Alkahest put his foot down. They were driving down the M1, with still more than a hundred miles to go before they reached London – a destination chosen mostly on intuition. And the fact that the sun appeared to be rising from its direction rather than the East.
‘…No, a macchiato is an espresso shot with a dash of steamed milk,’ Merlin was saying. ‘The concept of a “latte macchiato” can’t exist, because if you add more milk, it’s just a damned latte.’
‘Isn’t it stronger than a normal latte?’ asked Nora.
‘A stronger latte is still a latte! It just has a double shot! Starbucks is meddling with semantic ambiguity. At this rate there’s going to be a hundred different drink names based on the exact percentile ratio of espresso to milk!’
Alkahest clicked the indicator and signalled that the monster Rolls Royce would be pulling into the next service station. ‘Maybe that’s why they write the names on the side of the cup,’ he said. ‘Anyway, we’re nearly out of gas. We can use this time to get our breath back a little, too.’
World #C0027 – going by the Caliber Institute’s nomenclature, anyway – seemed largely the same as the one before it, with crystalline sources of arcane energy taking the place of pylons flanking the motorway. White tyres were the norm; perhaps magical strengthening of materials meant introducing carbon black to the rubber was never necessary on this world?
Another, more horrifying difference between this world and the Fulcrum one: the service station they’d arrived at was largely dominated by a Little Chef.
‘You maniacs,’ said Merlin, wide-eyed. ‘You kept it open! Damn you! God damn you all to hell!’
The others shot him looks of disgust.
‘Well, I thought it was funny,’ said the gnome.
‘I always liked their Jubilee Pancakes, to be honest,’ mused Nora.
The others shot her looks of disgust.
‘Anyway,’ said Alkahest, rooting through grenade pins to retrieve his wallet. ‘You two sickos head in while I fill up. I hope at least one of my cards works here.’
So Merlin and Nora went inside to perform the usual routine at a service station: stretching legs, waiting for mediocre coffee, and performing risk/reward assessments on whether to use the bathroom or wait for the next one.
Merlin decided to use said facilities while Nora waited for a Latte Macchiato. As he washed his hands, the door opened to reveal a little old lady who came slowly ambling in toward a cubicle. Merlin thought little of it over the sound of the hand dryer; gender-neutral restrooms were probably more common on this world.
She had made weird eye contact… but that was her problem, not Merlin’s.
He returned to Nora, sparing only a slight scoff at her choice of beverage – a beverage chosen for solely antagonistic reasons – and the two prepared to head back to the Rolls.
Strangely, the old lady that had followed Merlin into the bathroom had reappeared now, and was making her way to the exit with a speed quite at odds with her hunched-over posture. Merlin paused to let her pass, taking in her thinning white hair, her expression of polite bewilderment, her bright orange shawl…
Merlin began to run.
The service station went up in much the same fashion as the cinema – loud; more force than fire, resulting in a great deal of falling masonry – only this time with just enough time for Merlin and Nora to sprint onto the car park and avoid being buried.
Again, Merlin saw a flash of orange vanish through some sort of rift. This time, though, there was a face to attach to it.
‘Who the hell is doing that?’ said Nora, brushing at her shoulders. ‘Are they following us?’
‘That old woman,’ said Merlin, thinking as he spoke. ‘I can only surmise she’s trying to stop us from reaching the trial.’
‘Why? Who is she?’
‘That I don’t know.’
Alkahest had come running up to them from the petrol station proper. Others who’d been filling up their cars stood around aghast as he pushed through their ranks.
‘Jesus fucking Christ you two,’ he said. ‘I thought you were goners.’
‘Still think it isn’t important?’ asked Merlin. ‘We need to move.’
Nora’s hand came up to halt him. ‘Wait,’ she said, as they approached the Rolls Royce lurking by the petrol pumps. She ducked down, and with Glove-of-Thievery-enhanced dexterity, quickly disassembled a device of obvious ill-intent that had been affixed to the car’s belly.
‘That’s one more bomb, then,’ she said, holding it up.
The others huffed out breaths simultaneously.
‘Shit,’ said Alkahest. ‘Shit.’
The bomb looked, in Merlin’s eyes, to be quite easy to put together, actually.
And then there came a crash from behind them. The three turned to see parked cars being crushed and pedestrians ducking for cover, as a massive, armored, big rig semi-trailer truck juggernauted through vehicle and rubble alike.
