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Natasha Romanova had been having a very topsy-turvy day. First was the flight from California to Heathrow in a supersonic jet, which was fun but not exactly comfortable. Then she spent several hours in customs, primarily because while she had all the ID requirements of a SHIELD operative, SHIELD itself was not exactly welcome outside the states just yet, and the Brits knew Natasha from her days working for the Russians during the final years of the Cold War.
They weren't exactly happy to have a spy of her skills in their country, but eventually she was released into the personal care of the head of MI5 Jack Harper (and four of his top agents, but who's counting?). And then, rather than finding herself at one of MI5's bases in the city, she found herself in Buckingham Palace in what was a small meeting room deep in the palace. This meeting was not just with Jack Harper but with the chief of police for Scotland Yard Roger Towney. Next to him was an old general named Lord Arthur Demontebanks who had been a captain in world War 2 and who Director Fury had called 'good people' (his highest appellation). On top of that was the costumed Captain Britain, leaning against the wall. He looked rather imposing in his suit colored like the union jack.
Natasha took a moment to admire the man's physique, the man's six pack and bull-like chest on display in the skintight suit. She idly wondered if his face, covered as it was by a mask was as handsome as the rest of him. His presence wasn't wholly unusual, since his powers would make him a help in any kind of action. The fact his sister (not public knowledge but the connection was known to SHIELD), the now crippled Betsy Braddock sat next to him, her face turning toward whoever was speaking, was odd however. Though she wasn't the oddest addition to the group, that prize would have to be King William himself, who sat at the head of the table.
William's reputation abroad was much more mixed than it was in the UK. While his policies were generally seen as good (of course there were people who didn't agree but that was true for any leader) the fact was he was a king, someone who ruled by 'divine right' rather than election, stuck in the craw of a lot of Americans and pro-democracy movements worldwide. The fact he generally ruled with the will of the people and in no way had abused his power since taking the throne sort of threw a wrench into the idea that he was one of those old uncaring kings, but the gut reaction was still there.
Natasha didn't have a problem with the ideas of kings, what she did have a problem with was the fact one of her missions as a spy for Russia had been trying to have the man assassinated in the closing year of the Cold War. The attempt failed obviously, and thankfully her part in that had never come to light, but it was still making her feel oddly nervous sitting in the same room as one of the ones who got away.
"I understand she is here from Director Fury General, and I agree that his record makes Fury trustworthy. But that doesn't necessarily translate into trusting all of his agents." Jack, an almost obese man in his fifties growled this through his heavy beard, his beady little black eyes trying to pin Natasha in place with minimal success. "This woman was one of the best Russian assassins in the last leg of the Cold War, how can we trust her?"
"I don't," Arthur riposted, smiling faintly. He was an older man only about five or so years younger than William, with short cropped white hair streaked with black and a very well trimmed goatee. He was also fit and trim despite having been paralyzed in a riding accident four years ago, his arms showing significant muscle definition. He often joked that his horse had done what years of warfare couldn't. "I trust Nick. Despite his little out of body experience, the man is sharp. I doubt any young lass like this is going to pull the wool over his eye."
The king had been silent up to this point, and Natasha had actually been wondering why the hell he was here but he chuckled now immediately drawing the attention of the police chief (who had sided with Harper about not trusting her) and the others to him. "Indeed, Fury was ever described as a good judge of character, though we never met the man ourselves. Be that as it may our realm might be in need of her skills."
Arthur nodded grimly, and the police chief looked thoughtful but Jack frowned. "Sir as horrifying as the assault on STRIKE was, we haven't seen any kind of follow-up assault. It's been nearly a week. If the attack was meant as a prelude to something bigger they would have pushed the next assault through by now."
His words seemed to sway Towney, but neither Arthur nor the king seemed moved. "In this you will have to trust an old war-horse's instinct Mr. Harper. We…" The king stopped speaking when the door opened and one of the Kings Guard entered, moving to him swiftly and whispering in his ear. The king looked at the man askance, his eye narrowed, then shrugged before turning back to the others. "It would appear the second shoe has begun to fall. Tell them what you told us."
The man braced to attention, resplendent in the dress uniform of red cloak and black pants despite the late hour, his unit insignia two black kukri knives crossed on a field of green on his arm.
The rotation for the unit serving as the king's guard was random and chosen from every military unit of appropriate size, normally a company size split between Windsor and Buckingham. After the massacre of STRIKE however William and the PM had agreed to enlarge the guard to a company in each castle.
At the moment they were from the Nepalese Gurkhas of the 2nd Battalion King William's own, and their devotion to their sovereign was absolute. This was due to both tradition and personal loyalty. William had set up a retirement package for the Gurkhas, soldiers native to the Indo-Asian country of Nepal who served in the British Army that included resettlement and relocation in the British Isles for them and up to three dependents, with an extra dependent added for officers above that of lieutenant. That had been seen as too generous at the time and still was to many native Brits, but the Gurkha regiments had served with distinction over the years, and William had decided they should be rewarded for it.
Despite their present assignment, they were serving soldiers not just pretty (a debatable point) faces in uniforms. "Sirs, the soldiers and officers on night duty outside report something odd going on. They report all movement beyond the palace's fence seems to have just… stopped. The palace guards on outer patrol fell where they were standing, and all traffic outside has ceased." There wasn't much traffic at this time of night but there was always some, after all cities never really slept whatever the time of day.
Natasha bolted upright in her chair wondering what the hell was going on while the others looked skeptical. William however was simply frowning in thought. A second later however one of the police chief's adjuncts came into the room so fast the Gurkha nearly drew his sidearm on him. "Sir, we have someone on the line calling for code Vermilion, he calls himself Wizard."
Roger paled while Jack looked shocked and Arthur and William's faces both blanked as their self-control locked down. Betsy and captain Britain however simply looked grim. William looked at Natasha's quizzical expression and elaborated. "Code Vermilion is the highest danger code we currently have, the worst case scenario after the assault on STRIKE; an attack on the entire city, possibly the nation as a whole." He looked at the policeman who had just run in. "Is Mister…Wizard still on the line?" The man nodded. "Then please put him on speaker phone, I think we all need to here this."
