Rough Magic

by Jenny Schwartz

  Rough Magic

  The Faerene Apocalypse

  Book 5

  Jenny Schwartz

  “But this rough magic I here abjure…” William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  A new tempest sweeps the Earth as the truth of humanity's magic is revealed.

  Magic is far more complicated on Earth than the Faerene suspected. Now, they must work with humans to create new ways of surviving it. They'll have to listen to Amy.

  The thrilling conclusion to the post-apocalyptic fantasy series, The Faerene Apocalypse.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Want More?

  Chapter 1

  Dragons bleed red.

  I ignored the reports of other magical disasters to watch the central wall slate and its display of Soma’s final moments. The blue dragon had fallen from the sky above the city of Civitas, his magic torn from him by the instability I’d unleashed.

  Across Earth magic flared and died, exploded and sang. It guttered like a flame in high winds, but inextinguishable, growing greater or less, erratically. I felt it in my body. The magic my human ancestors had locked into a rigidly stable, global pattern, now surged and fell with devastating results.

  The Faerene around me stared in horror as reports of failure cascaded in, the feral magic threatening to destroy the monitoring system that fed vital information to the research bunker where we stood.

  Fae King Harold’s voice cracked like a whip. “We did this. All of us here. Amy acted on our orders.” As an elf, Harold was physically overshadowed by the dragons and griffins and the Orc Champion in the chamber, but his authority commanded everyone’s attention, and brought us out of our state of shocked paralysis.

  “Agreed.” Quossa, a unicorn stallion and chief scientist for the Fae Council, led the other eleven members of the council in a chorus of assent. Our small group had gathered here at the remote Faerene bunker tucked into the Pontic Mountains in Turkey to activate humanity’s orb, and we’d succeeded.

  Less than a year ago, the Faerene had entered Earth through the Rift.

  They had destroyed humanity’s world to save us. Six billion people had died in the Faerene Apocalypse. The Faerene had taken from us our modern technology, reducing us to a Renaissance level of existence—in those places where we managed to crawl out of violence and despair. Modern medicine, transport and communications technology vanished. Guns failed. Steam locomotives wouldn’t work. Plastic and all petroleum-derived products disappeared. Epidemics, famine and war stalked the land.

  However, humans are resilient. We were learning to live in our new reality.

  There were one billion of us left, and half a million Faerene who’d come through the Rift from their home world. They couldn’t return to Elysium. The Migration was a one-way event that the Faerene had planned scrupulously. Those who migrated knew they’d never see their family and friends on Elysium again, other than magically through a world viewer—the same technology through which they’d monitored Earth for millennia.

  Unfortunately, it turned out that they hadn’t monitored us for long enough. Humanity’s mages had used and locked away their magic prior to the Faerene finding Earth and observing our situation.

  Humans had, unwittingly, brought disaster on ourselves. We hadn’t known that healthy worlds have shields that protect them from outsiders entering. We couldn’t have guessed that our obsession with linear progress bored into Earth’s shield. Anything that drills into a planetary shield for long enough creates a rift, and through a rift can come either salvation, or slavery and death.

  The Faerene had brought us an apocalypse, but they’d done so to protect us from the Kstvm. Those insectoid monsters would have ravaged Earth, turning humanity into cattle to incubate and feed their young, and when Earth died, the Kstvm would have moved on to the next world they could consume.

  Some of the Faerene had given their lives to seal the Rift. To keep it sealed, humanity’s idea of linear progress had to be frustrated; hence, the catastrophic return to Renaissance era technologies.

  But now Earth faced a new catastrophe, potentially a second apocalypse, and nothing in the Faerene’s meticulous preparation for their Migration had foreseen it.

  The ordinary Faerene out there, beyond the research bunker, would be terrified. The various peoples who made up the Faerene used magic as naturally as humans walked and ran. For magic to fail them or flare out of control would attack their fundamental sense of self and the foundation of their understanding of how reality operated.

  Scared people looked for someone to blame. Fae King Harold had just asserted that it wouldn’t be me. It would be very tempting for the Faerene to lay the blame for feral magic at a human’s feet, but I had acted at the Fae Council’s request.

  His statement might help later, but for now I felt guilty.

  It was my blood and my magic that had activated the orb and led to it unlocking Earth’s magic from its uncannily stable pattern. That had been five minutes ago. A lot had happened in those five minutes. Uncertainty came at you fast.

  “I’m declaring a global emergency, level one,” Harold announced. “Amy, you’re now a member of the Fae Council.”

  Two hours ago, I’d walked into the meeting with the option to join the Fae Council as its sole human representative. Harold had taken that decision from me, but I couldn’t argue with him. Forestalling a second apocalypse demanded that everyone work together. I lacked the Faerene’s understanding of magic, but I was miles ahead of every other human’s knowledge of it thanks to my bond to Istvan, the black griffin magistrate for the North American Territory, and my recent marriage to Rory.

  Rory was a werewolf. The flaring magic hadn’t caused him to shift, although the werewolf member of the Fae Council, Radomir, had noticeably wolfed out in terms of hair and claws and the elongation of his jaw and teeth.

