The whole of Hobart was too much to defend. It seemed most likely that the Fomorians would attack from the sea, they were semi-aquatic by nature. Still, they couldn't ignore the possibility that they'd come by land and settle in for a protracted siege.
Vivien's first insistence was that messengers be sent up the Derwent, across the river into the central tablelands, and further south to Kingston, to let everyone know that Hobart had a measure of security and supplies. That they would find a place for anyone who wanted to seek safety in numbers. There was still no reasonable way to explain to the survivors that an army of mythical beings was likely to descend upon them bent on destructive vengeance, so everything was couched in generalities.
There was nothing they could do for the people who had already decided to take their chances looking for refuge in the country. All they could hope was that they would find safe haven in the Huon or in the central lakes areas and that the Fomorians would get jammed up in Hobart and never follow them there. Inside the city, everything needed to be rearranged. Whole outer suburbs were largely abandoned with people encouraged to move into the city centre, to live in the hastily converted buildings that were never again going to be banks or offices or retailers of trendy handbags.
Vivien jogged downstairs into the cafeteria where the others sat. “We’ve got a problem.” She hissed. The others looked at her expectantly. “The water stopped running this morning. None of the taps are giving anything up.”
“Shit.” Aidan frowned. “We must have used up the available pressure and with the pumps not working it won't move.”
Keary looked angry with himself. “I should have thought of it, but when the taps worked I just stopped thinking about it.”
“What do we do?” Vivien asked urgently. “No one can last long without water.”
“Water talent,” Keary said.
Vivien just looked at him blankly but Mitch and Aidan frowned. “That’s a lot of work… All that water is very heavy.”
“Good thing I’m strong then isn’t it ” Keary remarked. “I’ll only be able to hold it for a while though, we’ll have to tell them that we can turn the water on for an hour a day in the morning.”
Aidan nodded “We should test it first. Come on.”
He led them back up to the on-call room where they had bunked down the night before. Keary lay on one of the beds and started to breathe in a deep, deliberate way. He closed his eyes and all the muscles in his body slowly tensed until it seemed that he lifted a massive weight that no one else could see.
“Try the tap,” Aidan said to Viv as he watched his friend with a concerned frown.
Vivien turned the tap slowly and water began to run. Everyone sighed in relief except for Keary, who lay still, tense and covered in a sheen of sweat on the bed.
“How long can he keep this up?” Vivien whispered.
“I don’t know,” Aidan admitted. “This isn’t something he practices a lot. Water is a given these days, even in the sanctuary we used basic plumbing.”
Vivien stood on the roof of the old post office and looked out at the water. One of her hands rested on the railing and the other on the hilt of her sword. The water appeared bluer. She was sure of it. Now that she thought about it, the mountain was greener too. Is that what happens when two layers of reality get smushed together, she wondered. Do they both just become 'more'? She shook her head and smiled to herself. Is this what happens? Like this has ever happened before.
"What're you smiling about?" Aidan asked as he moved to stand beside her.
"Just, you know, stupid thoughts." She leaned a little so their shoulders touched and then let her head flop to the side.
Aidan mirrored the move so their heads leaned against each other and looked out at the water.
"Were witches always real?" Viv asked.
"Sure." Aidan said, "It's just that human magic is almost entirely internal, or, it was. Human magic can change peoples minds. Really REALLY powerful witches could make you see things, feel things, but they couldn't make physical shit happen."
"But then I fucked up." She said softly. "I should have killed him when I had the chance. Keary knew I couldn't, that's why he didn't want me in there."
Aidan sighed and put his arm around her shoulders. "He didn't want you in there because you picked up a sword for the first time three days ago. No reasonable person expects you to be able to fight with it already... He didn't want you to get hurt."
"Turns out I wasn't the one Justin should have been afraid of."
"I don't know about that." He squeezed her for a moment. "It's not over yet."
"You really think he'll come back here? He was in a pretty bad way."
Aidan nodded. "He'll need time to recover, but there are ways he can recover faster. Probably even more now that he's merged the worlds."
"What do you think the Tuatha De Danann are doing now?" Viv asked.
"Dad will be building a plan. Making sure everyone is safe... Eventually, he'll come looking for us."
"No, I mean the ones in Ireland. Will they be in Ireland? Or will they have popped up randomly somewhere else? They're not going to be too happy about this I imagine."
