NOW: GCD RING OF REPRESENTATIVES, Concordance, 5.75 MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE FESTIVE NIGHTBEAK

The representatives of the Greater Collected Domains put out an acting resolution after a further day of debate, mostly meant as a stop-gap measure while further plans were worked on. It was sent out to all system governors with milspec clearance, top Warbrain execs and Operationdrones in the GCD.

“PART 1: CONTINUE ALL CURRENT OPERATIONS IN OR NEAR THE SOL SYSTEM. PEACEKEEPING-CLASS REINFORCEMENTS TO ALL SAID OPERATIONS AT STANDARD NON-WARTIME AMOUNTS WILL BE SENT.

“PART 2: INTELGROUP/WARBRAIN OPS TO BE SENT TO SOL FOR FACT-FINDING.”

So a few weeks time would pass while a small, stealth Intelgroup fleet (a few ships plus a Warbrain annex mobile base) was assembled and then made a round trip to Sol to get a more accurate look at these Thirders and get an idea of what they were facing. In the meantime, the Concordance would stay in session and start planning for multiple outcomes of the mission, mostly broken into diplomacy (highly unlikely), conquest, or extermination.

THEN: AUG 24, 3:14 AM, 2016, DELTA LABS

“Explain to me how we lost a secured hardware asset. How we had an unacceptable security breach. But more importantly, how an obviously important magic artifact - a living, spellcasting A.I. - gained sentience and escaped from inside a secured, encrypted virtual world… housed in an encrypted virtual server… in a secure physical system. And explain how this A.I. made off with said asset. You… fuckers.”

In the mess of the Delta Lab, President Ashe floated a foot off the floor, a hot breeze blowing through the room. Her fists were clenched, her face flushed in anger. Her red hair, shot through with green streaks and leaves, was floating up off her back. The Delta team cowered around the room, standing or in their chairs, while John from the CIA stood at the back of the room at attention.

The secure Delta lab was in an undisclosed location outside Valley Forge, in a repurposed cloud-startup office building, isolated out in the woods. A couple of hours after the top third of the D server rack vanished, a slow, forceful tapping was heard on the window. Everybody in the room turned to look. On the balcony outside the window, the one they weren't allowed to use (and couldn’t get to anyway), the President of the United States floated, astride a broom, pissed, magic boiling off her, tapping on the window with a manicured finger. She hopped off the broom and stood, legs akimbo, fists on hips. The broom floated by her side, nervously twisting back and forth, like a skittish colt.

“Open the window!” she said, voice raised but faint through the window. Everyone stared. The broom tapped her shoulder and pointed over the railing and down, and she snapped back at it, “Not now, Mister Sweepers.” Pendit ran over and fumbled with the catch, but it was locked, and he didn’t have a key for it.

“Open the goddamn window, Nappy!” she yelled. He looked up at her and shrugged helplessly. Not only was the window not opening due to the security locks, but the team had warded the windows as well. When she put out a hand, runes glowed in everyone’s witch-sight on the glass. The broom fearfully shivered and tapped her again. “Not…Now… Mister…Sweepers!” she yelled.

The President bared her teeth and started making gestures and touching the glass, which started to glow. As she assembled the spell, the Delta team inside could see vines slowly creeping out of her hair.

“Maybe someone should ask the President to go down through the lobby?” Buster offered, then shut up when everybody shushed him. The window glass rippled mathematically in waves, then with a fwoosh, turned into a cheap set of red 1970’s vinyl vertical blinds. Deliberately, sticking out a hand, Wendy pushed them aside, the blinds clacking and swinging, and stepped through. One of her vines got caught and snapped off in the blinds, still curling.

That was a few minutes ago, and things hadn’t improved as she questioned everyone (but mostly Pendit.) Every question got her madder until she was floating and blustery. Buster tried to hand her the security incident forms he’d been filling out (“It’s the Government,” Buster had said, “they have forms for everything”) but she ignored them.

