THEN: MOST OF 2016: DELTA LAB

“I have to say,” Mahut the dragon said, while craning his neck to look around, “this is one of the oddest dimensions I’ve ever stumbled across.”

Dingus stared up at Mahut, primitive fear currently his dominant mind influencing state. He was expecting more spells to apply in the air, with instructions, and he’d respond “I obey” enthusiastically and he’d get about his purpose. But this - this wasn’t a scroll. Or a spell. Or any of the local wildlife to interact with or avoid. None of his image pattern detectors were picking out this being from his list of known objects at all. He tried his built-in witch-sight and then cast a seeing-eye, which was even more baffling, since it showed the being oozing in and out of the 3D coordinate space the world was defined by. Mahut watched Dingus trying to figure him out and laughed.

“My goodness,” Mahut chuckled. “You barely are alive, hardly sentient above animal intelligence, yet you cast spells! What an odd arrangement. And this dimension! It’s like something a fledgling wizard would create. I mean, there’s almost nothing here at all! I’ve seen one-room pocket dimensions in the dreamlands with more qualiatic detail than this.

"I’m only here at all,” he said, slowly flapping along, his legs skimming the ground, “because I found a kha-river shortcut from Duat where I was visiting a friend. Apep. Charming sort of Dragon. Very evil, if that bothers you. Shortcut used to run near here - well, on Earth near where this dimension is anchored, but now it’s diverted here and then straight out to the Void, so it’s very convenient.”

Most of this was going way over Dingus’ head, but as he was equipped with audio recording as part of his memory, he recorded it for later analysis. His image-recognizers were coming back with some hits, but so full of errors as to not be useful. Mahut had an appearance sort of like FISH, sort of like LIZARD, but his boundaries and hitbox were continually morphing, which didn’t make any sense to poor Dingus.

Its limbs were enlarging and shrinking, and then parts of it would appear a few meters away, but the relation of the objects suggested a single being. Mahut had wings, which didn't flap so much as sprout, and grow, and shrink, and buzz, and blur. Some of them rotated and rippled. One was corkscrewing. None of them seemed attached to anything, as if they just happened to be nearby.

Dingus, looking for a question in his language parser that would apply, only could find a "Where did you come from?"

Mahut waved a tail and pointed off to the side. "In the Ardwīsūr river under the Činwad Bridge", he said. "Persian, before Zoroaster gummed it all up. But if you mean my growth, hmmm. "

Even Mahut's voice was difficult to process and convert in Dingus' audio-to-character recognition. The sound was multilayered, like a chorus, some parts early and some late, pitches slightly shifted, sometimes coming from multiple points in space. “Well, now, hmm,” Mahut grumbled, his voice flanging and reverbing, “I've had five births so far. Pretty standard really. The zeroth one was zero-dimensional, of course yes, so like a point, i.e. an egg. The first rebirth transformed me to a larva, a simple line. The second rebirth was a plane, second dimension and flat, and I looked like a jeweled flounder, more or less. I’m simplifying this of course!”

Mahut snapped at a passing BIRD, swallowing it. He picked at his teeth with a claw - that is, an elongating coil of scales and sinew with a free-floating talon extended beyond, through and past a tooth, the tooth itself elongating and morphing, then he burped in five-part harmony and continued. “After a few eons, I had my third true rebirth to give me three dimensions. I had my fourth a few centuries ago and now I ripple across localized spacetime. This place-” he said, gesturing with a mutating claw, “ is at best three dimensions but located inside a fourth dimensional substrate somehow. This place is more like a concept than a real place, if you believe anything is a 'real' place.”

Only because he had overheard a programmer use the turn once during the speech recognition part of his training, Dingus spoke up. “This is a sim, and I'm a sim, running-”

“Good heavens!” Mahut said, giving him a look, his eyes widening in multiple directions. “You’re right! You’re just a conceptual simulacra life form. And you are supported by the run-time physics of this world - and the whole world is a simulacra. Running on a virtualized computing device, itself another simulacra! So many levels! Delicious. Of course, we dragons can exist in any reality, even conceptual ones, so that's how we can be alive and exist in here.”

Mahut continued to lazily flap, with Dingus plapping with his hands alongside. “If you get the opportunity,” Mahut said, “you must find a juicy book to get into. Or find one of the really mind-expanding life forms out there and take a holiday living in their dreamscape. Quite the interesting time.”

