"Three Witch Queens"
May. 18th, 2022 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Three Witch Queens"
4/22-4/23/2000
I.
At twenty after nine, a dying woman sprawled on the stoop of the old stone building on East 38th Street in Manhatttan. Dark blood seeped out from her chest onto the steps beneath her.
As she had stumbled onto the steps, proximity alarms had sounded in the headquarters buildings and its occupants had gone on alert. Within a few seconds, the massive front door swung open and a tall thin man dressed in black appeared. Jeremy Bane scooped up the wounded woman and was back inside the foyer, the door closing behind him, so quickly that any passerby might have missed the movement. Passing through the foyer into the front hall, Bane carried her into the open doorway of the KDF's emergency room and lowered her onto one of the three regulation hospital beds. All six members of his team had been in the building and were gathering in the doorway to watch.
"Keep back but stand by for instructions," the Dire Wolf snapped. Under heavy dark brows, the grey eyes were more intense than ever. Bane snatched a pair of blue latex gloves from a box fastened to the wall just inside the door. "The bleeding first. Megan! Insert a standard saline IV into the back of her hand, then take a sample to determine her blood type." He ripped her coarse wool tunic open to reveal the upper torso. "Three vertical incisions, deep, knife wounds I'd say. Upper chest and abdomen. Let's clean it up a little with some gauze. Sheng! Call the clinic next door and see if Dr Wright has left yet. I know he had overnight duty at Metro."
"Yes, captain."
As Bane worked, he said, "Two of these wounds aren't bad but the third is deeper. Looks like it might have nicked a lung. Megan, we need a nasal oxygen clip."
As the Trom girl complied, fastening the clear plastic clip in the woman's nose and turning on the oxygen, she said, "Her blood checks as type O, nothing significantly strange about it. She is a Melgar."
"That's good," Bane said as he worked. "Stronger than Human, better able to deal with injury. Melgarin are as tough as they come."
"Dr Wright answered, he's on his way," Sheng called from the doorway.
"Good. I've got combat medic training but this is a bit serious for me to handle," Bane said. "The bleeding's under control. I don't see where any arteries were compromised. Megan, how are her vitals?"
Without being instructed, the Trom Girl had swung a monitor screen overhead and lowered it to face level. It took readings without the necessity for attached leads. "Everything looks acceptable, captain. Pulse fast but steady. Blood pressure low but within norms. Brain wave patterns are agitated but that's understandable. EKG reading coming up... it's erratic. She is in shock, after all."
"I think her main problem now is loss of blood," the Dire Wolf said as he peeled off the latex gloves and went to a stainless steel sink to scrub his hands with hot water. "Team, a wounded Melgar at our door means a crisis. I want everyone in full field suits and ready for immediate action. Report to the conference room in five minutes. All except you, Sable, your powers might be needed for the interrogation."
The front door swung inward and Bane's closest friend, his most trusted ally in the Midnight War, hurried in. Thaddeus James Wright was a middle-aged black man with heavy, sad features and a beard well sprinkled with grey. Even though he knew how well the KDF emergency ward was stocked, he had automatically brought his satchel.
"Ted!" said Bane from just inside the emergency room. "Glad you could make it. You've met Sable, I think."
"A few times," the Blue Guide said. He immediately moved over to inspect the woman in the regulation bed, studying her with dark eyes that had an inexplicable blue glint in their depths. He made the deep "Hmmm" sound of doctors through the ages.
As Bane explained the situation in detail, Wright began his own examination. His Tel Shai art of Kerwandu enabled him to perceive weakness or injury in living beings and to use gralic force to strengthen those areas. This was what made him such a highly valued diagnostician in the metropolitan area. Watching him from arm's length, Sable was fascinated. She knew that Ted Wright had been a founding member of the Kenneth Dred Foundation twenty years earlier and that he was one of only three to still survive. She knew that he was in fact an actual doctor, an MD specializing in trauma surgery and recently used for quick diagnoses by a half dozen hospitals and clinics. Sable was immensely taken by Wright's air of competence and assurance, and she was further impressed seeing how Bane visibly relaxed when the Blue Guide took over responsibility.
After a few more minutes, Wright straightened up and rubbed his chin somberly. "She's out of immediate danger, Jeremy. You did all the right things under the circumstances. Let me see the X-Rays."
"No X-Rays yet," Bane answered. "I was relying on the Trom sensor scans."
"Even better. I know this is going to be a waste of time, old friend, but have you called the police? Is an ambulance on the way?"
"You know better than that," Bane said. "Our treaty with Androval, remember? Any Melgar renegades we capture get repatriated to Androval as soon as possible. If a hospital got hold of her, she would never be released because she can't possibly be identified. We'd have to abduct her at some point for repatriation... or King Holmir would send a squad of Melgar swordsmen to fetch her."
A sharpness crept into Wright's voice. "Aside from the limited medical care she can receive here, there's the law to consider. I know we're working under Midnight War ethics, Jeremy, but still...."
"Ted, this is serious. She came here wounded, desperate to warn us about something. All my instincts say that something big and dangerous in underway. We need to find out why. Sable here has enhanced senses. She can read eye movements under closed lids, smell chemical traces in perspiration and detect subvocal tremors. I want her standing by when we question this Melgar."
"What? This woman is not in any condition to be interrogated."
"It's my call. We have to find out why she came here. Stabbed and fading fast, she still forced herself here to KDF headquarters. Whatever she wanted to tell us, it must be critical. The Midnight War is still on, Ted."
"I don't like it... but I know you're right." The Blue Guide shook his head and held up his hands in angry resignantion. "In effect, we work under battlefield conditions. All right. Let's get it over with."
As Sable and Bane stood nearby, Wright bent over the unconscious woman and drew on his mystic discipline. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply in a Tel Shai pattern, his hands folded in front of his chest in a prayer gesture. Pale blue light shimmered around the woman in a beautiful nimbus. She sighed and mumbled, "Witch Queens..."
"Yes," the Blue Guide said soothingly, "Tell us all about the Witch Queens."
Four minutes later, Wright placed the woman into a deep, healing sleep which would last for hours. He rubbed his eyes and turned to Bane. "Your new team sure has its work cut out for it, Jeremy."
"They'll step up," the Dire Wolf said. "We have no choice. Are you coming in on this, Ted?"
"I can't," answered the Blue Guide in a heavy tone. "I have to get back to Metropolitan General. I have patients there, it's a responsibilty I took. In any case, this task calls for fighters. I'll send my Kerwandu student Lexi here to watch over the patient until I can return."
"Lexi's a good person," Bane admitted. "I guess she'll be taking over for you at some point."
Wright nodded, still gazing down somberly at the patient sleeping in front of them. "We arrange for our successors. Just as you have done. I have faith in your six newcomers, Jeremy... even though they look like children to me at this point."
"I know, I know. Thanks for everything, old friend. You've done more good than the world can ever know."
Wright adusted his smock, took a deep weary breath and started for the door. "Say, where is Cindy, anyway? She could be checking this woman's mental state."
"Cin is staying at Tel Shai for a while," Bane said. "Until the new team is launched. She said her telepathy would be constantly helping them and they'd never be ready to stand on their own."
"She knows what she's talking about. As always." Wright finally put a hand on the door jamb and stepped out into the hall. "I'll be sending Lexi here to take over. It'll be a few hours before I can return."
The Dire Wolf joined him in the front hall. "Thanks again, Ted. I have to go send the new kids on their assignment right now, we don't have any time to spare." With that, even as the Blue Guide saw himself out, Bane rushed up the wide staircase to the second floor where the conference room waited.
II.
At the long oak table which took up much of the conference room, generations of heroes had assembled for more than eighty years. Before Kenneth Dred, Dr Mercado Vitarius had gathered his allies here. Now, six new Tel Shai knights took their seats and anxiously awaited their captain.
Except for one. With his usual brashness, Sheng Mo-Yuan leaned back in the captain's chair at the head of the table. He toyed with the small gavel which rested on its stand. "I look natural here, don't I?" he asked. "You might say, this is where I belong--"
He broke off and quickly vacated the seat as Jeremy Bane and Lauren Reilly entered the room. Both had changed into the black field suits, carrying their helmets. The young Chujiran dropped in his assigned spot and tried to look nonchalant as Sable took the chair next to him and leaned over to whisper, "You're a jerk."
Standing at the head of the table, the Dire Wolf said, "I call this meeting to order. Team, this is a major crisis and we must act immediately. Let me brief you with the little we know before you leave on your assigments. The woman in our emergency ward is named Themisar. She is a Melgar from the adjacent realm of Androval, one of the Cousin Races to Humans. This Themisar claims to have been an apprentice to a sorceress named Lady Beldevar.
"Themisar was dabbling in the typical bloodthirsty black magick practices of Draldros worshippers when she discovered what Beldevar was planning. It was simply too appalling for her to go along with, so at great risk to herself, she managed to come to the world to warn us. To escape from Androval, she had to kill the fellow acolyte who was paired with her. In doing so, Themisar herself was stabbed."
"How did she even know about us?" broke in Argent.
Bane paused and gazed over at the Chujiran with those pale intense eyes. "Oh, we knights of Tel Shai are well known in the Midnight War. Both Sulak and Valera have worked with us as Associate KDF members. No more interruptions. Beldevar has formed an alliance with sorceresses from two other Races, Emish Tor of Ulgor and Tylothrol from Perjena. They call themselves the Three Witch Queens. Tonight they begin their ritual to begin what is the most vile agenda I've ever encountered. Listen closely.
"At midnight, their concerted spells will spread a wave of deadly gralic energy over the world, claiming millions of victims. The release of Human life force from the deaths will be channeled to Draldros himself, who feeds on it. In return, the Three Witch Queens expected to be rewarded with increased powers for themselves, including extended lifespans bordering on immortality." Bane's taut voice grew even more stern than usual. "At midnight, the three sorceresses will cast the spell from three different locations... and all over the world, its shock wave will murder millions of newborns. In every country, babies up to three days old will simply stop breathing."
The six members of his team stared with widened eyes as his words sank in. No one spoke. They all leaned forward and waited for him to continue. "As you can see, there is not much time to act. This is why there are knights of Tel Shai. This is what you all have signed up to fight. We have no time for preparations. It's ten forty-five right now. I am going to send you in pairs to where the Three Witch Queens are at work and you must stop them, whatever it takes to do so. Stand up. First team will be Argent and Blind Archer...."
III.
