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Tyche
Take a day off from work and go swimming?
Sure…
Except the swimming in question wasn’t going to involve a sexy bikini or James… or, for that matter, a beach or a swimming pool.
It was nice that Anne had put so much faith in me, but swamps are not my native environment.
At least there wasn’t what you would call a great hurry. If Anne had been underwater this entire time, she was long dead; if not, she’d found some way to make do and survive. I didn’t know what could have kept her from making contact again, but something clearly had.
Okay, I decided, alive and in trouble, then. Any other assumption was defeatist, and, besides, I knew Anne. I took it as an article of faith that Anne was still alive. Rushing in, though, wasn’t going to improve her odds.
I considered the news I’d been seeing, recently, and wondered if it would prove related; I would have discounted stories of giant bug men, except that I knew Lady Quantum, and I couldn’t see her making up a story like that just for attention.
Then again, there was the location. That swamp was new, having moved in rapidly once the West End had settled in Dream Haven and, as with many new places that felt old, it just about reeked of faerie magic. I’d asked James about that, and he’d related something that Dr. Madeleine Crowley had explained in a lecture, once: the Fae are drawn, much as demons are, to crossroads. Where an old, country road running east to west meets a highway running north to south, for example, or where the central elevator in a high-rise apartment building passes through the ground floor. Different origin points and conditions attract more or less power, but it is the confluence of junctional energies that attracts the supernatural.
Although the swamp was new, the land it inhabited was not, and the spirits that now haunted it were older than the Americas. Could the fae or some other monsters have claimed part of the swamp for their own?
Unfortunately, I was almost certain they could have, and with little difficulty.
*****
“Hi there, luv,” James called as I strode across the tiled student union floor towards him, “were you looking for me?”
James fit in here remarkably well; he was a slender ginger with incredibly pale skin and freckles. He wore jeans and a Friendly Fire concert t-shirt and looked about seventeen years old. If I hadn’t known better, I might’ve believed he was a prospective student hitting on the hot, older woman who’d just wandered into his line of sight.
Of course, the truth was that James was not only my boyfriend, he was also the highly eccentric and academically brilliant professor of non-human artifacts and cultures. He had come to the U.S. to study the emergent faerie rings, then transferred to Dream Haven University when his home in Florida had shifted through the dimensions into Louisiana.
“I suppose I could be,” I said, smiling back at him, “you done torturing minions for the day?”
“Hardly that,” he answered, “but I have a window and a private office, if you’re looking for a snog.”
I laughed. I wasn’t at all sure how James could manage to deliver such wildly inappropriate suggestions with a perfectly straight face, but I was sure I knew how to return the favor. I reached over and pulled him into a lingering kiss, instantly elevating his status amongst the various underclassmen covertly staring in awe.
“Why wait?” I murmured into his ear, and he grinned wickedly. I broke the embrace. “Seriously, though, I need your expertise,” I told him.
His expression grew more serious, although his humor didn’t vanish entirely. “Of course,” he said, gesturing me into his office and closing the door behind us. “I take it this is fairly urgent, since you didn’t wait to see me after classes?” he asked.
I shrugged uncomfortably. “Anne’s missing,” I said, and explained what Buck had told me.
“Someday,” James said when I wound down, “you’ll have to explain how this works to me. Is everyone you know—apart from me— a hero?”
“Not hardly,” I snorted, “but there does seem to be a certain predisposition amongst the people I know well.” I nodded at my boyfriend and smiled. “Case in point.”
James shook his head. “You won’t see me wearing a colorful costume,” he told me, “I don’t have the figure for it.”
“Oh, you don’t do too badly,” I replied, giving him an appreciative leer.
James’ cheeks reddened slightly and he cleared his throat. “Uh, yes. Well. Faerie activity in the swamp, yes?”
I nodded and James frowned.
“There was a report that crossed my desk a while back. I looked into it, but there really wasn’t anything to go on, at the time. Of course, faerie stories can be like that, and they can gain power with retelling.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
James pursed his lips. “You’ve seen Peter Pan, right?” he asked.
“Sure,” I shrugged, “saw the movie, watched the play, and read the book. I was a little girl, once upon a time.”
“A very diligent little girl, I have no doubt,” James intoned piously, and I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Seriously, though,” he continued, “Barrie included some faerie lore in his stories that was not pure fancy, although it was somewhat twisted in his presentation. It is not true, to the best of my knowledge, that a faerie dies simply because a child stops believing. It is true, however, that the fae can garner power from… I don’t know precisely how to define it. The energy of belief? The vitality of faith?”
I nodded. “Let’s assume that I follow that,” I said, “what does it mean?”
“Well, for one thing, it means that the stories of dark fae lairing in the swamp may well be true by now, even if they weren’t to begin with.”
“Dark fae?” I asked.
“Swamp monsters,” James clarified, “like the Loch Ness monster, for example, or Grendel’s mother, from Beowulf. If Anne was looking for one of the lost treasures of the Tuatha de Danaan, it’s not unlikely that the magic of the artifact will have drawn one of the faerie monsters to it.”
“Okay, so… hypothetically: if I thought I might be going off to fight an unknown faerie monster, what are some things I should do to prepare?”
*****
Of course, James warned me, the fae were not the only things I needed to be wary of, venturing into the swamp. Not only were there the usual collections of natural and supernatural hazards that called the Dream Haven swamps their home, recent events indicated that hostile extra-terrestrials could also be operating out of the swamp.
I’d contacted Ambassador Dal-Lii Ha-Chak to see if she could shed any additional light, but there were simply too many potential hostile forces for any information she gave me to be reliable: there were the Ch’thon, robots from Cydonia, Vrask from Vrasik 3, even bugman hunters from some unknown backwater in the far-beyond. Add to those species the various mercantile and opportunistic neutrals that might offer services or technology to groups of angry, warlike unseelie…
I wasn’t happy with the length of the list of potential sentient hazards I could be facing, but if it was bad for me, it was dismal for a woman like Anne, who had neither powers nor technology out in the swamp to increase her odds.
I finished making my preparations, then left instructions with Angelo and Faye on how to handle my affairs if I was gone for longer than I expected. We’d done this sort of thing in the past, and they could handle most of my routine business. I empowered my interns, Bridget McCormik and Faye Wheeler to handle most emergencies— they couldn’t write prescriptions, but I trusted them to handle nearly anything short of that, and there was a list of other veterinary and medical professionals in the area that they could refer patients to if they required care beyond their abilities.
I called Zed and let him know that Anne had been called away for a family emergency and that she wouldn't be able to be in contact until she got back; he took it surprisingly well, leading me to suspect that he had already guessed something of the nature of Anne's clandestine affairs. It didn't really surprise me; he was a cop, after all, and a good one, from what I'd seen.