The man obeyed, placing the phone into a speaker cradle and moving it to the center of the table. William waited until the man nodded and then spoke. "Mister Wizard, we are all listening here, do you have any idea what is going on?"
"I'd say so yes," Harry's voice came back, its tone grim despite his flippant words. "The assault on STRIKE was designed to take out the first line of defense against magical assault, this is the main event. An ancient sorceress named Selene intends to use magic to drain the life-force of everyone in the city. She also seems to have cast a spell over the city to put everyone in it to sleep, though if she did that as part of the plane before sending out her troops to finish the work for the ritual or because me and mine discovered her plot I can't say. If you weren't under those wards of yours you'd be out too, but I doubt they're strong enough to stop you from being included in the ritual."
Arthur's eyebrows rose, but he had seen the assault of Mys-tech a few years ago, and knew about wards and magic. Magic on this scale was shocking but he knew enough to not make a fuss, as did the police chief. Jack frowned for a moment, but he had worked with Captain Britain and Dr. Druid a few times over the last year, so after a moment nodded at the captain, who also nodded grimly. Beside him Betsy now looked a mix between scared and angry, but it looked as if anger was swiftly swamping the fear. Natasha was the only one who thought that magic was something out of fairytales, but since the locals seemed to be taking it seriously, she decided to go along with things.
"And do you have a plan to deal with this Mr. Wizard?" Captain Britain asked.
"Just Wizard please, no need to be formal after all." For some reason that rather lame joke sent a much needed ripple of laughter around the room. After a second the voice on the phone went on. "We need to cut out the runes and take out Selene and her allies, who apparently are held up in the 30 street Mary Axe. Myself and my two allies can handle them, but we can't do that and negate the runes, nor am I certain we could keep her attention solely on us."
William looked over at the captain of the Guard, who nodded firmly. "We can send at least half the company out sir so long as yourself and these gentlemen stay in the castle."
William nodded. "Due to the wards we believe ourselves safe enough here."
On the other end of the line Harry frowned. He didn't know what the wards on Buckingham palace would to the vampires. "Be aware that Vixen has troops of her own and they are heavily armed with high tech weapons and they seem to be high on some kind of combat drug that makes them ignore pain. And I have no idea if the wards of the palace will do anything to the vampires, they aren't magically created."
The captain and the general both grinned. "That won't be a problem on our end."
"I'll meet you outside the palace then, be aware there will be three of us, and we will be arriving by air." Without another word Harry ended the call.
William smiled faintly at Harry's abrupt nature, then turned to the captain. "You heard the man Captain Nedari, I suggest you hop to it."
The Nepalese man smiled, saluted, and ran off. William turned back to the others. "I would suggest you join them Ms. Romanov, and you captain."
Captain Britain frowned. "Sir if the wards fail or if she has superpowered help she may send it after you here. I'd prefer to protect the palace if that is alright."
William frowned momentarily, noticing again that for all his strength Brian seemed to doubt himself, and was not dealing with killing Slaymaster well. Still it was almost to be expected by someone who, despite his power, had never been trained as a soldier. Betsy on the other hand was already slowly making her way out of the room, though what she could do to help or indeed what she was planning the king didn't know.
"Very well captain," he said, a little bit of disapproval leaking into his voice, causing the bit of the man's face that was visible to flush. "The rest of us will adjourn to the reading room, there is little we can do now but wait, though I would suggest you go after your sister before you rejoin us."
Natasha, still wondering what the hell was really going on, rushed out to grab her weapons from the guard post outside the palace where she had been forced to leave them.
OOOOOOO
On top of the 30 street Mary Axe building, Selene Gallio, sorceress and mutant stood, staring out across the city. While there were a few taller buildings, none of them were in as central a location as this, making it the natural place for the ritual. The marks of said ritual ran around the oddly shaped top of the building, connecting it to the wider runic array laid out on the city, with the center being the building's roof where Selene stood.
Selene stood around five feet nine with long black hair lose to the small of her back, a fit trim body encased in a leather corset and leggings, and crimson colored lipstick standing out sharply on her pale features. To look at her one would think she was a young woman, around twenty five or so, with a rather unhealthy dominatrix fetish.
Selene was old, though she preferred to use the phrase eternal instead. She had been born well before recorded history, well before anyone even thought of keeping track of time in the Hyborian Age of humanity. Later she estimated that she was born around 17,000 BC, in a poor little village somewhere, even she did not know where nowadays, after so long many of her oldest memories were faded or gone. She could possibly have been the first mutant to ever been born, and her power set her on the road that she would travel all her life.
Some could say that Selene's power made her evil, and possibly for the first four thousand or so years that was true as she learned how to control it, but after so long there was no doubt that Selene was as evil as it came. How else can a person view anyone who looks at other people, other human beings, not as food alone, but as pawns. That is how Selene viewed the people of the world, as things to enhance her power. Even the original vampires, Varnae and his children that emerged six thousand years before the present day, had respect for humanity. Selene did not, to her every other person alive was either a threat to be dealt with (or avoided), a pawn to be used, or food to fuel her power.
She had not originally been a sorceress, but after she had been feeding for 4000 years or so she began to realize that she could use the life force she drained from her victims for more than simply heightening her physical abilities and retaining her youth. She had apprenticed under one of the most powerful sorcerers to ever live, the ancient mage known as Kulan Grath, and eventually betrayed him to his enemies. But that betrayal did not save her from those same enemies and she lost much of her power when she was defeated in turn by Red Sonja and Conan the barbarian. Indeed it was only because of one of the final spells she learned from her old master that she was able to survive her apparent death.
But it could be said that learning from losing is one of the most important things anyone could learn, even an immortal like Selene. For the next thousand years Selene refrained from doing anything that would draw attention to her, moving from place to place so no one could realize that she did not age as other people, growing in the use of her power, learning from those sorcerers she could without drawing attention to herself. She perfected her old Master's final spells, and became immune to practically any normal weapon and many a magical spell. While her body could be pierced, her soul would remain even if her heart was carved out and her body would eventually heal itself. Of course this was before the days when burying bodies began. That later added a whole new problem to deal with when 'dying'.