In a noiseless flash of transcendental blue light, two men in black appeared in a lonely beach along the North Carolina coast. The full moon blazed in a cloudless night sky filled with stars. The Tel Shai knight who called himself Argent caught himself and got his footing. Sheng Mo-Yuan was a twenty-two year old warrior whom most people took for Northern Chinese but he was actually from the realm of Chujir whose inhabitants claimed to be ancestors of the Han people. His gift was to channel gralic force into his body to increase either strength or speed or resistance to harm.. but only one trait at a time. He had been sponsored by a former KDF member who had taken up her permanent residence in Chujir, his teacher Tang Ming.
Beside him, Josef Jubilec held up a hand for silence. As Sheng watched with what little patience he had, the Blind Archer closed his eyes and cocked his head. Raised by the Blind Archers of the same Chujir where Sheng had been born, Josef had mastered that sect's strange ability to enhance his perceptions by cutting off his vision. The Blind Archers were greatly feared since they could sense life force in total darkness, rain or fog. Their arrows never missed. After a long moment, Josef opened his dark blue eyes and scowled. "There are life forms only half a mile away. Just beyond that bend in the beach. And there is black magick in this area, Sheng."
"There's no time for a clever plan, Josef," the young Chuiran whispered. "So much is at stake! I say we charge in, run right over the Witch Queen and whatever stooges she has, and save those babies. Sound good to you?"
"Exactly." The Blind Archer strung the longbow he had crafted himself, tested its pull and nodded to his partner. "We do whatever needs to be done."
They both took off along the beach at a quick easy lope they could maintain for hours. Of all the members of the new KDF team, these two worked best together. They were both action-oriented, serious and confident. They had more experience in dangerous situations than their teammates. Their common background of having grown up in Chujir was another bond between them, in language and customs and cuisine preferences.
As Josef sensed they were nearly upon the enemy, the two Tel Shai knights slowed their pace and took cover behind some rounded boulders near the water. With painstaking care, they each took a turn peering around the rocks down by the ground. A rough wooden platform had been constructed, its one end protruding out over the ocean like a pirate's plank. On this plank was a frame supporting a gong three feet across, made of the copper-colored metal Gremthom used by sorcerers throughout history. Within the past few minutes, a wind had picked up and the flames of the torches at each corner of the structure flickered wildly.
Standing near the gong, wrapped in sopping wet black robes with voluminous sleeves, was the obese round form of Emish Tor. The Witch Queen of sunken Ulgor held an elaborate ceremonial mallet with a curved haft in one bloated hand. Emish Tor was one of the Gelydrim who resembled normal Humans more than most of their Race. Only the bristling seal-fur texture of her white hair and her damp clammy skin seemed odd.
Kneeling before her in obeisance, hands holding his spear upright, a sole Gelydra fighter posed with bowed head. He was wearing the infamous shark-hide tunic and leggings of Ulgor, worn with the rough denticles on the outside so that anyone touching him would be scraped raw.
"What are we waiting for?" Sheng grunted and proved it was a rhetorical question by immediately jumping to his feet and racing toward the platform. With his gralic charge focussed into speed, he crossed the distance quicker than anything else on two legs except possibly the Dire Wolf himself. He was a dark blur in the moonlight.
Rising himself, Josef reached back behind him to the Y-shaped leather quiver across his back. Against Human foes, the Blind Archer often chose either arrows with round hard-rubber tips or needle tips containing the KDF's potent anesthetic. But Josef was raised to be an assassin, killing enemies did not trouble him in the least, and these Three Witch Queens were trying to murder millions of helpless infants around the world. He did not see how they merited any mercy. His arrow had a steel-barbed head.
The Gelydra spotted Argent's lightning-fast charge and he had just enough time to raise his spear before an arrow thumped home into the left side of his chest. Dropping backward from the impact, the dying guard tumbled off the platform and fell limp to the damp sand.
High overhead, the moon abruptly turned a deep ominous red. Wind gusted violently and thunder rolled close at hand. The spell was taking hold.
Seeing her acolyte slain, Emish Tor gave on a fleeting glimpse to the onrushing Sheng Mo-Yuan. She struck the gong. Its deep peal rang out over the Atlantic and echoed down the beach. As Argent came almost within reach of the Witch Queen from Ulgor, an immense misshapen hulk heaved up out of the water and flung itself right into his path.
Still new to the Midnight War, Argent was not familiar with all the beasts and creatures he might encounter. He had never heard of a malak before one was on top of him. It had the long body of a mako shark, nine feet long, held parallel to the ground as it lurched forward on thick Human-like legs which ended in three-toed taloned feet. The malak had short, massive arms with three-fingered clawed paws. In that ferocious shark head, the red-glinting eyes sparked with hateful intelligence.
Unnatural hybrids given life by the Darthan Kje ages ago, the malakim were too ferocious to ever be tamed or controlled. Their purpose was to be released into the waters around Maroch or on its beaches in case of invasion. At some point, malakim had escaped into the world's oceans where they survive to this day in limited numbers. They were savage beyond the predatory instincts of natural sharks. Even an adept like Emish Tor took a terrible risk keeping a malak close at hand.
At the first glimpse of the dark bulk looming up over him, Argent instinctively shifted his focus from speed into durability. It was a split-second decision that saved his life. Gralic force surged through his body reinforcing muscle and bone and tendons, making him dense as stone. A thousand pounds of sharkbeast came down on him with crushing impact. Even as he was crushed to the sand, Sheng thrust his right arm straight into the malak's gaping maw. The malak tore at him with its clawed paws, shredding the field suit into tatters while Sheng concentrated on jamming his arm as deep down the monster's throat as he could. He could not have explained why he was trying this, it was just deep primal instinct to survive.
"You will feast well, my little pet!" shrieked the Ulgoran sorceress. Emish Tor raised her open hands in triumph and abruptly gasped as an arrow sliced through her forearm. It scraped the bone without being stopped and emerged with half its length protruding from the other side of her arm. The ceremonial mallet dropped and was forgotten as the Witch Queen gripped her wounded arm with her free hand. Tough as the Gelydrim were, she wailed from the unexpected pain and shock.
Josef Jubilec stepped over to where she could see him. He had already notched a second arrow and drawn the bowstring back behind his ear without seeming ease. "Not a word!" he ordered. "Not a gesture. I promise you that you won't even feel the next one."
"Human scum!" she yelled. "How dare you! Oh Dread One, oh Grelok who lives beneath the waves, hear me-" Her voice cut off with the rasp of her final breath. Three feet of a slim wooden shaft had slid exactly into her heart. She sagged and then collapsed utterly without even trying to catch herself.
As the Witch Queen died, high overhead the moon was cleansed to its normal clean silver color. The gale died down and the feeling of oppressive disaster faded away instantly. The Blind Archer lowered his bow and raised the headband that had served as blindfold, and his face was impassive.
Four of the longest minutes of Argent's life seemed like hours as he struggled with the malak. He did not dare shift his power to strength for any attempt to struggle with the beast. During that second of transition, he would been torn apart. Sheng concentrated on staying impervious. Then he began to notice something hopeful.
The sharkbeast was choking. Sheng had wedged his arm so deeply into the brute's gullet that it couldn't breathe. For another minute, they both thrashed about and then the gigantic beast convulsed and went limp. Argent waited until he was certain, but it was true. The malak had died.
Sheng Mo-Yuan wriggled loose from beneath the carcass and dragged his arm out of the creature's mouth with some difficulty. There was not much left of his field suit. His skin had not been broken anywhere but his entire body ached from having been thrown about so violently.
Loping up, Josef said, "Glad you survived. You beat the malak."
"Of course," Argent managed to put his usual smugness in his voice. Getting to his feet, he gave the huge carcass a hard kick. "Too tough for your diet, eh, you stupid monster? That'll teach you." He glanced over at the Blind Archer. "And what about the Witch Queen."
"She's dead," Josef answered simply. "I only hope the other teams had as much success as we did."
The young Chujiran's breathing had settled down to normal. "Yes. We're done here, Josef. We should contact our captain and see if the other teams could use our help."
"I'm on it." Josef took the Link from his belt and set it to transmit. "Calling Dire Wolf. Blind Archer and Argent calling Dire Wolf. "Come in." After a tense twenty seconds, he repeated his call. "Come in, please. Jeremy, are you there?"
"Is that gadget working?"
"It's Trom technology, nothing is more reliable. The signal is going out." Josef had raised his head band and his dark blue eyes were narrowed. "Our captain said to report immediately. He should be at base waiting."
"Whatever he's doing, we have no other transport home," Sheng said. "I feel really unhappy about this, Josef. I think the worst is yet to come."
IV.
Pure blue light burst without a sound over a twisting footpath high in the Rocky Mountains. Two women appeared from nowhere within its flare. The first one, a tiny platinum-blonde dressed all in white, happened to materialize with one foot touching the ground. She got her bearings as easily as if stepping down off a curb and smiled as she straightened up.
Megan Salenger had a more awkward arrival. She emerged through the Gateway two feet above the path, dropped off balance and tumbled headlong down the icy slope with an outraged gasp. Her teammate watched her roll away without noticeable concern. "Hey you, stop fooling around!" Ashley called.
Raised from infancy by the Trom to be a liaison with the Human race, Megan quickly regained her poise. She was wearing the full field suit, complete with visored helmet, and in the palms of her gloves were controls for her suit's gravity shield disc. At once, she lifted up off the ground and hovered with her boots just clearing the surface. Turning on her vertical axis, she glided smoothly back up the hill to where Unicorn was waiting, tapping one foot.
The visor on Megan's helmet was raised, revealing a fringe of black hair over serious dark eyes and sharp inquisitive features. Despite a lifetime of training to repress emotion and always be rational, obvious annoyance showed on her face as she landed next to her partner. Not that Unicorn noticed.
Ashley Whitaker was one inch over five feet tall, slim and just curvy enough, with long straight hair so blonde it was white. In complete contrast to Megan's black operations suit, Ashley was dressed all in white. Ski boots, snug pants and a down-filled waist-length jacket. A knitted wool cap sat precariously at an angle atop her head and she was wearing thin wool gloves. She had her Unicorn horn strapped across her back in its leather sheath. Watching the Trom Girl alight next to her, Unicorn smiled as blithely as ever.
All my training is a failure, Megan thought as she brushed snow off her legs. I should be above petty annoyances but somehow Ashley has been getting on my nerves lately. Perhaps they had simply been teamed up too often by Sable.
Pointing further up the trail, Ashley said, "Okay, time to get serious, science nerd. We have to start looking for the bad guys."
Tapping the left ear pod of her helmet, Megan listened to the readings. "We are in Colorado, sixty-three miles from Denver. My satellite link locates us exactly where Jeremy intended us to arrive. Wait. Ashley, you're not in your field suit?"
"Naw, we were in such a hurry that I didn't change. My hat and gloves were in the pockets of my jacket, lucky huh?"
"Unicorn," said Megan with an attempt to keep her voice even, "Do you have ANY equipment with you?"