“I’m a… dragon?” said Dingus. That caused some internal object reference errors, which Dingus saved to his event log memory.

“But of course,” Mahut harrumphed. “I can recognize the draconic logoz-structures in your soul. Look,’ he said, stopping to gesture about in the air. “Kha tends to knot in river snarls (a KhaZhmem in the Enochian if you want to be technical.) Any kind of river. So-hoooo, any place in a reality-Brane, even one that is merely conceptual, that contains a river sometimes has a KhaZhmem in it. One theory is that the housing reality treats the knot in the river flow as a sort of wound or irritant.”

Mahut pantomimed the river flowing, and a knot, and then jammed his other claw into it. “And then, if some fragment of intelligence or self-awareness penetrates it, I mean that’s the last straw, yes? And the reality just seals the KhaZhmem in a shell, leaving the Kha, river-matter and awareness inside to gestate.”

Dingus just stared, so Mahut shrugged. “That’s just one theory,” he said.

Mahut started flapping again, so Dingus hustled after him. “Apep, for example,“ the twisting dragon said, holding up a claw to tick off points, “was a KhaZhmem bunched up around a piece of flint in a bend of the River of Night in Duat. If you hold to the theory, some piece of a soul from a dead Egyptian got blown into the River, and once a bit of self-awareness from it got wedged into the knot, it coalesced into an egg.“

“Error,” said Dingus.

“Of course, Apep now has a big piece of flint for a head, so he’s not blessed in the looks department, you know. But don't tell him I said that. Heavens, no. He's sensitive about it. "

Error,” said Dingus, more emphatically.

Mahut smiled and gave Dingus a pat on his head. “Adorable. You’re just a little baby dragon right now! Barely into your third dimension. Well, give it time. You’ll be developing a more robust intelligence and popping out of here on your own wings in no time. Worshiped as a god, if that’s what you’re into. Maybe a destroyer of worlds. Or maybe you go the poetry route. Or maybe - Oh, wait, here we are, this is me. Look me up when you are taking a stroll!”

Suddenly, Mahut stepped out of the universe at right angles and into a fast-flowing ley line of Kha that Dingus’ witch-sight could barely detect, and was gone, leaving the digital quiet behind.

Dingus sat there for a few minutes, feeling alone for the first time ever.

THEN: AUG 11th, 2016, 3:15 AM - BATON ROUGE, LA

Wendy came jogging out of the carriage house carrying a big old-timey straw broom, and carving Ogham into it, dozens of slashes, with the little enchanted knife she always carried now. It and a few other recreated household implements had been stored in a little display next to a fading framed picture taken just after the civil war by a wartime photographer, showing the original owners and a few servants. One of them was holding a broom, and it looked like the one used as a model for the current one Wendy had taken. Wendy had been amused to note the broom in the photo also had some Ogham slashed onto it.

The occupants of Winsome manor came outside, throwing on jackets and starting SUV’s, but stopped to gawk at the President, walking and waving a broom and banging it with a knife and swearing. A couple of police cars and emergency vehicles had arrived, some cops talking to Tommy, when he saw her. He came running over, followed by Xeniya. “Madam Pres-” Tommy managed to get out.

“Not now, Tommy. Hang on.” She brushed her fingers over the slashes, and they started lighting up a dim green. “Xen! Am I missing anything? Balance, lift, winds, purpose, animal awareness, Stay-Dry, Stay-Warm, navigation, forward, up, drop…uh. Grip. Luck couldn’t hurt.” She held it out to look at it critically. “I tried a basic version of this on the Dyson cordless back in Philadelphia, and it worked, just not very well. I think you need the actual fractal branching of branches at the end to really have it work.”

Xeniya looked over the broom - this kind of wild improvised stuff wasn’t exactly in her wheelhouse, but she could see what Wendy was doing, and knew the principles. “Um. It’s all toxic ozone up there. You need an air bubble, like one of the Aatlan underwater ones. Maybe you should throw some No-Harm’s on there, and some No-Fear’s, and goddammit this is going to use a LOT of Kha, all of this has to be powered, Wendy. Where’s the power source?”

Wendy shrugged, continuing to carve. “I’m shunting all of this to my own name in Futhark, so I guess I am. Hang on.” Wendy slashed her arm, dripped blood on her Futhark runes on the broom, which sizzled in response.

