Old Friends and Old Business

[Harry Dresden]

The flight from Dalaran back to Edinburgh passed quickly, though Harry would still have preferred a Way. Once the prospect of travelling by the realms of Fae had terrified him, but now he found it familiar and comfortable, and missed the option when it was taken from him. Perhaps that said something about the way he'd been living his life the past few years, before this Omniverse thing. Still, right now, he needed to acquaint himself with the information from Inlumia about the way the Omniverse worked. The griffon touched down outside Edinburgh, and Harry set the beast free, watching it fly away before walking underground and calling light from his pentacle amulet. He held the notebook in one hand and navigated the tunnels almost absentmindedly; he was intimately familiar with their workings.

As he approached the Halls themselves, he shut the book, a passage on summoning still fresh in his mind. He hadn't summoned this building from Earth, that was certain, though how he knew that he wasn't sure. But he could summon beings directly from home, or copies of those beings at least. He could think of one entity he didn't want to leave alone in the hands of the Leanansidhe, if only because Mab had a personal grudge against him and Lea might open the bag and find him, if she hadn't already. Though no fault of her own, Lea was beholden to Mab, and it stood to reason she'd share the Winter Queen's grudge against Bob.

That thought in mind, Harry opened the door with a few precise taps from his staff and set off towards his lab, which was under his apartment, which was under the ostentatory, which most people simply called a great hall or meeting hall. He found his familiar flannel robe waiting on a hook inside, along with most of the normal contents of his lab. Even the map of the Paranetters was there, despite its uselessness in this new locale. It was missing one thing, though; there was normally a skull on that shelf of romance novels.

The skull was the home of a spirit of intellect named Bob. There was only one thing that kept Harry from stating that Bob had forgotten more about magic than Harry knew. Bob never forgot anything. Ever. And he was loyal to whoever held his skull, which meant he was dangerous to have in circulation. It wasn't that Harry didn't trust his friends. He just didn't trust the Leanansidhe as far as he could throw her, and he couldn't throw her far at all. So he crossed over to the circle inlaid on the ground, closed it with an infusion of will, and funneled Omnilium into the rings of intertwined metal. He let the energy build up like he had for creating the Halls, and, after a few minutes had passed, spoke. "Bob, spirit of Intellect. Bob, spirit of Air. Bob, I summon thee!"

There was a flash of bright light from the Omnilium before it resolved into a shape. Specifically, a human skull carved with spidery black runes. Two flames burned in the skull's eye sockets, and its jaw moved up and down as it spoke. "What the hell was that, Boss? One minute I'm staring at the Swords and a box of depleted Uranium, next I'm here in your lab and it's like nobody ever touched it!" The skull turned in place a couple times before speaking again. "And why am I in a sealed circle?"

[Harry Dresden]

Harry couldn't help it. He started laughing. In fact, he laughed so hard he fell down on top of the circle, literally hitting the floor while shaking with laughter. Bob was not amused. "Oh, ha-ha. You finally know something I don't. Cute. See if I help you now." Harry laughed for a few more seconds before standing up, placing Bob on his shelf of romance novels where he usually was. "I'm sorry, it's just such a novel thing." He put Inlumia's notebook on the shelf and nodded to it. "Most of the pertinent information is in there. Some kid named Inlumia. The bits that aren't are pretty simple, otherwise I doubt I'd have been able to get them. This place is called the Omniverse. It seems to be a separate dimension from home. I can't use my Sight or access the Nevernever, so the rules are different here. I'm what's called a Prime here, which makes you a Secondary since I summoned you here."

While Harry spoke, the pages of the notebook blew from right to left at a startling speed, the sign of Bob reading the book. Bob was done before Harry finished talking, which was just to be expected. Bob was a spirit of intellect, after all. He was about the smartest being Harry knew. "You know, Boss, not even DuMorne got into this much trouble. You've got a gift." Harry cringed at the mention of his old mentor. "At least I'm living through mine. There doesn't seem to be a Mab here, so I've dodged that particular bullet for the time being." He could've sworn Bob somehow made the orange flames of his eyes seem flat and sarcastic for a moment. It wouldn't surprise him, though he wasn't exactly sure how a fire could look sarcastic. "Fine, I get it. I shouldn't have done that thing with Kincaid. Geez."