"Oh, sure. I was already wearing the flexible armor under my clothes. I grabbed my utility belt with the dart gun, it has pouches with some gear and my Link. That way, I'm always ready. Anyway, I knew you'd be packing enough gadgets and gimmicks for both of us, right?"
Megan sighed inaudibly and let it go. There was no use being angry at Ashley. The little blonde was so self-assured that she never considered the possibility anyone could dislike her. In many ways, this was justified. Between her looks and her genuine friendliness, most people did warm to her at once.
Unsnapping the catch on the sheath across her back, Ashley drew the long spiral horn out and inspected it carefully. The horn of an actual Unicorn beast from Okali, the talisman was capped at its flat base with an ensalir disc. It had been ensorcelled ages ago by the Eldarin themselves to disperse gralic attacks, undo malicious spells and remove unnatural abilities. Unlike her teammates, Ashley had no true extra-human powers of her own. It was wielding the horn that qualified her to be a Tel Shai knight and a KDF member.
"Mmmm. My baby's warm to the touch," she told Megan. "That's a bad sign, it means we're near gralic energy which is harmful. This thing is like an early warning system. We need to be on our toes, Megsy."
"Please don't call me 'Megsy,'" the Trom Girl said distractedly. She was taking readings on her hand-held sensor. "Just a second. I'm picking up six life forms, Human or near Human, four miles northwest of our position. Just over that crest, you see it? Massive levels of gralic activity. I have a high degree of certainty that Beldevar is there."
Ashley pretended to spit on her gloves and rub them together, "Awrighty, let's tackle her. My nose is starting to run and I hate that."
The Trom Girl frowned at her teammate. "We should approach from different directions, attack simultaneously and have the element of surprise--"
"No, no, no, no. I am NOT gonna trudge through deep snow for miles. Carry me. We'll fly in fast, I'll disrupt her magick and we'll be home warm and dry in half an hour."
To her own dismay, Megan Salenger nearly lost her temper. What could have happened to my discipline, she thought, I am on the verge of shouting in anger. "Look. Ashley, please. If you object, I can come back for you after I handle this Witch Queen myself."
"Wrong. You need my Unicorn horn to deal with her gralic powers." Ashley almost stamped a foot in her anger. "Come on, Meg, let's not have a spat. Pick me up and let's go."
"Very well. We need to work together," the Trom Girl admitted. She reluctantly circled an arm around the blonde girl's narrow waist and Ashley draped her own arm across Megan's shoulders. Triggering the gravity shield, Megan lifted clear off the snow and leveled off at head height. She accelerated slowly at first to give her partner a chance to adjust, then sped up as they rushed over the white landscape.
In a clearing fifty yards across, five Melgar warriors had set up a strange altar. It was a raised platform of rough wooden beams, draped with overlapping black cloths inlaid with esoteric red symbols. At each corner of the structure was a set of polished bull horns on a post. Torches flared erratically in the mountain winds, and standing in their uncertain light was a dramatic figure in chain mail.
Like many Melgar women, Beldevar was tall, over six feet in height, well built and athletic. The oiled mail of her tunic and leggings glistened in the torchlight. Beldevar wore a six-foot longsword in a scabbard across her back. Her head was uncovered and the long yellow hair whipped wildly in the winds. The Witch Queen was chanting a spell in the language that had been passed down from the Corruption on Ulgor itself, when the Midnight War had begun thirty thousand years earlier.
Standing vigil near the altar were the five Melgar warriors, stout men in mail, wearing heavy linen tabbards that bore the white horse symbol of Androval. Each brandished a thin throwing spear with a barbed blade, and each had either an axe or a long dagger sheathed at their waists. Androval had a warlike culture and they were stronger and more difficult to injure than Humans; inhabitants of the other realms regarded the Melgarin with with caution and tread carefully when dealing with them.
Just before they would be spotted, Megan swooped low and released her partner without warning. Unicorn fell into the deep snow gracelessly, her rear end up in the air before she scrambled to her feet and brushed herself off indignantly. The Trom Girl was not noticed that. She was flying directly at the altar, picking up speed as she went.
Reaching to her belt, Megan drew the beam projector. A small flat metal device, she had inserted the photon ram clip earlier and adjusted its intensity. As the Melgarin saw her, even those hardened veterans of wars and duels were startled and uncertain how to react. Here was a young girl hurtling at them six feet off the ground, coming at them faster than a arrow.
Beldevar paused in her incantation. "Fools! Strike her down."
That moment of doubt proved fatal to the Melgarin. The Trom Girl triggered her device and a pale beam of kinetic energy flickered into the knights with lethal impact. Bones snapped cleanly, arms and legs were broken and three of the Melgarin were flung in all directions without having a chance to defend themselves.
To their credit, neither of the remaining warriors tried to flee or showed any signs of fear. One drew back his arm and let fly the six-foot spear with coolness and accuracy. Megan swerved in mid-air, twisting her body as nimbly as an ice skater, and the weapon got nowhere near her. The photon ram caught that Melgar full in the face, swinging his head back so far that the sound of his neck breaking was clearly heard by everyone. A second later, the final Melgar knight was struck down by a barely visible stroke of light as if he had been crushed by a boulder from a catapult.
As Beldevar raged and cursed, Megan swooped closer, dropping her legs to land lightly on her feet in front of the Witch Queen. Unnoticed in her all-white suit against snow in moonlight, Ashley crept smoothly toward the altar from one side. She had been raised from childhood to be the second Unicorn by her mother and was remarkably stealthy when she wanted to be.
"So Themisar must have survived," said the Melgar sorceress. "She managed to reach you Tel Shai swine after all!"
"This is the end of your scheme." The Trom Girl stood at ease, speaking with understated certainty. "Your partners in mass murder are being apprehended right now. I am not sure why I am even offering you an opportunity to surrender. I would be justified in executing you immediately."
"Stop!" yelled Beldevar. "I will not bandy words with a child." She raised her open hands and deep red force crackled around them, hissing and spitting sparks. "Your flesh will burn away from your bones, little girl..."
"Yeah, right," interrupted Unicorn. She was standing so close that she could have reached over and touched Beldevar. The Witch Queen was taken entirely by surprise and lost her concentration. She whirled and gaped for an instant at the young woman all in white who had crept up on her.
Ashley Whitaker raised the ancient horn overhead and shouted, "With this horn I remove thy power!"
Instantly, the gralic force faded and was gone from around the Melgar woman's hands. Beldevar reeled back a step and stared down at her open hands as if they had betrayed her.
"Hell yeah. The Unicorn strikes again!" Ashley sang out gleefully. "For the next hour, maybe longer, you have no magick powers at all, you old crone!"
Outraged beyond being able to speak, the Witch Queen swiveled the scabbard on her back around to the side so she could draw the greatsword. The Melgarin are a warrior race, and the Beldevar whirled that heavy weapon overhead with ease. There was murder in her eyes.
Ashley jumped back and made a squeaking sound, trying to get her horn to one side so she could reach the dart gun at her belt but stumbling as she fell off the edge of the altar. In that second, the Trom Girl calmly sent the sword twirling away from Beldevar's grasp with a touch of the photon ram beam. The Witch Queen screamed and clutched at her broken wrist with her free hand.
"Whoa, thank you, Megs," said Unicorn as she got her footing again.
Megan aimed the beam projector at the injured Melgar woman. "Considering you were actively trying to murder millions of innocent babies, I think there is no reason to spare your life."
"Do you expect me to plead? To beg for mercy? Never. I am a daughter of Androval and I am Melgar to the bone!" The Witch Queen tightened her hands into fists and lunged headlong into a bolt from the photon ram that crushed her rib cage flat and threw her off the altar as if she had been dropped off a cliff.
"I do not regret that," the Trom Girl said as she turned down the beam projector and clicked it back to the magnetic plate on her belt. "If we extradited her to her own realm, I'm sure that she would have been beheaded for her actions."
"No argument here. She intended to cut me to the wishbone with that thing," Unicorn answered. She had managed to return her talisman into its sheath and snapped the fastener shut. "Well all right then, buddy, do we seem to be done here or what?"
"A few of those Melgar knights are still alive," the Trom Girl observed. "They are not our responsibility. We are facing such a crisis we need to learn how our other teams are doing. We might be needed to help out." She pulled her Link from its holster at the back of her belt and set it to transmit. "Calling Dire Wolf. Trom Girl and Unicorn calling Dire Wolf. Come in, please."
After a few seconds of receiving no answer, she repeated her call with a definite twinge of worry in her usually subdued tone. "Dire Wolf, come in. Captain! Are you there?"
"Maybe it's the batteries," offered Unicorn helpfully. "Try taking them out and putting them back in again."
"Will you be serious!? I don't understand this. Jeremy was supposed to be standing by to recall us as soon as we signalled. What could be wrong?"
Unicorn tugged her fur cap down more snugly on her head, tucking her hair up under it. "Heck, who knows? Looks like you might be flying us back to New York yourself. Two thousand miles with no snacks and no inflight movie."
Megan replaced her Link and came over to seize Ashley around the wait. "You are allowed to joke if you think it appropriate. I am worried. Hold on tightly, I'm going to accelerate to the full speed you can survive."
V.
In the moonlight the white desert sand of Arizona shimmered like water. A bizarre skeletal figure crouched in its black robes, slowly letting colored sand drip from both hands to add to the complex mystic symbols already drawn within a pentacle. Watching from a distance squatted two dark figures bulkier than any Humans.
Tylothrol of Perjena straightened and inspected the blasphemous symbols she had so painstakingly crafted. No living soul knew what those characters signified. Their original meaning had been lost thirty thousand years ago when the face of the Earth had been changed and the Darthan Age brought to an end. She cast back the cowl of her robe and turned to regard the two brutes who served her.
The Nekrosim of Perjena were among the most grotesque of all the Races found in the Midnight War. The hairless heads with protruding brow ledges without eyebrows, the lack of ears and the mere snubs of noses resembled flesh-covered skulls so closely that few normal Humans could bear to be in their presence. The few Nekrosim who had come to the world, from the terrorist Golgora to albino Prophet of Death known as Malacoda to Margil the Death's-Head agent of Nazi Germany, had all brought misery and fear with them. Tylothrol intended to surpass any of them.
For she was not acting alone. The Nekrosan was allied with Beldavar and Emish Tor to commit an act of mass murder breathtaking in its audacity and scope. It was with difficulty that she fought down gloating laughter. The wide lipless mouth grinned as she gestured for her two enormous bodyguards to approach. "Our hour is upon us," she whispered.
Even as she spoke, pale blue light exploded silently not one hunded feet away. Two figures appeared within that flare of gralic energy, transported instantly more than two thousand miles.
