Crossover Fan Fiction / Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction / Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction ❯ Reason And Accountability ❯ Dresden Spoilers ( Chapter 32 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

THIRTY-TWO

I stepped from the portal into a chilly garage in a suburban home. How did I know it was a suburban home? Well, it had a station wagon/SUV parked in it, a lot of kids’ sports equipment, several bicycles hanging from wall hooks I narrowly missed walking into, and a rather startled very tall man who was petting a dog the size of a Japanese horse. Only one man I know has a dog that big.

“Huh. You don’t see that every day,” said the man. I recognized him as he rose to his full height.

“Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden,” I intoned. “It is time for us to have a conversation.”

“You have got to be kidding,” he responded with sincere outrage.

“Uh… well, somewhat,” I answered in passably accented English.

“You can’t do anything bad here. This is the Carpenter residence. There are literal angels around you protecting them. More than a few,” he emphasized, gesturing around us.

“Ah… that’s fine. I said a conversation. That’s what I meant. Not veiled threats. Did you like the Sears Roebuck Catalog I left you? The one with the sticky note on the wood fired water heater pages?” I asked him.

“Huh? That was you? Wait, can you prove that?” he asked, suspicious now.

“Sure, but this garage is cold. I could do with a cup of tea and maybe meet your waifu and daughter.”

“Waifu? What? I can see you’re Japanese, but what do you mean?” he asked. Philistine. Dresden can’t use computers, so no idea about anime, or even most Television. Also no Wikipedia or memes.

“You’ve been generation gapped, old man. Did you marry Molly?” I asked directly.

“Uh… well, yeah. I mean, it’s not a secret,” he admitted. “And that’s not exactly proof either.”  

“The conversation with her mother must have been interesting. Did you still deal with Arctis Tor rescue and the phages?” I asked him.

“Uhh… yeah. But every Winter Fae knows that, and quite a few Summer. Still not proof.”

“You went there anyway? You ignored the warnings I gave you? They were written down clearly. I had to get help with that part.”

“Well, those are obviously red herrings. I couldn’t trust something that comes from a possessed person. They might be a demon or something worse,” he objected.

“I’m too cold to prove who I am. Let me in.” We moved through the garage door and I stepped across the threshold into the house and felt the drain on my mana, probably 60% of it was sealed away.

“Well, major healing will be harder in here,” I announced. It was a comfortable temperature inside, and I was glad for the heat. I’d been in the Flatiron Building in another universe a few minutes ago. Now it was Winter in Chicago.

“Daddy? Who is that boy?” asked the dusky girl standing in the kitchen. It was Dresden’s daughter, Maggie. I’m glad I read the books, even if Dresden’s brain was sometimes painfully stupid.

“Eh… I go by Roberts when I’m travelling inter-dimensionally,” I answered.

“Roberts? As in Dread Pirate Roberts?” Dresden confirmed.

“So you saw that movie?” I asked him. He nodded.

“Drive in theater. The sound gets iffy, but I go on a warm night and I can hear from the other car speakers,” he admitted.

“I learned magic in a place that has rodents of unusual size,” I said.

“Really? I thought they didn’t exist,” he replied, then grinned. Molly appeared from one of the doorways, holding an empty teacup and her expression shifted to surprised.

“Oh! You’re back?” she said.

“You know me?” I asked her.

“Of course. You came a couple times. Your soul smells the same,” she didn’t explain. I sighed. Naturally as the more sensitive magic user she’d get into soul magic in a completely different way.

“I wonder if I could teach you healing magic?” I asked out loud. She perked up at that.

“That thing you do?” she asked me.

“Yeah. By the way, is your knee okay?” I asked her. She winced.

“Well, I’ve regained a lot of my mobility, and it doesn’t hurt as much every day,” Molly explained.

“Want me to fix that?” I asked her.

“Can you?” she asked me.

“Sure. Might take a bit longer, but yeah. I haven’t been invited in, after all,” I pointed out.

“Shouldn’t you be pretty much blocked from doing anything?” Molly asked, confused.