Finally, I called one last person. This wasn’t a conversation I was looking forward to, but it needed to be done.
I reached out and sent my voice through her microbug; I wasn’t certain if she would still be wearing it, given that Network had been out of touch for over a week, now, but I was positive no one else was going to be sending signals through it, and I didn’t want this message being heard by any more people than were absolutely necessary.
“Lady Quantum,” I said, “this is Tyche. Can you spare a little time for a quick meeting?”

**************************************************************************************************

So, now we find out who Network calls when she figures she's in a bind... Tyche isn't the most powerful of my heroines by a long shot, but she's remarkably tough and capable and, besides that, she's also Network's best friend and medical doctor.

This story is the second of three parts. It began here:
and it ends here:

A First Small Apocalypse takes place in and involves events that are a part of .

Tyche, Network, Faye Wheeler, Angelo Troisi, James Harkness, and Captain Zed Slade belong to and may only be used with permission.
Dal-Lii Ha-Chak belongs to and is used with permission.
Bridget McCormik belongs to and is used with permission.
Lady Quantum belongs to and is used with permission.

Description

Tyche
Take a day off from work and go swimming?
Sure…
Except the swimming in question wasn’t going to involve a sexy bikini or James… or, for that matter, a beach or a swimming pool.
It was nice that Anne had put so much faith in me, but swamps are not my native environment.
At least there wasn’t what you would call a great hurry. If Anne had been underwater this entire time, she was long dead; if not, she’d found some way to make do and survive. I didn’t know what could have kept her from making contact again, but something clearly had.
Okay, I decided, alive and in trouble, then. Any other assumption was defeatist, and, besides, I knew Anne. I took it as an article of faith that Anne was still alive. Rushing in, though, wasn’t going to improve her odds.
I considered the news I’d been seeing, recently, and wondered if it would prove related; I would have discounted stories of giant bug men, except that I knew Lady Quantum, and I couldn’t see her making up a story like that just for attention.
Then again, there was the location. That swamp was new, having moved in rapidly once the West End had settled in Dream Haven and, as with many new places that felt old, it just about reeked of faerie magic. I’d asked James about that, and he’d related something that Dr. Madeleine Crowley had explained in a lecture, once: the Fae are drawn, much as demons are, to crossroads. Where an old, country road running east to west meets a highway running north to south, for example, or where the central elevator in a high-rise apartment building passes through the ground floor. Different origin points and conditions attract more or less power, but it is the confluence of junctional energies that attracts the supernatural.
Although the swamp was new, the land it inhabited was not, and the spirits that now haunted it were older than the Americas. Could the fae or some other monsters have claimed part of the swamp for their own?
Unfortunately, I was almost certain they could have, and with little difficulty.
*****
“Hi there, luv,” James called as I strode across the tiled student union floor towards him, “were you looking for me?”
James fit in here remarkably well; he was a slender ginger with incredibly pale skin and freckles. He wore jeans and a Friendly Fire concert t-shirt and looked about seventeen years old. If I hadn’t known better, I might’ve believed he was a prospective student hitting on the hot, older woman who’d just wandered into his line of sight.
Of course, the truth was that James was not only my boyfriend, he was also the highly eccentric and academically brilliant professor of non-human artifacts and cultures. He had come to the U.S. to study the emergent faerie rings, then transferred to Dream Haven University when his home in Florida had shifted through the dimensions into Louisiana.
“I suppose I could be,” I said, smiling back at him, “you done torturing minions for the day?”
