Occult Warfare - SCP Foundation

Two submachine guns were pointed directly at him, five more at his class full of students.

"NO MAGIC. SAY NOTHING. SLOWLY RAISE YOUR HAND ABOVE YOUR HEADS."

« Re: KTO-1466-Houdini "Mages Academy" | Mundus, Liberari |

Magister Elias Müller had been a member of the Mages Academy for over a decade, earning the rank of Grandmaster. Now a staff member at Budapesti Mágikus Egyetem, the Budapest University of Magic, he was delivering a lecture on the more advanced principles of Aetheric Informatics when he began to hear loud noises in the corridor. He tried to ignore it, and focus his students' attention on the finer principles underlying the editing of souls, but the noise in the corridor outside his lecture theatre became impossible to ignore. He was about to head over and see what was going on, when the door was thrown open and armed gunmen rushed into the room.

"DON'T MOVE!"

Two submachine guns were pointed directly at him, five more at his class full of students. There were a few screams, but most people froze in fear, Elias included.

"NO MAGIC. SAY NOTHING. SLOWLY RAISE YOUR HAND ABOVE YOUR HEADS."

The man shouting was presumably in charge - like all of the others he was dressed in a Hungarian police uniform, and while he carried a weapon he wasn't pointing it at anyone. He stood in the middle of the group of men that had fanned out around the doorway, and watched coldly as the class complied.

In a loud but somewhat calmer tone of voice, he continued addressing the room, his eyes scanning across the students then fixing themselves on Elias. "We're the Global Occult Coalition. Do not resist, and you will not be harmed. You've been attending an unauthorised occult institution. We are now shutting it down."

He slowly walked towards Elias, moving slightly to the side to ensure he wouldn't obstruct his allies' line of fire. Elias had no idea what to do - he knew multiple spells to protect himself from bullets, he also knew that there was no way to cast them faster than a trained gunman could pull a trigger. If they knew they were fighting mages, they wouldn't hesitate if they even got the slightest suspicion that he might be trying something.

The words of his mentor echoed in his mind, almost mockingly. A man who waits until battle begins to don his armour is as good as dead… Unfortunately, Elias had not been paranoid enough to expect an attack this morning.

The sounds of loud footsteps, shouting, and the slamming of doors echoed from the rest of the building. The GOC agent that had been speaking had now put away his gun and instead taken out a roll of adhesive tape, tearing off a strip of it and holding it up to Elias's mouth.

"We will be taking precautions to prevent the casting of magic. Remain calm, do not resist."

Elias did not. While part of him felt like he should, another part was simply relieved that they seemed intent on taking them in alive and unharmed. There were many ways to incapacitate a mage, but few of them were pleasant. As the tape was placed onto his upper lip, Elias expected hand restrains would come next to immobilise his fingers, and resigned himself to it.

"Ékrixi!"

The doorway exploded, and every student in the room began screaming.

Elias and the man who'd been covering his mouth were far enough away to only be startled, but the bright ball of fire knocked five of the gunmen to the ground and had the other two staggering back. Before it had fully dissipated, a familiar voice called out "Astrapē!" and lightning forked into the room through the doorway, striking the five of the men on the ground with a blinding flash and a deafening boom. They twitched, then went still.

Archmagister Szabó Janos strode into the room, an elderly man wearing spectacles and a tie. The two remaining gunmen spun around to face him.

"Témnō." With a slashing gesture made with his left hand, Szabó cut through the air and sliced open one man's throat. He was classically educated, and preferred to cast his spells in Ancient Greek. The other man opened fire, but the bullets ricocheted off an invisible barrier around Szabó as he clenched his right fist. Thrusting it forwards, he yelled "Túptō!" The gunman tried to duck, but Szabó had anticipated that, and the spell struck his head with a loud thud and enough force to knock him off his feet.

The leader of the group concluded that shooting Szabó was a lost cause, and instead he placed a pistol to Elias's head and placed a pistol to his head, too fast . "Stop, or I'll shoot!"

