TITLE PAGE

  Sorcerer’s Sabotage FIeld Manual: Book Twenty of Faerie Protective Services Inc.

  By Robert McKinney

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  Copyright 2023, Robert McKinney

  All rights reserved. Published by McKinney Can't Press

  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to mckinneycantwrite@gmail.com

  DEDICATION

  For C. We’ll get there, brother.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To mom, who taught me to focus on winning the fight. To dad, who thought that the Iliad was great reading material for nine year old boys. To Jurijus Chitrovas, who provided me with such amazing art for this book. Most of all, to my wife. As always, you are my heart and sky. You kept me standing and helped make this story the best it could be.

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  PROLOGUE

  I killed my last elf on the way home from a battle. It wasn’t planned. Exhausted, limping on a bad leg that I’d hurt in the last few hours, and bleeding far more than I wanted to be, I’d stumbled upon him while pacing the trails that would take me home. Over a hill. Through the woods. And then, the`re he was.

  From the look of the chaos scattered around him, the elf lay in the remains of an ambush. One that my people had set for him and whatever warband he’d been traveling with. Brass shell casings, their surfaces bright and glinting, were scattered in telltale clusters near the best cover and concealment. An AR-15, the magazine well filled with a D60 drum magazine, lay no more than ten feet away from the elf’s outstretched hand. I saw blood smeared across his fingertips. Something told me it wasn’t his. Something made me want to draw closer to be sure.

  As I moved closer I noted that his dark skin, which would have been luminous under mortal moonlight, was muted to a bruise-black shade in the eternal twilight of fae skies. Not that I could see much of his skin’s original shade. Blood covered him from damn near head to toe. Most of it was his, and clustered near a trio of gunshot wounds near his hip bone, thigh, and spine.

  Some of the blood, like the bits on his fingers, wasn’t his, though.

  Coming close enough for him to hear, but not near enough to reach, I lifted my carbine to my shoulder and settled the crosshairs of my scope on his forehead.

  “Do I know you?” I asked in the silken language of Faerie.

  The elf laughed. Groaned. Laughed again.

  “I am called Lord Tifes, though that is not my name.” he replied with labored breath.

  “I’m Ad–” I began to say, but he cut me off before I could finish.

  “I know you.” spat the elf. “Aden Flint. Lord of nothing more than war and strife. I know you, and fear not.”

  I nodded once at the elf’s words, then looked left, right, and over my shoulder to make sure that no one was moving to a blind spot unseen. The elf called Tifes didn’t seem to be a direct threat at the moment, but elves were known to surprise one on occasion.

  “No fear is needed, for now at least.” I said. “If there’s iron in you, and you’ve lived this long, it’ll pass its way out of you soon enough.”

  I flicked my head off to my left in the direction that I’d come from.

  “I think you have kin in that direction. Maybe three miles past these woods.” I said. “If you can keep your hands and spells to yourself until I’ve passed, then you’re welcome to make your way to them unmolested.”

  With that said, I gave the crippled elf one last nod, then stepped forward to continue taking the wooden path forward and to my home.

  “No.” said the elf before I could have gone more than two steps. “I will not give you the road.”

  Once again, I looked left, right, and over my shoulder. All I saw were dark woods brushed with just the first inklings of frost. No elven archers were lying in wait for me, though I noticed a few dozen spirit animals, their eyes bright and knit close enough to belong to small, quick bodies, staring at me from the shadows.

  None of them should pose a danger to me, for now. After all, I had two legs to run on and two hands to make war with.

  Even the elf, though crippled, had little to worry from them. I’ve seen his kind in battle before and knew that a warrior like this could fight off an army of the critters while sitting down with one hand tied behind his back.

  I turned back towards the injured elf, who stared at me with hard eyes.

  “Not to be that guy, but this is a woodland trail, not a road.” I said.

  “Nevertheless, I will not yield it to you.” he said, puffing out his chest from his prone spot on the ground.

  “Fine by me.” I said as I took a step to my left and off the woodland path. Leaves crunched and blades of grass bent under my foot. Though far from loud, the sound offended my former scout sensibilities, and my next step took me to a patch of dirt that lacked any debris which could further announce my presence. All the while, I kept my carbine raised up to my shoulder and my scope’s crosshairs fixed to the elf before me.

  “Stand.” said the elf laying prone on the trail. “Stand and fight me, with honor, if you have any.”

  “I’ll pass.” I said. “No offense given.”

  “Stand. And. Fight.” repeated the elf, his words taking on a strange new weight that made me pause in my tracks.

  I froze. Frowned. Shook my head once. Snarled.

  Up until this point, I’d felt nothing but the heavy weight of the battle I’d left behind me, and the bone dead fatigue that could only be cured by a week’s worth of rest. Now, though, I felt a stirring. A press. A push. A surge of something that made my breath come out heavy, and my face wrinkle into a mask reserved for bubbling rage.