At the wheel was Vic Sulph himself, incandescent with fury. ‘I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU, ALKAHEST!!’ he screamed. ‘YOU’RE A DEAD MAN!!’
Not that anyone could hear him over the sound of dozens of cars being reduced to two dimensions under the big rig’s wheels.
Alkahest saw all this and smirked. ‘Pah,’ he said. ‘He ain’t gonna crush his own car.’
The big rig wasn’t slowing. It barrelled toward them.
‘I mean, that’s the whole reason he’s here, because of the car,’ continued Alkahest. He was no longer smirking.
‘We should drive away,’ said Nora, as the big rig grew ever-closer.
‘…You might be correct, yeah,’ said Alkahest.
Merlin was already inside.
They tore out from the petrol station with Vic’s big rig on their tail like an anglerfish chasing its own lure. Out onto the motorway proper, Nora looked back to see that not only was Vic Sulph attempting to crush them with his eighteen-wheeled-trash-compactor, he’d also brought along a crew of his. They flanked him in what may have once been dune buggies, and now were dune buggies with spikes on.
‘What the hell are they doing?’ asked Nora. ‘Are those things road-legal? Wait, that’s a stupid question. Alkahest, can you get us out of their line of sight? Just for a second?’
The Demon was gripping the wheel like it was trying to bite him, but nevertheless he took the car forwards to a lorry up ahead, keeping it between them and Sulph like a child exploiting obstacles in Tag.
Nora’s hand pressed down hard on the inside of the door, and after a moment a videogame-time-trial ghost of the car drifted away and into the sights of Sulph’s crew. Alkahest slowed and dropped lanes as the big rig chased Nora’s Major Image off down a junction.
‘It won’t last long,’ said Nora. ‘If we get too far away it’ll just vanish. But hopefully by then we’ll be far enough ahead that they can’t catch up.’
‘Smart,’ said Alkahest, speeding up again.
‘We could have just taken them out, you know,’ said Merlin from the back. ‘Those buggies looked like they were held together by spit and wishes.’
Nora turned in her seat. ‘I’m sure we could, but we have to save our strength for when we get there. I’m not showing up at Fae court half-dead already, and I’m definitely not lugging your catatonic ass around because you wasted all your energy casting Level Eight Chicken of the Infinite.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Alkahest, before pausing. ‘I mean speaking of the court, not Chicken of the Infinite. Do we got a plan for when we get there? My usual approach would be to boot down the door and go in guns first, but, well… I don’t want to risk our position if we can’t get her back by force. And I don’t think Ursa would want to be taken back by force.’
‘What?’ said Merlin. ‘What happened to the Demon that bit a man’s head off – landing us in this mess to begin with – because he tried, not even succeeding, to cast a spell on you?’
The Demon kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the road for almost a full minute. ‘Look, I’ve been rolling in some brutal company for a while now,’ he said eventually. ‘I got goals. Things I believe in. And I thought that hurting people was the only way to show them I mean business. I thought I had to remove threats before they could become threats. That last one in particular is the reason the Summer Court hates me so damn much.
‘I’ve killed people, Merlin, because I was concerned that they might later betray me.’
It was quiet save the roar of wheels on the motorway.
‘But, thing is, Ursa came with me the last time I met up with someone important. And I messed it up, but she fixed it. No violence. No shows of force. No biting heads off, even.
‘I thought that harm was the only way to get things done, and I was wrong. So I want to try some other approaches.’
Quiet again.
Alkahest coughed. ‘And also I think Queen Titania is probably there too, based on the sun.’
This got a response. ‘Titania?! The Queen of the Summer Court?’ said Merlin, aghast.
In the front, Nora rubbed at her eyes. ‘I’m assuming she’s less Queen-of-England figurehead and more Queen-in-Chess strongest piece?’
‘That’s a real good analogy, actually,’ mused Alkahest. ‘Because she can basically do whatever she wants, and she’s way taller than everyone else.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Merlin, in an attempt to get things back on track. ‘We can’t really put together a plan because we have no idea what state things are going to be in when we arrive. We don’t know what Ursa’s planning to do. We don’t know if the Queen will have gotten mad and just incinerated her on the spot. We don’t know if the Queen will have gotten bored and just incinerated her on the spot.’
He found himself fidgeting in his seat.
