She turned and met the attacking wolf with a shining silver sword in one hand. The time for subtlety was over. She slashed at the wolf as it charged, her blade cutting off one of its paws, revealing it to be solid silver and pixels inside. The wolf snarled and snapped at her, but it could not get through her armor, and her fairy wings carried her away before it could bring her down. She danced around the wolf, slashing and stabbing it with her blade, until finally the program came apart in silvery ribbons of code and crashed altogether.
Now, then, where was I? Trouble thought as she resumed rummaging through Zoller's trash.
* * *
Talon sat cross-legged on the floor of the basement room, opposite Silverblade. Between them on the floor sat the crystal. It remained dull and gray, with none of its former luster or the faint inner glow Talon had noticed before. Around them was drawn a warding circle, to protect the building against any magical energies they might accidently unleash, though Talon doubted any ward could contain the kind of magical power he'd seen the crystal display.
"Are you ready?" asked Silverblade.
Talon nodded. "As I'm likely to be. Let's see what there is to see."
He took a deep breath and focused on his heartbeat, as he'd learned to do from his mentor so many years ago. He slipped easily into a light trance state, allowing his awareness to expand beyond the physical world into the realms of the astral plane. From the astral he could sense the forces of magic and the life force of living beings. To his magical sight, the warding circle appeared as an opalescent shimmering dome of light enclosing himself and Silverblade. The elf's own aura showed brightly around him; filled with magical power, bright with confidence, touched in places with hints of other emotions kept tightly controlled by the constraints of his duty. Talon could also see Aracos, in his wolf-form, standing nearby.
His familiar would remain in astral form to better help study the magical crystal.
Talon turned his attention toward the crystal itself. Most non-living objects had no aura to speak of, only the emotional and magical imprints they picked up from being handled by living beings. As an enchanted item, the crystal should have had a strong aura of its own, but it was weak and barely visible. Whatever power resided in the crystal, most of it had fled.
"The aura is weak." Silverblade said quietly. "It looks like the crystal expended whatever enchantment it held all at once."
"Yes." Talon replied. "Not unlike a spell anchor of some kind." The spell anchor was a magical technique for "attaching" a spell to an item and setting it to activate when certain conditions were fulfilled, like a magical "time bomb" of sorts.
"Hmmm, perhaps. But an extraordinarily powerful spell anchor to be sure. No mere focus could have done what you described."
Talon peered more intently at the smoky-colored crystal, looking past its surface, trying to plumb its depths, to learn what secrets it held. What are you? he asked silently. Where did you come from? And why did someone use you to get at Lofwyr?
The smoky color of the crystal seemed to expand to fill his field of vision. It was as though he dove into the very substance of the crystal itself until he was immersed in it, surrounded by it. He was drawn down, down into the depths of it, until he felt he could almost drown in it.
Suddenly, Talon found himself soaring. He was flying, high above the ground, which stretched out below like a multicolored patchwork. His vision was amazingly sharp; he could still make out the details of small creatures moving far below. He could see some of them look up in awe, could feel the fear that radiated off them, like smoke rising from a flame. The wind was strong at his back and flowed over his wings and his body as he soared. The heat of the sun beat down on his back and his outstretched wings, and he luxuriated in the sensation for a while. It felt good to fly, stretching his muscles and feeling the air around him.
Then he spotted them, a small herd of creatures moving along the ground far below. They were what he was looking for: prey. Instantly, his eyes focused on them and he could see that they were some sort of cattle, a fine meal, indeed. His wings furled in and he dove toward the earth like an arrow from a bow. The animals sensed his approach, but far too late to do them any good. Some of them tried to run, beginning to stampede in their panic.
As the ground rushed up to meet him, Talon felt his mighty wings unfurl again, snapping out to catch the wind, his mighty tail acting as a rudder to keep him moving straight and upright as he pulled up out of his dive to fly close to the ground, so near the prey he could smell the strong scent of their hides. He opened his mouth and a geyser of flame erupted from it, washing over part of the herd. They screamed in pain and terror, then suddenly fell silent as they were seared by the flames.
