked fairly well for the near future, but only until something outside the data entered into the equation. In fact, he had said that Frankie would have more luck than he would for getting classic prophecies since the greater spirits could sometimes see the flow of magic and probability and identify those people or events that stood as major catalysts upon the future.
Of course, the greater spirits rarely shared those insights with even those gifted enough to speak with them since the concerns of the mortal world were often beyond their alien nature. The only other group who could see such things with clarity were the dead beyond the Veil. Some spirit mages or notable death mages from history had talked to the hungry dead who lingered near the borders of life and death and received warnings of what might come to pass. However, unlike the spirits who rarely bothered to lie, the hungry dead would often say anything necessary in order to trick someone into opening a hole in the Veil for them. These were the ghosts who hadn’t passed along peacefully and hungered for life in any form, often literally eating those who dealt with them.
In the end, all Frankie knew for sure was that this time and place was one of those moments. For all of them, they would come away from here changed.
Or perhaps some would not come away from here at all. Frankie hated having to bring the young eager members of the pack into a fight against three death mages. Lucinda was as ready as she could be, if lacking in experience, but Mark and many of the newer security team members had no real idea what they were getting into. Honestly, with every death mage being so different and rare, even Frankie only had many years of general experience to use against these enemies, rather than some specialized expertise. That strange death mage belonging to the Department of Magic was the only person Frankie had ever met who she could say actually specialized in stopping death mages and even that was only possible because of the changes in the world. Without modern information exchange and transportation, death mages were too rare to be considered a whole specialty.
The world was a large place, especially when one accounted for the outer realms, but modern technology made it also too small. Distance was no defense. Hiding became increasingly more difficult. The world was changing again. Frankie had no idea how this moment would change things further.
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Frankie marched into battle with four of the best fighters in the pack at her back. Vera had fretted about it, wanting to be there personally to back her up, but Frankie had put her foot down on the matter. All the shaman of the pack, almost all of combat-trained pack members of any degree, and Norris were all indisposed with this fight. Vera had to stay and defend their home base or none of their attack team would have been able to concentrate on the task at hand, not after the multi-pronged mayhem of the day so far. Vera’s presence gave the pack faith that if something more went wrong, she’d be there to handle it, whether personally or via efficient delegation.
Her lover hadn’t been thrilled to be sidelined like that, but Frankie didn’t give a shit. She had needed Vera safe to be able to face off against two or more death mages as the most experienced caster present. That meant being ruthlessly practical and heartless when needed, putting the greater good over any individual. It was hard enough doing that with her students and pack. She couldn’t do it with Vera.
Besides, having Vera waiting for her at home, mad enough to spit nails if Frankie got herself hurt or cursed or some such shit, was plenty incentive for Frankie to win.
Frankie wasn’t a large woman. She was short and thin. Unlike Vera, who was plush and tall and looked capable of hibernation if needed, Frankie looked like the bird she was, thin and lanky with delicate bones. Her tattoos showed the blue patterns speaking of wings and skies and water. Her mantle wrapped her large wings, feathers dyed in the variegated blue-shaded greys and whites of a great blue heron, around Frankie and the rest of her team. Frankie slipped into the battlefield under that shelter, guiding her followers along an unseen path in slow sure steps. She couldn’t hold that effect for long without invalidating it by boosting it with external and likely spiritual sources, the increased flare of magic attracting the very people she was presently stalking.
The spirit of the tree in the center of this clearing worried Frankie. Spirits were usually aloof existences, motivated by their own agendas that stemmed from the concept from which they arose. The spirit of a tree should be steadfast, weathering the storm without any thought to why it is storming or how it might be stopped. This spirit was paying attention. And it was angry. Frankie wasn’t sure why it cared and couldn’t assume it would be a passive observer like a normal tree spirit. If it became involved, the consequences could be anything.