  I’d burrowed against Rory as the horror show on the wall slates began. When you couldn’t breathe because of smoke, you wore a mask, even if it was merely a soaked piece of towel. When I couldn’t breathe because of terror and dread, I needed Rory. He didn’t filter reality for me, but he gave me the strength to endure it; to fight for our future.

  He held me tight with his left arm, leaving his dominant arm free to defend us. None of us knew what the unleashed magic would trigger next. The Faerene bunkers were intended to operate as safe havens, but they’d been built on the principles of magic with active magic embedded in their design and contained within them, and right now, that made them hotspots for danger.

  What Rory didn’t do was protest my co-option to the Fae Council.

  With the nightmares displayed on the wall slates, one pushing out the other as emergency reports flooded in, this wasn’t something I could refuse. I looked at Harold. “I accept.”

  I’d lived through one apocalypse. Turning away when people needed me wasn’t an option.

  Holographic briars exploded out of a wall slate as a thorn thicket engulfed a Faerene town, sending its residents fleeing the mutated protective ward.

  “Outside,” Quossa snapped. “Where is the bunker chief?” He stamped a hoof.

  A passing scientist flung the answer over his shoulder. “Containing the bathumas.”

  Rory halted. He’d fought those creatures. He knew the danger they posed. “Kill them.”

  The scientist, an elf, gog
gled at him.

  “We require live specimens.” Nora’s crest feathers rose in protest. With her golden coloring shot through with crimson highlights, she was a startlingly beautiful griffin, and her intelligence exceeded her beauty; but currently, she wasn’t thinking clearly.

  Quossa was. “There are more important things in the bunker than the bathumas. Your bunker chief has to be free to preserve them. Kill the bathumas.”

  The plump elf looked between Nora, the chief scientist for the bunker, and Quossa, chief scientist for the Fae Council. The other Fae Council members had continued evacuating, leaving me waiting beside Rory, and Istvan waiting for both of us—and perhaps, for Nora.

  Quossa lowered his head and literal sparks flew from his horn.

  The elf scientist yelped and hurried off.

  “The sparks were unintentional,” Quossa said.

  “Feral magic,” Istvan rumbled. “Nora.”

  “I have responsibilities—”

  “Outside,” Quossa said. He was her boss. It was an order.

  Rory urged me down the corridor to the exit. As our pace picked up, Quossa trotted with us. We burst out of the cave mouth to the cold of the mountains in winter. Snow lay thinly on the ground. An icy wind soughed through the pine trees.

  Istvan followed close on our heels and halted beside me.

  I gripped a handful of his black fur. He was warm and solid, and I trusted him implicitly.

  Harold stood facing the rest of us, with Piros at his back. The red dragon was the Fae Council’s spymaster and Istvan’s best friend.

  I had mostly gotten over my dislike of him.

  Piros had been the “face” of the Faerene when they’d first arrived through the Rift to Earth. He’d announced their presence on television and radio before we’d lost both. He’d spelled out the apocalypse the Faerene would wreak: the loss of technology, the rise of previously preventable diseases, and humanity’s helplessness against Faerene magic.

  Now, magic had turned on the Faerene.

  Harold raised his voice. “We’ll issue a statement to all Faerene within the hour. No, we’re not debating the content of the statement, now. We don’t know if the instability in Earth’s magic will settle by itself and in what timeframe, so we must prepare for ongoing disaster management.”

  Geat, the Orc Champion, slammed the end of his staff against a flat rock. “Regardless of when or if the magic settles, there’s trouble to deal with. Clean up.”

  I winced, remembering the image of Soma’s broken body amid the rubble of a corner of the bazaar at Civitas. There would be other bodies among the destruction.

  “Since we can’t predict events,” Harold continued. “We divide our resources for coverage and resilience. Again, unless there is a significant reason against your assigned post, do not argue.” He spaced the last three words.

  Heads bobbed in agreement. Time was critical and slipping away.

  Harold took a deep breath. “We can’t risk flying. Therefore, translocation is out.” Translocation could only occur midflight for various complicated magical reasons that Istvan had explained and I’d understood a quarter of. Soma’s fatal crash was brutal evidence of why flying wasn’t an option. “We will risk portaling.”

  Creating a portal was major magic. Rory and Istvan did it with ease. Most other Faerene struggled.

  If the feral magic played with a portal, who knew where someone stepping through it might end up? Or they could die, if the portal collapsed.

  “Rory,” Harold said. “You’ll go first. Istvan must stay here with Amy to study the orb. In current conditions, we can’t risk taking it through a portal.”

  “But you’ll risk Rory?” My fury and fear combined and fed into each other, and forced the protest from me.

  “I’m a war mage,” my husband said. “And the territory needs me in Istvan’s absence.” It was the duty Rory had vowed to undertake when he’d sworn himself to Istvan’s service as head of the magisterial guard for the North American Territory. Rory was Istvan’s second-in-command. “I’ll be there to look after our pack.”

  And our werewolf pack, Earth’s newest, the Hope Fang Pack, included my human family. They were mine by adoption and by the bonds of surviving the apocalypse together. Our ties were as strong, or stronger, than blood. One of us had to be there for them.