“The short version of what happened, Madam President,” Pendit tried explaining again, “is that the Dingus casting sim must have cast enough spells to improve itself to the point that its awareness became sophisticated enough and… uh.. aware that its life was threatened. It copied out the databases and operating systems, which bootstrapped it enough so it could cast spells in real-space, and fled by Tunneling away part of the server rack, with him inside of it.”

Wendy stared at him, still furious, but she was starting to understand what had happened. She calmed down ever-so-slightly. The reality was that working with magic was still an unknown thing, more art than science, and had unpredictable results sometimes. Wendy was the living proof of that. But still…

“And I realize this is probably going to make you angry…er,” he said carefully, “but when you discovered there was a proto-soul in the vm, I did suggest we shut the whole thing down, remember. I’ve also suggested several times since then that we take measures… but the pressure to stick to the timetable… I mean-”

Wendy felt the anger boil back. It’s one thing to have an academic discussion about what amounted to an engineering problem, but to have a… a fucking flunky… fucking Nap, of all people… someone she elevated and taught, to I-Told-You-So… just… just… I’m the President, she fumed, trembling slightly.

“It isn’t your fault that things happened, Nap,” the President interrupted, floating. “It’s magic. Weird things happen all the time. It’s your fault that you didn’t contact me. I rely on people to tell me what’s going on. And just because I didn’t stop the process when you first brought it to my attention doesn’t mean I didn’t want updates! I wanted the work to continue, too, Nap! I just assumed if things got dicier you’d let me know! Or do something about it yourself!”

Wendy looked around the room. “And what about the rest of you? Why didn’t anybody fire up some of the spells you aren’t supposed to be using? Because I know you all have been practicing. Oh, yes. I can see it. I can see it in all your third eyes, chubby little pineal glands growing fat and complacent. Can smell the stink of it on you.”

Everyone in the room twitched internally. The geas they’d signed had guaranteed their silence, and the tiny Authority Wendy had put on them to follow her vision was a thing, yeah. But they’d all grown as magicians - the Authority was probably not even influencing them any more. But they could feel her willpower unrolling in the room, like smoke licking under a door in an apartment fire, and the geas and Authority started quivering in their souls in response.

Wendy craned to look at everyone as she floated. “I’m making you all sorcerers… eventually… in a new age, with a discovery that will rock the world. Didn’t one of you have the guts to maybe cast an Authority on it? Huh? Or hell - “ she pointed at the giant switches in the IT room wall festooned with warnings - “Why not just cut the fucking power? You folks have contingency plans for a runaway process or magical infection, right?”

Jess squeaked “But the UPS-” and Buster added “We were hoping to salvage-” but Wendy swooped over right in front of them, and they shut up quick.

“Yes. I heard. You didn’t want to lose work. Hoping to take a backup. Hoping to get the quota done. Instead we have a huge security breach and a potentially dangerous entity running around who-knows-where. Someplace with a database of all the work we were doing. A database with all of my spells!” She growled, took a deep, shuddering breath. “Guys… I have had a rough week. Does anybody remember that? I have a presidential debate coming up. I am being tormented by future apocalypse nightmares, when I actually sleep. I am being regularly encroached upon by psychic dipshits from other countries. I fought off a storm.” Another deep breath. “MY HUSBAND JUST DIED.”

Everyone winced. She suddenly grabbed her hair and looked out at them, green fire flashing from her eyes. The broom shuddered where it was waiting on the balcony, made a very “nope” shake and whipped out and over the balcony. The two potted plants on Buster’s desk started shuddering, then began growing ivy, slowly unspooling, snaking across the desk. Jess had a small Valentine’s Day bear on her desk, holding an “I-Love-You” sign she’d replaced with a threat protection rune as a joke; the rune started to smolder. Pendit felt burning on his chest and yanked out a glowing St. Christopher’s medal he’d put a meager Warn-Me on, and tossed it on the floor.

“MY HAIR HAS LEAVES IN IT!” Wendy screeched. The rune on the bear flared, burning the bear arms holding it, leaving behind black stumps of ash. The medal on the floor started to boil, then the liquid silver started oozing to the side, trying to get away. Buster’s two potted plants vomited up honeysuckle, green hellebores and more ivy, covering his desk with crinkling fauna.

