Law of Shadows

“They fought to decide each other’s fate. So they decided not to interfere in hope that the other party would doom themselves anyway.”

- A memory of the Old Ones.

***Carinthia***

“Tap down your creature, then I attack for five. Your turn.”

I glare at the table and study the cards which are displayed there in an orderly manner. Maybe I shouldn’t have come to the store just to play MtG. Stupid trading card game. I am sure that he has some kind of ‘Wrath of God’ on his hand. Why else should he leave mana open with three cards on his hand.

So I could block his creatures in an unfavourable manner, which makes his combat trick obsolete, or I could take five senseless damage. In which case he will sacrifice his creatures to the altar and play the wrath anyway. I need to know exactly which trick he has up his sleeve. Or is he bluffing?

I could call the bluff and hope that his trick costs more than five mana, in which case I could counter his spell. Stupid human. This was supposed to be a relaxing evening, not an endless series of lost card games.

When I woke up this morning, I searched the entire city for clues on who to hunt. Sadly, word of yesterday’s killing spree got out and now all the mercenaries are hiding in their holes. I couldn’t find a single soul with usable information. Apparently being a merc includes the ability to go undercover within hours.

I briefly considered to picking my path through every tourist in the city, but I have no idea how many mercs there are. It could take me weeks to find the right ones. So I decided to visit the local gaming store and play cards until something happens. If I am lucky, the mercs are so frightened that they avoid causing me any more trouble.

Just that I am losing one game after the other today. And against a human. Fred is another regular at the Diamond Mox and a pure base human. The real name is Friedrich, but I call him Fred. The Diamond Mox is the biggest game store in the city and located at the inner ring-street, just beyond the city centre. It’s my little secret that I am actually the owner and always playing incognito.

Sometimes a big risk yields great results. “Okay, I call it. Show me what you have.”

When Fred doesn’t react, I start dribbling my foot on the ground and look up. My annoyed comment to ‘get-it-on’ doesn’t leave my mouth, as I realize that Fred isn’t moving. Nobody inside the store is moving. Hm. The last time I checked, I didn’t allow any artefacts in my city which are able to freeze time.

The door chime rings and a blonde woman enters the store. Her eyes survey the walls with the various goods and then the counter and the tables with the players. She snorts upon detecting me and steps closer. As she does, she also drops the glamour around her. Her business suit and the bland face distort in a puff smoke, revealing sharp eyes and the elongated ears of a fae.

“Little elemental, tell me where to find the local coven of Old Ones. The Veil which is covering this valley is dampening our magic. They will remove it.”

Elemental? Which drugs did this bitch smoke? I am no elemental. Oh, I suppose with all my magic suppressed I look like one to the untrained eye. So this fae is a young one. And a merc if I am not completely wrong.

But who would ally himself with the fae? They are major players among the supernatural races and their feud with the Old Ones is legendary. I purse my lips and study the sword in her hand. So she is old enough to know how to wield swords. Though it seems that she didn’t get the message that guns are the weapon of choice nowadays. Two hundred, maybe three hundred years? That’s why I try to live amongst humans. They invent so much useful stuff.

You take just a little time off in the woods and before you know it, you are some strange hermit who can’t deal with life. The world is changing too fast.

“A sword? Really? Why don’t you tell me why you wish to see the local magic users? Surely you have heard that they are a secluded bunch. Especially in this territory. And aren’t you worried that they prefer killing to talking?”

“I have certain financial assets to persuade them, but that’s none of your business. So just tell me where to find them and save me the disgrace of having to talk to diluted offspring.”

I clench my teeth and squint my eyes at her. The Old Ones are the ancestors of almost all supernatural races. They are beings of pure magic. The old tales called us mages, demons or gods.

Elementals are their rare offspring, which resulted from mixing with humans. They have only a part of their ancestor’s magic, which most often manifests in control over a single magical element or field. Hence they are called elementals.

But fae are no better in that regard. They may have inherited a really strong trait, but they are nonetheless the bastard offspring of my race. So she is using the magic of will to freeze this store. The people aren’t really frozen in time, nor is anything else. A fae can cast any spell as long as the caster’s will is stronger than the one of those who observe the spell. It’s a tricky kind of magic. Much like with the question of Schrödinger’s cat. The cat is decidedly both, dead and alive, but just as long as nobody takes a close look at the facts.

And there is also the problem of the feud. The fae are a weakening race because they aren’t much more than donkeys. Almost sterile, they can’t breed true, so they are often abducting children of other supernaturals and replace them with their inbred fakes. They particularly like it to get their hands on a true mage or witch-child, whatever one decides to call us.

