Chapter 9
“Balla Sioc!” I shout while pointing behind as we run through the tunnel and a 8 cm thick wall of ice blocks the tunnel. As we keep running I hear crashes against the ice and frustrated blood curdling screams. Lis stops as we reach a crossroad on the tunnels, and I point to the left. As we start moving again, I gather my magic and focus on casting another spell “ceo ceilt” I murmur and a white mist start covering the ground on the crossroad, the mist that doesn't go higher than 30 cm should help erase all signs of our passage and make harder to track us magically.
We keep running for a while, the corridor is well lit with glowing gemstones, so we have no difficulty to keep as fast we can carrying two unconscious bodies, I soon hear the sound of cracking ice and know that the little pests are once again pursuing us. We reach an intersection and as soon as we turn right I spot an open door. I ask Lis to stop and look inside in what seems to be a crafting hall of some kind. I motion for us to get inside and silently lock the door. Once inside I drop Hendrickson from my shoulder and grab a piece of chalk on my coat. I start drawing concealment and warding sigils on the door. Once I finish me and Lis, who had deposited Ward on a corner, quietly move some of the work tables in front of the door.
The room is one of the biggest I’ve seen on the burrow so far, probably 10 meters long and 5 meters large at least, and mercifully it’s seiling is almost two meters tall, contrary to the corridors that were 1,5 meters tall at best, meaning I can stand my full height, and no longer have to run while crouching. Doing that while carrying a man as heavy as yourself on your back is a pain in the ass.
I had already given up finding a way out, so we were either going to be found, and then the high ceiling will make a much better spot for a last stand, or we will remain hidden until sunrise.
As I stand, in all my glory, 1,87 cm tall, dirty blonde hair halfway to my shoulders, the power of winter turning my blue eyes in to a darker hue and dressed for combat in a heavily enchanted coat and carrying a staff humming with magic you could almost believe that being chased by a horde of undead gnomes in a faery burrow was how I expected my day to go when I woke up.
But it wasn’t, seriously, what kind of crazy idiot you would need to be to expect something like that? My day actually started very well, thank you for asking. I was confident, I made my preparations and had a nice rest the night before. Things were looking good, I even remember thinking that maybe this stint with the guard would go well. Looking back, I think that is probably the moment I jinxed it.
Pyralis was waiting for me at the base entrance gates. She was easy to spot, not that it’s hard to spot her, like all sidhe nobility she is a head turner. Lis is 1,70 tall, has shoulder length red hair and bright orange eyes that somehow always seem to be cintilanting. She is wearing what I call her military outfit, the only one I’ve seen her using while on the job. With pieces her brown and orange padded leather armor set under her dark green cloak. Even with all that gear, she still managed to turn heads and have hearts beating faster. I look at myself, and feel underdressed with just a t shirts, jeans, my combat coat and boots. I knew I should have gotten myself a fedora.
We took the downhill path in to net town on our way to the guard precinct.
The town streets were getting full with people by the time we reach the precinct. The guard precinct on the center of net town is also their headquarters. They also have three more outposts. One close to the limits of the town with each courts and one at the district 9 (as many like to call the special district).
Net town is about six times the size of the old vatican city. Occupying about 20% of the enclave size, each court occupies another 10% and the rest is either wooded area for the Fae who can’t live in towns or used for growing food and raising livestock.
The town itself is a mix match of old modern buildings that either survived the end or were built with salvaged modern materials and medieval like buildings of stone and wood. Thankfully, we salvaged enough materials to instal a modern plumbing system. I think it was on the second year of the enclave that a team discovered a way that led in to a huge construction material warehouse, part of a big construction retailer distribution center. Until today, members of that team rarely have to pay for their drinks.
Anyway back to the story, we arrived at the precinct at 8 am. The place was mostly empty, with 2 clerks and a few guardsman around. After introducing ourselves to the clerks we were asked to wait for a few minutes while they called the officers responsible for the case.
After 20 minutes or so, two detectives comes from one of the officers only doors. “Ah, if it isn’t officers Mulder and Scully!” I say as I stand up to greet them. Both officers scowl as they recognize me. Why so many people scowls when they see me? I wonder if there is anything wrong with me. It can’t be, I’m such a nice guy.
“Captain Dagworth, Sidhe.” Detective Mulder greets us. “Will you come with us to discuss the case”. He says as he turns back to the door they without waiting to see if we would follow him. Well, at least, I’m not the only one they dislike, Pyralis is also on the guad shitlist, well she did came close to burning part of the town, So it’s understable, unlike my case.
I felt tempted to stay still just for the principle of it, but decided to be the grow up in the room. See? Nice guy. Detectives Adam Hendrickson and Natasha West were the Guard detectives that handled most of the cases involving the special district or involving magical creatures. Reason why they got nicknamed Mulder and Scully. I bet you all just thought that it was me who gave them the nickname, shame on you.
Lis and I follow them inside the precinct, we walk through a bunch of corridor and offices until we reach a door marked as special investigations. The room has two desks and a table for meetings. The table has an open map of the enclave and another one of net town in a bigger scale. There is a big circle around the special district, and at least 9 pins in different spots in the district.