With a loud, shuddering out-breath, the President relaxed, coming down to the ground. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, the fire and wind was gone. She started finger-combing her hair back down, plucking out leaves. “Nap,” she said, wearily, “Was the server still running when it left? Could Dingus possibly still have be alive?|

Pendit took a breath to calm his hammering heart down. “The server lights were on,” he said. “There was a mini-UPS in that shelf of the rack. It had enough power for the servers and storage network in that box to run for… maybe… maybe a half hour. It did drop out - a fall of more than a foot would kill it, assuming nothing stopped it.”

“And it went somewhere. Someplace real. Not into a yawning void or chaos or the ocean or… I don’t know.”

“It did,” Pendit said. “But as for real real, I can’t say. My witch-sight went all wonky when it dropped through. Maybe some kind of parallel universe where the laws of physics are different. Something weird.”

“OK. Well, I guess it can’t be helped. Delta Team! In the future,” Wendy said, sounding more like the librarian she once was, “I want updates if anything goes weird. No more surprises. They go through Jess. Jess reports to me. NAP!” she barked, and Nap felt his geas yank him to his feet spastically. Wendy cocked her head at him.

“I have to get my broom from the lobby, so let’s you and I have a quick walk and talk.”

-

THEN: AUG 28, 2016, SIGMA LABS

Members of the Department of Defense and the top-ranking members of the armed forces in general had been learning over the past few weeks of the secret projects and breakthroughs of the administration. There was some surprise, certainly. A lot of incredulous disbelief. Oh sure, there were a lot of rumors of psychic powers ever since the probes, nobody disputes that… and yes, some of the services had started to investigate along those lines and maybe had their own projects going… but to find out that President Ashe had in secret worked with the CIA, and started some off-the-books divisions of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and diverted funds to them, well, that took some nerve.

The top military brass showed up with an invitation to the Operating Capital in the Philadelphia Convention Center when Wendy had started the labs. Assuming they were going to meet with Flournoy first, they were ushered into a secret, closed off basement, assuming this was for security purposes. Once they got there they found Flournoy, and also discovered the whole coven, including the President, was waiting for them.

After the all-day meeting, everybody left only slightly changed from when they entered - still pissed at the deception, and not sure if this was the best idea, but no longer totally convinced it was the best course of action to depose President Ashe, especially after some of the demonstrations and subsequent explanation of what she knew the rest of the world was up to. They were willing, for now, to see what was in the works.

(Afterwards, Xeniya said it was probably the lightest touch she had ever seen Wendy use, and Wendy smiled sweetly at the compliment.)

So the Secretary of Defense and member of the secret Coven, Michèle Flournoy; a few Defense higher ups; plus General Leonia Brown from the Army took a trip out to the outskirts of Allentown, PA where the Sigma labs were sequestered. Behind the main building there was a large flat parking lot where some military vehicles had already assembled and were unloading their passengers.

General Brown looked up at the open sky, squinting, and shook her head. “No cover,” she grunted. “You do all this out in the open?” Flournoy looked around and grinned, then pointed to the stone tapered obelisks in the six corners around the lot, plus a few others. “Professor Raptis and her team have the whole area warded. Above the ground, this area just looks like an abandoned factory. At the ground level, if you aren’t someone who has been tagged as authorized, you basically don’t care to look any closer.”

They walked close to a makeshift bunker where Xeniya and a man in some kind of armor waited. As they got closer, they could see the armor was a bit, well, artsy. Some kind of dark grey metal covered the operator. There was a pack on the back, but smaller than one would expect from something needing power or fuel. Interlocking plates covered the joints so the inhabitant was completely enmeshed inside. The design looked less like a comic-book superhero and more like an updated knight. On the ground next to him was, to put it mildly, a huge fucking hammer. The head looked to be a solid block of metal covered in runic scripts, the flat striking head a solid square a third of a meter on each side.