I like to go by the term of Old One. It has something mysterious and emphasizes the point that we aren’t human. We may look like them, but only as long as we choose to do so. I am actually not sure if some of our forefathers still remember our true form. I do not, but I am relatively young and I have a feeling that it’s nothing pretty.

“Hey, I am talking to you!”

Suddenly the fae waves the tip of her sword in front of my face and I react on instinct. Flicking my wrist, I throw the dice which is acting as my life-counter at her. She parries it out of reflex, slicing it cleanly in two. But that just triggers the spell matrix which was hidden inside the dice. A blinding flash of light stuns both of us and interrupts her defensive wards.

I have my pistol out and unload in her general direction as I throw myself backwards. Not a second too late, because I feel the ‘swish’ of parted air as her blade passes through the spot where my head has been.

Even on the ground I keep shooting, covering all the possible angles she could have moved to. Fae are fast and I am not keen on dying here. When the magazine is empty, I eject it and reload with trained, mechanical motions even though I still can’t see a thing.

When my vision finally clears, I find her crumbled against the far wall. Her wild eyes tell me that she is still alive and very keen on running her sword through me. She doesn’t move though, and green blood is gathering under her, so I assume that I’ve hit something important.

I place two more bullets in her forehead and unload the rest of the magazine into her chest. One might find that excessive, but when fighting supernaturals you don't do half jobs. You either make sure that they are down and stay down, or you are just asking to get your head chomped off sooner or later. And I have a dislike for fae because of the aforementioned reasons.

I’ve no problem with half-breeds, but the fae-method of ensuring their kind’s survival is creepy.

Once she stops twitching, I edge closer and carefully edge the sword away from her. Fae are tough bastards and their healing abilities are almost as strong as ours. I wouldn’t dare to come too close to myself if I were in her place. After a few more moments I finally dare to bend down and pick up the sword. Without hesitation, I swipe it across her neck, decapitating her even as the first bullets are pushed back out of her forehead.

With that done, I finally relax. Even a lich needs a while to come back from that. And for most others it’s a death sentence. Growling, I look around the damaged room. To my luck the people are still frozen and it seems like I don’t have to take care of any more corpses. Just the poor Fred got a little nicked by her blade. Blood is dripping down his cheek.

I step closer to inspect his hand. So he had a ‘Wrath of God’! Bastard. And then I realize that the new advertisement stickers on the shop-window are pretty good mirrors. Hah! That’s how he anticipated my every move! I just knew it! Reaching down, I break his finger just to make a point, bending it backwards until it touches his wrist.

With such an injury he won’t play for quite some time. Cheating is okay, I even encourage it. But not if you are caught. I’ll not kill him because he expertly used the new environment against me.

Feeling satisfied, I contemplate my next steps. Mercenaries are one thing, but fae inside my territory? Didn’t they learn anything from their last incursion ten years ago? But first things first. I have to find someone to break the spell on my shop and clean everything up. After a few moments of going through the possibilities, I decide to stick to the only real option.

I reach into my pocket and get out my mobile phone. After a few rings the other side picks up and introduces himself with a few gurgles.

“Paul! Yesterday you left without saying goodbye! Why don’t you visit me at my shop and we have good, nice time between men. What do you think?”

“...”

“This isn’t about our agreement?”

I snort. “No. What are you thinking? I just thought about breaking the ice. I am a real ass sometimes and wanted to pay you back for putting up with me. Just come to Ringstreet 16. It’s already dark, but it’s almost impossible to miss the shop with all the lights and advertisements.”

“Okay… Just give me ten minutes.”

I hang up and put the phone away. Extreme times call for extreme measures. Now I just have to hold the line for ten minutes and hope that nobody else wants to play games at seven in the evening.

Twenty minutes later I am inside my car and on my way to the outskirts of the city, leaving the brooding toad to his job. I am sure that I’ll never again be able to pull off such a stunt with him since he is a fast learner. I suppose it was necessary. Otherwise he would have never showed up without some ‘special compensation’.

I stop where the industrial area merges with the city and shake out a cigarette. It’s clear that I overdid it a little with the fae, so I want hold back on my next meeting.

This place is a prime location for everyone who is providing ‘special services’. I get out of the car and walk a few more feet to the house with the extravagant gate. In the upper windows are a few red hearts, blinking. The big neon-sign at the roof removes any doubt about this establishment.

The red Eve.

Sure enough I find Eva, the owner, at her usual spot right in front of her nest, watching over the parking area. “Eva! Already had your fill today?”

The busty brunette smiles and makes an extra effort of showing off her magnificent assets, angling them just right for me to take a peek down the V of her neckline. “I have, but I am always ready for someone who performs with as much vigour as you. Do you want to have another round of my special services?”