Xeniya’s eyes went wide. “Wendy, for fucks sake - if the broom sucks out too much of your Kha, you’ll be dead. If you just get tired the broom will barely function! Just wait a few hours for me to rig something!”

“No time. Have to nip it right now before it gets too big for me to stop. Call me when you get a science thing about the storm. Tommy!” Wendy straddled the broom, turning to her bodyguard. “Tom, if I don’t make it, there’s some letters in my desk at home that’ll have instructions.”

Wendy suddenly leaned over, grabbed Xeniya head by the short hair on the back of her neck, and pulled her in for a passionate kiss. Wendy’s tasted like balsam and clover and left a tingling sensation on Xeniya’s lips, who was so surprised she barely let out a squeak.

Wendy let go of Xeniya, barked some Gaelic, and with a rush of winds was airborne. She did a slow circle around the yard a couple of times, swooped at Xeniya and Tommy once, then kicked back and whooshed up, while close to fifty people on the ground who had just watched them kiss now watched her soar.

She was a few hundred meters up when she realized she had forgotten to throw a blanket Ignore-Me on the crowd.

-

Xeniya had stepped to the side for some privacy from the crowd (most of them still abuzz from the kiss, and oh yes, also the sight of their President riding off in a broom) and called Wendy on her mobile. It had been about twenty minutes since she had taken off, during which Xeniya had made a bunch of frantic calls. Wendy answered, a bit breathlessly, “Hey, girlfriend.”

“Wendy, you dipshit. I hate you. Jesus. How high are you?”

“Dunno. I’m about halfway to the storm mass. My lift rate isn’t as fast as I’d hoped so I’m doing big loops to gain speed and altitude and looking for updrafts. Also, I’m freezing my fucking tits off. ”

Xeniya nodded. “Maybe twenty thousand feet up, then. Take your time. You can add more branches to any of the heating runes if you need to tune it for more warmth. Are you tired?”

“I’m OK”, Wendy said. “It feels like a jog. Hey, I just thought of something. If I’m this high up, how’s my mobile still working? I’ve got five bars!”

Xeniya grinned. “I added some enchantments to both of the phones. Inside the case there’s a binding sigil. We should have a point to point connection, just the two of us.”

“How romantic!”

“Well,” Xeniya replied, “technically, our phones have a point to point connection to the Verizon tower in Philadelphia on top of Logan Square, but it’s the same thing.”

“Not as romantic.”

“Listen,“ Xeniya said. “I called a few folks, but this is uncharted territory. The main issue is the warm air coming up, fueling the thunderstorm. If you can cool the inside of the cloud enough to push down the warm rising air, that might break the cycle - you might be able to use a Malketh’s spiral for that. Or just increase the wind speed and knock everything apart. But they’re saying there’s multiple storms up there - it’s a big multicell storm. I’m not sure knocking out only one will even stop it. And anything you do will have to be big.”

“OK. That gives me some ideas, anyway. Woof, winds picking - crap -”

The connection turned into just a whistling noise. Xeniya squinted up to the sky. “Wendy?” she said, tentatively. She looked around the grounds, the rain pouring down, emergency teams waiting. Winsome had moved out a pretty expensive telescope from the house, peering up.

A few minutes later, the connection made a thud sound, and went silent.

-

Once President Ashe arrived inside the main mass of the storm, she took a couple of minutes to rest and assess. The broom felt like standing on a self-balancing scooter, not needing much from her to stay level. She was cold, and wet, but not dead, and she could still breathe, so the spells on the broom were running themselves, which was good. She didn’t have a lot of extra attention to give it right now.

Given the limited options, Xeniya’s ideas of cooling the storm seemed best. Increasing the wind speed to knock it apart would also put her in the middle of a cyclone, and she wasn’t sure if she could survive that. Hell, she probably wasn’t going to survive this in any event, she thought. She could fly by herself for short distances, she’d practiced that a few times by herself, but she doubted that if she got knocked off the broom she'd be conscious long enough to get a fly spell going. She couldn’t even hold onto her phone!

Wendy signed. Best get to work.

For a few minutes she traced Malketh curves and Futhark in the sky, flying around in the shape of the big circular curves and gesturing the straight Futhark lines, linked pathways and building up triggers with some of the Aatlan macros she had in reserve. She could see the mass of it, floating in her witch-sight. It was hard to get a bead on how big it was without a reference point in the open sky. But, when it seemed big and fat with power, she cast the triggers, and the whole thing popped and exploded like a blue and white firework.