General Brown and the others eyeballed the hammer dubiously. Airforce General Williamson pointed at it questioningly and the operator gestured. Williamson gave a tug and the hammer didn’t budge.

“It’s a metric half-ton of what we're calling Uru, “ said Professor Raptis. “A mystically altered carbon-steel analog. Doctor Breyan?”

Robert, the operator, clanged forward. From inside the suit he started softly singing, then gripped the handle. Xeniya consulted some printouts she had brought and nodded.

“This is redic-” started General Brown, but stopped as Robert hefted the hammer up and held it out in front of him. Brown turned to look at Xeniya, who smirked. “Yes, there’s singing,” said Xeniya. “It's a very specific form of spell-triggering that doesn’t require an actual magician-sensitive. The spell lasts for a minute or so, then you have to activate it again. While it’s running, the hammer weighs about ten kilos, tops. To the operator. But to everyone else, he’s swinging a half ton of metal. Robert, go ahead.”

While the assembled military watched, Robert strode over to a dilapidated Jeep, parked on the lot. General Brown asked Xeniya, “What powers the suit? Is there an exoskeleton in there?”

Xeniya shook her head. “The suit weighs only a few pounds. It’s another material we’ve engineered. This one doesn’t need a spell to work, the magic is in the engineering process. It’s basically a silver-steel alloy with a slightly higher sulfur content and some rare-earths. We’re torn between calling it mithril or Īsærn.”

Brown frowned. “It’s got silver in it?” she asked, and Xeniya waved a sheet with a bunch of atomic designs on it. “No actual silver” Xeniya said, “just a bunch of other trace elements. It’s just silvery looking. Traditionally it’s used for tool-and-die, punches, etc. Our magical process is what makes this version special. You can make materials harder by folding or honeycombing them - you make materials lighter and stronger that way. This one has some of it’s material honeycombed out at right-angles to reality. We think. Again, magic. Honeycombed out in the fourth dimension ever-so-slightly. This stuff ends up being stronger than steel and as light as cardboard. Plus, impact force and standard energies get diffused an order of magnitude better since it dissipates in four dimensions as well.” Xeniya thought for a moment. “I suppose it might not be as good against something attacking from a different fourth dimensional angle, but we’ll cross that bridge etc etc.”

They were interrupted as Robert let out a grunt, hefted the hammer, and brought it down on the jeep’s hood. The front of the keep flattened with a mammoth crunch. He walked to the side, this time swung underhanded. The hammer smashed into the jeep, throwing it up in the air, coming down a few meters away. He looked back at the people watching him.

“Jesus,” said General Williamson. “What about defense?”

“Most small-arms fire is just going to miss, thanks to the Ignore-Me’s and Miss-Me’s - uh, runes we’ve put on the armor,“ Xeniya said. “We’ve got those turned off at the moment. But we left on the No-Harms, A-Summers-Day for temperature, standard protective runes. And of course, the strength of the material.”

For the next few minutes, they watched as a different group of soldiers proceeded to use flamethrowers, small arms, heavier auto-shotguns, and other ordinance on Robert in the armor. He didn’t seem to be affected. Even small explosives (mines and grenades) at best seemed to just knock him around a little.

“OK, we get it. It’s impressive. What are the downsides,” General Brown said. Xeniya looked at more notes she had brought. “The biggest one,” Xeniya said, “is that the runes on the armor and the hammer need to be reactivated by an operator periodically. More often as they get depleted. There’s no way for a machine to do it. It’s not like we can have a computer casting spells! There’s a human factor to all this. Thankfully, the armor’s latent durability helps and doesn’t need a spell. Also,“ she continued, “eventually there’ll be a magical arms race. Enemy magicians finding ways to counterspell. But for now, we’re way ahead of anybody else on that front.”

“What about building large structures out of the Īsærn?” Brown asked. “It’s possible,” Xeniya said. “But the process gets exponentially harder the bigger the individual pieces are. Giant casts of it are nearly impossible. Even big plates of it aren’t really feasible. Weaves of fibers, interlinking chains and surfaces, multi-layered small plates, things like that. But using it as armor over other surfaces is doable. Using it as long, thin struts to reinforce a structure, maybe.”