Bob looked a little satisfied with that. "So, Boss, what do you want?" Harry shook his head. "Right now, not much. I'm just trying to wrap my head around this place. The universe we're in is called Camelot, it's like the middle ages or something, but with more magic, and less witch burning. I'm thinking of opening a private investigations business in Minas Tirith, if only for the novelty." Bob's skull swiveled to gaze at him directly. "Minas Tirith? As in..." Harry nodded. "Exactly like Lord of the Rings. Someone mentioned a King Aragorn too." Bob chuckled. "This must be paradise for a nerd like you." That got Harry laughing too. "I will have you know..." he managed to choke out between fits of chuckles, "I am a wizard. Nerd doesn't do me justice."

[Harry Dresden]

Bob's camaraderie, such as it was, did wonder's for Harry's mood. After a few more hours of bouncing ideas back and forth, including a rather dismaying 15 minutes wherein Bob examined raw Omnilium and concluded that it wasn't ectoplasm or, in fact, anything that he'd ever seen before, the wizard was ready to go to bed. "I don't know how many romance novels I'll be able to find here, but I'll see what I can do to give you a little fresh reading. I'm going out tomorrow. There's a kid named Blues, or Proto Man, and a woman named Samus who are allowed into the Halls. Don't let them know who you are." Bob sighed, though Harry still wasn't clear on how a skull could sigh, and replied with a bored-sounding "Yes, boss." Harry grabbed the notebook, ascended out of his subbasement laboratory (mua-ha-ha-ha) and hung his flannel robe on a hook before retiring to his bed and sleeping soundly for the first time since he'd gotten here.

Morning came and his trusty Mickey Mouse alarm clock rang its cheery tones straight through Harry's skull. Harry left the halls, taking care to shut the door behind him very tightly, and maneuvered the tunnels to emerge into the early dawn light. Consulting the notebook and the sun to determine that Minas Tirith was a few hours' walk that-a-way, Harry pocketed the little bundle of pages and started jogging. He didn't have the benefit of Intellectus here like he did on Demonreach, but he could still jog for a very considerable distance. In fact, a couple hours later the wizard slowed to a walk just as the woods gave way to farmland and the city of Minas Tirith loomed over the cleared fields like a massive watchtower. Harry planned on continuing straight until he found a path that led into the city, but, of course, nothing could ever be simple.

"Help!"

"Quiet, you!"

The voice that had silenced the human cry for help was anything but human in itself, and Harry groaned as he set off towards the source of the noise, the sun making the run through the fields hotter and more uncomfortable to the duster-clad wizard than the jog through the shady forest had been. He vaulted a low fence (Parkour!) and found the source of the sound; a ghoul, much like the kind that Harry had to deal with back home, canine muzzle and long claws and wiry muscle and all, was toying with a farmer, chasing the poor bastard like a cat played with a mouse.

Harry had issues with ghouls.

The wizard strode forward, staff and blasting rod in hand, and thrust the staff forward first, calling on Soulfire. His voice rang out with power and anger as he yelled the incantation; "FORZARE!" A phantasmal hand, burning with cold blue Soulfire, seized the ghoul by surprise and flung it away from the man, who looked twice as fearful now that magic was being used. He recognized the mark of a wizard at work, though the presence of a friendly mage didn't seem to comfort him much. Harry would worry about that reaction later.

For its part, the ghoul didn't seem to know about Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, since it decided the best course of action was to run straight at the interloper. It was fast, but Harry's next spell was already rising to his lips as he raised his blasting rod. "FUEGO! PYROFUEGO!"

There were a lot of ways Harry could deal with ghouls. Many of them were less extreme and would probably result in less pain. That was exactly why he'd elected to burn the damn thing alive. Ghouls had taken two of his young Warden trainees from him, at Camp Kaboom. He wasn't about to forget that.

The world turned white for a second. You could almost hear a ghoul screaming over the high-pitched keen of the brilliant blast of flame. Almost. Harry blinked a few times to clear his eyes, and saw the ghoul's feet standing in a patch of scorched grass about fifty feet wide and sixty feet long. Overkill? Yep. Harry was breathing heavily, but damned if that wasn't therapeutic. Maybe that was just the Winter Knight talking, but roasting ghouls had felt good even before his deal with Mab. Call it a vice of his.

