Denise called me back the next day after our team up.
“Tim, I have an idea. Took me forever to remember which book this was.” She sent me the text of one of her mom’s books, “Hardy Witches and the Tower of Terror,” a dungeon crawl where Denise and her mom went tromping through a highly fictionalized version of Madison Tower, hunting for a lost cat.
Yeah, I know.
The book ends with Denise winning a magic duel versus the ghost of Harvey Madison, the insane architect who had enough magic in his body to drive him insane, but not quite enough to join the magic program at Newbury Tower.
He spent millions of dollars in the early 1900s, trying to find ways to use technology to amplify magic, trying to turn his own feeble spells into world-shaking weapons of doom. He built his tower to be a giant resonator, determined to blast Newbury Tower to oblivion before he died, but he didn’t live long enough to finish it.
Arthur Walton was able to use transmutation and construction magic to finish his work and turn the tower into a giant magical lightning rod, just long enough to kill Nergal, more than a century after its creator died.
Arthur said he reversed his changes after the battle, to make sure the tower could not be used like this again, but the building was still standing, upgraded and reinforced for the Nergal fight, even if the tantalum coils had been removed.
“The way you described your plan, I think I’ve found a way for you to use the tower, if this fight goes bad,” Denise said. “All the big amplifier stuff is gone, but Madison built all kinds of crazy defenses that may still be functional, if you can charge them up with magic. Best to do this in advance, as soon as you can, to give all his Rube Goldberg shit a chance to kick on and do its thing.
“Madison turned his place into a fortress, expecting an amphibious attack from the Germans or something. Walton ripped out the giant cables he used to carry power from the rift, but you might actually be strong enough to turn the old systems back on, all by yourself. I’m stuck a hundred miles away, trying to trap a berbalang in this fucking graveyard, but I think I can talk you through it. Head for the tower and levitate yourself to the very top. Oh, and bring cleaning supplies, strongest you can find!”
* * *
Do you know how hard it is to levitate fifty feet straight up while carrying full gallons of ammonia, bleach, and vinegar? It wasn’t the weight, the backpack kept pulling me off balance, making me drift in the wrong direction, until I put it on backwards and used the weight to draw me toward the building instead of away from it.
Madison Tower wasn’t particularly tall, but Madison wasn’t going for any kind of record; he just wanted to be one story taller than Newbury Tower, so he could constantly look down on them from his mad scientist lair on the top floor.
Madison was kind of a joke figure in pop culture, lampooned in countless movies, cartoons, and TV shows, just because he was a great character, with his pipe and his ridiculous maroon smoking jacket.
But as crazy as he might have been, his tower was beautiful, in a terrifying, Gothic sort of way. The roof was an open expanse of black marble shot with gray, covered in inches of dust now, but cleaning spells made it shine.
And here’s the coolest thing about casting on top of the tower. I cast one simple cleaning spell, and it instantly expanded to clean the whole roof, removing dust and debris from ten times the area I expected.
I felt like I was standing in a 19th century museum. The marble floor shined in the afternoon sun, but the gargoyles, defaced by looters and wrapped in police tape, would have to be cleaned by hand.
Madison had named each one after a different regent at Newbury Tower, threatening to capture their souls and imprison them in these effigies for eternity. Eight giant statues, each slightly larger than human, carved with the faces of the regents they were meant to contain, with one placed at each cardinal direction.
Did I really carry thirty pounds of cleaning supplies up here when a spell could do the job in two seconds? Not quite. The figures glittered when I tried the spell again, but they seemed to absorb and neutralize anything that might affect them directly.
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There was an ordinary spigot next to the stairwell door. I wasn’t expecting it to work, but I was able to fill my bucket with collected rainwater, delivered through some elaborate harvesting system that I couldn’t even see.
I grabbed rags, wire brushes, and a collapsible mop, and started to clean. And if I thought I saw a flash of maroon in the corner of my eye from time to time, surely that was just my imagination.
When I asked Azael about Harvey Madison, he just said, “I’d rather not talk about it,” in an uncharacteristically bitter tone of voice.
So, Mister Madison, wherever you are, I don’t care what people say about you, anyone who can piss off the Angel of Magic as badly as you did has my respect.