Szabó froze, standing on scorched wood surrounded by the bodies of dead men. The room became silent except for occasional sobs of terror from the students. When they'd come here to study magic, they weren't expecting anything like this.

Szabó stared intently at the last GOC agent. "It seems we have a stalemate." There were loud sounds in the rest of the building, but Szabó seemed unconcerned about any reinforcements, his full attention fixed on the hostage-taker.

"Stop talking!"

"There's nothing I can do to help." He looked intently at Elias.

Szabó had entered just in time to interrupt the GOC agent - while the tape was covering Elias's mouth, it wasn't sealed onto his lips properly. Szabó continued speaking, and as the soldier shouted at him to remain silent, he didn't notice Elias quietly saying "Repello". He did notice when Elias thrust out his arms, but by the time the gun fired his magical shield was up, deflecting the bullet off at an angle and throwing the agent back. Elias dropped to the floor, physically unharmed but with a painful ringing in his right ear. He could block the bullet, but the sound of the gunshot was still deafening.

When Elias got to his feet, the final soldier was dead, his face smashed in by Szabó's striking spell.

"Quick thinking, Magister Müller. However, if you had been more aware of your surroundings, this would not have been necessary." Szabó turned to the entire class. "As you might have guessed, we are under attack. We will now be leaving."

He gestured at the corridor leading to the lecture theatre, chanting words in Ancient Greek, and the walls warped inwards, narrowing the space. He then gestured at the opposite wall, and the brickwork of the back wall rearranged itself into a doorway. He strode confidently out, leaving Müller to grab his spellbook from the desk and usher the students out after him.

They emerged on the other side of the Danube, the warping of space that enabled the entire Budapest Campus of the Mages Academy to fit inside a single building now unfolding to place them outside the perimeter the GOC had established. They'd have to get moving quickly, they were close enough for their building to still be visible on the other side of the river, surrounded by a swarm of police cars and armed gunmen.

"I guess this is over," said Elias, with some regret.

The Budapest Mages Academy had officially shut down during the Soviet occupation of Hungary following the end of the Second World War. Szabó had stayed until 1950s, participating in the uprising in 1956, but following its failure he had fled the country as an enemy of the state. His combat experience had made him a valued teacher for the Mages Academy's Charter Enforcers, but his fondest wish had always been to re-establish an institute of magic in the country of his birth. After the fall of Communism in the 1990s he'd seized his opportunity to do that, establishing the Budapesti Mágikus Egyetem, but now they were on the run again. This time from the GOC, another group unwilling to tolerate any occult organisation outside their control.

Szabó cast a quick communication charm, then began speaking. "Is everyone out? No, not including the Coalition… Excellent. You sure we're all out? Well, get to a safe distance… Probably further than that."

Elias had learned enough Ancient Greek to understand Archmagister Szabó's spells, although he personally preferred to cast in Latin. This was a more complex spell than usual, and the Ritual could not be compressed into a single word.

"I Have Made, I Will Unmake. I Have Folded, I Will Unfold. I Have Contained, I Will Release. Hecate. Pandora. Nix."

The invocation of deities and mythical figures was not technically necessary, but Szabó insisted that it gave spells a certain flare. Elias couldn't help but agree as he watched every window of their building explode outwards, as the extra space that had carefully been folded within the building suddenly expanded outwards. This was immediately followed by the rapid collapse of the entire building, the roof caving in as the brick walls crumbled.

He remembered a lecture a few years ago, on the topic of spatial distortion. While it was possible to fit far more space into a volume than it would normally hold, Szabó had warned them that it came with a certain pressure that needed to be carefully contained. He'd analogised it to inflating a balloon with air, and it seemed that this was what it looked like if the balloon was burst.

"And to think…" Elias muttered. "You could have done that… at any time…"

"Not at any time," clarified Szabó reassuringly. "Certain wards prevented it. The same wards the Coalition broke through on their way in, actually. Saved me the trouble of dismantling them, which was, of course, exactly as planned."