The detectives point for us to sit down. Once we are all settled I break the silence. “Detectives, you have already met Pyralis of the Salamanders before. She is here as a favor for me and will assist us in the investigation to the best her knowledge. So you don’t have to worry about owning her anything for her help as long as it’s related to this case. So I would thank you if you would drop all this passive hostility bullshit. The forces aren’t the courts to try gain leverage on the guard.”
Both detectives demeanor change from strongly guarded to just moderate so as they understand what I’m saying. Unfortunately, Fae courts power play does infest everything on the enclave.
“Thanks Captain.” Detective West says before continuing. “Let’s cut the chase, we have a missing persons case going on district 9, and as you are aware, we have trouble getting the locals to help us.” She then points to one of the pins. “That is the first disappearance, a human, touched, that worked on the district as a courier disappeared during a delivery, the package was found on one of the main streets close to an alley entrance. So we discarded robbery for the cargo. That was 12 days ago.”
“We initially thought that it could be related to the victim work, maybe he stole from a customer or managed to piss some of the residents” She then points to another pin “then we got the second disappearance, a regular human who lived outside of the district. He worked as a carpenter for the city, but has no relatives and his few friends have no idea what he was doing there. That was 9 days ago” She stops for a few seconds to gather her thoughts and then continues. “We initially thought the cases weren’t related until the third disappearance a girl who worked as a server on the Hole.”
“You mean The Watering Hole? Your talking about Cherrie?” The Watering Hole is a well known bar on the district, it’s frequented by all kinds of magical citizens and has a reputation of neutral ground where different parties can make deals and settle disagreements.
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It’s also my favorite place on the district. I’ve been a customer since it opened early on the enclave creation. Cherrie served tables there for years, she is a nymph and a wyld fae. If there are any fae you can call benevolent, that is Cherrie.
“Not her, a new girl. Cherrie half-sister, from what I understand. That was 7 days ago.” Detective Hendrickson answers me. Fuck, Cherrie’s father is a Gwyn ap Nudd, a powerful wyld fae King and was one of the leader of the wild hunt before the crash of the fae realm. And he is also one of the most important Fae living outside the courts.
“The girl is changeling” Hendrickson continues. That means a half-fae. Born of a mortal and a Fae. “As you can imagine, any cooperation we were getting from the residents vanished after that. Gwyn put his own people to try find her and punish whoever is responsible.” “As we were trying to get things done and Gwyn to back down the fourth and fifth case happened.” He points to another pin.” Two dwarves who owned a brewery disappeared from their house. That was 6 days ago”
“It was the first time that more than one victim was taken.” He continues. “After that things started getting out of control, we had 5 more cases, with people gone missing every night, both individuals and groups. A total of 17 persons are considered missing.”
Ok, that's fucked up. My day just went from what I hoped was going to be talking around with the fae and other creatures on the district to help assure their cooperation too crisis control. Because there is no way this is anything else.
“And can you tell me why this mess hasn’t been reported for the us or the D.F earlier?” I ask in a serious tone. Both detectives look at each other face and when West nod Hendrickson start giving me an answer.
“The true is that we didn’t know things were so bad until the day before yesterday. After Gwyn started on his war path the guard is not welcomed there, only we are entering the district, and always with a 7 man squad at least.” Ouch. “We didn’t want to involve anybody because we can barely do our jobs with all the interference, and any help big enough to get Gwyn ap Nudd to back down wouldn’t come without a big price. So before we knew how bad it was, we hoped that Gwyn would solve it on his own.
Fuck court politics, that's why I like to venture outside, the undead and other monster at least are pretty straightforward on what they want from me. I take a deep breath and focus my mind back on the case.
“Ok, you are the detectives, what you need from us? Any other information we should know?” I ask of them.
“We don’t have much more, beside that one of our informants managed to pin the places of the attacks we are unaware off. And victims are both magical and regular. Looking at the map you can see most of the attacks are on the northern side of the district, close to the city town walls to the farm lands”. The farm lands are all the enclave territory that are inside the outer walls but outside the city and courts walls. “With two exceptions, these two cases here, he points to two pins located more to the center of the district.”
“And your theories?” I ask of them. “We think something is coming from outside the city walls, but we don’t know how or what could kidnap both mortals and Fae alike”. West states. “Pyralis, any ideas?” I ask. “Many, but the only helpful one is that we need to talk to the Lord of the Tylwyth Teg.” Damm, she is right, time to go see Gwyn ap Nudd.
The detectives wanted to bring a guard escort for us, but I shot the idea down. Gwyn was more likely to see us and cooperate if we doesn't show up with a demonstration of force. We left the precinct and took a guard carriage to the limits of the special district.
The detectives were using the guard coat over regular clothes. Hendrickson was as tall as I am at least, somewhere between 1,85 to 1,90 meters. He has a rough face and keep his face shaved and his blond hair in a military cut. West has a petite build, she is not over 1,6 meters tall, has brown eyes and hair, witch she keeps long enough to use a ponytail. As far as I know they both were police before the end. I never asked, but I estimate they are on their late thirties.
