Chapter Nineteen: The Battle of St. Circe's

"I thought I'd lost you," Cassie said.

She pulled me into another hug and kissed me again. You'd think I'd been the one who'd been abducted for weeks, leaving her girlfriend to miserably pine for her. But, no… I'd been gone for about a day. Cassie had been miserable for that day, though. She'd thought I'd sacrificed myself to the Gangling Men forever to free her. This wasn't an unreasonable assumption, because that's exactly what had happened, with the minor caveat that I'd had a trump card up my sleeve. Or, more precisely, I had whatever was left of Lucian Bryce still glommed on top of my soul.

"Cassie…" I struggled to free myself from her powerful grip - I wanted nothing more than to snuggle with her, to nuzzle against her breast and feel her warmth as I dozed off (and maybe break out the vibrators after a little nap). But we had serious work to do. "We've got serious work to do," I said.

Cassie straightened her blouse and nodded. "Right… that's six down… how many ley points are there?"

I chewed at my lip. "Ten." I pulled my hair back into a braid - the wind had picked up, and now the storm was upon us, violet and blue flashes of magical energy pulsing through the sky, making the deepening evening nearly as bright as daytime.

After I'd met with the Thirteen down in the St. Circe's ritual chamber, I'd immediately gone to inform Cassie of my whereabouts and recruit her to help me get the non-witch and magically inexperienced students to safety beneath the conservatory. It had taken about two minutes to get Cassie to stop crying and kissing me, at which point we'd lost most of the time advantage of having two people leading groups of girls to safety. After we'd done that, and after I got Cassie to stop carrying me around like a pet puppy, we got to work with our next assignment: sealing all of the local leys.

St. Circe's had three main nexuses where the ley manifolds intersected like crazy. Two of these ley lines had roads along them for driving in and out of campus. The third was out in the middle of the lake. It was an awkward spot for the Gangling Men to exploit, but if we left it vulnerable, they'd probably do it. Beyond those three spots, there were another seven 'ley wrinkles' where the manifolds intersected less substantially, but were a very determined person (or animated pile of creepy-ass rags) might enter. It would be a smaller, less stable portal, but you might get a few 'people' through it before it collapsed on you. So Cassie and I had been tasked with closing them up. You couldn't just close a ley line - the magical energy was a fixture of  the environment - but you could occupy it to keep anybody from outside coming through. That way, we could open the portals on our own terms and bottleneck the Gangling Men to negate any numerical advantage they might have. But it was a two person ritual (at least it was for Cassie and Me), and we needed platinum to do it. Fortunately, Ms. Azucar had some platinum from her chemistry/alchemy class, little dime-sized chits that we could use in the ritual.

"I don't understand why the teachers don't do this," Cassie said. She rowed us out into the lake while I waved my little witch candle around to find the approximate location of the ley nexus.

"First off," I said, "A teacher is doing this." I continued when Cassie was done rolling her eyes. "And second, because, Lily is busy with the wards and none of the teachers but Lily knows tempura. Nobody but Simone and I are any good at it, and it's kind of needed to keep the stasis up for more than a few minutes at a time."

"Sorry," Cassie said. "I wish I'd got a chance to practice it."

I leaned forward in the boat and kissed her cheek. "You were stuck in the tree when we discovered it. And, unfortunately, we might all be stuck in there forever if we don't get all of this shit sealed up. So it's you and me starting with the north road and Simone with the main entrance to the Southeast." Simone, Constance Jessup, and Tiffany Chalmers were the second ley-sealing team since she knew the symbology and the other two were pretty competent at ritual magic, maybe enough to be one Cassie worth of assistance.

Once we were out to the ley, I lowered a little styrofoam container with our ritual setup into the water. I held the container in place with an activated dowsing pendulum, and then Cassie and I performed the ritual to occupy the ley: Cassie worked to maintain the ritual circle while I directed my energies to the platinum inside. As long as the ley storm lasted, it would feed right into our ritual. Thereafter, the energies would dissipate, but it would likely take a few days before somebody outside St. Circe's could enter, before which we could just come back out and re-up the ritual circles. We could go for weeks or months if we had to.