  Damn, damn, damn. I knew what this was. This was magic. War magic. The brewing berserker's wrath that was building in me even now wasn’t my own. It was this goddamn elf. His pressure, his will, trying to move me towards violence.

  “Don’t do this.” I said, my voice coming out as a growl.

  “Stand. And. Fight.” repeated the elf. “I deserve a warrior’s death.”

  “You deserve whatever I give you.” I hissed back, barely able to keep the words from coming out as a shout. “You goddamn elves. You’re all alike. You think it’s fine to play around with people’s heads. You think it’s fun, huh?”

  “Stand. And. Fight” repelated the elf, and I felt my heart jump in my chest as my finger slid away from the metal frame of my carbine and began to tighten on the trigger.

  “This isn’t a fight.” I said. “And it won’t be a murder, either.”

  “Stand. And. Fight.” repeated the elf, his power shoving me beyond rage and into one of the uglier states of mind that I’ve had the displeasure of experiencing.

  “This isn’t a fight.” I said as I fixed my aim and squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle bucked in my hand, and a bullet sped true from the suppressor. It stuck home with a wet sound and brief flash of sickly green light. Elven blood sizzled and burned with ghostly bluish flames as they ignited on contact with the cold iron ammunition.

  The elf smirked once, then softened as his muscles went still in death.

  “Fucking elves.” I said as I lowered my rifle.

  In the forest around me, I heard the sudden shifting of small, clawed things. They drew closer, their chittering emerging in bits and bursts. It wasn’t the sound of hunters, but that of scavengers.

  Opportunistic.

  Hungry.

  For a while, I stood my ground as the sound of hungry moths and scabrous paws drew closer from the forest. Eventually, though, I pressed forward as the first of them, a rodent-like thing with bristling quills for fur, slunk forward from the edge of the trees. I didn’t need to see what they’d do with the body I’d left them. I just needed to get home.

  Home, where things would be safe.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “How the fuck did that happen?” I said to no one in particular as I stared at the giant, ragged hole that had once been the ceiling of my throne room.

  I said it to no one, because my mother, father, Colonel Treg, and assorted other advisors had been busy with their own damage control elsewhere in our stronghold by the time I’d limped back to the seat of my power. For a second, I considered tracking them down as I figured that most of them would like to hear about the pesky, and not-so-little, duel that I’d signed myself up for. But then again, I was already in the throne room, and the new hole that had been ripped into it was just above my head.

  When I’d last seen the throne room, less than five hours before, the ironclad room had been chilly, but whole. Now the roof sported a gash that was large enough to drive a tr

uck through.

  No mean feat, given how said room was built from the guts of an ironclad battleship.

  And now there was a hole in it. A really big, really ugly, and even a little bit scary hole right over the head of where this realm’s ruler usually sat.

  Oh, plus the tree. The tree was very large and dry, with dark, withered leaves and branches that seemed to shiver in a wind that I couldn’t see or feel. The roots dug into the steel flooring more or less where the throne itself should have been, all while the trunk extended up, through the hole itself, and into the frigid twilight air.

  On closer inspection, the tree shared a trait or two that reminded me of the vicious, carnivorous, and entirely too mobile trees which floated around the borders of the realm. None of those had leaves, though. And I’d never seen one of those floating abominations take root in anything, much less a metal floor.

  Gawking at the hole and the tree wasn’t going to provide any answers, though. That’s what the other people crowding the insides of this throneroom were for.

  “Seriously, how the fuck did that happen?” I asked again, this time directing my question towards the wider room packed with bloodied assassins, staff officers, my parents, and a bird.

  “There was a battle.” replied the bird, as if the answer was obvious.

  For a second, I just stared at the bird - dumbfounded. Not because the bird had spoken, either. I’d long since gotten used to Skaath, Mother of Witches, Winter, and the Hunt’s penchant for possessing the bodies of birds in order to explore beyond the confines of this ironclad ship which served as both her prison and un-life support system.

  No, the reason I was confused was because I could barely imagine a fae battle that could do this to a warship.

  Sure, the mortal world was full of weapons that could poke holes in a Dreadnought. But this wasn’t the mortal world. This was the land of Faerie. Magic was so common in this place that it leaked from the soul and whispered on every breeze if one knew how to listen or look. Magic was also notoriously worthless in the presence of cold iron, steel, and every alloy in between. That’s why the entire kingdom of goblins, orcs, and half-bloods was composed of steel-wrought ships pillaged from the oceans following World War One.

  There was no way that a spell did this, right?

  One way to be sure.

  “Are you telling me that a spell did this?” I asked the bird in the language of Faerie.

  Skaath fluttered her wings a bit before answering. As she did, the whole room watched our exchange with no small amount of unease. Most of them thought she was a familiar - a kind of servant spirit that was bound to body and soul.