Lauren Sable Reilly had arrived with her dart gun already drawn. She got her bearings instantly and aimed the long needle-thin barrel directly at the Witch Queen. "Don't move! Don't speak! Your sick game is over."
Standing beside her was a stocky young black man in a plain cotton T-shirt and jeans. Levon Bingham did have a gunbelt with equipment pouches buckled around his waist, but he made no move toward his own pistol. His full attention was on the two hulking shapes who were advanced out of the shadows toward the newcomers.
Sable had been doing her homework more diligently than the other new Tel Shai knights. Her background as a journalism student had proven to her the importance to research. Now she immediately recognized the two brutes slowly moving to circle around behind them.
"Those are Trolls, Levon," she said evenly. "Fighting Trolls, stronger than gorillas. They have bludgeons of wood bound with iron rings on the end. You handle them. I'll take care of the Witch Queen."
"I suppose," Levon mumbled unhappily. He was of average height but wide-shouldered and thick-waisted. No more than XX years old, he hardly seemed like a match for a pair of common Human thugs, let alone creatures who towered seven feet tall and weighed five hundred pounds apiece. Yet Levon unbuckled his gunbelt and let it drop to the sand. The newest KDF member kicked off his soft slippers and waited for the Trolls to get a little closer.
Then, strangely enough, he began to smile.....
The Nekrosan sorceress shook her head. "Does he hope they will slay him quickly or mercifully. How little he knows! Human fool. Does he realize what Trolls eat when they can get it? Hee hee..!"
The larger of the two monsters swung his bludgeon idly by his side as he approached Levon. The creature's skull rose to a conical point and the tusks in his lower jaw protruded up visibly past his lip. Now that the Troll was almost within reach, Levon saw clearly that the brute's arms were longer than its bandy legs. Both Trolls wore leather harnesses over a mail shirts, but their arms and legs were bare. The naked flat feet and spatulate toes.
Annoyed at the smug smirk on the Witch-Queen's face, Sable told her, "You should know that you face the Cat's-Claw."
At once, that grin fell of the skeletal face. "No. You lie. Everyone knows Wakimbe's Claw has been lost for years."
Sable smiled in her own turn. "Its time has come again. Watch. And fear."
The Troll rumbled deep in its barrel chest and kept lumbering forward, swinging the heavy club back and forth as it approached. Stepping forward to meet the charge, Levon Bingham abruptly dropped to his hands and knees, and his head lowered. In less than a second, the Human body of the young Tel Shai knight swelled up and erupted, more than doubling in size. The Black Lion reared up on its hind legs, its terrifying roar exploding outward into the night air.
Taken by surprise, the Troll stumbled back a few steps and nearly fell. The bludgeon dropped from his thick fingers unheeded. Before the Troll could scream, the Black Lion of ancient Danarak hurled itself full on top of its prey. There was a grisly crunching and the Troll's legs convulsed once before falling still.
Sable felt her throat constrict and a cold lump clutch at her heart. For one second, she felt dizzy enough to sway but caught herself. She had seen the Black Lion before, true, but every appearance of the supernatural beast was like the first time. Sable got control of herself and was stable enough to swing her dart gun back toward Tylothrol. She needn't have bothered. The Nekrosan sorcereress was goggling at the spectacle with her mouth hanging down to her chest.
The Black Lion gripped that tattered corpse in its jaws and swung its head from side to side before hurling the remains away. The glowing green eyes fixed on the second, smaller Troll who reacted in unashamed panic by spinning on his heel and loping away as fast as he possibly could. For a long moment, the gigantic cat watched the fleeing Troll but then turned its attention back to the two women who were just beyond reach.
Lauren Reilly had the presence of mind to have scuffed at the colored sand patterns with her boots, scattering the designs and disrupting the intended spell. "There," she said with obvious satisfaction before glancing up to see the huge black beast regarding both her and Tylothrol with a predatory stare. It was the exact look of deep interest a house cat fixes on a mouse it is stalking.
The Black Lion took one step toward the women, its tail lashing beind it like a whip. Tylothrol gasped and flung up her open hands. Lurid red light swirled darkly around her bony fingers, gathering to strike as a bolt. But she knew in her heart that she had no gralic magick which could harm the overwhelming presence of the god of ancient Danarak. The Nekrosan staggered and fell back into a seated position on the sand, crossing her arms in front of her face pitifully.
Hawking up a mouthful of dark blood, the giant cat spat it to the ground. Those terrible eyes narrowed as he took another step toward the trembling Witch Queen now almost within reach. Sable stepped quickly forward to interpose herself between the hunter and the prey. This was the most difficult act she had ever taken in her young life. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest so hard she worried it would fail. Yet she drew herself up straight, lowered her hands to her sides, stared full into the leonine face as big as her own torso. The Black Lion was so close its steaming hot breath fluttered her hair.
"Don't do it, Levon," she ordered in the calmest voice she could manage. "The fight's over. You don't need to do anything else."
The Black Lion rumbled like thunder deep in its chest. The green eyes shone with a light of their own.
"Levon, listen to me," she said. "It's Sable. Listen to me, the fight is over. Our job is done. You need to change back to Human, right now!"
The ferocious jade eyes slid past Sable to focus on the Nekrosan Witch, who shrank back with visible shuddering. Then the moment passed. The enormous beast shivered and shrank, collapsing into itself to become Human-size and form again. Levon Bingham rose to stand on two feet, then fetched his gunbelt and slid his feet into the discarded slippers. For one alarming second, he gave Tylothrol a glare as if he still intended to bite her head off.
"Are you okay?" Sable rushed over and placed a reassuring hand on each of his shoulders. "For a second there, well, I admit I was worried."
Levon did not meet her eyes. His voice was sullen. "I was worried too. I don't have Bakwanga training like Kwali did. When I become the Black Lion... everything is different. It's like wrestling with primal urges and forces stronger than we are. I don't know if I can rein the Lion in." He let out a deep breath and his body visibly became less tense. "Thanks, Sable. Maybe I need you guys to keep an eye on me."
"You can always count on me. And the others," she promised. "Right now, we need to get our prisoner back for Jeremy to interrogate. I'm dying to find out how the other teams did." Unclipping the Link from its holster at the small of her back, she thumbed a contact patch. "Calling Dire Wolf. Sable and Black Lion calling Dire Wolf. Respond, please."
There was no answer. After thirty seconds, Sable repeated her hail but still heard nothing in reply. "Oh, Levon, I don't like this," she said.
The somber young black man glanced back to make sure Tylothrol was remaining where she was. "Maybe our captain went to help one of the other teams?"
Just then, the crisp voice they knew so well crackled through the Link's speaker. "Dire Wolf here! Hold on, you two, I'm summoning you home." Again, pure blue light swirled like a whirlwind. When it faded, only the ragged corpse of the Troll remained behind in the sand.
VI.
Back in the conference room, Jeremy Bane stepped away from the Eldar travel crystal set in the wall. He had brought all six members of his team and their prisoner back in rapid succession. As the process finished, he exhaled shakily. The mental effort required to use a Gateway crystal even once required more discipline and will power than the average Human could summon. He straightened to face his team.
All six were talking excitedly all the same time, chattering over each other as they tried to fill everyone in on the events. Only Sable noticed the shapeless bundle in the corner.. a dark canvas draped over something about the size and shape of a human being. Lauren Reilly frowned, then noticed that Bane had a thick gauze bandage taped on the back of his right hand. What had been going on here? Before she could ask, the Dire Wolf took control of the situation.
"Quiet down, team!" he snapped. "One at a time. I need clear reports. Josef, you first."
"Emish Tor is dead," said the Blind Archer. "Her part of the spell is broken."
"Good. Megan, you're next."
"Beldevar is also dead, captain. We were in time."
"Good," repeated Bane. "And you, Sable?"
"We managed to bring our prisoner in for questioning," she answered.
The Dire Wolf almost smiled, just the barest hint of his mouth turning upwards. He turned those cold grey eyes on the captured Witch Queen. "Very good! So, Tylothrol, is it? Do you have a statement to make?"
The Nekrosan sorceress had gotten to her feet and now drew herself up defiantly. "Human fools! I will tell you what you will regret hearing. Look at that clock on your wall. It still lacks one minute to midnight. I tell you at that time that the great spell WILL be cast! Miserable Human pups will choke and die all over the lands you occupy. Millions of parents will weep without comfort, and the Dread One himself will reward me with power such as has not been seen in thirty thousand years."
"Aw, you're crazy," scoffed Argent. He waved one hand in a dismissing gesture. "Your two partners in evil are dead. Their conjurations are halted. It's all over, Nekrosan, you're just ranting and raving empty words now."
The hideous skull-face leered more than usual. Under the heavy brow ledge, those dark eyes were gleeful. "How little you know," she hissed. "What Themisar did not know...and what she could not warn you... was that there are in fact Four Witch Queens. Not three, but four. And the most dangerous of us, our secret leader, is still free, still casting the great spell even as you stand there with sudden terror in your hearts."
With her last word, the old-fashioned clock on the wall struck midnight with a single mellow chime.
"Oh, my God..." breathed Sable. "No!"
"Jeremy?" asked Argent, "It can't be true, can it?"
The Dire Wolf stood with folded arms, gazing at the Nekrosan prisoner. "She's tell the truth as she knows it, my brothers and sisters of Tel Shai. There was a fourth member of their coven, a Darthan named Broslinor Kje."
Tylothrol threw back her fleshless head and shrieked with triumph. "AH ha ha! You are too late wise, Human dog. This is the hour of triumph for Dread Draldros."
"I don't think so," Bane continued in the same calm, assured voice. "You don't realize who you're dealing with, lady. I've been fighting the Midnight War for twenty years and I've learned a few tricks. While my team tracked you and your two Witch sisters down, I did some hunting of my own."
The six Tel Shai knights held their breaths, hardly daring to hope.
Tylothrol stared at the Dire Wolf. "Aye, you are known to the children of the night as a cunning foe. Dire Wolf indeed! Yet you must be bluffing now, how could you have guessed...?"
"Experience and instinct," Bane replied. He pointed at the bundled shape in the corner. "You don't have to take my word for it. Argent, would you pull the tarp away?"
Slowly, the young Chujiran warrior walked over and grasped the heavy canvas in both hands. As everyone watched in silence, he flung it aside. There, sprawled on a rubber mat, was the thin body of an albino-skinned woman with pointed ears and fine milk-white hair. Blood had dried where it had trickled from a wound right in the center of her chest. Even in death, her green eyes glared with startling hatred.
"Broslinor Kje," announced Bane grimly. "She put up a vicious fight, but you can see how it ended."
The Witch Queen of Perjena cried and fell to her knees, sobbing with frustration and rage.