The farmer, for his part, was screaming imprecations at Harry. Apparently, he wasn't overly fond of "blasted magicians" with their "unnatural conjurations" and "damned feuds" getting "good, normal folk like me" caught in the crossfire. Harry turned to face him, and the sight of his face silenced the farmer almost immediately. He briefly considered turning to face away again to see if the yelling would resume, but instead he needed to ask a question. "What do you mean, feuds? Someone's making ghouls?" The farmer nodded as the sound of clanking plate mail came into Harry's perception, coming closer. Ah, the authorities. At least there aren't any buildings on fire this time.

[Harry Dresden]

Harry walked over to the ghoul's feet and knelt down to examine them. From the little of them that wasn't charcoal, they looked like they'd been alive until recently. That confirmed it; these weren't storytime undead ghouls. These were creatures, beings from the Nevernever. Except you couldn't access the Nevernever from here. Then it dawned on him; a Prime could summon ghouls, and for less effort than hiring them back home. If his suspicions and Inlumia's notes were correct, there wasn't even a reason to bother summoning them when you could just make them, with no free will involved. The clanking plates stopped short and called out. "You there, in the coat! Halt!"

Harry slipped his blasting rod back into his pocket and turned, holding his hands above his head with his rune-carved staff grasped in his left hand. "Who are you?" The guard's tone was hostile, and nervous. He must've been drawn by the fireball. "Harry Dresden. I'm a new Prime. Just saved this man from a ghoul." The farmer sounded outraged. "You tried to set my lawn on fire, you damned wizard!" Harry couldn't believe the lack of gratitude. "Maybe I wasn't correct in assuming you wanted to be saved, then? I've got a pair of roast ghoul feet here that would be standing over your corpse if I hadn't shown up before that thing got board." The farmer looked abashed, the guard didn't look like anything beneath his visor. "So that blast of fire was you? Thanks, but try not to go overboard like that." The wizard nodded. "I can respect that. Do you know where the ghouls are coming from?"

The helmeted man shook his head. "Somewhere in the forest, that's all we know."The guardsman turned towards his comrades. "Back to your stations, men!" They marched off into the distance, back on patrol, and Harry set off for Minas Tirith proper once again. No point searching the whole forest. There have to be some answers in Minas Tirith, somewhere. He entered the city and, through various conversations, found an available building whose owner had moved up higher in the massive city. The available building was lodged firmly in the middle of the bustling medieval metropolis, and the owner would meet him there.

Harry waited at the designated building, staff in hand, leaning against the wall with a bored expression. A voice from the side caught his attention. "You're dressed strangely. Not from around here, I take it?" Harry turned and shook his head. "I'm not, no. I'm a new Prime. I was wondering whether I'd be able to rent this place, set up an office." The man stepped forward and stood facing Harry. "What kind of business?" Harry shrugged. "Private detective work. Wizardry. That kind of thing." That got the man's attention. "Wizard? Hmm..." The rather opulent landlord snapped his fingers. "I know! You're a prime. Take care of those ghouls that are coming from the forest and harassing our farmers, and you can have my old home for whatever you like." Harry nodded sagely, though inside he was groaning. He'd been hoping to have an office before going after whoever was calling those ghouls. "Where are they coming from." "Why, the forest, silly!"

There were some battles you couldn't win. Getting information out of these people seemed to be one of them.

Harry started walking back down to the city gates.

[Harry Dresden]

The gates hadn't shut yet, though a guard informed him that they would close at sundown, which would be in about seven hours. A quick line of questioning revealed that there was a keep in those woods where the ghouls seemed to be coming from. The soldiers couldn't get close; something was stopping them. They were due to get support from a magician in Dalaran in a few days, but until then all they could do was respond whenever they could. Harry had mused that they needed better communication and lookouts, and set off for the magically fortified keep.