Aidan laughed. "Probably not. Yeah, I guess they're in Ireland. We may well never know. Nothing will go back to being the way it was. Even if we could separate the worlds again, there's no way to ensure they'd split along the same lines."
"Could we?" Viv asked. "Separate the worlds again? Get technology back?"
"If it's possible, I don't know how. The Tuatha De Danann might, and if they can they probably will, but we don't have any control over that. All we can do is keep going." He gave her a shake. "Come on, there's a load of stuff to do."
Tess wasn't comfortable with the amount of attention she was getting. Everyone stared at her like she was a freak. She'd perfected the shield spell, and working with the others she'd expanded it's range, though not as far as Aidan would have preferred.
He was a strange one, Aidan. They were all strange. No one had flat out said it, but she got a distinct impression that they weren't exactly human. They talked about 'human magic' like it was something alien to them. She caught herself staring at him as he sat opposite her and compulsively cleaned his sabre.
He looked amused when he caught her staring. Tess flushed and looked down at her hands, which were clenched in her lap.
"You've got questions... Everyone does, I suppose." He said quietly.
"Everyone else is too busy crapping themselves and following whatever order seems to make sense at the time." She disagreed. "But you talk about things like magic and monsters and you don't even bat an eyelid. So you're either completely deranged... Or you know things. Things the rest of us don't." She looked at him searchingly for a moment and finally screwed her courage up. "What are you exactly? You're not a human being, are you?"
Aidan smiled at her. "You're not just a pretty face," he leaned against the seat back and looked at her speculatively. "We're elves. For lack of a better term." He said after a long pause. Then he watched her face carefully.
"Elves..."
"Tuatha De Danann," he clarified. "My family, my clan, have been here for almost a hundred years now. All of this," he gestured around to the windows with dark windows and the cars that would never start again. "All this happened when someone merged your world with mine. Unfortunately, the laws of physics as you know them, don't really apply in the mist."
"In the mist..." She looked away from him, up the hill at the city. "We're never getting it back are we?"
"I don't know," he confessed. "I don't think so though."
"Why are you here?" She asked.
Aidan frowned. "To help." He said simply. "The truth is, I didn't want to stay. None of us did, except for Vivien." He sighed and looked slightly ashamed. "We were going to leave. Let you work it out yourselves but Vivien wouldn't let us. Well, no, she couldn't make us stay but she wouldn't leave, and I couldn't leave her and... Before we knew it we were all here."
"To help."
"Yes. Why is that so hard to believe?" He asked.
"Why would elves care about us?"
Aidan chuckled softly. "Vivien was raised as a human. She doesn't think of herself as Dannan, she still thinks of herself as one of the ‘man-kind’." He shrugged. "She'll get over it eventually, but until then you're her people and she wouldn't leave you."
"And you wouldn't leave her." Tessa prodded gently.
Aidan blushed as he looked at her. "Viv is my sister. Well, half-sister." He confessed. "I actually met her less than a week ago. And no, I wouldn't leave her. I couldn't leave her."
"Oh," Tess blushed as well and they sat there in silence like that for a long time.
Aidan reached out and put his hand on hers. “I shouldn’t have told you that. About Vivien. No one else knows.”
“Why not?” She frowned.
Aidan laughed on the edge of hysteria. “I don’t even really know. My father kept the secret, I don’t know why. Maybe I’m making things harder than they need to be but… he didn’t say anything, so Viv and I haven’t either.”
“But she knows?”
“She worked it out. She just knew.” He smiled. “She’s intuitive like that.”
“Did you get your stitches checked out?” Mitch asked Keary the next morning when he came down for breakfast.
Keary grunted, “I’m fine.”
“That’s a no,” Aidan said. “Get Dr. Benson to check you out.” He leaned forward and whispered. “The shit could hit the fan any day now and we’re going to need you as healthy as we can get you.”
“I said I’m fine.”
Aidan leaned back and snorted. “You’re more cantankerous than an old man.” He shook his head and smoothed his long hair back. “I want to get the witches practising putting reasonably sized shields up today.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“How are you going to convince them to do that?” Keary asked.
Mitch laughed. “You’re so boring. They’re witches Keary, they’ve discovered a funky new power. You try to stop them messing around with it.” He flopped his napkin down onto the mushy remains of his eggs and toast. “Speaking of, I should get over to the Grand Chancellor. They’re gonna start any minute and I don’t want to miss it.”