3/22-2000-Rev 7/29/2017
4/22-4/23/2000
I.
At twenty after nine, a dying woman sprawled on the stoop of the old stone building on East 38th Street in Manhatttan. Dark blood seeped out from her chest onto the steps beneath her.
As she had stumbled onto the steps, proximity alarms had sounded in the headquarters buildings and its occupants had gone on alert. Within a few seconds, the massive front door swung open and a tall thin man dressed in black appeared. Jeremy Bane scooped up the wounded woman and was back inside the foyer, the door closing behind him, so quickly that any passerby might have missed the movement. Passing through the foyer into the front hall, Bane carried her into the open doorway of the KDF's emergency room and lowered her onto one of the three regulation hospital beds. All six members of his team had been in the building and were gathering in the doorway to watch.
"Keep back but stand by for instructions," the Dire Wolf snapped. Under heavy dark brows, the grey eyes were more intense than ever. Bane snatched a pair of blue latex gloves from a box fastened to the wall just inside the door. "The bleeding first. Megan! Insert a standard saline IV into the back of her hand, then take a sample to determine her blood type." He ripped her coarse wool tunic open to reveal the upper torso. "Three vertical incisions, deep, knife wounds I'd say. Upper chest and abdomen. Let's clean it up a little with some gauze. Sheng! Call the clinic next door and see if Dr Wright has left yet. I know he had overnight duty at Metro."
"Yes, captain."
As Bane worked, he said, "Two of these wounds aren't bad but the third is deeper. Looks like it might have nicked a lung. Megan, we need a nasal oxygen clip."
As the Trom girl complied, fastening the clear plastic clip in the woman's nose and turning on the oxygen, she said, "Her blood checks as type O, nothing significantly strange about it. She is a Melgar."
"That's good," Bane said as he worked. "Stronger than Human, better able to deal with injury. Melgarin are as tough as they come."
"Dr Wright answered, he's on his way," Sheng called from the doorway.
"Good. I've got combat medic training but this is a bit serious for me to handle," Bane said. "The bleeding's under control. I don't see where any arteries were compromised. Megan, how are her vitals?"
Without being instructed, the Trom Girl had swung a monitor screen overhead and lowered it to face level. It took readings without the necessity for attached leads. "Everything looks acceptable, captain. Pulse fast but steady. Blood pressure low but within norms. Brain wave patterns are agitated but that's understandable. EKG reading coming up... it's erratic. She is in shock, after all."
"I think her main problem now is loss of blood," the Dire Wolf said as he peeled off the latex gloves and went to a stainless steel sink to scrub his hands with hot water. "Team, a wounded Melgar at our door means a crisis. I want everyone in full field suits and ready for immediate action. Report to the conference room in five minutes. All except you, Sable, your powers might be needed for the interrogation."
The front door swung inward and Bane's closest friend, his most trusted ally in the Midnight War, hurried in. Thaddeus James Wright was a middle-aged black man with heavy, sad features and a beard well sprinkled with grey. Even though he knew how well the KDF emergency ward was stocked, he had automatically brought his satchel.
"Ted!" said Bane from just inside the emergency room. "Glad you could make it. You've met Sable, I think."
"A few times," the Blue Guide said. He immediately moved over to inspect the woman in the regulation bed, studying her with dark eyes that had an inexplicable blue glint in their depths. He made the deep "Hmmm" sound of doctors through the ages.
As Bane explained the situation in detail, Wright began his own examination. His Tel Shai art of Kerwandu enabled him to perceive weakness or injury in living beings and to use gralic force to strengthen those areas. This was what made him such a highly valued diagnostician in the metropolitan area. Watching him from arm's length, Sable was fascinated. She knew that Ted Wright had been a founding member of the Kenneth Dred Foundation twenty years earlier and that he was one of only three to still survive. She knew that he was in fact an actual doctor, an MD specializing in trauma surgery and recently used for quick diagnoses by a half dozen hospitals and clinics. Sable was immensely taken by Wright's air of competence and assurance, and she was further impressed seeing how Bane visibly relaxed when the Blue Guide took over responsibility.
After a few more minutes, Wright straightened up and rubbed his chin somberly. "She's out of immediate danger, Jeremy. You did all the right things under the circumstances. Let me see the X-Rays."
"No X-Rays yet," Bane answered. "I was relying on the Trom sensor scans."
"Even better. I know this is going to be a waste of time, old friend, but have you called the police? Is an ambulance on the way?"
"You know better than that," Bane said. "Our treaty with Androval, remember? Any Melgar renegades we capture get repatriated to Androval as soon as possible. If a hospital got hold of her, she would never be released because she can't possibly be identified. We'd have to abduct her at some point for repatriation... or King Holmir would send a squad of Melgar swordsmen to fetch her."
A sharpness crept into Wright's voice. "Aside from the limited medical care she can receive here, there's the law to consider. I know we're working under Midnight War ethics, Jeremy, but still...."
"Ted, this is serious. She came here wounded, desperate to warn us about something. All my instincts say that something big and dangerous in underway. We need to find out why. Sable here has enhanced senses. She can read eye movements under closed lids, smell chemical traces in perspiration and detect subvocal tremors. I want her standing by when we question this Melgar."
"What? This woman is not in any condition to be interrogated."
"It's my call. We have to find out why she came here. Stabbed and fading fast, she still forced herself here to KDF headquarters. Whatever she wanted to tell us, it must be critical. The Midnight War is still on, Ted."
"I don't like it... but I know you're right." The Blue Guide shook his head and held up his hands in angry resignantion. "In effect, we work under battlefield conditions. All right. Let's get it over with."
As Sable and Bane stood nearby, Wright bent over the unconscious woman and drew on his mystic discipline. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply in a Tel Shai pattern, his hands folded in front of his chest in a prayer gesture. Pale blue light shimmered around the woman in a beautiful nimbus. She sighed and mumbled, "Witch Queens..."
"Yes," the Blue Guide said soothingly, "Tell us all about the Witch Queens."
Four minutes later, Wright placed the woman into a deep, healing sleep which would last for hours. He rubbed his eyes and turned to Bane. "Your new team sure has its work cut out for it, Jeremy."
"They'll step up," the Dire Wolf said. "We have no choice. Are you coming in on this, Ted?"
"I can't," answered the Blue Guide in a heavy tone. "I have to get back to Metropolitan General. I have patients there, it's a responsibilty I took. In any case, this task calls for fighters. I'll send my Kerwandu student Lexi here to watch over the patient until I can return."
"Lexi's a good person," Bane admitted. "I guess she'll be taking over for you at some point."
Wright nodded, still gazing down somberly at the patient sleeping in front of them. "We arrange for our successors. Just as you have done. I have faith in your six newcomers, Jeremy... even though they look like children to me at this point."
"I know, I know. Thanks for everything, old friend. You've done more good than the world can ever know."
Wright adusted his smock, took a deep weary breath and started for the door. "Say, where is Cindy, anyway? She could be checking this woman's mental state."
"Cin is staying at Tel Shai for a while," Bane said. "Until the new team is launched. She said her telepathy would be constantly helping them and they'd never be ready to stand on their own."
"She knows what she's talking about. As always." Wright finally put a hand on the door jamb and stepped out into the hall. "I'll be sending Lexi here to take over. It'll be a few hours before I can return."
The Dire Wolf joined him in the front hall. "Thanks again, Ted. I have to go send the new kids on their assignment right now, we don't have any time to spare." With that, even as the Blue Guide saw himself out, Bane rushed up the wide staircase to the second floor where the conference room waited.
II.
At the long oak table which took up much of the conference room, generations of heroes had assembled for more than eighty years. Before Kenneth Dred, Dr Mercado Vitarius had gathered his allies here. Now, six new Tel Shai knights took their seats and anxiously awaited their captain.
Except for one. With his usual brashness, Sheng Mo-Yuan leaned back in the captain's chair at the head of the table. He toyed with the small gavel which rested on its stand. "I look natural here, don't I?" he asked. "You might say, this is where I belong--"
He broke off and quickly vacated the seat as Jeremy Bane and Lauren Reilly entered the room. Both had changed into the black field suits, carrying their helmets. The young Chujiran dropped in his assigned spot and tried to look nonchalant as Sable took the chair next to him and leaned over to whisper, "You're a jerk."
Standing at the head of the table, the Dire Wolf said, "I call this meeting to order. Team, this is a major crisis and we must act immediately. Let me brief you with the little we know before you leave on your assigments. The woman in our emergency ward is named Themisar. She is a Melgar from the adjacent realm of Androval, one of the Cousin Races to Humans. This Themisar claims to have been an apprentice to a sorceress named Lady Beldevar.
"Themisar was dabbling in the typical bloodthirsty black magick practices of Draldros worshippers when she discovered what Beldevar was planning. It was simply too appalling for her to go along with, so at great risk to herself, she managed to come to the world to warn us. To escape from Androval, she had to kill the fellow acolyte who was paired with her. In doing so, Themisar herself was stabbed."
"How did she even know about us?" broke in Argent.
Bane paused and gazed over at the Chujiran with those pale intense eyes. "Oh, we knights of Tel Shai are well known in the Midnight War. Both Sulak and Valera have worked with us as Associate KDF members. No more interruptions. Beldevar has formed an alliance with sorceresses from two other Races, Emish Tor of Ulgor and Tylothrol from Perjena. They call themselves the Three Witch Queens. Tonight they begin their ritual to begin what is the most vile agenda I've ever encountered. Listen closely.
"At midnight, their concerted spells will spread a wave of deadly gralic energy over the world, claiming millions of victims. The release of Human life force from the deaths will be channeled to Draldros himself, who feeds on it. In return, the Three Witch Queens expected to be rewarded with increased powers for themselves, including extended lifespans bordering on immortality." Bane's taut voice grew even more stern than usual. "At midnight, the three sorceresses will cast the spell from three different locations... and all over the world, its shock wave will murder millions of newborns. In every country, babies up to three days old will simply stop breathing."
The six members of his team stared with widened eyes as his words sank in. No one spoke. They all leaned forward and waited for him to continue. "As you can see, there is not much time to act. This is why there are knights of Tel Shai. This is what you all have signed up to fight. We have no time for preparations. It's ten forty-five right now. I am going to send you in pairs to where the Three Witch Queens are at work and you must stop them, whatever it takes to do so. Stand up. First team will be Argent and Blind Archer...."
III.
In a noiseless flash of transcendental blue light, two men in black appeared in a lonely beach along the North Carolina coast. The full moon blazed in a cloudless night sky filled with stars. The Tel Shai knight who called himself Argent caught himself and got his footing. Sheng Mo-Yuan was a twenty-two year old warrior whom most people took for Northern Chinese but he was actually from the realm of Chujir whose inhabitants claimed to be ancestors of the Han people. His gift was to channel gralic force into his body to increase either strength or speed or resistance to harm.. but only one trait at a time. He had been sponsored by a former KDF member who had taken up her permanent residence in Chujir, his teacher Tang Ming.