"Still… To destroy all we've built in the last two decades, so quickly…"

Szabó turned away, his mouth smiling but his eyes cold. "It's not the building that matters. It's the people inside it."

Elias hoped he was referring to the student's who'd gotten out, but feared that he may actually be referring to the GOC agents that had been trapped within.

It had been weeks since they fled from Budapest to the extradimensional enclave of Sjhlfels am Rhein, but Elias was filled with looming dread the entire time. They were safe for now, but after the fall of Three Portlands and the invasion of the Wanderer's Library, it had become clear that the GOC would not be respecting Sjhlfel's sovereignty for much longer. They would need an army if they hoped to defend it, and so the Magistrate, the ruling body of the Mages Academy, took the unprecedented step of summoning all of their students and graduates to this one location.

Most never made it - some surrendered, others were captured or killed, and many more went into hiding. The GOC had made it clear that they would not tolerate the practice of magic by anyone not under their control, and there were members of the Mages Academy felt that the wisest course of action was to submit to the Global Occult Coalition and negotiate a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Archmagister Szabó Janos had never been one of them. As soon as he'd gotten to Sjhlfels am Rhein, he'd began reinforcing the defensive wards around the Sjhlfelser Hochschule für Angewandte Magie, the Sjhlfels University for Applied Magic, planning ways to impede a GOC advance. He laughed bitterly at any suggestion that they might be able to negotiate a peaceful settlement - he insisted that the Coalition wanted capitulation, not compromise. Their options were to surrender, or to fight.

There were two ways into Sjhlfels - one way was by water, approaching from the Rhein Delta in the Netherlands, and the other way was by land, approaching through the Sihl Valley in Switzerland. Local residents were always humorously debating whether they lived in a Dutch town in the mountains, or a Swiss town by the sea. After living there for a few weeks, Elias concluded that the town was a bizarre but endearing mixture of both, the only place in the world where a living Nälkä temple looked completely at home next to traditional Swiss and Dutch architecture.

Although a pleasant place to live, Sjhlfels am Rhein would not be particularly defensible once the GOC entered the extradimensional space. They'd presumably attempt to come in by land and by water, to prevent the defenders from escaping, and while their advance could be slowed by building barricades across roads and docks, Sjhlfels was no fortress. They could hold the GOC off for a while, but there would be little they could do if the GOC really wanted to take the city.

Elias had been working closely with Szabó whenever he wasn't busy teaching other Mages. For now, he'd set aside the more advanced theoretical principles of magic and the Astral Energy that fuelled it, to instead focus on helping his students to master spells with combat applications. At Szabó's insistence, the curriculum primarily focused on defense, mobility and stealth rather than offense, since a mage that drew everyone's attention with a flashy fireball was unlikely to survive the battle, unless that mage was also bulletproof and invisible, and ideally behind cover in a fortified position.

Now that the GOC had arrived, Elias had been glad for Szabó's insistence that only those mages that could properly protect themselves be sent out to stop them. As he looked out of a window on the second floor of one of the Swiss townhouses lining the streets of southern Sjhlfel, he couldn't help but feel exposed. He was shielded by magic and wearing an invisibility cloak, not to mention concealed by the gloom and pouring rain from the thunderstorm they'd created over Sjhlfels, but the Strike Team in the street below marched towards them like knights in armor.

"White Suit" was such an innocuous term for the clothing they wore. It was bulky, made from layers of metal, ceramic and carbon fibre, but the internal power source made sure that the wearer's movements were unimpeded by the weights, while a cloaking device bent light around it to make it invisible to the unaided eye.

Elias's eyes were aided by magic, and by gazing into the Astral Plane he could perceive the outlines of the White Suits as they climbed over the crude barricade of rubble and furniture that blocked the street below. The GOC had now made it into Sjhlfels proper, and initial reports from skirmishes on the outskirts of the town reported that the boxy assault rifles they carried, apparently a new addition to their arsenal, fired pure telekinetic force with no projectile. It ignored cover and bypassed all protective wards. The Mages would have to rely on surprise, stealth and mobility if they hoped to stop them.