After that, she experimented with her original power, and found that she did not have to drain the entirety of a person's life force. She could choose how much to drain, and if she drained Just enough to wipe her victims personality she could then fill that empty cup with her own commands and come to dominate them utterly. To Selene's mind that was even better then draining them and watching as the light faded from their eyes. To utterly dominate someone, to take all that they had could be, all that they ever would be, and to wipe it out utterly, to replace it with her own mind and her own will? That, she felt was the height of power. Using this power she corrupted a crew of explorers, and traveled the world with them, seeking out new magical knowledge, always on the search for ways to add to her power. Later Selene learned how to change her pawns, to make them stronger and have some of the same abilities as herself.
Selene did not have any truck with any of the Elder Gods or anyone who would deal with such, which severely limited the sorcerers she could learn from. Selene was interested in being the master, not the slave and knew that in a relationship between any of the Elder gods and a sorcerer who the true master was. The ones who would not enslave were too neutral or honorable for her purposes. And later she ran into problems with the Sorcerer Supreme, those magicals who rose above their fellows in order to protect the world from misused magic as well as extra-dimensional threats.
It was after a Sorcerer Supreme threw her out of China that Selene first learned of the Nahua and their sacrificial rituals. There were many societal/economic reasons why human sacrifice began among the civilizations of Mezo-America, but Selene was not one to care about reasons, only outcomes, and the fact of the matter was that some of their sacrifice-based magic sounded much like her own abilities magnified 100 times over. Yet because of her defeat at the hands of the Sorcerer Supreme she would not be in a position to do anything about it for a long time, and turned her attention elsewhere. She devised her own runic array based of ancient Cimmerian that would take the life force of anyone around it and feed it into her. With enough life force she could ascend to Godhood.
She chose Rome as the city to test this array on mainly because she was an egotist, but also because she felt that Rome was the most powerful nation in the world. If she could ascend to Godhood and at the same time decapitate Rome the only nation that could potentially challenge her ascension, then it would be like killing two birds with one stone.
Here she was betrayed not by her own hubris, but by one of her servants suddenly growing a conscience. Eliphas was a general of Rome who had first fallen into her service because he wanted revenge against his wife who had left him for a senator. In return for the added strength speed and stealth necessary to carry out his personal revenge Eliphas became one of her first true servants, who chose to serve her of their own free will. This allowed him to retain much of his mind and will, and for some reason her powers made him stronger, faster and far more durable than her mindless pawns.
Yet it was because of him that her attempt to sacrifice the city of Rome to her own power failed. Eliphas had a soft spot for children, and when he came upon a child at one of the points where he was supposed to inscribe the runes for her array he broke momentarily from her control in order to warn the child to leave the city. Of course the child told her parents, who were highly placed senators who in turn told the authorities. And thanks to a recent addition to the senate, a powerful mage called Myrlin, Selene's plans were thwarted and her own power supremely diminished as she again had to deal with her physical form dying. It took her over five hundred years to reconstitute her body from the ashes after Myrlin cremated her body.
Selene spent the next 250 odd years slowly gathering her strength, and then went to Mexico after the Aztecs were broken by the Spaniards to search for their runes. She slowly gathered her power and her knowledge again, for she was determined that when her chance came again, she would ascend to Godhood no matter who stood in her way.
She sat out the world wars, content with gathering her strength and her knowledge, and it was around that point when Eliphas reappeared under the name Eli Bard. Selene had cursed her former follower with un-life, turning him into a twisted vampire thing and then made certain that he was buried in the earth before she was discovered in Rome. It turned out he had been around for a few years, and had made a new identity for himself in London and wished to make amends. He had joined a shady high society club called the Hellfire Club and was slowly accumulating wealth and power.
Selene was not yet prepared to move with him however, but the Hellfire Club seemed an interesting tool. She moved to the Americas, where she created an empire based off of land ownership as well as investing. Her magic had grown to such an extent that she could hide from anyone, even the so-called haunted Sorcerer Supreme if she wished, and she used that power to create a financial empire. Then she went to the Hellfire Club and demanded entry. Such was her wealth that they had to allow her in, though she always got the impression that Buckman and Shaw at the very least were not only wary of her but terrified. As well they should be. Shaw was a mutant, something that she could see from a mile off, had powers, yet nowhere near enough to combat her, and they both knew it.
About two years after that, Eli got in touch with her again, and told her about the declining Hellfire Club in London as well as a book he had obtained. The book contained knowledge of the ancient Aztecs that she had been searching for millennia, not having found anything when she went to Mexico after the conquest. The book detailed the way the ancient Aztec head priests would gather their power. What they did was not to sacrifice the entire body, but to sacrifice a little bit of everyone's soul in the entire nation, tying the taking that power with a single sacrifice.
It was based off symbology and the psychic nature of a nation. With a king or an Emperor or someone of that ilk, there was a tiny bit of everyone's energy that fed into them. When there was a capital city the result was much the same. Everyone in that country fed a little tiny bit of power into that capital as it was always in their thoughts somewhere.
Of course in a country like America that power would be minuscule since the president was not, as the ritual called it, tied to the land. America was also not a normal country as the ritual saw it, too large and far too diverse. But King William was tied to the land, and London had been a capital for far longer than Washington and the thoughts and minds of the United Kingdom were tied to it in a way that Washington could not hope to match. The ritual also needed for the stars to align properly to work, and that time was fast approaching.
That, and the fact that Eliphas had already begun to set the groundwork for her inclusion in the London chapter of the Hellfire Club made her decide that her time had come. She remained in New York for a time, slowly transferring her wealth and money to London, always staying away from anything that could bring any attention to her. The London Hellfire Club was grateful to have her power added to it, and the New York Hellfire Club was just as grateful to see the back of her. None of the trio of Kings would admit it, not even Edward, who was the most outgoing, but all three of them had been afraid of her, like wolves who sense that there is a greater predator around.
Then she transferred herself, and within a week the Hellfire Club London Branch answered to her body and soul. The two main movers and shakers besides Eli were barely of the ranks that the New York branch would call a bishop, and easily disposed of. Eliphas was the only one who was of a true bishop rank somewhere between a bishop and king frankly, and he was totally subservient to her.