Talon banked around and landed on the ground, mighty wing beats blowing away the last of the smoke from the half dozen or so charred cattle that lay on the ground. He leaned down and took a large bite out of one, biting off nearly half of the beast with his massive jaws. He chewed on it, still warm, felt the bones crunch under his teeth. He swallowed, savoring the taste, eager for the rest of his feast. Then a voice called out to him.
"Talon!"
Who dares interrupt my meal? he thought. He looked around, but saw no one. The voice came again, quickly followed by another.
"Talon!"
"Talon, can you hear us? What’s going on? Hey, boss!"
Talon shook his head. What was he doing? What was going on? Just as suddenly as it began, the vision vanished and Talon found himself sitting on the floor of the basement room. Silverblade was shaking his shoulder while Aracos, materialized in wolf form, nuzzled his side and eyed the elven paladin with distrust.
"Wha . . . ?" Talon managed to gasp as he looked Silverblade in the eyes.
"Talon, what happened to you?" Silverblade asked. "We were studying the crystal and you fell deeper into trance. I couldn't bring you out of it."
"I . . . I'm not sure." Talon said. He told Silverblade and Aracos all that he'd seen during his vision. "It was almost like an astral quest," he said, "only I wasn't in control. It was like I was living somebody else's life."
"A dragon's life." Aracos said.
"Interesting." Silverblade mused. "I experienced none of this. All I could determine was that the stone once held powerful magical energies, most of which are gone now. I still can't tell exactly what its enchantment is for, or who might have enchanted it. Whoever it was, he is a more skilled sorcerer than Zoller or any of his cronies. Did your vision give you any insights about the crystal?"
Talon shook his head. "Not really. The crystal didn't seem involved with it at all. At least, not that I can remember."
Just then, a tiny bell icon flashed in the upper right corner of Talon's field of vision. He mentally keyed his headcom to pick up.
"Talon here." he said aloud for Silverblade's benefit, holding up one hand to stay the elf's questions.
"It's Trouble. You two need to get up here. Zoller is on the move, and I think he can lead us to whoever is behind this."
17
The train yards were located in a particularly rundown area of Essen. Although trains were still used to move goods to different parts of the German Alliance, they were being supplanted by remote-piloted trucks and cargo-lifters. The train yard was dark and virtually silent but for the few sounds drifting from the distant inhabited areas of the city.
Talon and the others sat in their van on the outskirts of the yard. The van's lights were dark, its engine silent. Val sat in the driver's seat, jacked into the controls, her remote deck sitting on her lap. Trouble was in the front passenger seat. She also had her cyberdeck on her lap, but wasn't jacked in at the moment. Instead, she remained alert and kept watch for any signs of trouble outside.
In the back near the rear door was a launching rack for several remote-drones, along with the rest of the team. With Talon was Boom, Hammer, and Speren Silverblade, all of them dressed in dark clothing under armored jackets or long coats like those Talon and Speren wore. T
he elf wore his sword on his belt and Talon had his own mageblade sheathed at his side. They all carried sidearms—Boom and Hammer had several guns each—and they checked them one last time.
"Ready?" Talon said, receiving nods from the others. "All right, let's go."
"Good luck." Trouble said from the front.
Talon slid the side door of the van open and the runners hopped down, moving quickly and quietly away from the van. Hammer applied a small pair of bolt-cutters to the chains holding the gate shut, and they slipped into the train yard. They moved across the open spaces, dashing from one place of concealment to another, hiding behind stacks of crates and the sides of buildings and supply bins as they moved.
Talon checked with the rest of the team over his headcom.
"Team Two, this is One, come in." he subvocalized through his cybernetic link-up. He could hear Trouble's response in his head.
"One, this is Two. We read you."
"We're almost in position. Val, what have you got?"
"They're definitely in that warehouse near the tracks." Val said. "I'm moving in for a closer look now."