‘What we need to do is take control of the narrative,’ said Alkahest. ‘The further Outside a Fae is from, the more likely they are to get swept away in a story. If we can frame this as a daring rescue against all odds, then–‘
There was a slam as something chose that moment to rear end them. Thankfully, all three made their saves against whiplash, and we able to turn and see what had done the damage.
Vic Sulph’s big rig bore down behind them, spiked buggies following in an arrowhead formation.
‘Shit!’ said Alkahest, fighting to keep their car going straight ahead. ‘How did they find us? I’ve got Ursa’s amulet!’
‘They must be tracking the car itself,’ said Nora, retrieving her pistol from its holster. ‘Okay, think. We can’t get away from them on a straight like this!’
‘Yes we can,’ said Merlin, waggling his fingers as if preparing to select a donut from a box. He had a spell he’d been wanting to try, a sort of souped-up version of On/Off.
Merlin cast Haywire.
High up in the driver’s seat of the semi-trailer, Vic Sulph leaned forward in anticipation of crushing a band of thieves beneath the reinforced wheels of his war rig.
There was a crackle, earning the radio a suspicious look. Then it burst into a shower of crackling sparks, jolting Vic backwards. He looked through the windows and saw that the same had happened to a couple of his crew, their buggies slowing as the engines stalled.
His rig had stalled too. Despite his momentum, the stolen Rolls Royce opened a gap between them, and Vic scrambled to grab the radio and get his crew in order. The radio hissed, haywire, and spat at him.
Merlin watched as his spells got several of the buggies to slow, and one – that had been turning when the spell hit and now found its steering locked up – actually veered to the side and went under the big rig’s wheels.
‘Oof,’ said Merlin. They were at least far enough away to ignore how gruesome it must have been. Two more of the buggies that had avoided his Haywire were closing in. Each had two Demons in, wearing their game faces – one to drive, and one with some kind of heavy weapon; in this case, a machine gun.
‘Everyone down!’ yelled Merlin, as a spray of bullets came their way. Their stolen vehicle must have been reinforced, because miraculously, none of them were hit.
Retaliating, Merlin popped up with his hand through the window, sending a bolt of lightning in their assailant’s path. The buggy swerved to avoid it, getting between the Rolls and the big rig.
‘Damn it,’ said Merlin under his breath. He couldn’t get a good enough angle from inside the car, even if it was a monster with windows big enough for him to fit through. ‘Wait.’
The Demon with the machine gun aimed at the Rolls’ tyres, holding the buggy’s spiked roll cage to keep his shot steady. He realised – too late – that something had climbed out of the Rolls’ window, and now balanced atop the speeding car’s boot.
Merlin’s second Lightning Bolt struck the buggy dead center, and it went up like a bottle of fireworks.
‘What the fuck is he doing?!’ shouted Alkahest, trying to drive in a way that wouldn’t throw the Gnome off the back without getting them hit by more gunfire.
Nora, leaning out of the front window and taking potshots at the big rig itself, shouted back to him. ‘There’s only two of them left now, with the ones that fell behind and the ones that got wrecked! Though the truck itself is speeding up again now…’
She shot at it a few more times.
‘Try this,’ suggested Alkahest, tossing her a grenade.
‘What happened to bluffing?’
‘Hey, it’ll make a statement either way.’
Nora pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade. It bounced, then again, then exploded against the rig’s armored side, blowing a chunk of plating off around one of the tires but not otherwise slowing it at all.
From the black cloud it left behind, another of the buggies emerged, this time carrying a Demon with a high-powered lever-action rifle. He took sight of the Gnome on the back of their car.
‘Shit!’ yelled Alkahest again, seeing this in the rearview mirror. ‘Hold onto something, Merlin.’
He began taking further evasive action, swerving between lanes erratically, hoping that an exit would reveal itself as a means of escape. Briefly he considered pulling the Parallel Drive lever, but he didn’t know what would happen to Merlin outside the car, and anyway, Sulph’s big rig would absolutely be able to follow.
Merlin held on. Another of the buggies had gotten close, and its passenger, wielding a massive battleaxe, leapt from it to the Rolls Royce. He raised his weapon and readied it to split the Gnome’s skull.
Alkahest slammed on the brakes. The Demon, axe above its head, staggered at the change of momentum, and with a swift boot to the shin from Merlin fell back onto the road. The buggy caught him, but found itself locked in a spin and crashed into the barrier.
