Heretic mage, p.1
Heretic Mage, page 1
part #3 of Paranoid Mage Series
Paranoid Mage Book Three: Heretic Mage
Callum is at war with the Guild of Arcane Regulation, the organization that governs mages on Earth. He’s spent most of his time lying low and hiding out, trying to understand what he can do and how he can remain free from their meddling. What he’s learned is that he can’t.
It’s time to move from reaction to action, and take on GAR and its evils directly.
Foreword
This book would not have been made without the tireless work of my editor, Kaorin, and the support of my many patrons and readers. Thanks to everyone who has supported me!
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Heretic Mage Copyright © 2022 by InadvisablyCompelled
Table of Contents
Chapter 1– Gayle
Chapter 2 – Mictlān
Chapter 3 – Unwind
Chapter 4 – Work
Chapter 5 – Fulcrum
Chapter 6 – Christmas
Chapter 7 – Fane
Chapter 8 – Infiltration
Chapter 9 – Assassination
Chapter 10 - Cracks
Chapter 11 – Vacation
Chapter 12 – Evidence
Chapter 13 – Compromised
Chapter 14 – Annoyances
Chapter 15 – Favor
Chapter 16 – Foreshocks
Chapter 17 – Hammer
Chapter 18 – Fracture
Chapter 1– Gayle
Gayle Hargrave listened to the earth-shaking rumbling and crashing outside of Lucile Harper’s cell in Garrison Two. It was one thing to snipe obvious monsters from the safety of a fortified wall, and it was another to actually be in the middle of things. A sudden burst of hot air washing under the cell door made her flinch, before an enormous hole appeared above them. She barely saw the magic and certainly didn’t have time to react before it swept down, devouring them in darkness.
She felt herself spin through the air for a long eternal second before she landed heavily on something padded, letting out a grunt. A groan came from beside her and she had to stifle a shriek before she realized that it was just Lucile. Gayle would freely admit she was terrified; they weren’t any longer in Garrison Two, they weren’t even in a portal world, and there was no telling what would happen.
Finally, she laid a hand on her focus band, but before she could figure out which one was her illumination focus, a window opened and bright light streamed in. Gayle scrambled to her feet, putting together a negative healing dart as she squinted at the window. There wasn’t a person there and, in fact, it wasn’t even a window, but a disc that was letting in sunlight that revealed bare gray stone all around them.
“Lucy?” A voice came through the hole. A voice Gayle recognized.
Lucile popped upright in the dim light, her muscles tense and rigid, her fists clenched hard enough to draw blood. Cords stood out on her neck. She looked ready to throw a punch, but her face was completely blank when she replied.
“Of House Harper, that’s me.” Lucile’s voice was far too loud, bouncing off the walls of the small cave. As soon as she said it, she relaxed, breathing hard as all the tension drained out of her and almost losing her balance on the cheap padded blankets the light had revealed underfoot.
“Professor Brown?” Gayle demanded in the brief silence afterward, almost incredulous. She knew Callum Wells was an incredibly dangerous criminal – she kept having to remind herself that the Professor Brown she knew had been a lie – but she still found it hard to believe.
“…Gayle?” Wells said, sounding just as surprised as her. “Of all the— alright, this complicates things,” Wells muttered to himself. “Gayle, I need you to take a few steps away from Lucy, please.” He sounded so reasonable that she took a step before she realized what she was doing and stopped, crossing her arms and frowning. She wasn’t sure what Wells wanted, but she knew she wasn’t supposed to be helping him.
“Now, now, you wait just a minute!” Gayle said, managing not to splutter it. “I’m a member of the Bureau of Secret Enforcement, and you two are both criminals! I can’t just do whatever you tell me!”
“Gayle, do we really have to do this?” What instantly quenched her indignation was not that Wells sounded angry or upset or even threatening. He just sounded tired. “I know that healing magic is dangerous but I don’t think either of us want to fight.”
“I don’t want you to fight either,” Lucile said. “Especially not since I’m in the blast radius! Seriously though, you don’t seem a bad sort and the big man there is pretty scary.”
Gayle glared at Lucile, but her heart wasn’t in it. She found the entire situation surreal, completely unlike anything she had trained for. The only spell form she had that might help was the one that killed people, and it could kill mages with their shields up! Yet she couldn’t imagine actually trying to kill a person, especially one she knew. If she could even target him.
Which she couldn’t.
“Fine,” she grumbled, and stepped over to the bare stone wall. Vis surrounded Lucy, so light it was only a glimmering in Gayle’s magical sight, and Lucile disappeared. Leaving her alone in a small stone room. With no entrances or exits save the tiny window of sunlight. “Um,” she said.
“Why were you holding Lucy hostage?” Wells asked.
“I wasn’t holding her hostage!” Gayle said indignantly. She was kind of supposed to, but there was never any real chance of that.
“It’s not Gayle holding me hostage,” Lucy agreed.
“Oh. Fucking hell,” Wells swore. Gayle’s ears burned.
“Mister Wells,” she said, shocked.
“Sorry,” he said, apparently by reflex. “Is that fae magic?”