The lake's water was choppy on account of the storm, but the pendulum would hold our little styrofoam boat in place. At least I hoped it would. With a little hum of magic, the ley's energy faded into the background static of the ley storm, its fluctuations far too strong and fast to disrupt from outside.

"That's seven points in the books," I said. I counted in my little pouch - I had seven platinum chits left, so we could keep going. I looked shoreward and off into the woods, craning my neck as if that might help me see further. "Did we really do seven points before Simone's crew could even do three?"

Cassie rowed us back to the pier, worry playing across her face. "Even with Tiffany and Constance helping instead of me, she should've been more than half as fast as us… shit… do you think something went wrong?"

"I hope not," I said. "We'll keep going… on to the next point. Hopefully, we'll meet them somewhere along the way.

As Cassie lashed us to the pier, I watched as a glowing ball of light descended out of the sky, made contact with the water, and summoned a mermaid, tentacles and all (think closer to Ursula than Ariel, and closer to a humanoid hagfish than either). It sang out a mournful, keening wail for all of two seconds before disappearing back into the energies of the ley. Yup. Ley storms are weird.

We tromped through the woods to the next point - we'd do as many of them as we had to. Though it would have been convenient if St. Circe's wasn't so big. At around four square miles (plus some parts outside the standing stones, which didn't really count), it had a pretty substantial perimeter to traverse. And the woods were dark and snowy. The ley storm rattled the trees and made the shadows dance in strobing technicolor noise. I almost missed the other person cracking and running through the woods.

"Hey! You! Who the hell are you!" I took two steps, stumbled through the snow, and then looked on as Cassie vaulted the nearby log and ran off into the dark. I heard somebody shriek in surprise - and it was a very familiar shriek. "Simone! Is that you?"

"It's Simone," Cassie confirmed. The two of them crunched back to the path. "Were you heading toward the third point?"

Simone gave us an odd look, her smoke-gray eyes casting nervous glances northward. "Third point? Hell no, I was looking for Tiffany and Constance… they ran off when the ley storm hit the west road, flashing all orange and blue. Tiffany was all, 'I, like, don't want to die,' and she ran off. She fucking left us, you guys… and then Constance freaked out and took off, too. So the two of them are hiding somewhere and, until I can get at least a second person, I can't do a damn thing."

"So is it safe to say that the ley nexus at the main entrance is completely unguarded?"

Simone nodded. "That's safe to say."

"Well, shit… we'd better go there first and then work our way back to here. We cannot let a major ley go undefended."

"Don't you think I know that?"

Simone tried to dodge away from my hug, but I was too fast. "Let's not fight, okay? We can kick Tiffany's butt when the school is safe. We gonna do this?"

"We're gonna do this," Simone agreed.

+++++

As we approached the main entrance, it started raining. It rained water, of course, but it also started raining frogs and toads... it was a ley storm, after all. Simone did not take it well... she and creepy crawlies weren't on the best of terms. So, as she shrieked, dove for cover, and attempted to dodge frogs tumbling out of the heavens, Cassie and I got to the ritual.

"There's a frog in your hair," Cassie said to me.

"It's a toad."

We set up the circle, placed our platinum chit into the circle's center, and fell short by precisely two seconds. As I was finishing my chant, the ley shimmered to life and Gangling Men started pouring through. I was so focused that I didn't even notice until Simone shouted out a warning and the wards started triggering. With a loud pop!, one... two... three Gangling Men exploded into confetti, their cloth lost beyond any ability to recover. But there were more where they came from. Two of them managed to stumble in just short of the wards - a few more inches and they'd have been confetti, too. They set a device on the ground - something similar to an old school TV antenna, albeit with lots of extra doodads and covered in magical symbols - and activated it.

Flashes came down from the ley, magical surges from every color of the rainbow (and a few that I think were invented just for magic) and converged on the device. With a crack and an audible tearing sound like the rending of a great shroud, the ley tore open, its gaping portal shimmering and stretching all the way from the main entrance to the third wrinkle. The two Gangling Men were toast, but the damage was done. Every entrance that we hadn't yet sealed was a single, massive portal, and I wasn't quite sure if we could  close it.

"Run!" Simone said. Already, there were a dozen Gangling Men through the portal setting up devices and working to dispel the wards.

I pulled the toad out of my hair and whispered to her: "Attack!"