Elias looked out the window, raised up a hand to the dark grey sky above, and said "Fulmena"!

The storm overhead was a repository of power that they'd built up over the last few weeks, and calling down lightning took almost no effort at all. With a bright flash, lightning forked down to struck the GOC Strike Team as it moved through the streets.

Elias immediately moved away from the window.

A single lightning bolt wouldn't take out a man wearing a White Suit - while earlier models had been more vulnerable to this kind of attack, the armour was now built with a conductive outer layer and an insulating inner layer, allowing it to rapidly disperse heat and electricity. In effect, every White Suit was a Faraday cage.

With that said, their sensory and concealment systems were not quite as well protected as the people inside. They would be blinded, deafened, and very visible, at least until they could reboot.

From buildings all around the Strike Team, the follow up attack came as mages revealed themselves, opening or breaking windows to establish line-of-effect.

"Stamine armis!"

They'd known the GOC was coming, and they'd known their armor was nearly impenetrable. Szabo had suggested that they simply turn that against them, and Elias had worked out how to do it. It turns out that it took surprisingly little Arcane Energy to twist the armor plating into a new shape - doing it remotely was difficult, but was still far easier than trying to break through it.

Elias knew he was imagining that he could hear bones breaking in the street below. He was in the house's staircase, running down to the next floor, and the sound would be too quiet to hear over the rain and wind.

He placed his left hand on a small piece of plating that had been retrieved from a White Suit in Hamberg, using it as the material component to focus his magic, then ran out from the stairwell and over to a window, to stretched out his right hand. "Stamine armis!" he said, targeting the helmet of one of the men still on his feet as he curled his fingers inwards.

The material, identical the the substance he was holding in his hand, suddenly warped inwards, crushing the man's head in a vice like grip. But while that would cause an almost loss of consciousness, spells targeted at the torso or limbs were less effective, and the GOC returned fire at any mages they could see.

Elias dove away from the window, knowing that if one of those guns was fired at him, he'd be the one with broken bones. As he dashed down the stairs to reach the ground floor, he glanced across the hallway to see a corpse with a shattered skull lying on the floor. Someone had been too slow.

It was hard to even recognise who it was, but after a moment Elias remembered Anya Berg had been downstairs. He'd insisted she stay on the ground floor, to be the one closest to the exit. At the time, he'd thought that would ensure she made it out alive.

With a sick feeling in his stomach, he realised he was wasting time. He ran into the house's kitchen, sprinting towards the short range Way they'd created earlier, in the doorway to the pantry.

Elias suddenly felt a sharp pain just below his left shoulder. There was no warning, no loud gunshot or flash of light, just the loud crunch of breaking bone.

Safely on the other side of the Way, now in a completely different building, he looked down at his limp left arm, and screamed.

He didn't stop until he ran out of breath.

It seemed to take a very long time.

They quickly had his arm in a sling, wrapping it in bandages to hold it in place. There was no time for an X-ray, but they were pretty sure it was a clean break, rather like the kind of wound that would be inflicted by being hit by a hammer.

He didn't feel lucky, but compared to some of the other people he'd seen in the field hospital, he definitely was. Not to mention the people like Anya, the ones who hadn't made it back at all. Elias could at least walk, unlike the people with broken legs or fractured skulls being carried away on stretchers. One woman had been hit in the stomach, and it seemed that all they could do for her was give enough morphine to make her death more comfortable.

The defenders of Sjhlfels am Rhein had hoped that they might be able to push the Coalition forces back, but it seemed the GOC would keep advancing until they took all of Sjhlfels, no matter how many men they lost. Elias wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but it seemed that while the defence of the docks had prevented the GOC's amphibious landing, their land-based assault had broken through the defences, and any remaining defenders in the south of the city would quickly be outflanked and overrun. At this point, the defenders of Sjhlfels were in full retreat. Of course, they'd left behind enough traps and obstacles, magical and mundane, to slow the GOC's advance. Still, the sounds of war were getting louder. It was time to go.