“That’s righ…” Lucile’s voice trailed off oddly and Gayle worried at her bottom lip with her teeth while there was silence from the window.
“Gayle.” Wells’ voice was flat. “Can I trust you to heal Lucy?”
“I— what?” She felt like she was having trouble keeping up with events. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. Will you do it?”
“Yes?” Gayle was a healer. That was what she wanted to do and how she thought of herself. She wasn’t willingly going to stand by while someone suffered. Not that she could see either of them at the moment, but that wasn’t relevant. A moment later, Lucile reappeared on the padded floor, but she was stretched on her back and either unconscious or close to it. Gayle stepped over and knelt down, extending her magic to the woman with a frown.
“Can you drop your bubble, please?” Wells asked. Gayle blushed.
“Mister Wells, that is highly inappropriate!”
“I suppose that’s true,” Wells said slowly. “Pull it back close, then. I want to keep an eye on Lucy myself.” Under the circumstances she couldn’t well argue his caution, so she made an effort of will to pull her sphere of authority tighter around herself.
Using her magic on a mundane – Lucile was close enough to count – was more difficult than on a mage. Normally a healer could count on a mage’s vis to do some of the work, but with a mundane she needed to be more selective and careful. Active healing senses were a mess of returns and she was no where near being an expert on what it all meant. Nevertheless, she was pretty certain there was nothing actually wrong with Lucile. Sure enough, just a hint of a low-powered refresh resulted in Lucile’s eyes opening, and she sat up with a groan.
“Can you talk about it now?” Wells asked immediately.
“I don’t know what you’re asking about, big man,” Lucile replied immediately.
“You take a rest then, Lucy.” Wells’ voice gentled. “We’ll figure this out.”
“I feel fine,” Lucile assured him with a brittle smile that betrayed her words. Gayle didn’t know what to think of such false bravado, especially coupled with some ailment she couldn’t detect or cure.
“I’m sure you do,” Callum said neutrally. “Gayle, do you have any idea how to purge fae mana from someone?”
“I— no?” Gayle blinked. “I guess get another fae to remove it?”
“That isn’t likely. What about a portal world? Would that erode it?”
“Umm.” Gayle considered the question. “Maybe? I know they had extra portals into Garrison Two so fae could function, but I don’t know about once they’ve actually done something.”
“Then we’ll do that. Keep an eye on her for me, please.”
“I will?” She wasn’t exactly sure what Wells intended to do, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t a good idea. Or at the very least a legal idea. Not that she blamed him, if he had some way to fix whatever was wrong.
“And thank you.” Wells voice sounded tired again. “While we’re here, I want to apologize for what happened to you. They told me that you got packed off to black ops because of my advice. I wouldn’t have done that to you on purpose, and I know that’s not an excuse, but I just didn’t know.”
“Oh.” Gayle was struck speechless. She’d gone over what she might say to him, and vice versa, so many times in her head, but she’d never thought he’d just flatly apologize. Her thoughts flew in useless circles, pointing out the apology didn’t make sense, that there was no way he could be unaware of the esoteric rules if he was so skilled. He seemed to be acting as if he were from some completely foreign land she’d never heard of.
“You’ll have to hang on for a bit. I’ll drop you off when I get a chance but I need to tak e care of Lucy first.”
“I told you, I’m fine,” Lucile butted in, with an even more brittle smile than before. She wobbled from where she had propped herself up on an elbow, and Gayle sent out another probe of healing magic. Yet again, there didn’t seem to be anything she could exactly fix. “Where exactly are we anyway, big man? Guess we’re not in the Deep Wilds anymore?”
“You’re somewhere safe,” Wells replied, and Gayle, while still quite flustered, didn’t miss that it wasn’t exactly an answer.
***
The rescue itself had gone well, except for one worrying complication. Nothing had compelled him to show up himself, which was a damn good thing considering the terrifyingly powerful bubbles that had been on the other side. Nobody had even died, and while he was forced to grab someone he didn’t intend to, at least he’d been able to. He hadn’t been at all confident of his ability to sweep a portal faster than a mage could disrupt it.
Fortunately for him, the mage in question was definitely not combat trained. Callum had only recognized Gayle in hindsight, since she was wearing a slightly tactical uniform and her blonde hair was cut shorter. The slightly bewildered blue eyes were the same, though.
With Lucy, he hadn’t known what to expect, but he was still somewhat thrown by the brunette with a small oval face who looked and dressed like she was out of a 1940s Sears Catalogue. Given how she’d talked about how isolated and outcast she was, he thought she’d be plain and frumpy, not strikingly attractive.
She was the complication. Immediately using the duress phrase and then practically collapsing in his arms was not exactly the triumphant introduction he’d hoped for. While he had no idea what exactly they’d done, he could sense a little bit of the swirly fae magic about her and even inside her. He had thought that shoving magical forms into someone else was impossible aside from healing magic, but Lucy didn’t have the dense, impenetrable vis of a vamp or a shifter. Hers was closer to a normal person’s, which he still had to work to see through with his perceptions, but he could do it.