It hadn't taken long for him to run up against the wards. Their structure was fairly sturdy, and familiar. He examined the magical energies closely; they looked like interlocking, small structures. Legos of magic. They'd stand up to a brute force assault and keep on kicking, but they weren't as strong individually as they were together. An attack targeting just one piece of the wards would bring it down easily, and the others would follow suit. Harry gathered his will, pointed his staff at one of the pieces, and muttered the spell; "Forzare." The sphere of force shot forward and punched a hole in the small bit of ward he'd targeted, and the others around it fell in an invisible cascade of force. "Sloppy."

The keep loomed ominously in the middle distance, and Harry advanced cautiously, staff and blasting rod at the ready. It was entirely possible he'd been meant to get past those wards, after all.

[Harry Dresden]

Harry approached the keep, attempting to keep his senses open for traps. He didn't find any, and he didn't explode into flames or freeze solid, so that was nice, but that didn't mean he hadn't tripped over a metaphysical stack of cans on his way in. If the person who assembled that ward was still paying attention to it, he'd know that someone had busted it open. He approached the door on the side of the castle, instead of the front, and found that it was a modern lock. Someone had decided to make this grandiose castle, but they were from somewhere with modern security locks.

Harry, for his part, pulled out his modern set of lockpicks. Murphy had gotten them to help with his rehab; having delicate tasks to do with his charred hand was helping the nerves grow back. He was better at this than guitar, though it was hard to be worse at something than Harry was with his guitar. He was only there for a couple minutes before the door clicked open, and the wizard slid inside, shutting the out-of-place modern portal behind him.

[Harry Dresden]

The interior of the castle was dark. Torches didn't provide that much light compared to a modern lightbulb. Harry lifted his pentacle necklace, lighting it with an effort of his will, and he continued through the halls, making every second right turn just so that he'd get somewhere. Eventually, the torchlit hallways gave way to a dark atrium with a balcony. Stairs flanked it on either side, providing access. However, as the wizard stepped onto the lush carpet and regarded a suit of armor that looked out of place, he heard a familiar voice.

"Wizard. I never thought to see thee again."

Harry turned towards the balcony as the room flared into brighter light, the torches burning unnaturally high and threatening to catch the tapestries on fire. "Leonid Kravos. Didn't I kill your ghost?" The man stood on the balcony, average male height of 5'9", thin, with a sunken face and murderous eyes. He gave a chill laugh, one that sounded as though he was having trouble remembering how to do it. It sounded like a Palpatine impression, which didn't give Kravos any points in Harry's book. "Ah, but I am in my flesh once more, Dresden."

Kravos started monologuing, but Harry wasn't listening at all. Instead, he walked to the stairs, hardening his will into a shield in front of him. He caught the blast of fire Kravos flung at him almost without moving. "What are you doing, Dresden?" Harry stopped at the top of the balcony, the flames from Kravos' dramatic torch spell starting to crackle on the wall hanging like he'd known they would. "Correcting your delusions. I am a Wizard. You are a two-bit thug of a sorcerer. From that fire blast, you're the same as you were when you died. Maybe a little stronger. Nowhere near as strong as your ghost was after he snuck up on me."[/color]

Harry planted his staff on the floor and snarled, [b]"Forzare." A sphere of force knocked Kravos forward onto the floor. "Impossible! We were evenly matched when I was alive!" Harry almost laughed, feeling the chill of Winter come over him. The flames shrank back a bit, seemingly cowed by the wave of cold that washed into the room. He didn't draw his blasting rod; he just walked over to Kravos and picked the shorter man up off the floor by his collar. "Let me give you a lesson, Leonid Kravos." The sorcerer shuddered as Harry Named him and meant it, infusing the words with an effort of will to get his attention. "I am not the same as I was when you killed yourself in that jail cell to make a ghost. I am more than I was. I am the Winter Knight, now. I held a Blackened Denarius for a time, and had the strength of will to put that temptation aside."

Harry reached down to the sorcerer's hand, ripping off the chain link bracelet that served as Kravos' focus. "You are still a two-bit sorcerer. I'm going to take you back to Minas Tirith, and you're going to be imprisoned." Kravos had the courage to laugh in the face of the Winter Knight. "Why not just kill me, wizard? There is no Nevernever here, nowhere for a ghost to come from." Harry didn't respond with words; he couldn't. The Winter in him wanted to kill the man so badly. No magic was necessary, no Laws needed to be broken. All he'd need to do was throw him and he'd break like so much glass.