Elias was still in pain, but with his left arm immobilised it was manageable, and so he'd be expected to walk himself out. However, rather than following everyone else to the temporary Way out of Sjhlfels am Rhein that the mages had set up, he instead turned towards the campus of the Sjhlfelser Hochschule für Angewandte Magie. Once he was out of the crowd, Elias moved as fast as he could without jolting his arm too much. A medic called Marc Fontaine tried to stop him, but Elias yelled that he'd be back soon, and headed towards the structure known colloquially as the Wizard's Tower.

It offered a panoramic view of the city, taller than every other building in Shjhlfels except for the Superprime Tower in the business district, and so Szabó had decided to coordinate the defence of the city from the very top. While it was an obvious target, the wards around the SHAM's campus prevented anything that had not been specifically permitted from passing through. The GOC would eventually break them, but the barrier would hold for now.

Elias ran through empty university buildings until he reached the bottom of a spiral staircase. Climbing hundreds of steps would take far too long, so he stepped into a circle of runes in the middle of the stairwell.

While he'd done this many times before, his stomach lurched as he fell upwards before coming to a halt at the top, where he stepped out into the landing at the top of the circular Wizard's Tower. There was a stabbing pain in his broken right arm, and Elias took a moment to gasp for breath.

Szabó turned away from the window's all around the room to face him, the old man looking at his wounded shoulder with concern. "Magister Müller, it seems you're injured."

Elias frowned. "That's not really what I'm worried about!"

There was a bright flash and loud explosion from behind Szabó. It seems like the GOC had set up artillery to break through the wards preventing them from advancing further.

Szabó scrutinised his left arm, immobilised by a sling. "You will wish you'd heard this sooner, but we managed to get hold of some of those rifles. If you create a magnetic field around you, you will be shielded from the telekinetic attack."

With his magically enhanced vision, Elias could see that Szabó had already cast that spell, along with many other wards to protect himself from harm. "Fine. I'll cast that." Creating a magnetic shield was a trivial matter, but Szabó seemed insistent he did it before leaving. "There. Done. But come on! The wards won't hold much longer!"

There was another explosion, even louder than the first, and the whole tower shook.

Szabó shook his head. "They'll hold longer if I remain here."

Elias was confused. "We need to go!"

Szabó looked at him sternly, and said "You need to go." There was a definite emphasis on the first word. "I'll stay right here."

"What? No! Come on!"

Szabó shook his head. "I'm an old man. I only have one thing left to teach you."

Elias shook his head as Szabó spoke, his words punctuated by the sound of guns. He could see the old man was preparing himself to cast something, and doubted it was to get them out of there.

"Mister Müller, magic comes with many rules and restrictions, intended for your own safety, or the safety of others." Szabó smiled, and the look in his eyes was chilling. "All of them can be ignored."

"What are you…"

"We cannot win, so I intend to make our loss ruinous to the enemy. I suggest you start running. I would be very disappointed if you died here with me."

Ignoring Elias stuttered protests, he began to chant in ancient Greek, and Elias noticed that he was now standing in the center of a ritual circle - the same circle used to create the thunderstorm that raged above them, but modified, to call the storm down into a whirlwind.

Even at at glance, it was clear that there was no way to safely channel that much energy, not alone and not before the wards fell. But it was clear that Szabó did not intend to do this safely. As Szabo began to cast what was clearly intended to be his final spell, Elias turned away from him with tears in his eyes.

He jumped back down the center of the Wizard's Tower, magic slowing his fall, and hit the ground running.

Szabó had been a mage for many decades, but had never attempted something as ill-advised as the ritual he was currently casting. If any of his students had seriously considered doing something like this, Szabó would have threatened them with expulsion for reckless endangerment. But Szabó knew exactly what he was doing.

Astral Energy flowed through his body, then out into the storm above that he'd carefully created, with the help of others and over the course of several days. Now, as the GOC continued to pound against the wards around the SHAM with tank rounds and mortar shells, he began to reshape the storm, magically rewriting the attributes that governed its behaviour. There was no time to do it elegantly, so he compensated by putting as much energy as he could channel into the task.