Emma Steed was another bishop who wished to be a queen but did not have the finances or influence necessary. A dark-haired young woman of 28, who had been born into old money and been determined to change it into new money she was actually quite an attractive young woman with dark raven colored hair cut short to her ears, piercing black guys, a svelte body with long legs, B cup breasts and sharp mind. She was also a mutant with an interesting telekinetic ability to create telekinetic/telepathic chains of varying length she could control with a thought. It made her a very dangerous weapon, and she was the first to fall to Selene.
Despite her telekinetic powers she was no match for Selene who shattered her mind and made Emma into one of her chief lieutenants. Sometimes Selene felt that she hadn't done a complete job on her, that there was a bit of willpower left somewhere in the younger woman, but if it was there it hid itself well.
The other woman of the hellfire club London branch was of a woman named Courtney Ross, who was the white bishop; though she tried to call herself the White Queen the rules of the Hellfire Club forbade it. You had to be of a certain level of power and wealth (calculated with regards to inflation) to call yourself a king or queen. She was not a mutant like Emma, and her mind was much more easily crushed. Her business of transportation however was much more useful than Emma's building and construction business, and allowed Selene to slowly build up a force of mindless pawns in London. Some of these were willing, and those she allowed to retain a bit of will, but others were not. A hobo here, a tramp here, the homeless and useless that no one would miss became her slaves in far more profound a manner than they could ever comprehend.
It was around this time that she became aware of STRIKE and the threat it could pose especially the telepaths. Selene had not dealt with many mutants over the centuries preferring to hide herself away, but telepathy was one area where she knew herself to be vulnerable. Oh, Selene had built up her mental and magical mind defenses to an almost absurd degree, but it wasn't a natural thing for her and a powerful telepath who wanted to could break into her mind given time.
That was one of the reasons why she had kept so low a profile while in New York. The psychic profile of a powerful telepath lay over the entire state like a waiting lightning cloud. That and the fact that the Sorcerer Supreme was there. Before Stephen Strange became the Sorcerer Supreme Selene had felt confident in her ability to defeat him if need be, but after he had received the mantle of Agamotto that had changed.
At this point however Selene had put in too much time and effort to moving to London, and knew that the time of the ritual was coming up. If she wanted to ascend to her rightful place as a goddess, she would have to do it now, or wait another thousand years. Therefore she made contact with the local crime lord Vixen who had a bone to pick with STRIKE and a few of its superpowered members already. Vixen thought she would be an equal in the partnership, but not 10 minutes after meeting Selene she too was broken, made into one of Selene's lieutenants.
Selene supplied the magic and spells and Vixen supplied the muscle. It was almost ridiculously easy to break STRIKE, and when Dr. Druid teleported in to investigate what might be going on in London she and Eliphas were ready. While the last of the Celtic Druids had been able to teleport away before Selene could finish him off the injuries he had sustained in that short moment of magical combat had assured Selene the man was no longer a threat.
After STRIKE was taken out she spent a few days using her mindless vampires to move around the city in the darkest portions of the night to carve runes into the cityscape for the runic array. She was cautious here, knowing that MI5 and Scotland Yard would be on their guard but she was running out of time. The planets would be in alignment soon, and the ceremony and the ritual array had to be ready.
Now, she was faced with this new wizard with odd powers and his allies at the most inopportune moment. She used a spell to see through Elpihas's eyes and watched the ambush impressed despite her years at the combat ability the wizard and his fellows showed. The other two were mutants, and despite the fact that one of them was a telekinetic she felt they were no real threat. Either could be overwhelmed through brute force but the wizard was something different, and the scope and breadth of his powers remained an unknown, though they reminded her of the battle wizards Camelot fielded, but as she had no desire to fight Morgan or Merlin she had never ventured to England so long as they were around.
At that moment she was faced with a choice, to back off and once more disappear, allow the wizard to dismantle the runic array and leave a few pawns to cover her escape. Or she could up the ante and go for broke.
In the end the allure of godhood was too much, and Selene decided to roll the dice. Instead of retreating she upped the ante, using a bit of her husbanded power in a single spell to put the entire city to sleep. As she had expected it hadn't worked on the wizard or his fellows, and she had been rather surprised that it hadn't passed the wards around Buckingham palace either. That was worrisome, but those wards were finite, they were not powerful despite their rather amusing nature.
"What will we do mistress?"
Selene turned to look at Vixen standing by the doorway into the building. The other woman's sharp pointed features always rather amused Selene given her chosen name and she wondered idly which came first the look or the name. But that was rather a chicken of the egg sort of thing and didn't really matter at the moment.
She looked out across London from the top of the 30 street Mary Axe. "They will come for us," she said calmly, "I know not how or what their assault will be, but the wizard at least has realized what is going on. Let him come," she said calmly as she raised one hand her mind already forming the words of the spell. "Let them see what their paltry skills and abilities can do to the coming of true darkness."
She concentrated for a brief moment more than raised two fingers in either hand to the side and then brought them down to slap lightly together intoning a spell. "Summu Nura!" The spell shockwave rang out from the strangely shaped building, and as it went the lights covering the city went out like a snuffed candle.
She waited a moment and frowned as her eyes, enhanced through millennia to be sharper than any mortal eyes, saw pinpricks of light in the distance moving towards Buckingham Palace. She concentrated began raising one palm above her head and slowly pushing it out towards the city in front of her. "Магла на стравот! (Fog of Fear)"
From that Palm appeared a cloud of darkness, impenetrable blackness, and with it came an aura of fear to overwhelm even the staunchest heart. It grew and grew and grew roiling through the city.
As she watched it and felt the backside of that aura of fear Selene laughed. "Let him come! Let him come and witness the ascension of a goddess!"
A moment later however her laughter stopped, and she scowled angrily as her Fog of Fear was cancelled by a shockingly white light, splashing out across the city. She shook her head amused. "Let him pit his pitiful lights against this darkness. Let him come, he will find me waiting for him."