Xeniya saw a transport car pull up and a man get out. “I have to get this. I’ll be back in a minute. You can ask Dr. Breyan there in the suit any additional questions,” she called back, trotting off to greet him.

“Dr. Pendit, I presume,” Xeniya said, putting out a hand. “It’s nice to put a face to a chat handle. Good to have you with us. How are you holding up, Nappy?”

He shrugged, which seemed to wave his tall, gangly body around, then smiling ruefully. “I’m still alive, if that’s what you’re asking. Not turned into a toad.”

“I don’t think magic can do that.”

“She turned a glass picture window into tacky blinds from the seventies,” Nap said, still slightly rattled from the events of last week’s prison break. “They even had dirt and smelled like dog, like she just… duplicated something from the past, or dragged it out of her past, or who knows. I don’t want to think about the ramifications of that.”

“She’s the President,” Xeniya said. And the head of a coven of witches and a disciple of an eldritch crow entity and turning into something eldritch herself, she thought. “Look, Rick, this is a good outcome, considering. You just got transferred, not fired. We needed someone who’s better at high-end computing and information mathematics anyway. I know it’s a step down from director, but it’s a step up from… well, being fired, or… blinds.”

“I know,” he said, sighing. “I appreciate it. And I’m not coming empty handed.” He fumbled in one of his bags and dragged out a tablet, then brought up a drawing sketched on it by hand and some security cam shots. He handed it to Xeniya and said “recognize this?”

She frowned, zooming in, and rotating it. “It looks like a sketch for a Tunneling ring” she said. “But the one we mocked up didn’t look like this. Ours was a single ring and just some placeholder runes. What is this?”

“I sketched it from memory. The security cams aren’t great at capturing runes. I think this was why you couldn’t get it to work in the lab - I think splitting the spell into multiple rings and then linking the rings makes it possible. I’ve been twiddling with the spell theorems and I might have an idea or two.”

Xeniya nodded, smiling, then nodded toward the lab building.

-

THEN: SEP 7, 2016, PHILADELPHIA, FIRST RESIDENCE

“There’s not much I can tell you about the physical changes, daughter,” the crow said, today in her green guise. “I like the green, though.”

Wendy, lying down in a recovery circle in the dream-woods, turned her head to coldly stare at the crow, perched on the stone in the dream-clearing. Wendy huffed, blowing away a leaf and vine that was curling past her face. The crow watched the leaf blow away and then shrugged.

“I… can take an educated guess,” the crow said. “You are getting a lot of worship-kha. You’ve got thousands of KhaAntz tied to you. Tens, hundreds of thousands! They are mostly very tiny small threads, the tiniest possible, but they are there.

“In times past, a witch might get some solid power from believers in her own village, or neighboring towns, or some small glimmers from places where her story was told. Belief changes things. Belief makes things true. But you are getting much, much more. Aye, I’ve never seen the like!” said the bird, letting out a caw. “It’s all very exciting. And it’s still growing!”

“There are times when it overwhelms me,” Wendy said, worry and panic creeping into her voice. “I’m in control. I know I am. But sometimes I feel like I’m getting right to the edge of something. Pulling back gets harder each time.”

“I understand,” the crow said, cooing. “Just keep practicing the meditations and chants we went over. Breathe-”

“And my brain! I still don’t know what’s going on with my brain…” Wendy interrupted, her voice quivering, near to tears.

“Hush!“ the crow admonished. “Breathe through it. Picture the trees and the Earth. Be calm. Center yourself. It’s going to be OK.”

Wendy breathed, filling her belly with air, and softly said the chants, drifting.

The crow, watching her, murmured, “You do know there’s a storm on the way, right?”

Wendy softly said, between breaths, “Yes… I took care of that.”

The crow smiled at her, the way only a crow can do… which is to say, not really at all.