Merlin sat up. ‘Alright, one left–‘
The shot from the rifle was louder even than the grenade. A gout of blood covered the rear windscreen as a bullet the size of a finger entered Merlin’s chest and completely shattered his right clavicle.
He slumped down, beginning to slide from the back of the car, more blood gushing from him. The big rig was right behind them. He fell.
A black-gloved hand shot out and snatched at the collar of his shirt. Another shot from the rifle, but Nora had dragged the bleeding Merlin back inside the Rolls Royce.
‘Merlin?’ said Alkahest, head on a swivel between the road and the dying Gnome. ‘Merlin! Stay with us, bud!’
‘…Bud? Seriously?’ said Merlin, weakly. There was blood in his mouth.
Another slam as the big rig hit them. It fell back, preparing for another ram.
‘Merlin, if you die, I’m going to fucking kill you,’ said Nora. ‘Hold on.’
‘Get him to drink this,’ said Alkahest, but Nora cut him off.
‘I said hold on.’
She leaned out of the window with her fingers in a claw-like grip; the air around her hand shimmering with heat. A burst of fire went searing through the air, striking the big rig precisely in the gap in the armor the grenade had opened before.
A section of the massive tyre bubbled into a sort of black sludge, and the whole thing peeled away and tangled up the others.
Vic Sulph screamed in fury as he drifted off to the side and struck the barrier, sparks flying, his whole rig crashing through and rolling over on the grass, taking the last of the buggies with it.
⁂
Ursa, no longer caged – not physically, anyway – sat discussing her case with Elene, who more than anything seemed to be enjoying herself, like this were a Phoenix Wright game she were playing or something.
The conversation in the courtroom had grown hushed after Titania’s appearance. Once the bowing and kneeling had finished, anyway. Ursa took the opportunity to take a glance around while nobody was staring at her; it seemed like they’d adapted a forest clearing into a courtroom. The trees towered over them, and were so thick at the edges as to be practical walls.
There was even a great big double door at the back. Ursa stared at them, and imagined someone bursting through them until her vision got all blurry.
‘Now,’ Elene was saying, ‘Cait-Sìth doesn’t have a lot of fans here but Her Majesty does like him, and he’s good at what he does. We really need to avoid him type-casting you as… hey, are you listening?’
Ursa was half-listening. The other half of her was watching as an old woman dressed in an orange shawl slowly made her way towards them.
‘Hello dears,’ she said, upon arriving at their table. She leaned in towards Ursa, who tried not to recoil at the breach of personal space. ‘I’ve got a few surprises in store, you know, that I think the prosecution might not be expecting.’
She tilted her head a bit too far, and smiled a bit too wide. Then, slowly as she’d come, she made her way out through the double doors.
‘Well that was freaky,’ said Ursa. ‘It’s not rude to point that out, is it?’
Elene didn’t look up from her papers. ‘Oh, she’s always like that. You get used to it. Be thankful it isn’t you she’s out for.’
⁂
Merlin sipped at the last of the potion Alkahest had given to Nora, and Nora had given to him. It was clearly a strong one; he could actually taste the potion itself and not just blood.
They were almost in London, too. Which meant he needed to say something.
‘Alkahest,’ he began. ‘I think your potion may have… no, I think you may have saved my life there. Thank you.’
‘Hey, what else was I gonna do?’ said Alkahest.
This earned a snort from Nora, but still she stayed in the back seat in case anything else went wrong.
Which it did.
A flash of orange, and suddenly the old woman that had tried to blow them up (twice) was sitting in the front seat.
‘Ooh, it’s been a tough journey for you, hasn’t it!’ she laughed. ‘The kind of thing that–‘
Merlin had shot forward, despite his still-open wound, and woven together a Shadow Blade in less than an instant. This he rammed into the side of the old woman’s throat.
Her head spun around like an owl’s to face him. ‘I would appreciate if you’d remove that knife,’ she said, still smiling.
‘Okay,’ coughed Merlin. He pulled out the blade and immediately plunged it back in.
‘I’d come to take you to the court!!’ the old woman shrieked, and seemed to fold in on herself, vanishing, leaving Merlin to fall back to the rear seat.
‘What?’ he panted, sensing the unspoken questions of the other two. ‘She was going to betray us anyway.’
Roll History 