He really hoped that Elias had made it out OK. He was touched that the young man had come back for him, even if it was very foolish.

The storm above Szabó began to intensify, cracking with lightning that indiscriminately struck any GOC personnel that got too close. At this point, the only GOC footsoldiers close to the SHAM were Strike Teams of battlemages, warded against lightning and ready to charge in as soon as the wards fell. From the way that their forces were arrayed, they clearly thought that the university campus was packed with mages, and that this would be the site of the Academy's final stand.

Instead, there was only one old man with nothing to lose but his life.

Szabó broke the wards himself as he called down the storm with a final incantation: "Nemesis. Typhon. Zeus." Even with his preparations, the amount of Astral Energy required was overwhelming. As Szabo felt an unfamiliar presence in his mind, he knew that it was now all over, one way or another.

Elias ran as fast as possible, towards the docks and the closest Way out of Sjhlfels. The Mages had created numerous evacuation points throughout the city, extradimensional shortcuts that would lead people out of Sjhlfels to safe locations on Earth.

He knew he wouldn't quite make it before Szabó finished, but he should be far enough away for his own personal protective spells to shield him.

Behind him, all hell broke lose.

A vortex of wind formed around the Wizards tower, and began tearing the entire building apart, ripping off roof tiles and propelling them outwards as deadly projectiles. The hurricane-force winds spread through Sjhlfels, tossing aside armored GOC troops like ragdolls. At the heart of the storm, Szabó Janos's body glowed with Astral Energy, shining so brightly that there was no way for the GOC to miss him.

Realising what was happening, everything that was left standing began firing at him, a barrage of missiles, bullets, lasers and spells.

The problem they faced was that Szabó had channelled far more energy than any human could safely handle, and that was the kind of thing that drew dangerous attention to a mage. His power and skill was now at the disposal of the Astral Being that had taken control of his mind, and it was a trivial matter for it to shield itself against such pitiful attacks. The onslaught did succeed in getting the Astral Being's attention, and it focused Szabó's eyes on the forces arrayed against it.

Elias ran faster.

The entity that had taken Szabó's body took flight as the Wizard's Tower of Sjhlfels collapsed beneath it. Cloaked in a vortex of gale-force winds, the old man's body began to erratically rise and fall within the heart of the storm, preventing the GOC from getting a clear shot.

For the first time in its existence the Astral Being experienced nausea, a physical sensation that was almost overwhelming before it regained control of Szabó Janos's body. It could hear the old man's thoughts, a mixture of terror and anger that insisted he move the center of the storm away from the ruins of the SHAM and towards the GOC's front line.

The Astral Being looked down as the pitiful humans that were trying to destroy it, and decided the old man had a point. He should make it very clear how insignificant they were, compared to the power it now controlled.

The GOC, for the first time that day, began to retreat. Although they would prefer to phrase it as the tactical redeployment of assets. They were an Occult Coalition after all, and they did have people who could fight a hurricane and win.

Most of the battlemages at the perimeter of the SHAM had been killed, wounded or forced to withdraw by the sudden intensification of the storm, but Strike Team 0021 "Major Arcana" had been kept in reserve, just in case something like this happened. Twenty-two of the GOC's finest battlemages were now authorised to take flight and head into the maelstrom, to overwhelm whatever was causing it with everything at their disposal.

The Astral Being lashed out with lightning, but their defensive wards simply redirected it around them as they moved through the air to surround it.

The Astral Being considered other angles of attack, but it was unlikely that any of them would work - these thaumatologists had had plenty of time to prepare, and would have warded themselves against as many types of energy as possible. While Szabó's body was also warded against harm, there was a chance one of these mages had an angle of attack Szabó hadn't anticipated.

The old man then recalled something he'd been working on in secret, and the Astral Being drew back the old man's lips into a smile. Raising his hand, it spoke one word: "Sparagmo!"

