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It was the sound, more than anything, that made Katherine snap her mind back from its daze. The sudden crack of stone on bone, as discordant as a broken bell over the buzz of conversation, was too real to ignore. She sprung to her feet, not really sure what she was going to do there, but knowing she couldn’t stay seated.
Christopher twisted around in his chair to see what had made her suddenly stand. “Oh my fucking God!” he yelled, as a man wearing a courier bag calmly swung an aluminum baseball bat into the neck of a well-dressed woman.
To Katherine, it was as though Christoper’s yell was the event that released the room from its shock. Cries filled the air as patrons stood up at their tables. Even then, there was confusion. Most people hadn’t seen the attacks, and now with everyone on their feet, it was even more difficult to see what was going on. The confusion spread as chairs crashed over and glasses shattered on the floor.
There were maybe a dozen individuals in all who crowded in through the doors, each as unremarkable as the next. They varied in dress and skin colour, men and women, old and young. The only thing they all had in common was a faint self-satisfied smirk that curled the edge of their lips.
They overturned tables, and swarmed toward anyone in reach, attacking with assorted weapons, fists, feet, and teeth. They didn’t yell out in anger as they fell on their victims, they struck and maimed quietly only the cries and grunts of their victims audible.
In front of Katherine, Christopher lunged to his feet and stumbled toward the fray, nearly falling on his face when his feet tangled with a chair leg. He recovered before he could fall and bellowed as he charged ahead.
When Katherine first saw Christopher, she had only taken notice of how fat he was, what she hadn’t realized was exactly how large the man was. Now that she could see him standing, she realized he had to be at least six foot five. He looked even bigger as he upended tables and chairs charging toward the fight. He grabbed a half-full wine bottle from a vacant table as he passed and smashed it onto the head of the nearest attacker—a distinguished looking man with salt and pepper hair who was kicking at someone on the floor.
A Touch of Grey went down like a two-hundred-pound sack of shit in a five-hundred dollar suit, red wine staining his head and shoulders. Christopher bellowed again, all softness gone, and snatched up a nearby bar stool to begin swinging at the attackers.
A scattered few of the patrons were beginning to tentatively join in the fight, getting in the occasional sucker punch when one of the smirking invaders had their back turned. The only one doing any real damage though was Christopher. His long reach with the bar stool was doing an admirable job of standing off the mob, but even now his face was beginning to turn red and Katherine could hear him panting heavily. He couldn’t do this on his own for much longer.
“Screw this!” Katherine heard someone yell behind her. She looked around to see the flame-haired waitress who had been serving coffee earlier turn toward the rear of the room and make a poking gesture with her carafe toward the battered Viking figurehead mounted on the back wall.
Katherine felt, more than saw, the magic of Strangefellows whiplash into the cracked wood and begin to travel down the faded Norse knotwork carved there. The server was obviously one of Strangefellows’ char witches, no one else could move its magic around like that.
Where the carving had worn down over the millennia, new wood now began to regenerate, the intricate knots becoming well-defined and sharp as the day they were carved. The figurehead twitched where it hung and fell from to the floor with a crash. Whorls and knots began to grow out from the wood like the waving arms of tarnished brass anemones, twisting and writhing into the shapes of limbs and a trunk.
A cry of pain caused her to turn back around, one of the crowd had got too close and had been dragged into the middle of the silent attackers. Arms and legs pumped frantically, and the cries abruptly cut off. The group began to move deeper into the room, but Christoper’s bar stool slowed them as they tried to advance. He was calling for help, but no one seemed to be willing to step up.
There were far more patrons than there were attackers, but she could see in all of their faces that they were scared. These were mainly sorcerers, modest talents who traded old badly remembered tricks on recipe cards. Strangefellows was their sanctuary and it had been invaded. That made them unsure and afraid. In the arcane community, they were small fish in a big ocean, and when the sharks came cruising by, they got the hell out of the way. These invaders represented a power they couldn’t hope to challenge and were confronted only at huge personal risk.
Katherine understood, she felt the same way herself and was ashamed. She knew she could help. She wasn’t a fighter, but she was strong, and her alchemically created body could take far more damage than these silent attackers were dishing out. A voice in her head told her that getting into a bar fight wasn’t the way to keep a low profile. If she went in now she’d declare to the arcane community that she was something more than just human. She balled her hands into fists, grit her teeth, and felt completely disgusted with herself.
As she watched, the man Christopher had hit with the wine bottle regained his feet. Blood and wine sheeted down his face and neck, staining the collar of his white shirt bright red. His lips peeled back and he hissed at Christopher. It was the first sound Katherine had heard any of the door crashers make. Christopher’s reply was an oak barstool to the face, and Katherine couldn’t help but let out a cheer. The man staggered, but didn’t fall, he was tougher than he looked.
The sound of wood squealing against wood suddenly sounded loud behind her. The figurehead the char witch had been feeding power to, had transformed from battered old wood to a dragon the size of a large Brown Bear. The Norse-style knots she’d noticed had wrapped the figurehead in twisted brass cables of magic that now made up its body and legs. The cables shifted and writhed like muscles as it moved.
It wasn’t a dragon, like recent Hollywood monsters seen on movie screens around the world, it was something older, something more archaic. Its scaled head was wide like a mastiff’s with huge eyes and rounded ears. Its body had the thick muscular chest of a bear, and its arms and legs ended in sharp bird talons. Its wings were tucked in at its sides and a long wail whipped in agitation behind it.
It spread its wings wide, knocking over tables and chairs as it did, and made a noise that sounded like a load of wet cats being driven into the world’s largest hornet’s nest. Katherine covered her ears and saw others all around her doing the same. Say what you would about the methods of Norse witches, anyone who could trick a piece of wood and make the magic last a thousand years was badass in her books.
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