“I’ve still got around 40% of my power, if that’s what you mean,” I shrugged.

“Well, promise you’re just doing healing,” she insisted.

“I promise, just healing,” I said and felt a mild binding try to take hold. “Use your senses to pay close attention, because my spells are all Soul Magic, and since you’re sensitive enough you might be able to learn it by watching.” I started working on her knee with a cast of Heal Other. The diagnostic part of the spell seems to have developed with use and experience. I could see the bad break and the poorly aligned tendons and ACL damage. I healed all of that in a couple minutes.

“Okay, stand up.” She did so. She put more weight on it. She shifted left and right. She stretched, then rose on tippy-toes.

“Wow. That’s great.” My mana was refilled already. This place is pretty rich with the stuff, not much different from Skyrim, really.

“Hey, how’s your Dad doing? And your mom?” I asked her. She looked thoughtful.

“In the living room. Are you offering?” she asked me. I nodded. I remembered the hospital after the graveyard incident, and the AK-47 through the guts while dangling from a helicopter. Even while hanging onto the main power of the sneakier archangel Uriel, this is a problem I can fix.

“Hey Dresden, your spine okay?” I asked him.

“Right up until I get a nail through the skin,” he admitted. I rested my hand on his shoulder and quick-cast heal other, fixing the nerves and bones in his spine, all at once.

“Oi! What was that?” he asked me.

“That was the right to use cast iron cookware if you feel like it,” I answered vaguely. “Remind me to explain about Iron today. You really need to know some things. I want to tell Molly and Maggie too.”

“Eh? Why Maggie?” he asked.

“Because she’s magical. Duh!” I answered. “With the levels of Narrativium contamination you’ve got in this universe it would naturally result that Maggie, the daughter of a dhampir and a starborn wizard, would be magical.” Harry looked at me, then at Maggie, watching us while she sipped a tall glass of milk and ate a cookie solemnly, then back at me. He face-palmed.

“Of course,” he replied.

Molly returned.

“Come in. And you’re given permission to enter, as a guest,” she intoned. I felt the restrictions of my magic release. My mana refilled again over the next several minutes as I followed her to the living room, through a doorway and down a hall. Sitting on a couch beside each other were the aging couple, a huge man and his shorter but secretly magical wife, Harry’s inlaws.

“Hello. I am called Roberts. It is not my real name, but I am not from this universe. I travel a lot and have been here to this place before. I know how to heal people, properly. Speaking of, I should visit that hospital where a certain gangster keeps some dirty laundry. You know the place, Harry,” I reminded him.

“So what do you do?” Mrs. Carpenter asked me.

“I cast a spell, and I heal the person I cast it on. I can regrow organs, fix all sorts of damage and remove curses,” I explained. Harry looked at me sharply.

“I only recently learned that one, Harry, and I learned it because of what happened to her,” I answered his unasked question.

“And how long have you been able to do this?” she asked me.

“Around a month,” I answered without thinking. She cringed.

“Is that really skilled enough? What if something goes wrong?” she asked, worried.

“Confidence affects the spell, so I’m going to continue to ignore what you just said. If you like I can reverse that hysterectomy in a few minutes,” I offered. She looked pained. I cast the spell. The light glowed from my hand to her lower abdomen. I ran the spell, regrowing her womb and ovaries and fallopian tubes and repaired her cervix so it would work as intended. There were some broken ribs scars and a few other things, like fingers. Heal them all. And regrow a missing tooth, pushing out the implant, which she spit out with surprise into her hand. Firm up the bosoms from the usual tendon stretching that affects all mothers and repair the stretch marks that forces them to give up the bikini at the beach.

“Okay. That’s you all fixed up. Now, for Mr. Carpenter,” I stepped forward and cast the spell. The angel in his body resisted, but I kept up the spell and it slipped aside. I excreted lead from the liver as wire out of his abdomen, emerging from the skin, fixed the broken ribs and various bones from a life fighting evil, repaired his burst spleen, regrew a missing kidney, removed various organ scars from the bullet impacts, repaired and reinflated the sections of lung, which improved his color, repaired damaged bone marrow, and some damage in the brain from various causes, probably also from that plague event a few years earlier. There was a lot of healing to do. I was at it a long time. Even with the mana levels here, I think I was an hour before I finished.