Emma Steed, standing silent to one side her head down her entire body showing her subservience, looked out at that light. While the majority of her felt fear, the small, hidden part of her psyche, hidden behind the mental equivalent of her chains in the deepest part of her brain, felt a emotion it had long since given up on ever feeling again: hope.
OOOOOOO
Harry led the way flying over the cityscape towards Buckingham Palace, and the trio of fliers arrived swiftly at the edge of the wards to see a little over a hundred of soldiers gathering right inside the wards and Harry nodded in approval at their professional manner. They were not taking anything for granted, and had over a dozen men on look out looking around into the city, eyeing the rooftops and the roads while the others gathered in defensive positions. It was obvious they could move out swiftly, but just as obvious that they were ready for anything.
Ororo looked at them and nodded approvingly, "Nepalese, so these must be some of the British Gurkhas."
Harry racked his brain for a moment. He knew that name from somewhere, but he had only dealt with some SAS instructors, not the regular British military. "Good soldiers? I think I've heard of them but…"
"Oh yes," said Ororo as the trio landed amid shouts of exclamations surprise but no real concern. A captain hurried forward and she continued to speak switching to Nepalese for the benefit of the soldiers around them before translating back to English. "Very good soldiers, very tough and determined. I believe that they are also known for knife fighting, they use a special curved knife called a kukri. If we had time I would like to see how good they are really."
The captain smiled briefly at that, while a few of the nearby soldiers who overheard her chuckled.
"I'm not even going to try," said Harry dryly. "I don't want to get smacked again for using a translation spell so is it all right if we all speak the King's English?"
The captain chuckled again, always good to see people who know how to joke in times of peril. "You are Wizard?"
"That would be me," Harry replied. "Not the most original, but descriptive at least." He frowned a little as he noticed a woman coming out of the Castle Gates, a woman whose face he had seen through Hedwig's eyes. "I think we'll stick to our codenames for now. I'm Wizard, this is Phoenix and this is Storm." Ororo inclined her head regally, while Jean simply waved a hand looking around at the dark city, the rain still coming down and soaking everything.
"What would you have us do?" Captain Nedari asked. Around him his men already wearing night camo were preparing for night action, slipping on infrared goggles underneath wide brim hats to keep off the rain, checking their L85A2 rifles (some of them had grenade launchers added underneath the rifle) and their knives. Ororo was correct, there knife work was one of the things Gurkhas were most known for, and each of them wore a long, curved kukri at his side. A few of them were also setting up L108A1 light machine guns in hastily prepared positions.
"Our campaign is going to be twofold." Harry said briskly looking at the captain and glancing at the woman who had just moved up beside him. "For one thing, we need to cut out as many runes as possible from the runic array as a whole. One part of Aztec arrays is that the whole can still work if only a few runes are removed, so destroying as many as we can is essential." He knelt down and touched the grounds intoning "skrøpelige kartet."
The as yet not-introduced woman jumped back in alarm as the ground rose up to create a small 3-D diorama of the city about ten feet across. Harry waved a hand over the top of it and a simulacrum of the runic array as he suspected it was laid out appeared. Then he took out a conjured piece of paper and copied it thirty times. The paper had the runes he had seen so far written on them, as well as a few others Harry could remember from Cimmerian. "Now…"
"What the Hell?!" The woman interrupted, gesticulating at the map, "How the hell did you do that!"
"If you can't deal with magic, then you're not going to be of any help here." Harry said briskly looking up at her.
She shook her head angrily stung by his tone. "I-I can handle it I guess, though that is one hell of a vague explanation. My codename is Black Widow, and trust me I live up to my name."
Harry looked over at the captain who shrugged but nodded. "She is an American spy from SHIELD, an agency which I was debriefed on. They are supposed to handle 'super' issues like this, yes?"
Natasha nodded firmly and Harry shrugged, connecting the woman in his mind to the man who had been spying on the X-mansion. "All right, if the captain here is going to vouch for you that's fine for me."
"These," he said tapping lightly and motioning to a few bright spot on the runic array he had laid out across the 3-D map. "Are the places where I think the power siphoning runes are going to be, the ones who will actually drain the life energy of those around them. Those are the ones that have to be taken out no ifs, ands or buts."
"These others," he said marking down a second part of the array that was drawn like lines from the 30 street Mary Axe rather than in one of the many circles around it, "gather that energy and move it towards a central location. Take them out and the energy won't flow along the array, but it will still be drained unless we take out enough of the first sort. I suspect that the array is going to be guarded at key points by Vixen's men as well as the vamps." and he briefly described both to the soldiers around him, with Ororo telling them about how the thugs seemed able to ignore most wounds, up to and including the loss of a limb.
The Nepalese were slightly superstitious and Harry's talk about vampires had them touching their weapons nervously, but their eyes were gleaming with eagerness at the idea of combat after so long. This was certainly going to be a different battle than they were normally called for, but nighttime actions were one of their specialties, and it certainly beat just standing around looking pretty.
Harry frowned wondering if he could add anything to the soldiers, and then looked up as he felt a spell go off in the distance. He watched in alarm and shock as the lights all around them went out. "Shit," he muttered, "they know we're coming."
Behind him Jean flared her aura even brighter, while Ororo somehow summoned little tiny motes of electricity around her as Harry did the same with a Lumos spell. The redhead shook her head her now soaked hair stuck to her head so much it didn't move. "Did this Selene bitch just cast another spell that covered the entire city?"
Harry nodded. "I'm not certain what spell she used but she seems to have knocked out all electricity and…" he broke off as from the 30 street Mary Axe a mass of dark smog spread out covering the city even further. With it came a miasma of fear that shook even the staunchest hearts around Harry.
The wizard shook his head, gathering his power and intoned "Noli Vinci!" This was another spell he had designed based on the Patronus spell which simply pulsed a massive feeling of confidence and courage out. The spell could be made as powerful as the caster wanted, and this time Harry didn't hold back.
The light of his spell spread out slamming against the encroaching smog and through it, completely overcoming the aura of fear throughout the entire city, but the smog was unaffected by the emotion based counter-spell.
Harry looked around at the troopers around him as well as Ororo who was shivering slightly and Jean, who looked a cross between anxious and angry. The Black Widow didn't seem as effected or was simply better at hiding it. "Selene, the woman behind this thinks to scare you, to make you run and hide rather than stand against her! What do you all think of that!?"