Suddenly, thousands upon thousands of angry, croaking frogs and toads hopped towards the Gangling Men. I wasn't sure what they could do, but it provided enough distraction for our escape. Cassie and I tore off after Simone, splashing in the rain toward our 'battle lines' farther back at the main campus.

These lines were a second set of wards waiting to be activated… but not waiting for long. A few dozen witches, students and faculty, were out around the snowy, well-worn triangle formed by Masters Hall, the conservatory, and the administration building. They pointed and shouted as we approached, waving us across as Ms. Azucar suppressed the wards - we probably wouldn't activate them, but we weren't completely 'ward neutral', so it wasn't a given, especially not with a ley storm in situ.

"They're coming," I said, gasping in breath. "There's a huge ley tear between the main entrance and the lake…"

Ms. Azucar's eyes went wide. "What? Didn't you close all of the entrances?"

"No, because Simone's assistants turned tail the moment the ley storm started acting up. It was only Cassie and me, and we only got around to seven of them… so about a third of the campus is completely open and unprotected."

"Hijo de puta! Has anybody seen Tiffany or Constance?"

"Um…" Amanda said. She pointed out over the green to where a single girl was fleeing from about half a dozen Gangling Men. She had a considerable head-start, but they were catching up on account of floating over the snow. It was Tiffany Chalmers… wherever Constance was, it wasn't with Tiffany.

"Goddamnit, Tiffany! Move your butt!" Cassie shouted.

I worked to suppress the wards as Tiffany approached, untangling them and sapping energy from their triggering symbols - I'd have to put the energy back in, of course, once Tiffany was across - otherwise, the wards would stay inert. "Tiffany, wait! I'll have it in three sec…"

Tiffany didn't wait. She ran right across the ward, triggering it - fortunately only at about ten percent strength, and even then it sent her tumbling forward with multiple contusions. It also caused a chain reaction up in the ley storm, triggering every other ward in our perimeter. Our second line of protection had just vanished. Even though she was a lot taller and somewhat stronger than me, I grabbed Tiffany's collar and forced her down to face level.

"Couldn't you wait three goddamn seconds, Tiffany? Now we've got no defenses… I wish they'd just taken you!"

"Sorry… sorry…" she sobbed, and immediately I felt bad about having said what I'd said. "There's so many of them… they're coming…"

"I know that, god damnit!"

There wasn't much point in re-casting the wards. It would take five or six minutes for us to set them up, and already there were dozens more Gangling Men coming out of the woods. We had maybe three minutes. The girls around me were verge of panic, and even the teachers were demoralized by our sudden loss of wards. Some of them were praying to Mistress Starlight and others simply did their best to hold themselves together. But I’ve never been big on prayer – direct intervention is usually a lot more effective.

"Everybody retreat toward the administration building," I said. "Now!"

"You have a plan?" Ms. Azucar asked.

"Not a good one, but yes."

I took a few steps forward and cast a big tempura-quartopus ward in front of myself, scowling at the approaching gangling men. When they cast their spells at me, I deflected them, and when the closest one got within distance, he started casting black bindings around me. When a second and third one joined him, I let them think they were getting the better of me (I was working pretty hard, but it was to suppress the ward I'd just cast). Then, as the farthest ones were reaching the outside of my ward’s range, I manually triggered it, and… I was in Cassie's arms, huddled against her as she tromped through the snow and carried me toward the conservatory.

"What the fuck just happened?" I muttered.

"You and all of the pale fucks just… froze," she said. The relief in her eyes was visible. "I figured out the symbol to banish all of them back to wherever and then figured I'd take you to safety."

I squirmed enough to hop out of her arms. "Well stop… none of us is safe if they get through, so we'd better get back to defense. I assume you got the symbol cloths from the Gangling Men?"

"Um…" Cassie said. "Was that important?"

"Yes. If they take those back to their sanctuary, they can just bring the same bastard back… they just have to get within ritual distance of their tree, build a 'voodoo doll' out of the cloth, and then it turns into a body as soon as a spirit enters it. You didn't banish those guys, you just temporarily inconvenienced them."

"Shit."

Shit, indeed - we got back out to the commons to find the battle at full tilt.

OvidLemma

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