Keary stood and stretched. “I hate waiting.”
“No waiting today,” Aidan said. “Get Isaac and whoever else you can scrounge and drag the cars out of the way between here and the Grand Chancellor. Use them to plug the side streets as best you can.”
Keary nodded. “I want to talk to some of the ladies in the kitchen first.” He said. “I have this idea.”
Aidan raised an eyebrow but Keary waved him off. On his way out he collected a shopping trolley full of boxes of washing up powder.
“What’s he going to do with that?” Mitch wondered out loud.
The trip from the Hospital to the Grand Chancellor Hotel wasn’t long, but Mitch groused to himself about the necessity of exiting the hospital on the far side and walking around. Town Hall on his right had been opened and there were people in there bustling about. When he stuck his head in he saw piles of supplies stacked around the edges and a huge woman with thinning hair that showed signs of having once been magnificently red standing in the middle, orchestrating a ballet of organisation.
“Blankets over there!” She ordered. Then, “No no no, no food in here; that goes straight to the hospital or the Grand Chancellor. Don’t even think about leaving that there!”
Mitch marvelled at the resilience of humans. Sure there had been some throwing up, and that one guy Dr. Benson kept in the isolation ward on heavy sedatives, but on the whole, they were doing much better than he’d thought possible. He turned right to walk along the plain brick side wall of the Town Hall and saw the Grand Chancellor on the opposite corner. For a moment his eyes blurred and he was confused by what he saw.
A slightly blue tinted light shone up from the ground in a ring around the hotel! He broke into a run and curved around the outside of the building toward front doors. There he saw Tess and three other people stood outside the protective barrier patting themselves on the back.
“What’s all this?” He demanded breathlessly.
“Watch!” Tess said and picked up a stone from the garden. She turned and threw a wobbly overhand cast at the barrier of light. Just as the mug had done in her first demonstration, the stone disintegrated and its constituent atoms floated away on the breeze.
“Shit! How did you do the whole building?” Mitch asked.
The smile on Tess’ face was radiant. “It was Adam’s idea!” She said proudly as she indicated the small, very thin man who stood beside her. “Look there.” She pointed down to the ground where the light made it difficult to see.
If he squinted up his eyes tight Mitch could make out symbols painted on the ground. When he looked back at them, Adam wore a proud smile too.
“It was easy really.” The little man said modestly. “All the stories say you draw the symbols and make the magic right? So, we went around first thing this morning and made a ring of runes, protective words, the names of gods, all kinds of crap. We connected it all together all the way around the building and then all we had to do was stand here and concentrate on the ring.”
“How long has it been up?” Mitch asked.
Tess beamed. “Almost two hours!”
“The best part is we’ve been throwing stuff at it and it doesn’t seem to take any energy on our part. It’s set and forget!” Adam said. “I can’t wait to see what else we can do!”
“Ok, OK calm down.” Mitch raised his hands. “Guys, this is the most important part of our security strategy. If you guys can surround the enclave with this thing, that would go a long way towards making everyone feel a lot safer.” He paused when they looked at him curiously and he cursed himself internally when he realized that they still had no idea exactly what was going on. “Look, packs of those things have had to be run off from near the supermarket. At least three people we know of have wandered off and never come back… The safer we can make everyone, the better. Experimenting for fun might have to wait a little while until we’re better dug in here.”
He looked up at the light and scratched his chin. “Well… there’s nothing for it now I guess.”
“What do you mean?” Tess asked.
“We have to know what the failure point is. And if it has any kind of negative effect on you guys if it goes down.” He sighed. “We’re going to have to throw shit at it for a while and see what happens.”
The light show produced by Mitch’s ‘throw shit at it’ plan was spectacular, and before long a group of people had gathered to help attack the shield. At one point, to the jeering of people who hung out of the windows of the hotel, four young men managed to maneuver a car so that they could ram the shield with it. The resulting explosion when the petrol tank hit the light put one of them in the hospital, much to Dr. Benson’s disgust. Still, the shield held, and none of its casters seemed any the worse for wear.
Keary and a contingent of the biggest people he could find spent most of the day completing the arduous task of moving cars.
