Two days later, Day 3 (Sunday, May 1, 2022) Upstate University Hospital, Syracuse, New York, United States

The helicopter, a proper medical transport this time, took off from the roof of the hospital to transfer Ella to Weil Cornell in the city.

Isaac, Jade, and various Aqrabuamelu soldiers left in irregular waves to go back to the city. Charlie was set to follow along with Ella’s parents.

If the people of Syracuse noticed a sudden efflux of Middle Easterners with strange, military bearing, they mostly kept quiet. Crime had dropped significantly in the town and stayed down, but there had been many disappearances. The mayor had his theories but kept quiet.

Arcsa was on the ground outside the hospital watching the helicopter take off. He had pulled some strings, and the Air National Guard out of Syracuse happened to be conducting a training exercise that would provide air support to the transfer.

On the other end, Lenox Hill had seen massive a large influx of new renters and the hotels were full. Several buildings had been bought outright.

Illegal arms sales were through the roof. The NYPD had even been tipped off and were worried some sort of gang war was brewing.

Arcsa flexed the accumulated military power of millennia without hesitation. For what other reason had they become soldiers around the world except for this moment. A large number of transfers from elite units were approved to the TriState Area. More Aqrabuamelu had gathered than had been seen since the hell of Kur.

Bahu spearheaded intelligence gathering operations from her position in DIA. An uptick of FBI raids and investigations was met with some surprise by the underworld, but it was unclear what they were looking for.

The time for subtlety had passed. They had tried to kill his Goddess, he would burn the world if necessary.

One last thing to do…

He walked into the hospital, passed the remaining, thinly disguised guards who would be decamping for New York shortly, and into an unassuming patient room.

“Zana.”

“Prophet.”

“Your file was mostly empty.”

“And your files are very impressive. It took me a while to break the cipher. Elliptical curve cryptography.”

“A quantum computer.”

“Yes. And not just any kind. I actually had to call in favors to break it. A lot of them.”

“Yes, that is right.”

“And then having the notes in Navajo was a nostalgic touch.”

“Thank you.”

“But why? Why didn’t you switch the cipher?”

“Who says I didn’t. On the files that matter.”

Zana looked at Arcsa with a big smile, “Prophet, I think I might be in love.”

“Keep it to yourself.”

“Yes, Honored One.”

Zana hopped out of bed. “I need to get to the hospital. I assume our Blessed Goddess is not actually in the helicopter?”

And Arcsa had to admit, he was very happy to have met the elusive Zana.

“No… she is not.”

“Let me guess.. either in a random car, but she needs the medical support. A larger SUV? Or maybe one of the other aircraft that is ’escorting’ the medevac?”

“Not even close.” Arcsa smiled. He was particularly proud of this one, it felt like television spycraft.

Eleanor-Who-Is-Blessed-Inanna was in a shipping container being transported to New Jersey to a private medical facility.

A few Aqrabuamelu companies had been scattered around the TriState Area, and it just happened to be that one of those companies had been stacked with an extraordinarily elite group of soldiers. Each hand selected by Arcsa. All details on lattice encrypted messages.

The intelligence coming to him wasn’t always as secure, but the synthesis of it was where the real value was.

She hopped out of the patient bed, stripped down and started getting dressed in the clothes he had brought.

“I guess I’ll stay with you for now. Until you tell me where our resident goddess is really going.”

“No you will report to Bahu. She will be your handler and bring you into the DIA with a couple steps of distance. We want you back in the fold, but not too much.”

Zana smiled, “I never left. The Aqrabuamelu were the ones who ignored me.”

“That ends now. Once, Belatsunat and I watched our failures militarily and thought we would needed to be stronger soldiers. But we let our aversion to the drow and their role as spies affect our judgment.”

Zana looked positively ecstatic at being justified after so long. “By the way, I outrank Bahu. Here is my card.”

With sleight of hand, Zana made a card appear in her hand and slid it over. It was a business card with an NSA logo on it.

“Fine, then stay there. We may need some wetwork done when we find out who did this.”

“My pleasure. I will set up a series of dead drops and avenues to communicate with you, Bahu is too connected to you.”

Arcsa felt his phone ring. “That will be all.”

The phone call was another Aqrabuamelu leader asking why the return of Innana had been hidden. As if that wasn’t obvious. As if she hadn’t quite fulfilled the prophecy yet. The genie was out now that he had pulled the trigger on guarding Eleanor.

That evening Undisclosed location, New Jersey, United States

Ella’s parents and Charlie looked around nervously.

“Doctor, Professor, Miss Harris,” please sit down. Arcsa motioned to the table.

“What is going on? Who are you? Where is this? Who is that doctor treating Ella?”

“Doctor Jindal-Witten”

“Oh cut the bullshit. Call me Navneet and tell me what is going on!”

Arcsa sat there and thought about it. No way but forward. The secret would out soon enough.

“Navneet then. My name is Arcsa. I am… for lack of a better word, the leader of a group of people. And the Prophet of our religion.”

“Is this some sort of cult?” Navneet turned to Charlie, “What the hell is my Eeesha involved in?”

Charlie said grimly, “It definitely is a cult. But that isn’t even close to everything.”