"Kaatar Hunnu Bhanda Marnu Ramro!" shouted the soldiers back at him, angry at the very idea someone thought they would try to hide or run away.
Harry looked over at Ororo who smiled, her white eyes sparkling with more than the power that she commanded. "Better to die than to be a coward."
Harry laughed. "Gryffindors the lot of them, still good soldiers all the same. But this was a good move by Selene, she knows that the darkness helps her vampire allies, and I bet she's done something to Vixen's men too."
Captain Nerdali shook his head. "While my men and I are good night fighters, we still need some light to see by. With so few stars, no moon and this rain, we'll be at a disadvantage at anything but knife range. I would take my men against any normal foe at that range anytime, but against these vampires?"
In response Harry raised his hands, then gathered his power and slammed them together with a clap that rang around the square, intoning a Chinese spell he had learned from a book that Luna's classmate Su Li had loaned him. "Shi Jundai!" Suddenly the square was full of conjured golem all of them in the shape of monstrous men of clay. Normally they would be weak and easily dispelled by another magic user, but with the power Harry put into the spell they would be durable and dangerous against any purely physical threat.
His eyes flared with power Harry brought his hands up again and then moved them to the side. This was no spell really, he was simply imbuing each Golem with the light of a Lumos spell. The golems started to glow with a bright flaring light as if they each held a small sun inside the pushing away at the darkness.
Harry turned back to the captain briskly. "One fire team per golem, I'll order them to obey your men. Spread out of the city destroy any wards you find. Myself, Storm and Phoenix will move towards the 30 street Mary Axe."
"With me," said Natasha grimly. "You might need some subtle backup rather than brute force."
"That only leaves communication," said captain Nerdali. "That first spell seems to have taken out our electronics. We'll need to communicate with our teams, warn of ambushes and coordinate our efforts" Indeed all the Gurkhas had removed their headsets, which were dead like they had been dropped into a tub or water or something.
"I can handle that," a female voice rang out. Harry and the others turned to see Betsy walking toward them, her head held high despite needing to lean on her brother, who had decided to guard the castle from the exterior as well as keep watch on his sister.
"How so Ms?" Harry asked.
"I'm a telepath, and a decent one at that. I can keep in contact mentally with the soldiers." She could also maybe use her powers to sense out any ambushes, but she didn't know if she could, and wasn't going to mention it until she was sure.
Betsy's power of telepathy was not like Jean's, who had to concentrate to use it consciously, though these days it was getting easier and easier to use for long periods of time. Nor was it like Emma's, like a radar sweep going on all the time around her coupled with the ability to send out her own mind in the form of an astral projection at need. Betsy's was more like the sonar of a bat, always on and giving her an image of the minds around her. she never delved into them unless she had to, though most of them lacked the definition and sharp borders of a trained telepaths so she picked up some surface thoughts, but after so long she was able to ignore them easily enough.
Jean frowned, looking at the purple haired woman. "Are you sure you can do that over the entire city?"
"No, but over about forty blocks or so, yes. I'll have the mother of all headaches tomorrow, and it will exhaust me badly to do it even for an hour, but I should be able to."
The Gurkhas all looked a little askance at using a mind reader to communicate between them all, but none of them had any better ideas. Harry, if they had an hour or more to spare, could have come up with something but as it was already past 12 and pushing past 12:30 they didn't have any time to spare. "All right we'll go with that idea."
"One question," said one Gurkha fingering the top of his kukri, the curved long knife holstered at his side. "These vampires, what is our rules of engagement with them?"
Harry paused. The vampires that had attacked them earlier had seemed to come from all walks of life. Most looked like hobos or people from the streets, not the sort that anyone would mess, but then there were the ones who looked richer, and more normal. "Phoenix you've touched some of the vampires' minds, are the vampires worth trying to save?"
Phoenix, who had been staring out into the darkness beyond the light that Harry's golems were putting off turned back a frown on her face. "I" she paused, suddenly looking far younger and more vulnerable despite the aura of power still surrounding her. "I don't think so," she said quietly.
"You don't understand, whatever was done to them… their minds are gone. Their souls… their minds whatever you want to call it that made them who they were, whatever that was is gone. All that's left is the imperative to obey, nothing else. Some of them still have a facade of their normal personalities, but that's it. There's a bit of instinct underneath that, with a desire to feed, but that's all. I, I don't think they can be saved."
Charles might be able to save one or two with his greater knowledge and power, but even then it would be the ones who had a portion of their normal personalities left, and they were the ones who gave them to Selene willingly according to their own and Eliphas's memories.
Ororo strode up to her friend and put an arm around her shoulder comfortingly. "Can they spread whatever this is? This vampiric disease?"
Jean nodded sadly. I'm not certain the ones who are completely mindless can, but the few I sensed in that last group, the ones that had some semblance of minds left… they could, it was part of the reason why the few I scanned joined up."
"Does that answer your question trooper?" said Harry softly. "For those that move faster and seem more intelligent than the others, they gave themselves to this willingly. No quarter to them and as for the others," Harry shook his head. "Give them mercy."
Captain Nerdali nodded grimly, but whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the shattering sound of gunfire coming from a few buildings on the far side of the road way. At the same time over a dozen vampires came loping out of the darkness, pausing momentarily as they saw the light from the golems and Harry.
That momentary pause proved to be their undoing as before anyone else could respond Jean turned her telekinetic power flaring out in broad wings of flame to either side and she screamed, a scream of sadness and rage mixed with a cry of a hunting falcon. She brought her hands down slamming row upon row of pillars of telekinetic energy blasts down onto the vampires burning them all to ash.
At the same time she was doing this Harry and Ororo turned their attention on to the shooters in the rooftops. Their dual assault, lightning and hurricane gale spears of wind from Ororo and several attack spells from Harry swiftly dealt with the shooters. They turned back to the captain and Ororo cracked out "You have your orders Captain, let's be about it." With that she and feet Phoenix took the air, and Harry followed swiftly.