With the take over of Town Hall as a depot, Keary decided to clear around that too. The enclave, as Mitch termed it, was then bounded on one side by The Grand Chancellor Hotel, across the park to the museum, back towards the hospital between Town Hall and an odd little bar called Joe’s Garage. Outside this zone, cars were shoved snuggly into each other to block streets, or set up with carefully choked wheels, so that to navigate through them one had to be on foot and move single file.
“How’s it going?” Mitch asked the big man in the mid-afternoon as he made his way back to the hospital.
Keary wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand which smeared grease and dirt across his forehead. “It’s hard work, but we’re basically done.”
“What about your little incendiary devices from this morning?”
“The ladies in the hospital are putting them together for me,” Keary said. “I just showed them the mix, and then Vivian stayed with them to make sure everything went OK.” He looked around. “We just need to work out a few good places to store them so they’re ready to go.”
“Well, I’ve got the witches painting their mumbo-jumbo around the border of the enclave. They’ll be done soon and then we can start to see how well they can make this work.” He leaned in closer and said softly. “How are you feeling about Isaac these days?”
Keary shrugged. “He’s conflicted, probably because if we win, he’s likely to cease to exist.”
“That’s a pretty powerful incentive to swap sides, don’t you think?” Mitch pointed out.
“Perhaps.” Keary tried to clean the grease off his face with the hem of his shirt but only made it worse. “But maybe not. There’s nothing for it. Just keep an eye on him. He’s one man. A reasonably small man. Worst comes to worst I’ll chop him in half.”
“Well that’s pointed enough I guess.”
The scream when it came was painful to hear. Keary and Mitch both took off instinctively, and behind them followed the work detail that had been moving cars. People ran out of the Town Hall to see what had happened but Mitch and Keary kept going, across Macquarie street and through the small car park until they could see what the lookout stationed on top of the Grand Chancellor could see.
Huge humanoid bodies, naked to the waist and powerfully muscular had begun to pull themselves up from the water onto the docks where the small pleasure craft were anchored, on the far side of the old Mures restaurant. They moved with a terrifying clarity of purpose, and each was armed with something akin to a trident.
“Get Aidan and the volunteers,” Keary ordered Mitch.
“You’re going to need me here...”
“I need more than you. Go. And get back before you left!” The huge man snapped. He didn’t have his shield, but out of habit, has kept his lance close to hand all day. “Defence to the water!” He bellowed in a voice that seemed to echo back off the mountain, impossibly loud. “We’re under attack!”
Behind him the huge older woman who had been maintaining order in Town Hall marched forward with a shotgun, an improvised lochabre style axe strapped to her back. Keary glanced at her and the look they shared was calm and respectful. Behind the matron, a small force of defenders hurried to form a line. Most were armed with improvised weapons, bats, some obviously cheap art deco swords, and the muscular woman who had helped move cars carried a massive pry bar that they had been using as a lever on the heavier junk.
Tess and her coven stood in dumb shock and stared at the huge men with their slightly green tinted skin and angry faces until Adam, the smallest of them, hurried to the rune line and squatted to put his hand on it. The others followed and as they muttered under their breath, a line of light sprung into being and followed the runes away to the left along the front of the Hotel. It disappeared around the corner only to become visible again on Campbell street where it followed up to the Hospital before it again curved around out of sight. The witch’s voices rose louder as the light traveled back towards the water, down Argyle street, and ended off to Keary’s right.
They hadn’t closed off the front yet, but at least it meant the Fomorians wouldn’t be able to maneuver around and come at them from the side. The appearance of the wall of light made the huge men pause for a moment. Behind them, in a voice shrill with hysteria, Keary and the others heard someone screaming at the Fomorians to attack. Keary knew that the crazed voice could only belong to Justin. There were more than two dozen of the massive men out of the water and reinforcements from the Hospital hadn’t arrived yet. Keary glanced again at the older woman to his left.
“We can’t let them form up and get ready… we might be able to push them back into the water if we hit them now.” He waited to gauge her reaction.
She worked the pump action on her shotgun and nodded. “Ready!” She yelled with the voice of a drill sergeant. “Aim!” Came the second cry, and the people with firearms moved up level with her and Keary as they began to understand what they were being asked to do. “Fire!”
A staccato series of cracks and booms sounded which echoed off the concrete and glass that surrounded them. Keary noticed that though the woman had gone through the motions with her shotgun, she hadn’t actually pulled the trigger. “Ready!” She screamed again as several of the massive, green-skinned men clutched at various wounds and looked about in confusion. “Aim!”