“Okay. You should be good now. Retirement will be a lot easier, even if you don’t carry around the power of Uriel,” I added, looking at the man trying to be non-descript over in the corner of the room, watching with hard eyes. It was him who peeled away the power so I could work.

“It has been a long time since anyone has used that power here,” Uriel admitted.

“Some of your Saints probably did,” I pointed out. “This world is a bit too close to those Otherside things, but that’s also why you have so much mana here.”

“Such topics are not lightly spoken of on this world,” Uriel warned.

“Yes yes. I’m sure. But I’m an OCP, so you really don’t have a lot of room to contradict me,” I responded. I gestured to the healed couple.

“Be careful in the bedroom, Mrs. Carpenter. You have the fertility of a teenage girl right now,” I added. She looked shocked.

“Really?” she skeptically responded.

“Really. You could have another six kids,” I countered. “You could have kids younger than your grandkids.” Molly blushed.

“What, you didn’t tell them?” I asked Molly with surprise. My healing spell diagnostics has spillover to most people in the room. I’d noticed the baby inside her.

“I… I was waiting to be sure,” she stammered.

“Not drinking alcohol? Kind of obvious,” her father said, cuddling his wife who was being affectionate.

“Mouse started treating you differently,” solemn Maggie said, petting his head. Mouse stared and if dogs could shrug, he did.

“A mother just knows,” Mrs. Carpenter muttered.

“Great. So yeah, I’m pregnant,” Molly announced. Harry hugged her gently.

“So, know why magical babies often come from magical mothers?” I asked the room. They turned to regard me. “It’s a simple evolutionary principle, not a trick question.”

“Magic is inherited because babies without it miscarry, so magic becomes a dominant gene through evolution. Places with lots of magic make for magical babies, too, including spontaneous and first generation mages.”

“How do you know?” asked Harry, curious.

“Duh. Think about it. I’ll give you a minute,” I waited, whistling the music for Jeopardy under my breath. “Time’s up!”

“So why is that?” I asked Harry. Molly butted in with the answer.

“Same reason. So why does magic break technology?” she asked.

“Pretty simple actually. A lot of advanced technology is working at the quantum level rather than just electrical. We’re talking field effects and quantum energy state jumps and over into Dark Energy territory. That is also WHY Outsiders are such a threat,” I added. Uriel grunted discomfort from his corner, glaring at me.

“Hey, no summoning asteroids to kill me, over there. This is important to their future.”

“I know where you live,” Uriel threatened.

“Then you know who I’m working for, too,” I responded evenly. He backed off, grumbling. Azazel may look like a cute goth chick, but she’s an archangel as well.

“Most of the matter in the universe is 99% invisible, and most of the energy is not detectible to us. That energy is not normally created or destroyed, however, magic users make use of that. In small amounts, as the galaxy rotates like a record,” I explained to the two active magicals in the room.

“Don’t you mean the Galaxy spirals like a whirlpool?” Molly tried to correct me.

“No, actually. It is more like a record. The inner stars retain the same relative position and angular velocity, like a record, which has been one of the bigger mysteries of the Universe and is harder to make Relativity explain it, much less Hawking. Is he still alive in this universe?” I asked Mrs. Carpenter. She shook her head.

“Died a few years ago,” she answered.

“Well, he was right about several things, but wrong about many more, and his nonsense stopped science dead because it was mean to challenge the crippled guy with the speak n spell for a voice.” Harry looked confused. Molly laughed.

“Someone can actually reference jokes you don’t get, Harry. How does it feel?” Molly taunted. Harry looked annoyed.

“That face,” chuckled Michael Carpenter.