Beside him, Josef Jubilec held up a hand for silence. As Sheng watched with what little patience he had, the Blind Archer closed his eyes and cocked his head. Raised by the Blind Archers of the same Chujir where Sheng had been born, Josef had mastered that sect's strange ability to enhance his perceptions by cutting off his vision. The Blind Archers were greatly feared since they could sense life force in total darkness, rain or fog. Their arrows never missed. After a long moment, Josef opened his dark blue eyes and scowled. "There are life forms only half a mile away. Just beyond that bend in the beach. And there is black magick in this area, Sheng."
"There's no time for a clever plan, Josef," the young Chuiran whispered. "So much is at stake! I say we charge in, run right over the Witch Queen and whatever stooges she has, and save those babies. Sound good to you?"
"Exactly." The Blind Archer strung the longbow he had crafted himself, tested its pull and nodded to his partner. "We do whatever needs to be done."
They both took off along the beach at a quick easy lope they could maintain for hours. Of all the members of the new KDF team, these two worked best together. They were both action-oriented, serious and confident. They had more experience in dangerous situations than their teammates. Their common background of having grown up in Chujir was another bond between them, in language and customs and cuisine preferences.
As Josef sensed they were nearly upon the enemy, the two Tel Shai knights slowed their pace and took cover behind some rounded boulders near the water. With painstaking care, they each took a turn peering around the rocks down by the ground. A rough wooden platform had been constructed, its one end protruding out over the ocean like a pirate's plank. On this plank was a frame supporting a gong three feet across, made of the copper-colored metal Gremthom used by sorcerers throughout history. Within the past few minutes, a wind had picked up and the flames of the torches at each corner of the structure flickered wildly.
Standing near the gong, wrapped in sopping wet black robes with voluminous sleeves, was the obese round form of Emish Tor. The Witch Queen of sunken Ulgor held an elaborate ceremonial mallet with a curved haft in one bloated hand. Emish Tor was one of the Gelydrim who resembled normal Humans more than most of their Race. Only the bristling seal-fur texture of her white hair and her damp clammy skin seemed odd.
Kneeling before her in obeisance, hands holding his spear upright, a sole Gelydra fighter posed with bowed head. He was wearing the infamous shark-hide tunic and leggings of Ulgor, worn with the rough denticles on the outside so that anyone touching him would be scraped raw.
"What are we waiting for?" Sheng grunted and proved it was a rhetorical question by immediately jumping to his feet and racing toward the platform. With his gralic charge focussed into speed, he crossed the distance quicker than anything else on two legs except possibly the Dire Wolf himself. He was a dark blur in the moonlight.
Rising himself, Josef reached back behind him to the Y-shaped leather quiver across his back. Against Human foes, the Blind Archer often chose either arrows with round hard-rubber tips or needle tips containing the KDF's potent anesthetic. But Josef was raised to be an assassin, killing enemies did not trouble him in the least, and these Three Witch Queens were trying to murder millions of helpless infants around the world. He did not see how they merited any mercy. His arrow had a steel-barbed head.
The Gelydra spotted Argent's lightning-fast charge and he had just enough time to raise his spear before an arrow thumped home into the left side of his chest. Dropping backward from the impact, the dying guard tumbled off the platform and fell limp to the damp sand.
High overhead, the moon abruptly turned a deep ominous red. Wind gusted violently and thunder rolled close at hand. The spell was taking hold.
Seeing her acolyte slain, Emish Tor gave on a fleeting glimpse to the onrushing Sheng Mo-Yuan. She struck the gong. Its deep peal rang out over the Atlantic and echoed down the beach. As Argent came almost within reach of the Witch Queen from Ulgor, an immense misshapen hulk heaved up out of the water and flung itself right into his path.
Still new to the Midnight War, Argent was not familiar with all the beasts and creatures he might encounter. He had never heard of a malak before one was on top of him. It had the long body of a mako shark, nine feet long, held parallel to the ground as it lurched forward on thick Human-like legs which ended in three-toed taloned feet. The malak had short, massive arms with three-fingered clawed paws. In that ferocious shark head, the red-glinting eyes sparked with hateful intelligence.
Unnatural hybrids given life by the Darthan Kje ages ago, the malakim were too ferocious to ever be tamed or controlled. Their purpose was to be released into the waters around Maroch or on its beaches in case of invasion. At some point, malakim had escaped into the world's oceans where they survive to this day in limited numbers. They were savage beyond the predatory instincts of natural sharks. Even an adept like Emish Tor took a terrible risk keeping a malak close at hand.
At the first glimpse of the dark bulk looming up over him, Argent instinctively shifted his focus from speed into durability. It was a split-second decision that saved his life. Gralic force surged through his body reinforcing muscle and bone and tendons, making him dense as stone. A thousand pounds of sharkbeast came down on him with crushing impact. Even as he was crushed to the sand, Sheng thrust his right arm straight into the malak's gaping maw. The malak tore at him with its clawed paws, shredding the field suit into tatters while Sheng concentrated on jamming his arm as deep down the monster's throat as he could. He could not have explained why he was trying this, it was just deep primal instinct to survive.
"You will feast well, my little pet!" shrieked the Ulgoran sorceress. Emish Tor raised her open hands in triumph and abruptly gasped as an arrow sliced through her forearm. It scraped the bone without being stopped and emerged with half its length protruding from the other side of her arm. The ceremonial mallet dropped and was forgotten as the Witch Queen gripped her wounded arm with her free hand. Tough as the Gelydrim were, she wailed from the unexpected pain and shock.
Josef Jubilec stepped over to where she could see him. He had already notched a second arrow and drawn the bowstring back behind his ear without seeming ease. "Not a word!" he ordered. "Not a gesture. I promise you that you won't even feel the next one."
"Human scum!" she yelled. "How dare you! Oh Dread One, oh Grelok who lives beneath the waves, hear me-" Her voice cut off with the rasp of her final breath. Three feet of a slim wooden shaft had slid exactly into her heart. She sagged and then collapsed utterly without even trying to catch herself.
As the Witch Queen died, high overhead the moon was cleansed to its normal clean silver color. The gale died down and the feeling of oppressive disaster faded away instantly. The Blind Archer lowered his bow and raised the headband that had served as blindfold, and his face was impassive.
Four of the longest minutes of Argent's life seemed like hours as he struggled with the malak. He did not dare shift his power to strength for any attempt to struggle with the beast. During that second of transition, he would been torn apart. Sheng concentrated on staying impervious. Then he began to notice something hopeful.
The sharkbeast was choking. Sheng had wedged his arm so deeply into the brute's gullet that it couldn't breathe. For another minute, they both thrashed about and then the gigantic beast convulsed and went limp. Argent waited until he was certain, but it was true. The malak had died.
Sheng Mo-Yuan wriggled loose from beneath the carcass and dragged his arm out of the creature's mouth with some difficulty. There was not much left of his field suit. His skin had not been broken anywhere but his entire body ached from having been thrown about so violently.
Loping up, Josef said, "Glad you survived. You beat the malak."
"Of course," Argent managed to put his usual smugness in his voice. Getting to his feet, he gave the huge carcass a hard kick. "Too tough for your diet, eh, you stupid monster? That'll teach you." He glanced over at the Blind Archer. "And what about the Witch Queen."
"She's dead," Josef answered simply. "I only hope the other teams had as much success as we did."
The young Chujiran's breathing had settled down to normal. "Yes. We're done here, Josef. We should contact our captain and see if the other teams could use our help."
"I'm on it." Josef took the Link from his belt and set it to transmit. "Calling Dire Wolf. Blind Archer and Argent calling Dire Wolf. "Come in." After a tense twenty seconds, he repeated his call. "Come in, please. Jeremy, are you there?"
"Is that gadget working?"
"It's Trom technology, nothing is more reliable. The signal is going out." Josef had raised his head band and his dark blue eyes were narrowed. "Our captain said to report immediately. He should be at base waiting."
"Whatever he's doing, we have no other transport home," Sheng said. "I feel really unhappy about this, Josef. I think the worst is yet to come."
IV.
Pure blue light burst without a sound over a twisting footpath high in the Rocky Mountains. Two women appeared from nowhere within its flare. The first one, a tiny platinum-blonde dressed all in white, happened to materialize with one foot touching the ground. She got her bearings as easily as if stepping down off a curb and smiled as she straightened up.
Megan Salenger had a more awkward arrival. She emerged through the Gateway two feet above the path, dropped off balance and tumbled headlong down the icy slope with an outraged gasp. Her teammate watched her roll away without noticeable concern. "Hey you, stop fooling around!" Ashley called.
Raised from infancy by the Trom to be a liaison with the Human race, Megan quickly regained her poise. She was wearing the full field suit, complete with visored helmet, and in the palms of her gloves were controls for her suit's gravity shield disc. At once, she lifted up off the ground and hovered with her boots just clearing the surface. Turning on her vertical axis, she glided smoothly back up the hill to where Unicorn was waiting, tapping one foot.
The visor on Megan's helmet was raised, revealing a fringe of black hair over serious dark eyes and sharp inquisitive features. Despite a lifetime of training to repress emotion and always be rational, obvious annoyance showed on her face as she landed next to her partner. Not that Unicorn noticed.
Ashley Whitaker was one inch over five feet tall, slim and just curvy enough, with long straight hair so blonde it was white. In complete contrast to Megan's black operations suit, Ashley was dressed all in white. Ski boots, snug pants and a down-filled waist-length jacket. A knitted wool cap sat precariously at an angle atop her head and she was wearing thin wool gloves. She had her Unicorn horn strapped across her back in its leather sheath. Watching the Trom Girl alight next to her, Unicorn smiled as blithely as ever.
All my training is a failure, Megan thought as she brushed snow off her legs. I should be above petty annoyances but somehow Ashley has been getting on my nerves lately. Perhaps they had simply been teamed up too often by Sable.
Pointing further up the trail, Ashley said, "Okay, time to get serious, science nerd. We have to start looking for the bad guys."
Tapping the left ear pod of her helmet, Megan listened to the readings. "We are in Colorado, sixty-three miles from Denver. My satellite link locates us exactly where Jeremy intended us to arrive. Wait. Ashley, you're not in your field suit?"
"Naw, we were in such a hurry that I didn't change. My hat and gloves were in the pockets of my jacket, lucky huh?"
"Unicorn," said Megan with an attempt to keep her voice even, "Do you have ANY equipment with you?"