  Familiars, though not uncommon among elves and higher fae, were not often chatty. Skaath, by contrast, had never been one to hold her tongue - so our back and forth was drawing all sorts of attention. Usually I kept my conversations with Skaath to a minimum in public but we didn’t have time for illusions now. I filed that away under the “worry about it later” tab and waited for Skaath’s response.

  “It seems that the fae have discovered mortal explosives. Several took flight by one way or another and dropped them on the keep.”

  I glanced back towards the giant hole in the roof and the tree growing through it.

  “Damn.” I said, scratching my head. “I guess they blew a hole in the roof and dropped the tree in after. Wonder what it was supposed to do.”

  “Oh, they did neither.” replied Skaath. “Though a few taunted us over stolen radios, none of them came within bombing range of this keep. As for the damage, I used the tree to break through the roof myself.”

  “You … what?” I asked.

  “I used the tree to break the roof.” replied Skaath. “The fae fled shortly after.”

  “Why would a tree scare any of the fae off?” I asked.

  “It had more to do with what I did with the tree.” replied Skaath. “Observe.”

  With a hop and a flutter of her dark raven wings, Skaath bounced over to where the tree had taken root in the iron floor of the throne room. It turned out that it hadn’t quite landed on the simple chair, and had instead intertwined its roots so thoroughly with the seat that the bit of furniture was hard to make out amid all of that wood.

  While I was taking in that bit of detail, Skaath had begun chanting. Within moments, I felt a sensation in the pit of my stomach not unlike the feeling of using magic to jump from one bit of Faerie to another.

  Then there was a flash of white and a sudden buzzing whip of sound.

  The glare made me blink, and by the time I turned my gaze back to the great alien tree before me, bits of lightning had begun to dance from dark leaf to leaf.

  “That’s … unusual.” I said after a pause. “And a bit outside of what I thought you could manage these days.”

  “I’ve had a peek or two at your Tome of Storms in the past.” said Skaath in response. “Its contents were quite enlightening. This display was quite easy, now that you’ve claimed this realm for your own.”

  That last bit sent a little shiver of unease through me. Skaath shouldn’t have been able to wield power like that. Not anymore. Though there’d once been a time when she was a High Lord of Faerie, she’d been defeated in battle, killed, and imprisoned in the iron bowels of this fort long before I’d been born. Skaath being Skaath, she wasn’t going to let something like death keep her down. Using a mastery of iron magic beyond anything I’ve ever heard of, she’d turned herself into an undead thing that just plain refused to die.

  Her imprisonment and undeath came with serious downsides. Namely that her spellcraft was now limited to the handful of tricks that she’d been able to teach me. The more I thought about it, though, I realized that she had been able to teach me quite a lot in the time I’d known her. And what she hadn’t taught me, I’d learned how to use through skill, stubbornness, or swindle.

  None of that fully explained how Skaath had managed this, though. I couldn’t pull off something like this, so how could she?

  A potential answer that I didn’t like one little bit came to mind.

  “Uh, quick question.” I said, switching to the telepathic communication that had formed the bedrock of our partnership to ensure no prying ears scurried away with sensitive information.

  “Why does it matter that I’ve claimed this realm for my own? Is it because you’re my familiar?”

  “Oh, you sweet child. You’ve always been a clever student, even when half wrong.” Skaath replied in turn. “Yes, the bond between master and familiar is why I can once again harness the power of this realm.”

  “I’m sensing a “but,” coming.” I said.

  “But it’s not because I’m your familiar.” obliged Skaath, Mother of Witches, Winter, and the Hunt. “It’s because you are mine.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Everyone.” I said almost on autopilot as my tired, possibly concussed brain tried to decipher what Skaath had just told me. “Do me a favor and leave the room.“

  Sure enough, the few goblins, half-bloods, and orcs who made up the support staff for the throne room wasted little time in filing out of the space. Once they’d cleared out, I took a second to think of what the hell Skaath meant by calling me her familiar.

  I came up blank, so I sent a glare Skaath’s way and asked her directly.

  “Wait, what?” I said, my words still carried to her mind by the magic that linked us. “I’m not your familiar. You’re mine. I cast a spell and everything.”

  “You cast a spell that I taught you.” replied Skaath. “Such things are to be expected.”

  “Not when I have your true name.” I hissed in Faerie, out loud this time. “Look, I’m not one to give you orders, but it’s pretty clear which direction this relationship flows.”

  “The true name has been a complication.” admitted Skaath. “Fear not, for you are right. So long as you have my true name, I can do you no harm. But that does not change the fact that you are mine.”

  “Mine.” I repeated with a snort. “If I’m yours, then what happens if I tell you to hop on one foot?”

  “I doubt you are either brave or foolish enough to find out.” replied the Mother of Witches.

 

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