“Anyway, the dark energy that’s used by magic users and magical beings and creatures removes a bit from the path of our planet in the universe. Use enough for a long enough time and the planet will run dry of magic, and eventually the galaxy too, then it’s a very long way to the next galaxy, though it is shorter trip to another universe. Ever wondered why empty night is considered a curse? Imagine a universe where all the energy of stars and dark matter has been vacuumed up. The outsiders are from other universes that used up all their dark energy and they’re trying to get here because we’re relatively rich for it, and they need it to live and to cast spells and dominate worlds and enslave and sacrifice the populations to the dark gods they serve, presuming they do. They are bad news. A Starborn can also tap into that same type of dark energy that Outsiders prefer, which is why a Starborn can use magic that will actually hurt them in a fight,” I explained. 

“But this also leads to a related issue. There are less evil and less monstrous Outsiders living here. Certain gods. Dragons, the true ones who can shape change and use magic. Certain retired gods and current brewmasters.”

“What, you don’t mean?” Harry objected.

“Yes, duh. MacAnnally is an Outsider, a relatively friendly one. The old joke about God inventing beer because he loves us… not just a joke. Think about that the next time you put a bottle in your icebox.”

“And that leads to the elephant in the room. Faerie folk. They access additional types of dark energy, which leads to them having to modify their bodies to avoid iron, because the nucleus of the iron atom is one of the few on the periodic table that is properly stable. When you fuse iron you get iron and a lighter element. When you break down radioactive heavy isotopes, they eventually reach iron and stop. This is why it is all over the universe. The Fae had to create a habitat without iron in order to use magic the way they like to. And their most important magic is time. Fae are time travelers. Let that sink in. They are also trapped by time paradoxes, which is why they have so many rules and laws, and why they are allergic to iron. If they get contaminated by iron, they can’t use their time magic and not being able to jump around like Doctor Who means they take all sorts of cumulative damage and fail at their various plots. Iron is the key to time, and why Humans have free will. We have iron in our blood and live our lives sequentially. Fae do not. Ironic, ironically, that Doctor Who is actually a decent warning about the dangers of time paradox.”

“Nearly everything you have said in the last ten minutes upsets me,” Dresden deadpanned, trying to reign in his features.

“Oh, and your life is documented in another universe as a series of novels. Billions of people know everything about you. Including the source of your headaches, and more than a few think you’re the actual original Merlin since your character arc is obviously about the circumstances in which you violate every one of the laws.”

“Ah, thanks. That’s just great,” Dresden bemoaned. 

“And millions of readers are baffled why you don’t have a wood-fired steam powered shower. Your random transmutation wouldn’t affect it and you wouldn’t need to suffer cold showers. That is why I left the catalog for you. You could track one down or have one built for you. Probably cost less than your magic circle. Cold showers are very Edgelord, to be sure, but few people can sympathize when the answer is simple and obvious.”

“That’s just… wow. Really? I’m held in contempt?” Harry honed in on this thanks to his unerring persecution complex.

“This from the man who rode a zombie T-rex to stop local Armageddon? Oh, and the TV show about you wasn’t very good. Only one season. They replaced the Beetle with a jeep, and it just wasn’t the same. The audiobooks are great. They got the guy who played spike on buffy to read them. He’s really excellent.”

“Do I want to know who wrote the books about my life?” he asked, wincing.

“Eh, he’s from Oklahoma, doesn’t live in Chicago. The writing style is good and he works at it seriously, with good levels of humor and irony to capture what is probably your inner voice. Not that many people write Chicago properly compared to the war zone it has become for the last few decades in most of the non-narrativium dominated universes.”

“That’s the second time you used that word. What is narrativium?” asked Molly.

“Really? No Discworld here? Actually… huh. I need to confirm something,” I said, and began to concentrate on a specific woman from fiction. A moment later and she sort of faded into existence in front of me, complete with black silk gown and enormous witches hat.

“Rude!” she muttered.

“By any chance, might you be a Cheesemaker?” I asked her. She stopped her muttering and stared at me, hard.

“What about it?” she asked, voice sharp.