"Be careful." Talon told her, then turned to the rest of the team. "Val's drone is heading into the warehouse for a closer look. Let's get into position and be ready to move."
"If these rune-magicians are tampering with magical forces, we had better watch the astral plane." Silverblade said quietly.
"Already taken care of." Talon replied. "Aracos, how are things on the astral?" he sent to his familiar spirit.
"Not too good, boss. There's definitely signs of something nasty around here. Tough to say for sure out here, but I think somebody has been doing some major league mojo around here for a while. There’s also something else, some kind of power building up, but I can't say for sure what it is. I'll keep watching."
"Good." Talon said. "Let me know the second you see something else."
"Aracos says there are signs in the astral of magic being worked here before." he told the others. "And that they may be working magic now, building up for some kind of ritual."
"Then we should see about interrupting their plans." Silverblade said, resting one hand on the hilt of his magesword.
"I'm in." Val said over the commlink, routed to speak to the whole team. She had sent a tiny Renraku arachnid drone in to check out the warehouse beforehand. Normally, Talon would have simply used astral projection to scout the warehouse himself, or sent Aracos to do it, but with Zoller and his magical cronies about, they couldn't risk using magic until absolutely necessary, for fear of being detected. The spider-drone was small enough to go unnoticed, and able to fit into tight quarters.
"Zoller's here all right." Val continued. "He's inside the warehouse with eight other people. They're all dressed up like something out of a fantasy simflick, with cloaks and furs and drek like that. They're standing around a circle drawn out on the floor with magical-looking symbols around the outside edge. They've also got some company."
"Show me." Talon said. Val opened a link to Talon's headware and transmitted a low-resolution video of what the drone was seeing. It imposed itself over his field of vision, and he could see the room exactly as Val described it.
"There's some kind of metallic cylinder in the middle of the circle," Val said, "and they've got people chained to it, three of them. All elves."
Silverblade's face darkened and a dangerous light flashed in his eyes at this announcement.
"They look like squatters or people they picked up off the street," she said, "and they look like they've been doped up or something to keep them from fighting. Frag, I think we've wandered onto the set of some kind of freaky magical production."
"Nine of them," Boom said, "probably all mages. Can we take that many?"
"We'll need some help." Talon said. He turned to Silverblade. "Spirits?" he asked quietly.
The elf nodded. "It might even the odds enough if we sent elementals against the magicians inside, especially if they don't have any spirits present for the ritual. If they do, then our spirits can keep them occupied."
"They've also got no muscle." Hammer said. "From what Val said, it's just those mages. Mages may be tough, but they're not immune to flying lead, either."
"So we do this?" Talon asked.
"Damn straight." Boom grunted. "I'm not standing around while these fraggers do whatever they're doing, not to mention the fact that Zoller may have set us up."
"Same here." Hammer put in.
"I will not ignore my people in danger." Silverblade said. "Zoller and his cronies must pay."
"All right then." Talon said. "Let's do it. Regular magician-drill, chummers. Silverblade, you're with me. We keep spirits hammering them, and we protect everyone from incoming spells. Don't spellcast unless you have to. There's no point wasting effort against their defenses." The elf nodded.
"Team Two," Talon said over the commlink, "we're going in. Fire up the reinforcements. We'll do the same."
"Roger that." Val responded.
Talon closed his eyes and whispered words of power under his breath. He sent out the call through astral space into the depths of the elemental planes, the dwelling place of the spirits bound to serve him. In a few moments, the air around Talon shimmered faintly, like the air above a roadway in the desert. Three of Talon's elementals were present, awaiting his commands. He opened his eyes and saw Silverblade surrounded by a similar faint shimmering. The elven mage called up four of his own elementals to aid them against the rune-magicians gathered in the warehouse. Talon hoped it was enough.
"At my command," he sent to the spirits, "attack the humans inside the warehouse. Do not kill them unless you must, and leave this human alive." He sent a mental image of Zoller to them. He wanted the German magician alive for questioning.
