Wolf Who Rules

" Nasadae." Tinker echoed, mystified. What the fuck just happened? Maynard bowed his parting. Stormsong had gone into sekasha mode. And the conversation had been in English, so asking Pony would be pointless.

Wojo returned with the keys. "I see you've found the cause of all our problems." He indicated the shrine marking the ley line. "As soon as the magic seeped into the area after the first Startup, the whole unit went whacky. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen-including waking up the day before."

"Huh?" She was having trouble switching gears. That's it, I'm won't fight any monsters today and go to bed early.

Wojo misunderstood her grunt of confusion. "I lived out in West View right on the Rim - almost didn't come with the rest of the city. My place looked down on I-279. Every morning, I'd get up, have coffee, and check traffic out my back window. That first Startup, I looked out, and there was nothing but trees. I thought maybe I was dreaming. I actually went and took a cold shower before going back and looking again."

Tinker added a shower and maybe a nightcap to her 'must get sleep' list - if she could find either.

"I never realized how noisy the highway was until afterwards," Wojo continued blithely. "When the forest is still, its absolute quiet, like the world is wrapped in cotton. And the wind through the trees - that green smell-I just love it."

Tinker bet Stormsong would know where to find booze and hot water.

"But between the wargs, the saurus and the black willows, West View was just too isolated - I was way out past the scientist commune on Observatory Hill. It's all ironwood forest now. I have a nice place up to Mount Washington, beautiful view of the city, and it's much safer up there. And hell, with gas prices what they are, it makes sense to take the incline down the hill and take the light rail over."

"Yeah, yeah," Tinker agreed to shut him up and indicated the door. "Let's see what you have."

Wojo unlocked the padlock, freed it from the bolt, and opened the door.

Before her transformation, ley lines seemed nearly mystical - lines of force running like invisible rivers. The little shrines erected by the elves on strong ley lines served as the only warning for why the normal laws of physics would suddenly skew off in odd directions, as the chaos of magic was applied to the equation. "I hit a ley," embedded itself into the Pittsburgh language, blaming everything from acts of nature to bad judgment on the unseen presence.

But now, as a domana, she could see magic. The door swung open to reveal a room filled with the shimmer of power.

"Sweet gods," she breathed, earning a surprised look from Wojo and making the sekasha move closer to her.

The magic flowed at a purple on the far end of the visible spectrum, lighting the floor to such near-invisible intensity that it brought tears to her eyes. The high ceiling absorbed most of that light, so it stayed cloaked in shifting shadows. Heat spilled out of the room, flushing her to fever hot, and seconds later, the sense of lightness seeped up her legs, slowly filling her until she felt like she would float away.

"What?" Wojo asked.

"It's a very strong ley line," Tinker said.

Wojo made a slight surprised hrumpf to this.

She considered what she was wearing. An active spell with this much force behind it, snarled by something metal on her, could be deadly. She wasn't sure how dangerous this much latent magic might pose. "You might want to empty your pockets."

She pulled off her boots, emptied her pockets into them, and took off her gun belt. Since the sekasha caste couldn't sense magic, she told Pony and Stormsong, "This ley seems almost as strong as the Spell Stones."

"The shrine indicates a fiutana," Pony explained. "Like the one that the spell stones are built on."

"What's that?" Tinker asked.

Pony explained, "A single point where magic is much stronger than normal, welling up, like spring waters."

"If you're coming in," she told the two warriors, "Strip off all metal. And I mean all."

The sekasha started paper, scissors, stone to see which was going in, and which would stay behind with the weapons.

There was a light switch by the door; Tinker cautiously flipped it on, but nothing happened.

"Light bulbs pop as soon as you carry them into the room," Wojo explained, "so we stopped installing them."

"We needed a light source shielded from magic." Tinker flipped the switch back to off. "I don't think even a plastic flashlight would work."

"No, they pop too." Wojo took out two spell lights and held out one to her. "These are safe, but you'll want to watch - they're really bright."

With this much magic around, that wasn't surprising.

She wrapped her hand tight around the cool glass orb before activating it. Her fingers gleamed dull red, her bones lines of darkness inside her skin. Carefully, she uncovered a fraction of the orb, and light shafted out a painfully brilliant white.