A huge cloud of snow and ice appeared, completely with gusting winds, then sank. The cold had nearly solidified around Wendy, though, so frigid that the air became a shock to inhale, even with her warming spells. Wendy coughed and wheezed, then trembled so hard from the cold she nearly fell off. She hugged the broom for heat for a minute until the trembling stopped and she could gasp air in again.

“Crap,” she whispered. Way too small. What was she thinking? It would take a spell ten times, maybe a hundred times the size of what she just did to collapse a storm like this. She’d have to freeze hundreds… maybe thousands of cubic kilometers of air. And not just size - she’d thrown a lot of her own Kha into it. She couldn’t possibly power something big enough. She couldn’t see an option. Maybe fly back down, and-

See an option, she thought. Hmm.

Carefully, she pushed and sat back up on the broom, taking a moment to marshal what stamina she had left. Soaked to the skin, blisteringly cold, she thought, not so great, but take some small comfort in the trickle of Kha coming in from those thinking about her.

She closed her eyes and in the dark she carefully traced a seeing-eye in front of her, then built on that, looping it out bigger, adding more facets, linking it to her witch-sight. She added Ogham to the edges and more ancient Earth-signs and proto-Norse runes to the Ogham. It was more like teasing out meaning from a piece of poetry in a foreign tongue - there were the symbols, but beyond that there was meaning, layers of it, and you could focus on a specific layer, if you wanted.

Right now, she wanted to see.

Slowly, there in the blindfolded dark, she saw into the storm. She saw that it was multiple storms, twisting in the air, intermeshed. Looking down, the storm’s legs were tangled together, stuck in what was once what she thought was a low-pressure outflow boundary but now more resembling a thicket. The storms were trapped bucks, antlers locked; rats in a rat king; giants, hands trapped in each other's matted hair. The storms were confused, angry and frustrated.

Carefully she flew over to the largest knot, looked for the smallest kink, reached out with a quick word of Enochian and teased it apart. Off in the distance, several kilometers away was another knot, angry and painfully throbbing. She let the winds do the work, carrying her over to it. Once she got close she goosed a tricky silver tendril of a Futhark rune she cribbed in the air up inside it and it slowly shook loose.

Once she got the hang of it, it was actually kind of peaceful, like doing dishes. This locked together bit needed just a tiny bit of Malketh to cool it down enough to slip free. A couple of kilometers higher, a snarl of matted winds couldn’t be teased apart. She sawed through it with her knife carefully, like cutting out a hair knot and it came apart, the cut-off wind fluttering down. One cloudlet refused to be pried apart from another one, no matter what she did, and she got so annoyed that she popped it right on its windy nose with an Authority, saying “enough of that!” and it meekly let go and slunk off. She laughed at it, not thinking about the implications that a spell designed to order a living thing worked on a cloud. It just seemed right, at the time.

Right at the point where it seemed like the storms had separated enough to find their own way, she felt her attention slipping and realized that she was as cold as a corpse and drifting off, so she asked her broom nicely to get her down to Xeniya, please and thank you, and then slid into the dark.

-

“Wait,” said Xenya on the ground. “Something’s happening.”

Everyone looked around, and then felt it: A subtle shift of wind; a slight lessening of cold and rain. A few minutes later, lightning that was overhead now was lighting up further away. Tommy let out a shout and pointed up.

Gentle and purposefully, the broom slid down out of the sky, President Ashe draped over it. Xeniya, Tommy, doctors, onlookers, a couple of press people, and everybody else ran over to watch Xeniya carefully slide her off and check her pulse. Wendy felt frozen solid, but she was breathing. Tommy shouldered through the crowd with two EMT’s and a stretcher, got her up into it, and followed them to an ambulance.

Xeniya got ready to leave with them, grabbing her travel bags she had brought out. She opened the back of the SUV she was using and tossed her bags in, and at that moment the broom quickly and quietly flew over, daintily shook off some of the rain all over Xeniya, and then nestled snugly inside amidst the bags. Xeniya wasn’t thrilled about a wet pile of straw in her car, but considering this wasn't even third on the “weirdest things that had happened today'' list, she let it go.