"We obey." the spirits responded.
"Aracos," he called, "is the warehouse warded?"
"Nope, I don't see anything from out here. Of course, there may be wards inside the walls or something. Want me to . . ."
"No." Talon said, we can't risk warning them. We'll deal with it when we get there."
Talon heard a faint humming and looked up to see one of Val's rotor-drones hovering overhead. The drone was shaped like a tapered cylinder with a rounded top, from which sprouted the rotor blades that kept it aloft. It was armor-plated, and its "chin" held a machine gun on a swivel mount, giving it a wide arc of fire. Like most highly technological items, it was also fairly resistant to magic.
"Boom, you're with me." Talon said. "Hammer, you and Silverblade take the back. Let's move."
The runners split into pairs, with Hammer and the elf mage working their way around to the back of the warehouse. Talon and Boom headed for the sliding loading doors in front, while Val's drone headed for the roof, its dark hull nearly invisible in the shadows.
"Two, what are they up to inside?" Talon asked as they neared the doors.
"Looks like they're getting started." Val replied. "They're standing in a circle around the column and meditating or something."
When they reached the doors, Boom placed a small shaped-charge against the door panel.
"Set for ten seconds." Talon said.
"In place." Hammer's voice said over the comm.
"On my mark." Talon said. "Mark." Boom hit the countdown on the charge, and the two of them moved back. The timer ticked off the final seconds before the charge went off.
The small shaped charge blew through the reinforced sheet metal of the warehouse door like it was paper, leaving a jagged hole large enough for Boom and Talon to move through.
"Go!" Talon said. Boom pulled a small, metallic sphere from his belt, pulled the pin and tossed it through the opening before the smoke cleared. Two loud bangs sounded within seconds of each other as the stun grenades Boom and Hammer hurled into the room went off together. The shadowrunners immediately rushed into the warehouse.
As Talon hoped, the suddenness of their attack and the effects of the stun grenades had the rune-magic
ians reeling. They had been about to begin their ritual, but now everything was in chaos and they were having difficulty knowing which way to turn. He could see some of them starting to gather their wits and preparing spells. Leveling the Narcoject gun he carried, Talon fired at one of the magicians, his dart catching him in the shoulder. The fast-acting neurostun chemical immediately caused the mage to collapse, his eyes rolling back in his head as he hit the floor.
Talon saw the others firing at the confused mages, and two more went down from the effects of the neurostun.
Two dark clouds materialized out of the air, flickering from within with eerie blue light. They immediately engulfed two of the rune magicians, cutting off their chants and cries, which changed to coughing and gagging noises as the spellcasters gasped for breath in the relentless grip of the air elementals. Talon saw his water elemental materialize and attack another mage, surrounding him in a globule of water. Bubbles poured from the startled magician's mouth as the spirit forced the air from his lungs. That was more than half of the circle out of action already.
The remaining magicians wasted no time before mounting a counterattack. Talon saw Zoller raise his arms as he shouted out magical words, power shimmering in the air between his hands. A bolt of green fire shot out at Talon, but the flames seemed to strike an invisible shield in the air. They flowed around Talon and he could feel their heat, but his own magical shielding held against the force of the spell. He saw one of the other mages hurl a spell at Hammer, only to have it blocked by Silverblade's defenses. The remaining magicians also hurled spells. Talon was able to block another with help from Aracos, but the fourth struck Boom and sent the troll reeling, his armored jacket smoking from the impact of a stream of acid.
Then there was a crash as Val's rotor drone came through the rooftop skylight, sending shards of broken plexiglass raining down. The drone hovered above the fight and trained its machine gun down toward the startled magicians. The gun chattered and bullets slammed into two of the magicians, nearly cutting them in half. They collapsed to the ground in pools of blood. The tide had quickly turned back to the shadowrunners. Talon was sure they could handle the Runenthing now. There were only three of them capable of fighting back at the moment, including Zoller.
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