I spent all day cleaning gargoyles and ended up quite happy with my results. I got video and pictures of the restoration and set them to post anonymously in two weeks. Maybe I was being morbid, but I liked the idea of leaving this moment behind if I died. The public wouldn’t know me, but my friends would recognize my hands, and know that I had paid my respects and made the world a bit more beautiful in the days before the fight.
I couldn’t tell if the gargoyles were made from pure tantalum, or just coated with it, but they seemed entirely immune to magic cast from the outside.
I thought I was done, then I noticed two strange panels still covered in dust. They were also made of tantalum, and they had weird round fittings around them. This is where the cables used to go, the cables that let this tower absorb magic from the rift.
I sent Denise my video of the cleanup and got her on the phone.
She said, “That’s really nice, Tim. Madison may have been batshit, but he sure knew how to build.”
There’s a certain kind of obsessive personality that drives men to greatness, as painters or sculptors or master chefs. Or in this case, as an architect.
“I cleaned off the gargoyles, and these panels that look like fittings for giant hoses. What now?”
Denise hesitated. “Tim, this could be really helpful or really stupid, because I don’t know how much of this Mom made up. Even Mom doesn’t know how much Mom made up, since the historical records were so old. I think, after your cleanup job, and the way you’re about to charge this place up, I think the gargoyles will recognize you as a friend of the tower and stay dormant. But be ready to run, in case this accidentally brings them to life.”
“Denise, these things are immune to magic. Does that mean they’re immune to punching?”
“Your first punch should work, but every time you touch one, they’ll suck a little of your magic away. Then it’s just a matter of how fast you can punch before they drain you. You should have some warning, though, so if they start moving, just jump off the roof!”
I mentally mapped my escape route and put a hand on each fitting. “Uh, Denise. I need to bring in a shitload of magic now, but the only emotion I’ve got is a warm glow of accomplishment that doesn’t seem to be doing much for me right now. You want to tell me a joke or say something to piss me off real quick?”
“If you win this fight, we’re gonna finish our first date on that roof, and we’ll let the gargoyles watch.”
Yeah, that did it.
I touched my hand to the tantalum plate, and suddenly, I was somewhere else, looking at a 19th century Star Chamber decorated with the seal and colors of Newbury Tower.
I looked down at my clothes, and I was clearly looking through the eyes of a younger Harvey Madison, apparently about to take some kind of test. There were eight pedestals in the room. Each one had an old man standing behind it. Eight faces, matching the faces of the eight gargoyles. Each pedestal had some kind of simple object on it, with a short spell engraved on a metal plaque above each one.
I immediately recognized spells from the toolkit; rudimentary spells used to clean and repair objects, along with a few that I only recognize now, seeing this again in Azael’s mirror.
I recognized spells for heating and cooling objects, making them larger or smaller, one spell that could make an object invisible, and finally, a pedestal with a rubber ball sitting on it, in front of the five runes for inanimate levitation.
Madison went through the tests one by one, and failed them each in turn, looking into the smirking, superior faces of these men who obviously hated him. The regents were exchanging knowing looks with each other behind his back, each time he failed, until he failed the last one, and some of them tittered, unable to hide their amusement.
Each pedestal was covered with a dark blue drape that hung all the way down to the floor. Madison slowly walked around to each one like he was about to try again, then he stopped in front of a lead bar and yanked the cloth out from under it, leaving the bar in place like a stage magician, revealing the tantalum plate underneath. They rigged the test to make sure he would fail, even if he got all the spells right.
Madison lunged toward the closest regent, clearly intending violence, but the old man did something to paralyze him, and neatly sidestepped as Madison fell on his face.
A pair of porters took him - stiff, humiliated, and beaten, and threw him in the river. The magic wore off before he drowned, and I watched, almost two centuries later, as he crawled back onto dry land.
The vision faded and I could feel his ghost watching me, even if I couldn’t see him with my eyes.
“I’m sorry, man. That was bullshit, what they did to you. I get it now. Those assholes definitely had it coming, and this asshole I’m about to fight, he’s got it coming, too. I gotta do the hard part alone up here, and I need all the help I can get.”
A flicker of blue caught my eye, and I noticed a simple iron spire sticking out at a weird angle, like it had been bent by some kind of impact, long ago.
I floated up to it, and cast a repair spell, using runes I had just seen in the vision. The spire raised itself back in place, and lit up with blue lightning, bright enough to be seen for miles at night.