  “Look after yourself and let them look after you,” I said fiercely, and kissed him.

  Meantime, Harold continued with the distribution of Fae Council members. A global disaster like feral magic had to be managed.

  He, Piros and Vadim, a griffin, would return to Civitas, the Faerene’s capital city. After they’d cleared humans from the Mediterranean island of Crete at the beginning of the apocalypse, the Faerene had resettled and rewilded it to suit their purposes.

  I couldn’t even complain about their actions since it had been in the mountains of Crete that they’d fought, suffered and died to seal the Rift and save Earth from the Kstvm.

  Geat, Aswani, Maureen, Radomir and Fiona were to return home. They were geographically dispersed and of different peoples: orc, dryad, elf, werewolf and goblin. They gave the Fae Council global coverage.

  Branka, a centaur, snorted as Harold ordered her, Jakov and Adara to other bunkers. “We have to leave now. Rory!”

  His arms tightened bruisingly around me.

  Istvan, Nora, Quossa and I were to stay where we were at the bunker. The decision satisfied Nora, but Istvan opened his beak to protest.

  Quossa forestalled him. “We’ll stay at the trial grounds, away from the magic in the bunker.” The bunker wasn’t safe. None of them were, hence Branka’s urgency to reach hers and help prepare it.

  “Camping in winter?” Rory growled.

  Nora turned to look back at the cave mouth. “I should stay here.”

  “The tents are gone,” Harold said, answering Rory while frowning at me. “The cookhouse was built of stone. It’s still there and the bathroom facilities. Even without magic Amy will have shelter and water. Food…”

  “We’ll take from the bunker,” Quossa said.

  “Or hunt.” Istvan and Rory exchanged a long look.

  Nora edged toward the bunker.

  Istvan placed a paw on her tail. He released her as she whirled to glare at him. Otherwise, he ignored her. “Amy will be safe with me,” he promised Rory.

  “I know.” With a final squeeze, he let me go and walked a short distance.

  “Maybe open the portal further away?” Jakov shut his mouth as Rory opened a portal home to Justice in seconds.

  Rory traversed it as quickly and easily as walking through a doorway. He turned and gave us a nod of reassurance. The portal closed on the view of the magistrate hall at Justice. Istvan had founded the Faerene town on the banks of the Mississippi River, south of where the Ohio River joined it.

  I wanted to be with Rory. My family were hosting their housewarming party, tonight. Anyone in town who wandered in would be welcome. As the first humans—apart from me—to be welcomed as citizens of Justice they wished to show their appreciation that they belonged. “They’ll cancel the party,” I said inanely.

  “Tineke will explain things to them after the emergency broadcast,” Istvan comforted me. He extended his left wing enough for me to duck under it.

  It was warm and safe under a griffin’s wing, and Istvan was an Arani griffin, descended from warriors. Even without magic he’d be deadly.

  Other portals opened.

  One after the other, the Fae Council members vanished. The situation was weirdest for flyers like Piros and Vadim. They were accustomed to translocating rather than portaling.

  Istvan opened the portal for Fiona to return to West Africa. Goblins were the least magical of the Faerene. Depending on how the magical crisis developed, that might actually help them. The goblins who’d joined the Migration to Earth had embraced the idea of living with rationed magic. They could survive without magic altogether.

  Jakov’s portal falt
ered.

  Istvan and Nora reacted together, yanking the elf back by his cloak. Without it, in their urgency, their sharp beaks might have caught his skin.

  The elf tumbled to the ground, swore, and thanked them. He stared at where his portal had been, the same place all the other portals had opened.

  Nora glanced back at the bunker. She seemed to have accepted that she couldn’t return to it; at least, not yet. It had to be clawing at her that her colleagues and friends were facing its dangers without her. “Maybe you should try it further away?”

  Quossa came forward. “Let me. Ready, Jakov?” Quossa opened a portal a few feet behind Jakov’s original attempt.

  The elven councilor had courage. He walked through it. This bunker was in Australia. “All clear,” Jakov called.

  Quossa closed the portal. “Done.” The four of us were alone. “Nora, we need supplies from the bunker. Pen and paper for Amy. A slate for Istvan. Whatever study tools you think you and I will need. Your focus will be the rough magic. You are to divide your time between the bunker and the camp, keeping me informed. Istvan, Amy and I will focus on the orb.”

  We all looked at the cloth-wrapped bundle that Istvan had carried in his beak from the bunker and tucked safely to the side with his bulk between it and both the portals and the bunker.

  “Our first step will be to record our recollection of what the orb has revealed so far. I’ll make copies of the memory charm for safekeeping with other bunkers and in Governing House.

  His mention of Governing House made me think of Civitas and how they were coping there.

  “I’ll bring food as well,” Nora said. “I’ll be half an hour behind you.”

  Istvan leaned across and touched beaks with her.

  The ripple that ran through her feathers and fur may have been the griffin version of a blush. Griffins couldn’t smile, but there was shy pleasure as well as surprise in her body language.

  Quossa set off for the camp.

  Istvan picked up the orb, and we followed.