Despite his worries, he couldn’t just leave the evidence of his presence lying around. Cleaning up the campsite was just a matter of teleporting everything directly over to his cache, including the dewar and the portal anchors he’d used for his assault. While having access to fresh lava was useful, having a portal anchor pair free was more useful and it wasn’t like he could trust the lava-side setup to stay, even if supernaturals couldn’t trace him. For all he knew some tourist group would come through later in the day, to say nothing of what the actual volcano itself might do.
He shifted the portal end that led to Gayle’s location inside his cave-cache as well, so it had the mana to stay open on its own, and he teleported himself to the surface above his cache so he could get to traveling. Out came the flying-chair and once again he lofted himself into the air. If he’d left a portal anchor in the Deep Wilds he might have been able to use that portal world to cleanse Lucy, but that was an impossible wish. There was really only one portal world he could get to.
Portal World Six.
Callum still didn’t know what exactly the San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán portal held, why it was considered empty, or what defenses might be in place. However, the effectiveness of his portal anchor in the BSE base gave him fair confidence about using it again to infiltrate Portal World Six, and it wasn’t like he had many options. At least, not if he wanted to help Lucy quickly. He didn’t know what was wrong with her, but he had a feeling it’d only get worse.
The precise location of Portal World Six was somewhere on his laptop, and while he could have gotten it out to check, he had doubts the records were accurate. He really didn’t trust any of the official information, and once he got close he could use the mana flow to locate the actual source rather than relying on any official information. Assuming he could get close without having to plow through a bunch of mage defenses. More realistically, he’d bypass them, but in his current mood he felt inclined toward smashing things.
He was actually fairly fresh, magically speaking. The assault on the GAR base had been stressful but he hadn’t actually done all that much. Opened less than a dozen portals, only one of them large, and none of them sustained. The gravity launcher he’d cobbled together was actually more effort, and there’d been plenty of mana pouring through the portals to help with recovery.
Even as vis-intensive as chair flying was, he wasn’t that far from the Portal World location, by design. He only needed a few jaunts to cross the isthmus and home in on the portal location, so it only took him a couple minutes to touch down close enough to start using normal teleports instead. The flying chair was fast, despite how much he mistrusted the process.
“Everyone okay in there?” He asked, opening a new speaking-portal into the cave where Gayle and Lucy were sequestered. Originally he’d planned to have Lucy change into a fresh set of clothes, just in case hers had trackers, and maybe even run her through an airport scanner to make sure there were no implants, but that had been kicked in the head by the current crisis. Even taking Lucy out in the first place had been a bad idea, fueled by the panic of the moment, but at least the only place he’d given away was the volcano spot. Anyone who wanted to was welcome to comb that as much as they wanted; he didn’t have anything there.
He was still a little worried someone might show up at the cave he’d hidden the girls in, since if there was some kind of tracker that worked like the paired spatial enchants, he wouldn’t be able to sense it operating. Especially if Gayle had it on her person. Homebonds were a technology he’d taken from them in the first place, after all.
“Just peachy, big man,” Lucy’s voice came, but it sounded a little wrong. He didn’t know if he was actually hearing it, or it was just his imagination since he knew she wasn’t in her right mind. “When are we going to be able to get out and stretch our legs?”
“Won’t be long now,” he said, not entirely lying. While he was cautious all the time, it hurt to actively mistrust Lucy, even if it wasn’t her fault. Especially if it wasn’t her fault. Of course, he mistrusted Gayle too, but unless she was a superb actor, he was pretty sure she wasn’t actively trying to trip him up. Which was in a way more dangerous, because that made her very unpredictable.
“Wait, you’re just going to a Portal World?” Gayle protested. “They aren’t going to let you stay inside the defenses! You can’t expect to just, just, wander around in the wilderness!”
“I don’t really intend to. Besides, I have some advantages.”
He had to drop the phone-portal to teleport. Or rather, he didn’t have to, but keeping it open and wrapping his teleportation framework around it was more effort than he wanted to expend for the moment. It wasn’t hard, but he was a big believer in the sum of percents and when going into an unknown situation every edge mattered.
The portal world site was out in the countryside near San Lorenzo, out by the bogs, rather than on the coast. At least, that was what he remembered, but the mana density didn’t seem to be rising like it had near the portal worlds in Europe. It was definitely still above the levels in the States, but he was starting to think that even Lucy’s information was wrong before he finally caught some actual flow.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t in the air, but rather, underground, a languid flow through the water table. The mana in the air seemed to be coming up from the ground, through the ponds and cenotes that dotted the area. Once he realized that, following it back to the source was not particularly difficult. He was glad he didn’t have to actually walk the area, though, because it was marshy and boggy and it would have been an absolute bear to slog through on foot.
“Almost there,” he informed the women, popping open a temporary phone-portal.
“That was fast! What’d you do, big man, sneak through the GAR transport system?” Callum suppressed a sigh as he ignored Lucy’s obviously leading question. He was sure now that her voice really was off, and it wasn’t his imagination. Not that he would have necessarily minded answering the question if they were alone, but with Gayle right there he wasn’t going to give away any secrets.
“Do you know anything useful about Portal World Six?” He asked instead, since it wasn’t like he’d be able to hide where he was if he was to actually use it. “Either of you?”