“Know anything about Chalk and flint? Balancing pain? An old Ozarkian sheepherder on the Roundworld?” I asked further. Her eyes opened and she stared, then turned to regard Harry.

“Grandson!” she announced, and hugged the very startled wizard.

“Who? Who are you?” he managed to ask from her ruffled bosom as she hugged him.

“This, Harry Dresden, is your grandmother. And she is the reason you and your mother, and your brother too, are cursed to have such interesting lives.”

“Hush you, I’ll tell the boy.” I zipped it, out of courtesy.

“Once upon a time I spent some times with a teacher who mastered time and space, Eskarina Smith, the first female wizard. I am a witch, not a wizard, and my magic, like that of other witches on the Disc, is earth magic, and comes from nature and the elements. My name is Tiffany Aching, and my name means land under wave. I am a witch, like my grandmother, and I faced many trials to eventually gain sufficient renown and am regarded by my peers in the craft as the greatest living witch of our time, since the passing of Mistress Weatherwax four years ago. Time magic, done right, is less of a binding as it is for the faeries, and more of a shortcut, a way around things. I learned the Crawstep, which is why I came such a long way in such a short time. A trick passed to me by my friends the Feegles. I am not sure how to describe them.”

“Smurfs. Drunk, Scottish, smurfs. That curse and steal and party like a frathouse with unlimited beer,” I offered. Tiffany raised an eyebrow, but Dresden considered that before nodding at the description.

“You look younger than me,” Harry mentioned politely, which was really holding back for him.

“Time magic. Witches get a lot of foresight. We know when we will die, which saves on quite a few expenses. Meeting your grandfather will happen in my future, along with birthing Justin and Margaret. Why he calls them Du Morne and La Fey, and why I’ll let him do it I do not yet know. Margaret gained a lot of ability in travel from me, both learned and inherited, and I believe my leaving the Round world for emergencies back home before she finished her teens may have lead to certain psychological instabilities."

“For a world that barely has steam engines and bicycles in the last few years, you have a firm grasp of mental sciences,” I noted out loud.

“Witches have a great deal of use for psychology. My predecessor Mistress Weatherwax was a firm supporter of psychology of the individual and used it more frequently than magic. Potions containing aqua and sucrose merely helped cement the more subtle workings, sometimes assisted by a bit of chiropracty. I learned it from her.”

“I just finished healing a number of bone and joint wounds, so I think we’re all good here for that,” I interrupted again. She glared at me.

“I am not accustomed to being interrupted so frequently,” Tiffany said coldly.

“It used to happen to you all the time. I know about the frying pan and Jenny Greenteeth.”

“Eh? I met her. What do you mean?” Harry asked me.

“Ever notice that her smile is a bit gapped toothed? Tiffany did that. Pow, right in the kisser. She tried to drown and eat her little brother Wentworth,” I explained. I noticed some red bearded blue faces peering out from behind knickknacks and picture frames. “Crivens!” I squawked. A reply from a dozen small voices around the room responded.

“Crawstep?” I asked Tiffany. She nodded glumly. Harry looked disturbed.

“Is this the wee boy?” asked one of the small blue men, stepping out to be seen. He pointed to Dresden.

“The second son of my daughter. My boy went to the Black,” she explained. The Feegles looked resigned over that. Now that I could see her better, the ruffles hid some freckles, a modest bust, and the dress didn’t quite cover the sturdy boots. She looked barely twenty-five, if even that. Younger than Molly.

“We should go see about that Laundry, Dresden. Bring your gramma. She might like to see this,” I suggested. “Show her a bit of the world that’s changed since she was last here. When was that, anyway?”

“Ebeneezar said it was 1952 when I arrived, and I left in 1963.”