"Oh, sure. I was already wearing the flexible armor under my clothes. I grabbed my utility belt with the dart gun, it has pouches with some gear and my Link. That way, I'm always ready. Anyway, I knew you'd be packing enough gadgets and gimmicks for both of us, right?"
Megan sighed inaudibly and let it go. There was no use being angry at Ashley. The little blonde was so self-assured that she never considered the possibility anyone could dislike her. In many ways, this was justified. Between her looks and her genuine friendliness, most people did warm to her at once.
Unsnapping the catch on the sheath across her back, Ashley drew the long spiral horn out and inspected it carefully. The horn of an actual Unicorn beast from Okali, the talisman was capped at its flat base with an ensalir disc. It had been ensorcelled ages ago by the Eldarin themselves to disperse gralic attacks, undo malicious spells and remove unnatural abilities. Unlike her teammates, Ashley had no true extra-human powers of her own. It was wielding the horn that qualified her to be a Tel Shai knight and a KDF member.
"Mmmm. My baby's warm to the touch," she told Megan. "That's a bad sign, it means we're near gralic energy which is harmful. This thing is like an early warning system. We need to be on our toes, Megsy."
"Please don't call me 'Megsy,'" the Trom Girl said distractedly. She was taking readings on her hand-held sensor. "Just a second. I'm picking up six life forms, Human or near Human, four miles northwest of our position. Just over that crest, you see it? Massive levels of gralic activity. I have a high degree of certainty that Beldevar is there."
Ashley pretended to spit on her gloves and rub them together, "Awrighty, let's tackle her. My nose is starting to run and I hate that."
The Trom Girl frowned at her teammate. "We should approach from different directions, attack simultaneously and have the element of surprise--"
"No, no, no, no. I am NOT gonna trudge through deep snow for miles. Carry me. We'll fly in fast, I'll disrupt her magick and we'll be home warm and dry in half an hour."
To her own dismay, Megan Salenger nearly lost her temper. What could have happened to my discipline, she thought, I am on the verge of shouting in anger. "Look. Ashley, please. If you object, I can come back for you after I handle this Witch Queen myself."
"Wrong. You need my Unicorn horn to deal with her gralic powers." Ashley almost stamped a foot in her anger. "Come on, Meg, let's not have a spat. Pick me up and let's go."
"Very well. We need to work together," the Trom Girl admitted. She reluctantly circled an arm around the blonde girl's narrow waist and Ashley draped her own arm across Megan's shoulders. Triggering the gravity shield, Megan lifted clear off the snow and leveled off at head height. She accelerated slowly at first to give her partner a chance to adjust, then sped up as they rushed over the white landscape.
In a clearing fifty yards across, five Melgar warriors had set up a strange altar. It was a raised platform of rough wooden beams, draped with overlapping black cloths inlaid with esoteric red symbols. At each corner of the structure was a set of polished bull horns on a post. Torches flared erratically in the mountain winds, and standing in their uncertain light was a dramatic figure in chain mail.
Like many Melgar women, Beldevar was tall, over six feet in height, well built and athletic. The oiled mail of her tunic and leggings glistened in the torchlight. Beldevar wore a six-foot longsword in a scabbard across her back. Her head was uncovered and the long yellow hair whipped wildly in the winds. The Witch Queen was chanting a spell in the language that had been passed down from the Corruption on Ulgor itself, when the Midnight War had begun thirty thousand years earlier.
Standing vigil near the altar were the five Melgar warriors, stout men in mail, wearing heavy linen tabbards that bore the white horse symbol of Androval. Each brandished a thin throwing spear with a barbed blade, and each had either an axe or a long dagger sheathed at their waists. Androval had a warlike culture and they were stronger and more difficult to injure than Humans; inhabitants of the other realms regarded the Melgarin with with caution and tread carefully when dealing with them.
Just before they would be spotted, Megan swooped low and released her partner without warning. Unicorn fell into the deep snow gracelessly, her rear end up in the air before she scrambled to her feet and brushed herself off indignantly. The Trom Girl was not noticed that. She was flying directly at the altar, picking up speed as she went.
Reaching to her belt, Megan drew the beam projector. A small flat metal device, she had inserted the photon ram clip earlier and adjusted its intensity. As the Melgarin saw her, even those hardened veterans of wars and duels were startled and uncertain how to react. Here was a young girl hurtling at them six feet off the ground, coming at them faster than a arrow.
Beldevar paused in her incantation. "Fools! Strike her down."
That moment of doubt proved fatal to the Melgarin. The Trom Girl triggered her device and a pale beam of kinetic energy flickered into the knights with lethal impact. Bones snapped cleanly, arms and legs were broken and three of the Melgarin were flung in all directions without having a chance to defend themselves.
To their credit, neither of the remaining warriors tried to flee or showed any signs of fear. One drew back his arm and let fly the six-foot spear with coolness and accuracy. Megan swerved in mid-air, twisting her body as nimbly as an ice skater, and the weapon got nowhere near her. The photon ram caught that Melgar full in the face, swinging his head back so far that the sound of his neck breaking was clearly heard by everyone. A second later, the final Melgar knight was struck down by a barely visible stroke of light as if he had been crushed by a boulder from a catapult.
As Beldevar raged and cursed, Megan swooped closer, dropping her legs to land lightly on her feet in front of the Witch Queen. Unnoticed in her all-white suit against snow in moonlight, Ashley crept smoothly toward the altar from one side. She had been raised from childhood to be the second Unicorn by her mother and was remarkably stealthy when she wanted to be.
"So Themisar must have survived," said the Melgar sorceress. "She managed to reach you Tel Shai swine after all!"
"This is the end of your scheme." The Trom Girl stood at ease, speaking with understated certainty. "Your partners in mass murder are being apprehended right now. I am not sure why I am even offering you an opportunity to surrender. I would be justified in executing you immediately."
"Stop!" yelled Beldevar. "I will not bandy words with a child." She raised her open hands and deep red force crackled around them, hissing and spitting sparks. "Your flesh will burn away from your bones, little girl..."
"Yeah, right," interrupted Unicorn. She was standing so close that she could have reached over and touched Beldevar. The Witch Queen was taken entirely by surprise and lost her concentration. She whirled and gaped for an instant at the young woman all in white who had crept up on her.
Ashley Whitaker raised the ancient horn overhead and shouted, "With this horn I remove thy power!"
Instantly, the gralic force faded and was gone from around the Melgar woman's hands. Beldevar reeled back a step and stared down at her open hands as if they had betrayed her.
"Hell yeah. The Unicorn strikes again!" Ashley sang out gleefully. "For the next hour, maybe longer, you have no magick powers at all, you old crone!"
Outraged beyond being able to speak, the Witch Queen swiveled the scabbard on her back around to the side so she could draw the greatsword. The Melgarin are a warrior race, and the Beldevar whirled that heavy weapon overhead with ease. There was murder in her eyes.
Ashley jumped back and made a squeaking sound, trying to get her horn to one side so she could reach the dart gun at her belt but stumbling as she fell off the edge of the altar. In that second, the Trom Girl calmly sent the sword twirling away from Beldevar's grasp with a touch of the photon ram beam. The Witch Queen screamed and clutched at her broken wrist with her free hand.
"Whoa, thank you, Megs," said Unicorn as she got her footing again.
Megan aimed the beam projector at the injured Melgar woman. "Considering you were actively trying to murder millions of innocent babies, I think there is no reason to spare your life."
"Do you expect me to plead? To beg for mercy? Never. I am a daughter of Androval and I am Melgar to the bone!" The Witch Queen tightened her hands into fists and lunged headlong into a bolt from the photon ram that crushed her rib cage flat and threw her off the altar as if she had been dropped off a cliff.
"I do not regret that," the Trom Girl said as she turned down the beam projector and clicked it back to the magnetic plate on her belt. "If we extradited her to her own realm, I'm sure that she would have been beheaded for her actions."
"No argument here. She intended to cut me to the wishbone with that thing," Unicorn answered. She had managed to return her talisman into its sheath and snapped the fastener shut. "Well all right then, buddy, do we seem to be done here or what?"
"A few of those Melgar knights are still alive," the Trom Girl observed. "They are not our responsibility. We are facing such a crisis we need to learn how our other teams are doing. We might be needed to help out." She pulled her Link from its holster at the back of her belt and set it to transmit. "Calling Dire Wolf. Trom Girl and Unicorn calling Dire Wolf. Come in, please."
After a few seconds of receiving no answer, she repeated her call with a definite twinge of worry in her usually subdued tone. "Dire Wolf, come in. Captain! Are you there?"
"Maybe it's the batteries," offered Unicorn helpfully. "Try taking them out and putting them back in again."
"Will you be serious!? I don't understand this. Jeremy was supposed to be standing by to recall us as soon as we signalled. What could be wrong?"
Unicorn tugged her fur cap down more snugly on her head, tucking her hair up under it. "Heck, who knows? Looks like you might be flying us back to New York yourself. Two thousand miles with no snacks and no inflight movie."
Megan replaced her Link and came over to seize Ashley around the wait. "You are allowed to joke if you think it appropriate. I am worried. Hold on tightly, I'm going to accelerate to the full speed you can survive."
V.
In the moonlight the white desert sand of Arizona shimmered like water. A bizarre skeletal figure crouched in its black robes, slowly letting colored sand drip from both hands to add to the complex mystic symbols already drawn within a pentacle. Watching from a distance squatted two dark figures bulkier than any Humans.
Tylothrol of Perjena straightened and inspected the blasphemous symbols she had so painstakingly crafted. No living soul knew what those characters signified. Their original meaning had been lost thirty thousand years ago when the face of the Earth had been changed and the Darthan Age brought to an end. She cast back the cowl of her robe and turned to regard the two brutes who served her.
The Nekrosim of Perjena were among the most grotesque of all the Races found in the Midnight War. The hairless heads with protruding brow ledges without eyebrows, the lack of ears and the mere snubs of noses resembled flesh-covered skulls so closely that few normal Humans could bear to be in their presence. The few Nekrosim who had come to the world, from the terrorist Golgora to albino Prophet of Death known as Malacoda to Margil the Death's-Head agent of Nazi Germany, had all brought misery and fear with them. Tylothrol intended to surpass any of them.
For she was not acting alone. The Nekrosan was allied with Beldavar and Emish Tor to commit an act of mass murder breathtaking in its audacity and scope. It was with difficulty that she fought down gloating laughter. The wide lipless mouth grinned as she gestured for her two enormous bodyguards to approach. "Our hour is upon us," she whispered.
Even as she spoke, pale blue light exploded silently not one hunded feet away. Two figures appeared within that flare of gralic energy, transported instantly more than two thousand miles.
