Tyler surged out of the frozen ocean and spotted the Drow waiting at the top of the small scree that lined the low cliff at the edge of the rocky beach. He observed them for a moment then he sensed Madison come ashore some meters to the north.

Madison changed and dressed hurriedly in the cold wind. She eyed the Drow and sensed a resonance, she grinned and moved towards their welcoming committee. “You must be Mother’s champion and you her priestess. I’m Madison and I’m pleased to meet you. Are you here to help us locate a site for one of the Mock Turtle dungeon exits?”

The two priestesses exchanged greetings as Tyler assumed his human form. Then, after Ava had also come ashore and changed the two groups exchanged cautious introductions. The scowl of irritation and flash of homicidal fury that Tyler failed to hide at the mention of the dwarves brought wide grins to the faces of the drow and did much to ease relations between the two groups.

With scouts deployed the combined patrol moved cautiously through the evening’s dusk. The drow showed the three locations they favoured to Tyler. The all conferred and ended up rejecting one out of hand. Madison finally shrugged. “This location is for your benefit more than ours. Neither is too far from the sea and unlike Blue Lagoon Mock Turtle does not need his domain to be mostly sea. Pick your favourite location Laasa.”

“The caves,” suggested Laasa.

“The caves,” agreed Nightwind.

So they returned to the caves in the low cliffs that sat about a kilometre back from the icy southern sea. There were abundant signs to show that these caves had once been on the coast and regularly submerged. Madison took the marble and together with Nightwing and Laasa she penetrated to the furthest of the caves before invoking the marble.

The marble glowed blue and then a portal shimmered into existence against the rear wall of the cave. Madison couldn’t help relaxing as the domain of the Mock Turtle dungeon swept over her. It wasn’t quite the same as Mother’s but it was very close. Almost identical in fact.

Then she laughed. “Good evening Daniel, still sticking that overlong nose of yours into the lion’s den?”

Daniel drew himself up to his full forty-one centimetres height and sticking his maligned appendage in the air replied, “Huh, Walruses!” Them he grinned bobbed a greeting to the two drow and tossed a ring to Nightwind. “A little gift for your band from Mother. Sorry got to run, too bloody cold around here.”

Nightwind checked the gift and found three mithril mail shirts and mithril reinforced mail shirts for the rest of his followers.

* * * INTERLUDE 1 * * *

“Damn that girl!” shouted Cdr Simon Meadows. Lt Anna Partlow looked up from her laptop and raised an eyebrow in enquiry.

Meadows very carefully put the sheaf of papers he was holding down on the desk they were sharing. “Mary has just sent us a proposal for a patrol boat incorporating enchantments. Though slightly smaller than our current model it has more room and is faster as the magazine, most of the stores and much of the fuel are kept in her damned storage devices. She cites her Storm Dolphin as proof of concept for the stores and fuel.”

“So what are you going to do commander?”

“What can I do? I have to pass it along up the chain.”

“Still no news about how she and the Dolphin made it to Florida?”

“No! And Gallows has already ordered us to find out. Though I haven’t any idea when she’ll be back. Also he’s pissed Mary was seen with her father and stepmother. I think he had ideas regarding her status as a minor.”

“Do you think the Captain has bothered to read any of our messages?”

Cmdr Meadows just looked at her.

Lt Partlow sighed in resignation. “No of course not. Gallows never does accept anything that runs counter to his preconceptions.”

= = O = =

Tessa grinned hungrily as she stepped through the portal, she was home and it was time. She accepted the small usb unit that Mycroft had prepared. She checked the small folder of documents and slipped the tasteful earring into the hole in her right ear. She examined the reflection of the average looking brown haired woman in the mirror. It matched the photos in her new documents though the photos seemed determined to make the girl in the mirror look bad.

She slipped into the car Kent had bought. It didn’t take her long to reach the airport. Not long after she was in Honolulu. It didn’t take her long to borrow a car from the long stay car park. She left it within half a mile of Pearl Harbour. She breathed deeply and wrinkled her nose in slight distaste at the very slight smell of burnt fur.

Tessa smiled to herself at this proof that the other enchanted earring was working as advertised and any hair, piece of fur or flake of skin she shed was being completely incinerated before it could reach the floor.

Then it was time, Tessa faded from sight and she carefully infiltrated the base.

Some time later, mission completed Tessa was glad to see nobody had found her borrowed car, so she drove back to the airport. She left her borrowed car parked not far from where she had found it.

Later, back on Maui she drove back to the dungeon and returned the documents, illusion earring and the usb device before stepping through the portal back to Florida.

= = O = =

Cmdr Meadows was relaxing at the end of the day when the secure phone rang. He sighed and answered. He stiffened. “Yes Sir.” He checked his watch, “Just two hours and— about fifteen minutes ago Sir.”

“What! But? Yes Sir.” Then with a dazed look he replaced the receiver in its cradle. He stood and walked into the lounge where his team were relaxing.

“Attention!” He waited until silence descended on the room and his team turned to look at him. “Captain Gallows was found dead in an apparent suicide half an hour ago. People in the outer office heard the shot and found him dead. It looks like he was being blackmailed. His computer contained open files that suggest he had been selling secrets.”

Meadows looked round at his shocked looking team. “We have been ordered not to touch our computers. A team of investigators will be with us shortly as we were working under the Captain.”

* * *

Sunday was hellish. They had a bunch of suspicious intelligence types crawling all over the place, asking stupid questions again and again in slightly different forms and two of them wanted to haul in Ms Silvestre for questioning. It took the word of two of their own who had infiltrated the barbeque in Florida to stop that particular line of stupidity.