They were both carrying only the guard standard combat rod. Unfortunately no guns allowed outside of the Expeditionary and Defence Forces. The true is, there is thousands of ways a magic user can hex a gun, they can cause sparks to ignite the powder inside the bullets, they can the gun in a myriad of ways, they can obstruct the barrel and etc.. There is so many options and so low cost on magic that it’s very hard and time expensive to try enchant a weapon to be resistant to magic. That is true with technology in general, the more parts and the more advanced the item, the easier it is to make it fail.
But also because the Sidhe don’t like the idea of mortals walking with weapons that can rain a death of cold iron in to them.
The carriage takes no longer than 15 minutes to drop us at the entrance of the district. It’s located on the north east part of the enclave, you can tell the street where it starts because of the sudden change on the architecture. Most residue of modern architecture vanishes and while most of the town is packed with as much buildings as we can use, the special has much more green area, with some states consisting only of grove of trees, or mounds of earth with doors. There are also buildings that look like small castles or mead halls. You can feel the magic humming in the air from the multiple wards surrounding most buildings.
The district is basically a quarter of a circle with the round part facing the walls. It’s cut by two main streets one horizontally and one vertically and a lot of minor ones making a small maze inside.
We arrive from the west and stop at entrance of the main horizontal road. The district looked empty, not deserted, but few souls walking around. At intersection where the district starts there is a group of fae wearing military like uniforms with red gloves. “Ly Erg” Hendrickson says. “Some of Gwyn enforcers”. As we walk past the group, they stare at us, but do nothing for now. Once we get inside the district, we follow the main road until it intersect with the other one and take the way north, deeper in to the district. Soon we pass a group of wyld sidhe also in the color of Gwyn. As we pass them they start to follow us. Hendrickson points them to me in case I haven’t noticed. “Ignore them, they won’t do anything for now.” I answer him. We walk for another 5 minutes getting closer to the wall, then we turn right on a small trail between a grove of oaks and a big mound. From inside the grove I can see dryads staring at us. The small windows and doors on the mound are closed.
As we come close to another intersection a group of Fae blocks our way. Three more
Ly Ergs comes from one side, from the other there is two green humanoid figures no taller then one and a half meters but very sturdy they have pointy ears and fangs coming out of the corner of their mouths. They are wearing leather armor and carrying wicked looking scimitars. Walking in the middle there is one figure that can only be described as a Tylwyth Teg nobility. She looks like almost like a tolkien elf, with fair long blond hair, green eyes, pointy ears and a serene face. She wears a green and grey robe and walks barefoot.
I make a gesture for everyone to stop. “Let me handle this” I whisper. “Lady Creiddylad” I greet the sidhe and bow my head. “Wizard Dagworth” she answers me. “Your kind is not welcome at this parts at the moment.” She says coldly. The sidhe who were following us creeps closer.
“My fair lady, what do you mean about my kind? Your talking about the wizard part, the human part, the soldier part or as an emissary of winter part?”
“Your part as keeper of the human laws wizard, we have made clear for the constabulary that they should stay away”.
“But my lady, who made clear? The sidhe? Have the Queens spoken, ordering them to stay away?
“My husband, Lord of the Tylwyth Teg has said so.” She answers in a much more colder tone then before. She clearly didn’t liked me using the queens name here.
“Well my lady, the district streets are open to all by decree of Mab and Titania, if my lord Gwyn ap Nudd desires to change that he will need to convince the Queens.”
“We are not subjects of Winter or Summer wizard. The Queens don’t command us”. If her was cold before, it was pure ice now. And that was a nice play of words from her, but I was ready for it.
“Indeed my lady, but have you forgotten that your husband as accept the authority of the Queens on matter os the enclave ruling? Are you saying that he is breaking his word to them?
I ask even knowing she doesn't. If you analyze her previous words, she didn’t lie, the Tylwyth Teg aren’t direct subjected to any of the Courts, and so don’t directly take commands from the Queens, but when all the powerful Sidhe got together to save what they could and later build the Enclave, all Wyld Fae lords accepted the Queens ruling when both courts ruled together on a subject. This is one kind of the word play you need to be careful around the Fae, without telling any lies or implicating herself she managed to imply that the queens no longer ruled here and that any protection we get from them wouldn’t keep us safe here. Together with all the thugs she brought with her the message was clear, if you don’t leave you will regret. A less experienced person would think they are in danger, either retreating or making a move first, freeing the Sidhe to react.
“My husband keep all his promises Wizard, contrary to your barbarian kind”. Ha, I did struck a nerve. Better to press on while I have her on the ropes.
“Lady Creiddylad, I am here as a representative of the Expeditionary Forces to the Guard, whose institutions carry the will of both courts when in pursuit of their duties as set on the Foundation Chart. I bring with me two high members of the guard and Pyralis, princess of the Salamanders of the Summer Court. We are on official business of the Guard. We are on our way to speak with Gwyn ap Nudd, move or be known as oathbreaker and face the consequences.”