"Firebird and Thunderbird together," said the Gurkha captain in his native tongue looking over at his lieutenants, shaking his head to clear his large hat of the rain for a moment. "Suddenly I think that we are on the winning side yes?" With that he swiftly broke his command up, assigning fire teams to each golem, and then pointing them in different directions. He talked briefly to Betsy, introducing her to the fire-team leaders and his lieutenants to let her get to know the people she would be communicating with, then the half strength company broke up into fire teams and began to spread out through the city.
Behind them the captain, two fire teams and Betsy dug in at the entrance to the palace, while Brian took to the air, patrolling around the palace.
OOOOOOO
Harry and the two ladies flew through the air towards 30 street Mary Axe which was possibly the oddest name for a building Harry had heard, built seemed almost normal in comparison to the building itself, which looked like a strangely shaped bullet standing straight up.
Almost immediately they ran into the problem of all very visible lights in the darkness, that being that there were also targets. Gunfire erupted from all around them, and Jean frowned angrily. With a thought she grabbed all the bullets flying towards them in midair and pushed the bullets straight back down where they came from.
Below more of Vixen's steroid and mentally damaged thugs were swiftly riddled by their own bullets, some of them dying instantly while many ignored their wounds easily and kept firing up at the flying trio.
At the same time, spears of what could only be called black lightning shot out from the top of the building. Harry raised his hands throwing up a "Protego Maximo!" The magical shield deflected the black lightning up into the sky. "Mine I think," he growled. 'If that is not Selene I will eat my shoes."
A second after he stopped speaking telekinetic chain shot up towards them, but it was immediately blocked and smacked aside by a single wave of Jean's hand. "And mine," she answered, her eyes dark with mixed sadness and fury. "I'll take out whoever shot that out and keep the men that were firing at us just now busy." Ororo and Harry nodded and zoomed on, with Harry throwing simple attack spells at the top of the tower which were blocked or deflected as fast as he sent them with what felt like contemptuous ease.
Ororo suddenly gasped as they saw the front of the oddly designed building. The front doors were open and out came over a hundred vampires and zombies, zooming down the road that would eventually take them to Buckingham palace. Many of them looked as if they had been dug up from the graves around London, and indeed they had. Selene believed in preparing contingency plans, and she felt that a few dozen real zombies to go with her vampiric minions would provide enough of a distraction for her to either finish the ritual or get away. Of course they were now being used for another purpose, but good plans were ones you could change at any given time.
Harry had learned there were a few buttons of his lady that a wise man would not push. Now he learned another one, that desecrating the dead ranked well above hogging the covers or not having fruit for breakfast. She screamed, a scream of pure rage and god(ess) like fury. "This will not be allowed!"
She raised her hands into the air her eyes glowing with power and out of the rainy darkness came not a few, but thousands of lightning bolts, slamming down into the undead horde accompanied by sheets of ice and hurricane force winds. "Go back into the ground honored dead, this life is not thine, relinquish it and have peace again!"
Under her assault the horde of vampires and zombies first faltered, then broke up, and finally simply died, charred and broken and ripped asunder by her furious assault.
Harry was busy dueling with whoever was in the tower, and so didn't have time to even shout a warning to his lady when a single bullet traveling at near supersonic speeds shot up from halfway down the tower. It impacted her right in the middle, and it was only the fact that Harry had reinforced her suit as his first experiment with Orihalcum scales that saved her from more than a bruising. As it was, the Orihalcum scales underneath her suit and the charms to absorb impact saved her from any significant injury, but it still knocked the wind out of her and caused her attack to falter. Of course by this time her overpowered attack had done its job, and the undead had been forcefully returned to the earth, mostly in pieces admittedly.
Ororo shook her head, moving aside with a burst of wind to dodge another rifle around. "Will you be all right against whoever is up there alone?"
"Go on love," he said his voice almost light and playful despite the seriousness of the moment. "I can handle my partner in this dance alone."
"Good," the African woman replied, having caught a glimpse of the shooter. "I believe I just spotted Vixen. That is one woman I wish to have a chat with."
Harry nodded grimly. For some reason, a reason that he understood all too well but wasn't going to voice, after reading Vixen's background Ororo had developed a rather deep hatred of the woman.
That hatred came from the fact that the two of them came from similar backgrounds. Ororo was a very young girl when the embassy her parents worked at in Cairo blew up killing her parents and burying her in rubble, and she had spent her formative years on the streets of Cairo, one of the nastiest cities in the world. Vixen lost her parents at an early age, and had to live on the street from an early age in the area of London that had once been made famous by Jack the Ripper.
But whereas Ororo had risen above the thievery that she had to do to survive, only seeing it as a means to an end, Vixen had fallen into crime and reveled in it from the get go. Where Ororo left her life as a thief behind to explore the world beyond the city Vixen delved ever deeper into it. She prayed on people, selling drugs and taking what she wanted by force. Ororo loathed her, seeing in her what Ororo might have become if she had made different choices.
Ororo nodded and shot off, dodging another supersonic bullet in midair, thankful beyond words that Harry's spell that had changed her eyes into that of a owl hadn't worn off yet allowing her to see almost like it was daytime. With that she could see where the rifle was pointing and dodge accordingly.
OOOOOOO
"H-Wizard and O-Storm are fully engaged with the leaders of this attack," Betsy reported, a bit of sweat beading on her brow as she struggled to use her powers at so long a range for her. Well, that and remembering to use her new acquaintances code names. "Phoenix is engaged with another mutant and a group of fifteen shooters. Storm was really angry there for a minute, but that seems to have faded. Black Widow is closing in one Phoenix's position fast." That emotion had actually come through strongly despite Ororo's odd static filled mind.
Betsy and Captain Nerdali sat in a makeshift tent made over the 3-D map. It was only one of over a dozen the troops had put up. Betsy wondered for a bit what they were supposed to be for, but the smells of medical antiseptic reached her at one point even through the rain, and that answered her question.
Captain Nerdali nodded then looked at the 3-D map, where icons created by Harry showed him, Jean and the captain's men spreading through the city. None of his men had run into any opposition yet, but it was only a matter of time.