“There’s a lot more things since then. The interstate highway system is largely finished. Cars are sleeker and faster, but magic breaks them more easily. Medical science has really advanced. They can make DNA now. And libraries can be accessed through a palmtop device that runs on electricity and radio waves. Speaking of, my phone never breaks in other universes when I’m using magic, though I’m usually in someone else’s body. You’d say I was borrowing, Tiffany,” I clarified. We moved out to the garage again and piled into the big station wagon, which Charity drove while Michael sat beside her, Molly as well on the front bench seat. It was a big station wagon. I joined Dresden and Tiffany on the middle seat. Mouse and Maggie and Hobbit, who wanted to come along, were in the back. We drove for around an hour to a nondescript long term care hospital and Harry lead us to the desk, getting visitors passes and then to a specific room where a 20 year old woman, looking very emaciated, lay upon a massaging bed designed to prevent bedsores. They had used the Shroud of Turin on her, which is why she no longer required the monitors and apparatus, but sensors tracked her heartbeat and her persistent coma continued.

“Okay, so Molly, keep a close eye on me. The diagnostic portion of the Heal Other spell has grown more detailed with use.” I cast and observed. There were many problems, though not as severe or life threatening as they should be, probably from the Shroud’s effects. So it had done something useful. The scars from the bullet impacting near her heart had left bone fragments in various places, calcified. I dissolved those, healing as I went, restoring lung function and the damage to large arteries and veins near the heart and lungs. I restored full kidney function, and damage in the bone marrow from hypoxia. I corrected various bits of nerve tissue damage near the spine and various autonomic nerves going to the organs, and then ramped up T3/T4 and TSH hormone production. She began to stir, fingers twitching. Her heart rate rose along with her blood oxygen level. I healed damage on her throat and larynx, which had atrophied from going unused for 15 years. Her eyes rolled beneath the lids and she took a long deep breath, moving her arms and legs before her eyes cracked open for the first time in many years.

Michael and Charity held hands.

“Hello miss. You’ve been sleeping quite a long time. Mister Dresden, do you think you could call Miss Demeter and Mister Marcone and let them know?” I requested. Dresden peered at the girl, clearly awake and looking around. “We’re going to get your mommy,” I explained. “Are you hungry? Would you like a drink of water?”

A night nurse appeared, shocked at the higher heart rate and awoken coma patient. “Water please, with a straw. It seems the new treatment option worked,” I lied. She frantically pressed a button on the wall panel and picked up a phone. Some orderlies and a doctor appeared in a few minutes, taking her blood pressure and listening to her heart with a stethoscope.

“It’s a miracle,” he said. I just smiled softly. My diagnostic spell found no further serious issues. She had a chance to live now. I stepped out, the others coming with me. Dresden was muttering over a phone.

“Yes, Bonnie. I remember you. This is Mister Dresden. Please let Miss Demeter know that Sleeping Beauty is at the Sunny Arbor Long Term Care Hospital in Lower Arden, room 205. Her daughter has awoken from her coma. She’s been under protective custody for years now. This is the most important thing in her entire life. No, I am not exaggerating. Put her on the phone, Bonnie. She is not going to yell at you.” I listened waiting, Michael, of all people, picked up a pay phone and dialed a number. After a few minutes of conversation he spoke a few words and hung up.

“Was that Marcone? You have his direct number?” I asked him. He nodded.

“Even a man like him deserves the opportunity for repentance,” Michael said simply. He returned to his wife’s side and held her hand. Mouse and Maggie and Hobbit were curled up on a row of those uncomfortable hospital chairs. Tiffany looked at me then, then peered over my shoulder.

“It looks like you have somewhere to be. Thank you for doing that,” she said simply.

“It was the right thing to do. It was nice to meet you, miss. You’re a real hero, Miss Aching. I hope you know that. Your determination is a real inspiration to young people everywhere. The people here don’t seem to know about you. Where I’m from you have several books about you. You might tell some tales from your youth to young Harry. You kissed the Winter. You Bore summers fire. You defeated and released the Hiver. You beat the Cunning Man. These people know nothing of your battles. Help him adjust to just what he needs to live up to. Even after riding a dinosaur to save the world. Give him some perspective.

I turned away from the sheepherder’s daughter, the cheesemaker, and the greatest witch of her age, and returned through the portal back to my own home, and a good night’s rest in my own bed.