The jagged white line that extended from his palm and towards the closest battlemage resembled lightning, but unlike lightning it lingered, frozen in the air. As the mage collided with it, he was immediately sliced in half. His comrades looked on in shock. There was something about the glowing line that looked very wrong.

The Astral Being, observing how effectively this bypassed their wards, and sensing mingled satisfaction and terror in what remained of Szabó's mind, said another word: "Thrymmatizo!" It accompanied this with a violent striking motion, and cracks like forked lightning extended outwards as space itself shattered. The thaumatologists scattered, but two of them were not fast enough, one loosing an arm and the other a foot, clean cuts that began bleeding profusely.

Elias thought he'd already been going as fast as he could, but once he glanced over his shoulder to see the web of cracks in the fabric of reality itself, he discovered he had a bit more speed still left in him. He remembered Szabo mentioning this technique a while ago, when discussing why certain forms of magic were forbidden. Rending reality was a technique that even the most reckless and deranged magic users hesitated to use, simply because the damage it dealt to the fabric of space only got worse with time. If Szabo, or more accurately the Astral Being that had seized control of his body, kept this up, it was likely that the entire city of Sjhlfels am Rhein would collapse into the Astral Plane. As the GOC battlemages frantically struggled to take out the Astral Being, attacking with blasts of heat and light and force, and with curses of sickness, madness and death, the backlash from their spellcasting only worsened the damage to reality.

The closest Way out of Sjhlfels not already overrun by the GOC was in a tall townhouse in the more Dutch northern half of Sjhlfels. With relief, Elias ran towards a waving Marc Fontaine. "Cutting it close, Elias!"

Elias was touched that the medic had waited for him, but Marc clearly had no idea of the danger they were all in. Elias ran towards the door behind him, intending to drag the man with him through the Way if that was what it took to get them both out alive.

Marc suddenly staggered, a series of invisible impacts shattering his ribs. Elias glanced over to his left to see the outlines of four GOC White Suits, visible to Elias's enhanced vision but invisible to everyone else.

They took aim with their weapons at Elias, but had no effect. It seemed the shield Szabó had insisted he cast really did protect him.

Elias turned to face them as the wind howled around him, his face illuminated by the glow from the cracks still spreading across the sky. He slipped the fragment of armor into his sling, grasped it tightly in his left hand, then reached out with his right.

"Stamine armis!" He curled his fingers inwards in a crushing motion.

The breastplate of one of the GOC soldiers folded inwards, and the man fell to the ground as his ribs broke.

The other three realised what was going on, and discarded their telekinetic weapons to draw alternative firearms.

Elias realised he should have continued running, dashed through the doorway behind Marc's body, then slammed it behind him. Bullets, plasma and a laser beam tore through the space where he'd been standing only moments before.

"Claude!" he yelled, magically locking the door behind him. A few seconds later one of the GOC soldiers slammed into it with full force, but it remained closed. It would not hold for long.

Elias frantically looked around the room until he saw a seemingly empty doorway with arcane symbols painted around it, and dashed through to emerge in a building in rural Bavaria, crowded with refugees from Sjhlfels.

Elias immediately used magic to shatter the doorframe behind him, disrupting the Way to ensure he wasn't followed.

Elias heard later that the GOC had won, taking control of what was left of Sjhlfels am Rhein, although their casualties had been a lot higher than expected. From what he heard from someone who scried the whole thing, a casting of thirteen different curses plus the acceleration of time eventually overwhelmed the Astral Being possessing Szabó. It was probably for the best - it had needed to be put down, or it would likely have moved on from destroying Sjhlfels to tearing apart the rest of the reality. Still, Elias missed the old man, and wasn't sure what to do without him. His academic career had consisted mostly of following Szabó around, and it wasn't like he could go back to teaching.

People like Elias were fortunate - while there were ways to conceal it, anyone with a non-human appearance would find it much harder to hide from the Coalition. Still, Elias kept out of the big cities. He'd heard the GOC had been fitting EVE scanners on CCTV cameras, and even if that wasn't true there was a chance they'd recognise his face.