OOOOOOO
Terrence Mugabo was a sergeant in Gurkha Rifles and a damn good one. He was never going to be an officer, he didn't know anything about manners or how to stick his pinky out or anything like that, but he was good with his people, and very good with his knife. This saved him this evening, for when he and his four-man team moved slightly ahead of the golem with them it was his quick reaction time and his knifes that saved his life.
Out of the darkness ahead of them came five vampires, their forms that of everyday homeless people, dirty and almost sickly but their speed belying that nature. Even so, the five team strong fire team raised their assault rifles two fo them going to their knees on the wet concret of the street and all five began to fire. They belted out enough metal to put one of the vampires down before the others reached them, the darkness having allowed them to close without being seen. One of them reached for the Sergeant, and Mugabo stepped back very slightly raising his knife swiftly out of its sheath to slice into the thing's chest
That wasn't enough however and the vampire kept trying to slash Roger's throat out. His kukri lashed out again catching the thing on the wrist, slicing through skin and bone to amputate one of its arms but despite this the thing kept trying to get at him.
Thankfully Mugabo's arms were long and he was a very strong man and he was able to hold the vampire at bay while around him his men fought the other three vampires.
Suddenly an arm of stone reached across the Sergeant and grabbed the things head's crushing it in a powerful grip. With that respite Roger turned quickly, bringing his knife around and slicing into the side of a vampire who had his back to him. The thing turned swiftly at the sound of Roger's kukri singing through the rain but couldn't move fast enough to dodge the blow entirely. The kukri sliced into the things neck and back out, slicing away half its neck. The soldier it had been attacking took the opportunity to slice the back of its knees out with his own kukri.
Fight over for now, Terrence noticed he had one man down but the vampires were also down. The golem was moving around as swiftly as it could (which wasn't very fast admittedly), it's large fists rising and falling as it crushed skulls. Another one of his men had taken out a few phosphorus grenades. Normally used to make smoke they could be used to start fires and that was what the trooper was doing now, lighting the dead bodies on fire. The fire caught swiftly, and the dead bodies began to burn.
Terrence nodded grimly inwardly amused at the odd form of combat, how close and personal it was, like a throwback to the time before the British brought modern warfare to India. With the golem following him, Terrence backtracked the zombies, and swiftly found one of the rune things that Mr. Wizard had told them about glowing slightly in the dark with a sickly yellow. The sergeant knelt down and used his kukri to carve through the rune. The thing flared for a moment and went out. Satisfied he stood up and turned to the others nodding simply. "Let's move on."
This was not the only small clash going on in the city. The Gurkhas fought Vixen's men and the packs of vampires set to guard strategic points of the runic array, trading shots with the first, but all too often having to face the second in knife range. Despite their training and reflexes that was a losing proposition, but thankfully all the fire teams also had a golem that could handle the vampires easily enough.
Betsy was invaluable in this, using her power to tell each group what the others were doing, relaying orders from the captain, which allowed him to use his troops training and skills to best effect. More than a few times he had a group retreat from a pack of vampires to lead them into an ambush by another fire team. The darkness and the rain worked for the vampires, but the golem's light allowed the troopers to see them. Eventually the golems began to lead the way, providing mobile bulwarks behind which their fire teams fired at the vampires.
And those troopers with grenade launchers attached to their rifles began to use them as well whenever they spotted the vampires at sufficient range. However given the total darkness they were fighting through and the fact the vampires could see so easily in it, those times were few and far between.
Vixen's men were not so much an issue. They couldn't see anywhere near as well in the dark as vampires, and were no match for the Royal Guard at range or in close. Many times the Gurkhas used their maneuverability and ability to communicate to take them out without any casualties.
Yet all this was a mute point if Selene was still able to activate the rune at the appropriate time.
OOOOOOO
Jean scowled angrily. Telepathy didn't come as naturally to her as using her telekinesis did, and finding the minds of the individuals below wasn't very easy considering how weak they were. So the choices were to stay up here and simply shield herself from their gunfire, or get in closer and possibly have to deal with more vampires. Luckily for her, the woman with the telekinetic chains was much easier for her to spot.
She dived down towards the short-haired woman, gliding to one side as the woman again tried to throw up a chain of telekinetic power. As it flew past her before curving back Jean noticed that the end of it was barbed. An interesting mental construct, Jean thought idly before throwing out her own telekinetic attack, claw of flame which the girl dodged rather adroitly, moving like someone who had been trained as a dancer or possibly in acrobatics. From the woman's other hand another chain shot out, and then she twirled her head and of all things another change seems to appear from her forehead shooting out with a spear tip at the end.
Jean dodged through all three chains while making her way down toward the woman until a backhand of telekinetic powers slammed into the woman's chest before she could dodge. The blow threw her off the side of the roof she had been standing on, though she caught herself with her telekinetic chain swiftly. At the same time two of Vixen's thugs raised their rifles from hiding places on the rooftops around Jean and began to fire on her. Jean was forced to conjure up a telekinetic shield, to block the incoming bullets.
More rounds cracked out in the darkness, but this time they were aimed at two of the shooters who went down their heads now missing significant chunks. To the shock of the shooter this didn't actually seem to bother them. Seconds after going down they arose and turned, but Natasha started using experimental incendiary rounds which was filled with magnesium. This time she went for chest shots, and when the bullets hit they ignited easily, setting the thugs on fire which seemed to do the trick thankfully.
Natasha ducked under a pink chain of what she thought might be telekinetic energy as it zoomed in from the side trying to take her head off. But with the pressure taken off Phoenix she was able to turn her own power once again against the other telekinetic, who was sent flying backwards again slamming into a building and through the wall.
"If you take out the shooters," shouted Jean, having to shout as the weather suddenly worsened, the rain coming down in torrents around them. "I'll take her out."
Natasha touched her head where a chunk of her hair had been sliced off, that was how close she came to being beheaded by the chain of telekinetic force. "that sounds like a good division of responsibility yes."
Jean grinned and with a burst of telekinetic power shot off through the hole that the other telekinetic's body had made in the seven-story tall building across from them.
Unbeknownst to either woman however, someone else had pulled himself together and had gone hunting for who he called the mind witch.