For now, her targets were clustered around the altar. Frankie wished she could pierce through to the heart of this ritual, but under the shelter of the spirit’s cloaking boughs, she felt a wealth of dark power rising with each chanted phrase. She could deal with a fight or a spirit with confidence, but the proper dispensation of death magic was a tricky business. If they didn’t have an expert available, she would do it, but Frankie had watched Quinn Morrish at work when they cleaned the smear of death magic at the border. His magic was some of the most efficient and precise she had ever seen. She trusted that he would be better suited for carefully containing that pool of power.
As such, it was her duty to engage the death mages and buy him an opportunity. With any luck, she would make quick work of one or more of the death mages and be able to come to his aid in dealing with the ritual as well. Another step and Frankie was within the ring of onlookers. She saw the main caster of the ritual and the other mage acting as an assistant caster. She also saw the third death mage standing vigil, along with seven women who were enchanted to the gills. Those were the people ready to act and therefore, the ones Frankie must engage.
To the edge of the gathering, a magical shockwave went off, distracting the guardians. Lucinda had led her team in for the initial blitz. The guardswomen turned, preparing to rush off to engage Frankie’s students. That wouldn’t do. Frankie spread her wings wide, commanding her teammates, “Stop them.”
She’d watched her pack mates grow up, either from children born into the pack or married in or joining later in life. They were all precious to Frankie, though she’d never let them get spoiled by being soft on them. She had faith in their skills. Besides, she had already strengthened their spirit animals before they even got this far. The death mages’ guards weren’t the only ones buffed by magic.
The free death mage, the one known as Helena according to the reports, turned her attention to Frankie as soon as they appeared. Frankie could only imagine that she must be impressive with her spirit wings spread. There was a distinct temptation to partial shift to grow her wings for real, but it would mean losing her human hands and there wasn’t room for a human to fly under the tree branches. She tossed her head, black spirit feathers tracing over her short silver hair.
“Shaman to death mage, I call you. Submit to justice, those who steal death,” Frankie intoned dramatically, both because it was traditional to give them a chance to surrender and because she knew it was likely to piss them off. She grinned villainously, “That means, surrender or get your ass kicked, bitch.”
“What the hell?” Helena asked, clearly confused. That emotion slowed her down and took the edge off of her protective instincts. It didn’t help that Frankie, for all she was wrapped in a spirit cloak of feathers, looked like the little old hippie she was. Helena had also clearly never dueled an experienced mage.
Frankie fell into the Anishinaabe language of her youth, her casting language of choice. “By the pact we have sworn, Hrr, I invoke your presence in this place.”
The Guardian Spirit that had once been the spirit of a heron manifested, using magic from Frankie’s well to become temporarily existent upon the physical plane. It shrieked soundlessly, its blue runic markings flashing against its feathers. Then it snapped its neck forward, pecking at Helena with a beak as sharp as a spear. Helena barely managed to dodge with the assistance of one of her Warriors.
Summoning was an advanced skill for shaman. It required learning how to converse with spirits to the point of being able to form contracts as well as a knowledge of the interface between the physical and spiritual realms and a whole host of research on what types of spirits can be contracted to perform different sorts of tasks. Summoning them physically also required a heap of mana to expend. It was worth it though--
“Rot!” Helena called, finishing a spell and tossing a knife at Hrr. The blade sank slightly into the spirit’s proto-body until Hrr shook itself, knocking the knife loose. The death magic spell attempted to take root in the spirit and then simply drained away.
Frankie smirked. Spirits didn’t live and couldn’t die. They had no blood. Even death corruption faded from them over time. A summoned spirit was pretty much a death mage’s worst nightmare.
Frankie pointed at Helena, still speaking Anishinaabe. “Hrr, subdue.”
Then her smile dropped from her face. Behind her fight, Quinn had engaged the other two death mages, his first strike blocked by one as the other made to complete the ritual. The one now missing a hand shouted something and power rose in all the human members of the cult that surrounded them.