Harry calmed himself with deep breaths, running through multiplication tables in his head; the logic was something the Winter Knight couldn't grasp with its animal instincts. He forced Kravos to the ground, the stunned sorcerer hardly resisting, and started to summon a pair of handcuffs, his right foot on the man's chest and staff pointed at his head. "I'm better than you. I don't need to kill you. Besides, it wouldn't stick."

Five minutes of mild struggling later, Leonid Kravos had a matching pair of silver bracelets and was being forcibly marched at blasting rod-point towards the city of Minas Tirith.

[Harry Dresden]

The trip back to the city was uneventful, despite three escape attempts by the sorcerer who didn't even manage to slip his cuffs even once, much less put up an actual form of resistance. The sorcerer had been deprived of his focus and Harry could counter any spells the man tried almost without expending any effort at all. It really brought home how much he'd changed since he'd tangled with the man. The city of Minas Tirith towered above them as they approached the gates, and a few more minutes' walk brought Harry to the nearest group of guards. The highest ranking one among them was a sergeant, and he looked intimidated by Harry. The wizard made a note to look at himself in a river on his way back to Edinburgh and see what level of hell he looked like. "I've found the root of your ghoul problem. This idiot was summoning them. I don't like the summary execution thing most Wardens go for, not without a trial. I take it you've got somewhere to hold him until then?"

The sergeant nodded. "Yes, sir. Dalaran's mages devised a system to hold spellcasters until trial. A special set of manacles." Harry shuddered as the sergeant produced an honest-to-god set of thorn manacles. "Stars and stones, I hate those things." The sergeant gave a nervous chuckle as Harry undid Kravos' normal handcuffs and pushed the sorcerer over towards him. "Well, sir, don't get into trouble and we won't have to use them." Harry just shook his head. "Don't threaten a wizard. Most of us can't take a joke as well as I can." The man gulped. "Yessir. Did you need anything else?" Harry nodded. "Proof of capture. I agreed to take this guy on in exchange for a building in the middle of the city. An office for me to run my detective business out of." The sergeant pulled out a small, wooden coin. It was green, and one side had an anchor while the other bore a feather. He pressed the anchor side into Kravos' palm, hard, and the feather changed to a chain. "These are what the guard uses for proof of capture. They're bound to the person that they leave a mark on, for about 24 hours. Give that to your employer and he'll be able to check with the guards at the prison, but it should be enough proof for him on its own. They catch fire and burn up after the time's up."

Harry nodded his thanks and pocketed the coin, then went off to find the man who'd hired him.

[Harry Dresden]

Finding the rather ostentatious landlord proved to be fairly easy. He'd left a note on the door with directions to a bar. Harry followed the directions and walked inside, feeling a pang of sadness that it wasn't anything like Mac's. There was no electricity, for one thing; the place was lit by windows and oil lamps. There wasn't a semi-random arrangement of stools and pillars to disperse magical energies. It was just a normal, medieval bar. Which, granted, made a great deal of sense. It was Minas Tirith after all. Something in Harry still had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that he was in Minas Tirith, straight out of Lord of the Rings like it'd been plucked from Tolkein's opus and settled here in this Omniverse.

Instead, he tracked down the man who had hired him a split second before being spotted by the same man. The landlord gave a cheery wave. "It's done, then?" Harry slid the coin across the table to him and nodded. "Guards said you'd know what to do with that." The landlord nodded, pulling out a sheet of parchment, an inkwell, and a pen. "Alright. Sign here and I'll turn over the place to you." Years of dealing with Fae made him read the sheet twice, but it was just a simple property transfer in payment for services rendered. Really old style language, but still pretty clear in its purpose. After a few fumbles with the inkwell, the wizard managed to put something vaguely resembling "Harry Dresden" on the paper, more or less where the line for his signature was. The landlord waited for the ink to dry before rolling the paper up and sticking it into a bag, then tossed a large, medieval key to Harry. "That's that, then. There's the key. Enjoy." Harry nodded, said "Pleasure doing business with you," and then walked off to go and fit the room in Minas Tirith as an office.