Nope, even though I am in the mood! With my cigarettes I am too calm to risk it with a vampire. My blood is still needed tonight. Though I admit that I humped her once, just to see those two monsters jingle. And it was excellent. Too bad that there is no spark between us. She isn’t setting off my instincts for whatever reason.

I smile. “Not tonight. I just had an encounter with a fae. She spoke of her job, using the plural. Heard anything about them establishing a base in my territory?”

Eva stops smiling and reveals a set of long, sharp canines. There is a good reason that the fae set her off. The vampires are another high priority target for abduction. Or at least their neophytes. The human legends got a lot of things wrong about vamps. Not without a certain amount of misdirection from their side. They don’t like their real life-cycle to be known since it reveals certain weaknesses.

First, Vampires aren’t made but born. It runs in the family. They live an entirely human life in their neophyte stage. They go to school and party, age and marry… the whole, enjoyable, blissful thing. They even get kids as all other humans do and they are by no means special. The trick comes when they die for the first time and move from their neophyte stage to actual vampirism. They can’t change anyone.

From then on, they are pretty much the bloodsuckers of legend, just that they don’t go ‘poof’ in sunlight. It’s too bright for them though. And they are allergic to silver, but that has nothing to do with religion. And there is this urge to protect their bloodline at all costs without giving in even an inch. They are sterile as vampires, so they have to protect the children they had in life or other relatives.

If they lose their relatives, they lose their reason for existence. In other words, Eva is someone I can absolutely trust in this matter. She and her nest are the last supernaturals who would collaborate with the fae.

She presses her kissable lips together. “My nest would never have dealings with fae. To even imply such a thing!”

Oh, my. Good thing that I am smoking. Otherwise I would have her bend over that car to relieve some stress. Pushing up that skimpy skirt wouldn’t be any effort. I cough. “Of course I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought that you and your nest are the ones who probably have an eye on every good hideout in the city. If someone can take a reasonable guess on where to start looking, then it’s you.”

She takes a more relaxed stance and contemplates the possibilities. “The old warehouse over at the hardware store.”

“I know the place. It stood empty for a while after the disco inside it went bankrupt.”

“Good. So, here is the deal. A few days ago, someone bought the entire thing. They put a high fence around it in a single night and plastered everything with construction signs and advertisements. One can’t even get a look inside. Yet, a lot of people are walking in and out at nightly hours. And there are guards. We stayed away up until now, but if the new owners are fae-”

“Then they are probably growing a new tree for their reality marble,” I finish the thought. Reality marbles, or dimensional pockets, are the most powerful ability the fae inherited from us.

A few hundred years ago, during the times of what the humans call the black death, we fought a large war with the fae. They managed to piss off the Old Ones enough to unite against them. Something without precedent in known history. Old ones don’t get along very well, so we stick to small, clan-sized family groups. Everyone fiercely protecting their territory against outsiders.

I am no different. The veil around these mountain valleys lets through the weaker supernaturals, but everyone with enough power to rival an Old One gets a pretty unpleasant zap. It’s hard to get in and even harder to get out, but at least I’ll immediately know that someone dangerous is coming.

Returning to the war. From what history tells me, we gave them hell. They even started to fear that we will wipe them out to the last child. I suppose we would have done it. When it comes to children my kind is even worse than vamps to their neophytes.

In the end, the fae took a last gamble to save themselves. Their most powerful individuals worked together to split off a part of this world to create a safe haven for them. It even worked and now an unknown number of them is hiding out in Fairy, as they call their pocket dimension.

Individually we are more powerful than fae, but there are fewer of us. So the fact that we united against them was the only reason that we managed to win at all.

My people returned to the old ways and everything went back to normal until the fae returned via their stupid trees and fairy rings to steal children for their breeding program. Now we burn their little hideouts wherever they try to establish themselves. Annoyingly, it seems that we are never fast enough to make such undertakings uneconomical for them.

I don't give a shit if they steal a few humans. They aren’t worth much except for breeding quickly. The problem is that once they are going for humans, its a short way to other races. The hatred for fae was bred deeply into me.

“Do you need assistance?” Eva asks me after a while and I realize that I've been staring at the sky since a few minutes ago.

“No. I’ll gear up first. Grenades, poisonous bullets, wards. If I have to give them a beating, then I’ll visit the party prepared. But I suppose it would be nice if you guys are ready to stand guard to keep the humans from noticing. Just tell them that people are working.” I drop the cigarette and step on it.

She purses her lips. “Yeah, sure. Explosions and gunshots, high pitched screams… normal sounds for a construction site.”

I shrug. “There was an accident. Stay away until professional help arrives. Just don’t mention that we have people at the call-centre who won’t react.”