It took a week for his arm to heal - while he accelerated it with magic, there was a limit to what he could do if he didn't want to grow a tumour or start sprouting spikes of bone from his elbow. He may be a mage, but he wasn't a fleshcrafter.

Once he'd recovered, he spent a few weeks travelling across Eastern Germany, using a false ID he'd had made in Sjhlfels to pass himself off as "Elliot Braun". However, with no safe way to access to his old bank account, he was quickly running out of Euros. He knew that if he settled down in a small town and never cast magic again, he might be able to avoid the Coalition for years. Probably for the rest of his life. He just wasn't sure he wanted to.

He made his way to Outer Lichtenberg, a paranormal enclave on the outskirts of Berlin.

This place was very different to Sjhlfels am Rhein. Whereas that pocket dimension had been spacious, offering views of the Alps on one side and the North Sea on the other, Outer Lichtenberg was a crowded mess of grimy industrial buildings and poorly maintained apartments. But it was safe. Both the Nazis and the Stasi had tried to tame it, and both had failed. The GOC had been no more successful, with all of their attempts to navigate the winding alleyways resulting in them heading back out into regular Lichtenberg. Something about the place resisted any effort to take control of it.

Elias just wanted a place to lie low and meet up with other mages, which made Outer Lichtenberg perfect. The local residents were suspicious at first, but most were sympathetic once they heard where he'd came from, and he was able to help out with maintenance using a few basic spells.

Elias had never been the type to go to parties, and wasn't really in the mood for one anyway, but after a couple of weeks of living there he found himself sipping a glass of some truly terrible home-brewed beer, as several anartists had an incomprehensible conversation about politics. Elias spent most of the evening staring at painting on the wall that looked and moved a bit like a lava lamp, but somehow the conversation came round to him.

"Well, what do you think?" Fats Berg, a skinny young man who had insisted Elias come, looked over at him expectantly. "Is it worth fighting, even if you can't win?"

Elias had a moment to think. "I don't know."

That got him some disappointed looks.

Elias shrugged apologetically. "We convinced ourselves that we could defend Sjhlfels, but when you really think about it, more of us would have gotten out if we'd ran sooner."

"Well, you made it cost them, didn't you?" This came from Judas al-Zaman, a Palestinian immigrant with a mess of dark hair. They'd once tried to have a conversation about magic, but it had quickly been clear that he didn't understand even the basics of Astral Manipulation. People here seemed to be more into praxis than theory.

Elias thought for a moment.

Someone else spoke up, a woman with long brown hair and flecks of paint that occasionally moved across her face. Julia Reinhardt, the Painter of the piece on the wall. "Yeah, and it won't be the last time. I heard from the Critic that if the GOC comes here again, let him know. He's got people in the Protectorate that have scores to settle with the fascists."

There was some murmurs of agreement with that idea, as well as a loud cry of "Fuck the Critic!", which everyone also agreed to.

Elias was sceptical. He'd heard about the Security and Containment Protectorate, everyone seemed to be signing up, but he wasn't sure what they even expected to do. "So what's their plan? We keep losing until we wear down the New World Order?"

Fats frowned, uncomfortable on Elias's behalf. "Sorry. I know you lost people. We should… probably talk about something else?"

There was a long and awkward pause, before Elias smiled. "It's fine. We've gotten used to losing."

He downed his drink, then grimaced. It really was awful beer. "But the way I see it, that actually gives us an edge. As soon as we stand up to them, and things stop going to plan, they're going to get scared. People are going to start wondering if they're really willing to die just to keep the Coalition in power."

Judas looked sceptical. "You think they're just going to give up?"

"No. But we can convince them they should." Elias stood up, unsteady on his feet but more confident than he'd felt for a month. He hoped that wasn't just because he'd been drinking. "You say there's a Protectorate planning to hit the Coalition back? Count me in."

If the GOC came for him, he'd at least go down fighting.

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