Arcsa mused. He supposed cult was as close as anything to describe his people. Eleanor, during one of their many discussions, had called them fanatics and jihadists. She was right. They would drench the world in blood if necessary.

“Doctor, Professor, I am going to show you something. Something you won’t want to believe. Something that is going to frighten you.”

“Sir, Arcsa, I don’t know if that is a good idea…” Charlie said tentatively.

“How else will they understand? We don’t have Eleanor here to do her tricks.”

Ella’s parents were just confused by the byplay but stood there waiting.

“Follow me. And know you will not be hurt.”

They exited the small kitchenette area and went back to a waiting room not too dissimilar from the ones at the hospital they had left behind. Arcsa picked an open spot and transformed.

His legs ripped through the pants he was wearing and multiplied. his pincers growing out from his carapaces that appeared.

Navneet and Henry stood there in shock.

“Doctor and Professor Jindal, My name is Arcsa of the Aqrabuamelu, Prophet of the Blessed Innana-Who-Is-Your-Daughter. I am thirty-thousand years old. My people have waited for our prophesied savior that entire time, and my people would die to the last to protect your Eleanor.”

They stood there and then Ella’s father said faintly, his Estuary accent strong after so many years, “Well, isn’t that something.”

Navneet fell more than sat down into the sofa behind her, and Henry sat down next to her with a thump.

Arcsa stood there across the room patiently, not moving, his carapace and legs still.

Charlie stood there uncertain and was unprepared for Ella’s mom to turn to her and pat the chair next to them.

“What is going on?” Navneet said, carefully not looking at the half-scorpion, half-man in the room.

“Pardon me, I have work to do. But I will make myself available should you have any questions.” Arcsa started walking away, his form shifting smoothly as he walked until a man, missing his pants left the room.

“What is going on?” she repeated.

And so Charlie told them the story from the very beginning. The subway and the castle. Navneet started when she mentioned walking in the subway tunnel but recognized that it was not the time for scolding.

Charlie only knew the superficialities of magic, the meeting of the Aqrabuamelu, and not too much else. But it was enough.

“So Ella is now, what? Some sort of princess?”

Charlie nodded.

“And their prophesied savior?”

Another nod.

“Jae-Young was an elf?”

Charlie winced, “That one probably wasn’t mine to tell.”

“And this new one, Isaac?”

“Oh he is human. Normal like me and you. Except he has this magic bird that only he and Ella can see.”

They took a moment to digest.

“And your boss is a dragon?”

“He is a fuzanglong, a Chinese dragon. That’s right. We are… drinking buddies?”

“How is this not ridiculous? What is going on, were we drugged?” Ella’s mom was hyperventilating.

“Ma’am. You know me. I wouldn’t lie about all of this. It took months for Ella to accept what was happening. Your daughter thought about it a lot and…”

“What?” Navneets voice broke a bit there. Henry was still silent sitting next to her; holding her hand tightly.

“Shit. I am going to mess this up. Something about tests being gifts.”

“That book! I read that book to her! This is my fault… How could she get involved in this?”

And now she finally turned to her husband and wept into his shoulder. He just held her. It went on for a while, all that pent up fear and worry.

“Navneet, do you remember when we met?” he said, his voice sounding far off.

“Of course. You had just moved to New York. You moved into that apartment down the hall — that place was such a rathole. Do you remember those guys doing heroin that lived in between our apartments. You had dreams of being a big actor. And you thought maybe I was also a struggling actress. I remember telling you to shove it, that I wasn’t a flake like you, and I was going to save people as a doctor. I had just finished my boards, I was so proud.”

He didn’t say more. And Navneet took both her hands and hit him with fists on his chest. Again and again.

“She did it to save people?”

Charlie wasn’t sure if she should interrupt, but she did, “Magic is coming back to the world, and she was afraid that it would be horrible. She wanted to find another path. A less violent one. She has spent every day, every hour, studying and reading and training and planning and everything. Just to try and figure something out.”

A voice interrupted. Arcsa and Bahu stood at the doorway and Arcsa said, “I will tell you more about Ella and what she has been doing with us. Learning to fight, yes. But more, learning who we are. She feels a profound sense of responsibility for our people. To save us along with everyone else. For that alone we would follow her.”

“Are you really thirty-thousand years old?” Henry asked. Perhaps another time, his studies as a cultural anthropologist would have made this an academic question.

Arcsa looked at him. “I have spent longer on this earth than anyone should. When I was created, the world was a cold place. Glaciers covered the land. You humans were just part of the landscape in primitive huts. Convenient stock to help in our creation.”

“I think we need time to process all this. Can we see Eesha?”

“Of course.”

Arcsa led them back to the medical suite and the team of doctors who had been paid obscene amounts of money to be there, foremost experts in burns, shock, trauma, and a variety of other disciplines. Dr. Navneet Jindal-Witten, a well-regarded, published trauma physician, recognized all of the names from papers. Hell, one of them was the author of the standard trauma textbook. Several of them were clustered around a large screen displaying MRI images, others were talking to colleagues on video monitors, sometimes with the assistance of translators.

Ella floated in a burn therapy tub filled with a cocktail of stem cells and healing factors.

It was hard to see with all of the other lights, but if someone was inclined and they looked closely, they would see a faint glowing mist rising from the pool.