It finally occurred to the Fomorians to try to take cover, but the second volley still caught a further three or four as the order to fire was called.
“CHARGE!” Keary bellowed, not waiting to see if his order was followed.
More Fomorians climbed out of the water, but unlike the initial party they formed up under cover where the defenders couldn’t shoot at them. Behind him, Keary could hear the first of the reinforcements on horseback thunder across the road.
“Hold!” Aidan called from his horse.
The line faltered and the four horses with Aidan, Mitch, Vivien and Dr. Benson lurched forward past them and across the last road. They pulled up sharply and turned their horses. From their saddlebags they pulled glass bottles filled with murky brown liquid with long, white, fabric wicks. Dr. Benson had a flaming torch in his hand and the others used it to light their petrol bombs and then threw them into the carpark where the Fomorians had taken refuge behind abandoned cars.
The screams were nothing to the smell. Fomorians howl like animals and their skin melts like wax when heat is applied. Vivien knew none of this when she threw her first Molotov. The sight and sound and smell made her stomach roil, and she gripped her saddle bow tight in one hand.
“You bitch!” Justin screamed from his position on top of one of the small junction rooms at the beginning of the docks.
“Hey!” Mitch yelled back. “We’re here too, you wanker!”
“We must withdraw and regroup!” One of the Fomorians boomed in a rough voice.
“No!” Justin screamed. “I am your general and we press the attack!”
The Fomorian growled and shook his head. “Into the building!” He bellowed. The others hurried to obey. Some grabbed the wounded, others roared their defiance at the humans through the noxious smoke that rose from the burning bodies of their comrades. At least thirty of them made it into the two-story restaurant while Justin continued to scream and rant from the top of his utility building. Keary took a rifle from one of the other defenders and put it to his shoulder.
“Don’t move you little maggot…” He breathed. Just as he applied gentle pressure to the trigger, one of the Fomorians grabbed Justin’s ankle and pulled.
The screaming elf went down hard and was then dragged into the building on his back. He kicked and screamed and threatened all the way. Behind Keary, Isaac let out a harsh breath and doubled over with his hands on his knees. Keary turned and looked down at him.
“You OK?” The big man asked.
Isaac waved a hand. “I just… I thought I was dead there. I’m OK.” He took long, shaky breaths and rocked from side to side until Keary pulled him up.
“Pull back to Town Hall.” He ordered. “You don’t need to be here.”
Isaac shook his head. “I want to.” He said. “I want to see. It makes it easier.” He looked Keary in the eye with a sad expression. “He’s completely mad, isn’t he?”
“I think so.”
“Pull back to the carpark!” Aidan yelled. “Tess, where are you?”
The coven darted forward and before Aidan could order it, they joined their hands and concentrated on extending the light shield along the front of the enclave between the restaurant and the carpark. Without the symbols and words to follow it cost them much more energy and when the light connected in the middle, one of them collapsed from the strain.
“We should press the attack and burn them out,” Keary advised immediately.
“We can’t.” Aidan disagreed. “Look at these people Keary.” He leaned in so only Keary could hear him. “They’re not soldiers. They’re not warriors. Defending is one thing but if we ask them to attack they’ll balk. Trust me, we can’t press now.”
“We have no idea how long that shield will hold,” Keary said.
“I know.” Aidan shook his head and rubbed at his eyes with one hand. “I know, but there’s nothing I can do about that right now. Get anything you can to form a barricade behind the shield, and someone needs to be on watch here.”
Keary nodded and moved to start work. Aidan turned and saw Vivien. She sat pale and trembling violently, so he pulled his horse in tight alongside hers and grabbed her hand. “It’s OK. It’s gonna be OK.”
“I can still hear them screaming.” She wasn’t imagining it. They couldn’t see into the building clearly, but it seemed that the Fomorians were attempting some kind of medical care for their wounded which resulted in renewed screams.
“Head back inside,” Aidan said gently. “We surprised them, nothing’s going to happen for a little while now. Get some water.”
She gulped at a fresh round of screams and turned her horse back towards Town Hall.
The middle aged woman with the shotgun barked orders, and the shellshocked defenders moved in oddly jerky motions as they followed her direction. Fetch water. Bring medical supplies to Town Hall. Get the Molotov Cocktails from the cooks at the Hospital. No one argued and Keary accepted the help without comment.