Lauren Sable Reilly had arrived with her dart gun already drawn. She got her bearings instantly and aimed the long needle-thin barrel directly at the Witch Queen. "Don't move! Don't speak! Your sick game is over."
Standing beside her was a stocky young black man in a plain cotton T-shirt and jeans. Levon Bingham did have a gunbelt with equipment pouches buckled around his waist, but he made no move toward his own pistol. His full attention was on the two hulking shapes who were advanced out of the shadows toward the newcomers.
Sable had been doing her homework more diligently than the other new Tel Shai knights. Her background as a journalism student had proven to her the importance to research. Now she immediately recognized the two brutes slowly moving to circle around behind them.
"Those are Trolls, Levon," she said evenly. "Fighting Trolls, stronger than gorillas. They have bludgeons of wood bound with iron rings on the end. You handle them. I'll take care of the Witch Queen."
"I suppose," Levon mumbled unhappily. He was of average height but wide-shouldered and thick-waisted. No more than XX years old, he hardly seemed like a match for a pair of common Human thugs, let alone creatures who towered seven feet tall and weighed five hundred pounds apiece. Yet Levon unbuckled his gunbelt and let it drop to the sand. The newest KDF member kicked off his soft slippers and waited for the Trolls to get a little closer.
Then, strangely enough, he began to smile.....
The Nekrosan sorceress shook her head. "Does he hope they will slay him quickly or mercifully. How little he knows! Human fool. Does he realize what Trolls eat when they can get it? Hee hee..!"
The larger of the two monsters swung his bludgeon idly by his side as he approached Levon. The creature's skull rose to a conical point and the tusks in his lower jaw protruded up visibly past his lip. Now that the Troll was almost within reach, Levon saw clearly that the brute's arms were longer than its bandy legs. Both Trolls wore leather harnesses over a mail shirts, but their arms and legs were bare. The naked flat feet and spatulate toes.
Annoyed at the smug smirk on the Witch-Queen's face, Sable told her, "You should know that you face the Cat's-Claw."
At once, that grin fell of the skeletal face. "No. You lie. Everyone knows Wakimbe's Claw has been lost for years."
Sable smiled in her own turn. "Its time has come again. Watch. And fear."
The Troll rumbled deep in its barrel chest and kept lumbering forward, swinging the heavy club back and forth as it approached. Stepping forward to meet the charge, Levon Bingham abruptly dropped to his hands and knees, and his head lowered. In less than a second, the Human body of the young Tel Shai knight swelled up and erupted, more than doubling in size. The Black Lion reared up on its hind legs, its terrifying roar exploding outward into the night air.
Taken by surprise, the Troll stumbled back a few steps and nearly fell. The bludgeon dropped from his thick fingers unheeded. Before the Troll could scream, the Black Lion of ancient Danarak hurled itself full on top of its prey. There was a grisly crunching and the Troll's legs convulsed once before falling still.
Sable felt her throat constrict and a cold lump clutch at her heart. For one second, she felt dizzy enough to sway but caught herself. She had seen the Black Lion before, true, but every appearance of the supernatural beast was like the first time. Sable got control of herself and was stable enough to swing her dart gun back toward Tylothrol. She needn't have bothered. The Nekrosan sorcereress was goggling at the spectacle with her mouth hanging down to her chest.
The Black Lion gripped that tattered corpse in its jaws and swung its head from side to side before hurling the remains away. The glowing green eyes fixed on the second, smaller Troll who reacted in unashamed panic by spinning on his heel and loping away as fast as he possibly could. For a long moment, the gigantic cat watched the fleeing Troll but then turned its attention back to the two women who were just beyond reach.
Lauren Reilly had the presence of mind to have scuffed at the colored sand patterns with her boots, scattering the designs and disrupting the intended spell. "There," she said with obvious satisfaction before glancing up to see the huge black beast regarding both her and Tylothrol with a predatory stare. It was the exact look of deep interest a house cat fixes on a mouse it is stalking.
The Black Lion took one step toward the women, its tail lashing beind it like a whip. Tylothrol gasped and flung up her open hands. Lurid red light swirled darkly around her bony fingers, gathering to strike as a bolt. But she knew in her heart that she had no gralic magick which could harm the overwhelming presence of the god of ancient Danarak. The Nekrosan staggered and fell back into a seated position on the sand, crossing her arms in front of her face pitifully.
Hawking up a mouthful of dark blood, the giant cat spat it to the ground. Those terrible eyes narrowed as he took another step toward the trembling Witch Queen now almost within reach. Sable stepped quickly forward to interpose herself between the hunter and the prey. This was the most difficult act she had ever taken in her young life. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest so hard she worried it would fail. Yet she drew herself up straight, lowered her hands to her sides, stared full into the leonine face as big as her own torso. The Black Lion was so close its steaming hot breath fluttered her hair.
"Don't do it, Levon," she ordered in the calmest voice she could manage. "The fight's over. You don't need to do anything else."
The Black Lion rumbled like thunder deep in its chest. The green eyes shone with a light of their own.
"Levon, listen to me," she said. "It's Sable. Listen to me, the fight is over. Our job is done. You need to change back to Human, right now!"
The ferocious jade eyes slid past Sable to focus on the Nekrosan Witch, who shrank back with visible shuddering. Then the moment passed. The enormous beast shivered and shrank, collapsing into itself to become Human-size and form again. Levon Bingham rose to stand on two feet, then fetched his gunbelt and slid his feet into the discarded slippers. For one alarming second, he gave Tylothrol a glare as if he still intended to bite her head off.
"Are you okay?" Sable rushed over and placed a reassuring hand on each of his shoulders. "For a second there, well, I admit I was worried."
Levon did not meet her eyes. His voice was sullen. "I was worried too. I don't have Bakwanga training like Kwali did. When I become the Black Lion... everything is different. It's like wrestling with primal urges and forces stronger than we are. I don't know if I can rein the Lion in." He let out a deep breath and his body visibly became less tense. "Thanks, Sable. Maybe I need you guys to keep an eye on me."
"You can always count on me. And the others," she promised. "Right now, we need to get our prisoner back for Jeremy to interrogate. I'm dying to find out how the other teams did." Unclipping the Link from its holster at the small of her back, she thumbed a contact patch. "Calling Dire Wolf. Sable and Black Lion calling Dire Wolf. Respond, please."
There was no answer. After thirty seconds, Sable repeated her hail but still heard nothing in reply. "Oh, Levon, I don't like this," she said.
The somber young black man glanced back to make sure Tylothrol was remaining where she was. "Maybe our captain went to help one of the other teams?"
Just then, the crisp voice they knew so well crackled through the Link's speaker. "Dire Wolf here! Hold on, you two, I'm summoning you home." Again, pure blue light swirled like a whirlwind. When it faded, only the ragged corpse of the Troll remained behind in the sand.
VI.
Back in the conference room, Jeremy Bane stepped away from the Eldar travel crystal set in the wall. He had brought all six members of his team and their prisoner back in rapid succession. As the process finished, he exhaled shakily. The mental effort required to use a Gateway crystal even once required more discipline and will power than the average Human could summon. He straightened to face his team.
All six were talking excitedly all the same time, chattering over each other as they tried to fill everyone in on the events. Only Sable noticed the shapeless bundle in the corner.. a dark canvas draped over something about the size and shape of a human being. Lauren Reilly frowned, then noticed that Bane had a thick gauze bandage taped on the back of his right hand. What had been going on here? Before she could ask, the Dire Wolf took control of the situation.
"Quiet down, team!" he snapped. "One at a time. I need clear reports. Josef, you first."
"Emish Tor is dead," said the Blind Archer. "Her part of the spell is broken."
"Good. Megan, you're next."
"Beldevar is also dead, captain. We were in time."
"Good," repeated Bane. "And you, Sable?"
"We managed to bring our prisoner in for questioning," she answered.
The Dire Wolf almost smiled, just the barest hint of his mouth turning upwards. He turned those cold grey eyes on the captured Witch Queen. "Very good! So, Tylothrol, is it? Do you have a statement to make?"
The Nekrosan sorceress had gotten to her feet and now drew herself up defiantly. "Human fools! I will tell you what you will regret hearing. Look at that clock on your wall. It still lacks one minute to midnight. I tell you at that time that the great spell WILL be cast! Miserable Human pups will choke and die all over the lands you occupy. Millions of parents will weep without comfort, and the Dread One himself will reward me with power such as has not been seen in thirty thousand years."
"Aw, you're crazy," scoffed Argent. He waved one hand in a dismissing gesture. "Your two partners in evil are dead. Their conjurations are halted. It's all over, Nekrosan, you're just ranting and raving empty words now."
The hideous skull-face leered more than usual. Under the heavy brow ledge, those dark eyes were gleeful. "How little you know," she hissed. "What Themisar did not know...and what she could not warn you... was that there are in fact Four Witch Queens. Not three, but four. And the most dangerous of us, our secret leader, is still free, still casting the great spell even as you stand there with sudden terror in your hearts."
With her last word, the old-fashioned clock on the wall struck midnight with a single mellow chime.
"Oh, my God..." breathed Sable. "No!"
"Jeremy?" asked Argent, "It can't be true, can it?"
The Dire Wolf stood with folded arms, gazing at the Nekrosan prisoner. "She's tell the truth as she knows it, my brothers and sisters of Tel Shai. There was a fourth member of their coven, a Darthan named Broslinor Kje."
Tylothrol threw back her fleshless head and shrieked with triumph. "AH ha ha! You are too late wise, Human dog. This is the hour of triumph for Dread Draldros."
"I don't think so," Bane continued in the same calm, assured voice. "You don't realize who you're dealing with, lady. I've been fighting the Midnight War for twenty years and I've learned a few tricks. While my team tracked you and your two Witch sisters down, I did some hunting of my own."
The six Tel Shai knights held their breaths, hardly daring to hope.
Tylothrol stared at the Dire Wolf. "Aye, you are known to the children of the night as a cunning foe. Dire Wolf indeed! Yet you must be bluffing now, how could you have guessed...?"
"Experience and instinct," Bane replied. He pointed at the bundled shape in the corner. "You don't have to take my word for it. Argent, would you pull the tarp away?"
Slowly, the young Chujiran warrior walked over and grasped the heavy canvas in both hands. As everyone watched in silence, he flung it aside. There, sprawled on a rubber mat, was the thin body of an albino-skinned woman with pointed ears and fine milk-white hair. Blood had dried where it had trickled from a wound right in the center of her chest. Even in death, her green eyes glared with startling hatred.
"Broslinor Kje," announced Bane grimly. "She put up a vicious fight, but you can see how it ended."
The Witch Queen of Perjena cried and fell to her knees, sobbing with frustration and rage.
3/22-2000-Rev 7/29/2017