Meadows and Tod watched the clip that the two agents in Florida had provided. They were able to identify Mary and the leopard twins. Moriarty was there too as was a cat man they hadn’t seen before. Then there was the shaven headed biker that kept dropping in and out. Also in plain sight were her father, stepmother and stepsister.

When he got a chance Meadows dragged the rest of his team by ones and twos to watch the clip so that they would all have a chance of recognising the people at the barbeque.

When finally the spooks left there was still no word of Mary boarding a flight. In fact there was a clip of her sailing out to sea in her powerboat and the damn thing shimmering and vanishing.

* * *

Monday morning they were all getting breakfast when they heard a car’s horn out in the street, then Joanne’s phone rang.

* * * EARTH – MARY * * *

A short while later in her room Mary shoved the pillows on her bed out of the way and settled down cross-legged leaning against the wall. She shifted her attention once again to the Dungeon Exchange chat feature.

(Dungeon Exchange: EARTH)

‘I wonder? Wonder what’ll happen if I select “Earth”. ’K a drop down list with “Parthia” an’ “Tarifax” with greyed out options for “Fragatta”, “Diavlo” an’ “Ambuila”. Intrestin’ gotta let Jerica know. Anyway want Earth.’

Mary selected Earth. ‘Now where is that message from Linny askin’ for help?’

Mary quickly scanned down the list of entries. She was able to ascertain that there were fifty active messages on screen – so to speak – and that more messages could be displayed but that nothing was available that had been posted over twenty-four hours previously.

She checked Bluey’s help files. ‘’K then. Twenty-four hours is the limit, I’ll just make sure Tod doesn’t think of access this function for a day or so. Right then, Fragatta is an all but dead iceball while Diavlo is a totally lifeless furnace. Guess that means Ambuila is the other world. Oh well back to the chat.’

Winter Wolf: Can any of you help? The feds have lost patience and are planning a massive assault.

Alligator Haven: Sorry girl, all I gots gators.

Blackrock (PrD): You don’t deserve to survive you vicious bitch. You’ve killed everyone in that damn prison.

Winter Wolf (cmp): What do you expect wimp? We’re a dungeon.

Blackrock (PrD): Well you’ll soon be history you murderous scumbags.

Drop Bear: Temper, temper Blackrock. Winter Wolf is showing us the wisdom of keeping our heads down on Earth.

Mary scanned the last messages and grinned. ‘Gonna make some waves, but waves are good an’ this could be useful. Fun too. So...’

Blue Lagoon: Can put some weapons on exchange, and template for Wolverine ’folk. Then can supply some modified infantry skillset templates. Bluey insists on payment so I suggest future favours.

Winter Wolf: Can offer template for cocaine, heroine, meth, wolves or undead.

Blue Lagoon: Not interested in drugs, only foresee problems down that road, got wolves and have zero and I mean zero affinity for undead.

Winter Wolf (cmp): What sorts of weapons?

Mary grinned to herself, a quick scan on the internet made her chuckle.

Blue Lagoon: Lang may yer lum reek MacLeod. M16A4, M203 under barrel grenade launcher, FN P90 and M136 AT4.

Alligator Haven: Hey I WANT some of that!

Blackrock (PrD): How can you help the psycho bitch who’s killing people right in the middle of my town.

Winter Wolf: I don’t know what you said but you’ve silenced my companion. I know what an M16 is and can guess at the grenade launcher, both sound good, but what’s the FN P90 and M136.

Blue Lagoon: Nobody been nice to him before? The FN’s a sub-machinegun and the M136 is a fire and discard anti-tank weapon.

Aligator Haven: Oooo!

Blackrock (PrD): How can you Blue Lagoon! Winter Wolf will just use what you give her to kill more people.

Blue Lagoon: Sell not Give. And it’s nothing to do with you unless you go dungeon.

Winter Wolf: I’ll take them, but only if you can supply some diggers.

Drop Bear: Sorry girl, us Aussies are not for trading.

Blue Lagoon: Your choice. Think about it, you’re a dungeon, and you can access portals at your ranking. Then again the faerie realms, underhill sound to me like some kinda dungeon. MacLeod can probably help you there. I’ll place my offerings on the Exchange and leave them there for fifteen minutes.

* * *

Mary grinned as she flushed the fatigue poisons out of her avatar. « Hey Jerika, I think we’ll need an explorer to send to that new world. Then gotta look at plankton an’ air filtration. Sulfuric acid’s no joke even well diluted. Honestly what kind of idiots are those New Gods. And what does that say about the intelligence an’ wisdom of the Greater Gods who are backin’ ’em? »

« Um, Mary, careful when you speak of the Greater Gods. They are— »

« Self centred Idiots? Yes I know. »

Jerica mentally bit her tongue and made a note to herself to warn her auntie Trish of this dangerous new development.

« An explorer, you mean an agent. Given the kind of world it is I suppose a male human’s the best bet. »

« Yeah! But it’ll have to be a sea human. That should be close enough and I can create a few of those. » Mary sighed, « Monday. Time for school again. »

* * *

Mary stopped her Jeep at the foot of the Meadows’ drive. ‘Funny, no sign of Joanne. Or for that matter of Tod.’

Mary sounded her Jeep’s horn and waited for a minute before producing her phone and dialling Joanne’s number.

“Hey Jo, where are you? You not coming to school today?”