“Hardly that,” he answered, “but I have a window and a private office, if you’re looking for a snog.”
I laughed. I wasn’t at all sure how James could manage to deliver such wildly inappropriate suggestions with a perfectly straight face, but I was sure I knew how to return the favor. I reached over and pulled him into a lingering kiss, instantly elevating his status amongst the various underclassmen covertly staring in awe.
“Why wait?” I murmured into his ear, and he grinned wickedly. I broke the embrace. “Seriously, though, I need your expertise,” I told him.
His expression grew more serious, although his humor didn’t vanish entirely. “Of course,” he said, gesturing me into his office and closing the door behind us. “I take it this is fairly urgent, since you didn’t wait to see me after classes?” he asked.
I shrugged uncomfortably. “Anne’s missing,” I said, and explained what Buck had told me.
“Someday,” James said when I wound down, “you’ll have to explain how this works to me. Is everyone you know—apart from me— a hero?”
“Not hardly,” I snorted, “but there does seem to be a certain predisposition amongst the people I know well.” I nodded at my boyfriend and smiled. “Case in point.”
James shook his head. “You won’t see me wearing a colorful costume,” he told me, “I don’t have the figure for it.”
“Oh, you don’t do too badly,” I replied, giving him an appreciative leer.
James’ cheeks reddened slightly and he cleared his throat. “Uh, yes. Well. Faerie activity in the swamp, yes?”
I nodded and James frowned.
“There was a report that crossed my desk a while back. I looked into it, but there really wasn’t anything to go on, at the time. Of course, faerie stories can be like that, and they can gain power with retelling.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
James pursed his lips. “You’ve seen Peter Pan, right?” he asked.
“Sure,” I shrugged, “saw the movie, watched the play, and read the book. I was a little girl, once upon a time.”
“A very diligent little girl, I have no doubt,” James intoned piously, and I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Seriously, though,” he continued, “Barrie included some faerie lore in his stories that was not pure fancy, although it was somewhat twisted in his presentation. It is not true, to the best of my knowledge, that a faerie dies simply because a child stops believing. It is true, however, that the fae can garner power from… I don’t know precisely how to define it. The energy of belief? The vitality of faith?”
I nodded. “Let’s assume that I follow that,” I said, “what does it mean?”
“Well, for one thing, it means that the stories of dark fae lairing in the swamp may well be true by now, even if they weren’t to begin with.”
“Dark fae?” I asked.
“Swamp monsters,” James clarified, “like the Loch Ness monster, for example, or Grendel’s mother, from Beowulf. If Anne was looking for one of the lost treasures of the Tuatha de Danaan, it’s not unlikely that the magic of the artifact will have drawn one of the faerie monsters to it.”
“Okay, so… hypothetically: if I thought I might be going off to fight an unknown faerie monster, what are some things I should do to prepare?”
*****
Of course, James warned me, the fae were not the only things I needed to be wary of, venturing into the swamp. Not only were there the usual collections of natural and supernatural hazards that called the Dream Haven swamps their home, recent events indicated that hostile extra-terrestrials could also be operating out of the swamp.
I’d contacted Ambassador Dal-Lii Ha-Chak to see if she could shed any additional light, but there were simply too many potential hostile forces for any information she gave me to be reliable: there were the Ch’thon, robots from Cydonia, Vrask from Vrasik 3, even bugman hunters from some unknown backwater in the far-beyond. Add to those species the various mercantile and opportunistic neutrals that might offer services or technology to groups of angry, warlike unseelie…
I wasn’t happy with the length of the list of potential sentient hazards I could be facing, but if it was bad for me, it was dismal for a woman like Anne, who had neither powers nor technology out in the swamp to increase her odds.
I finished making my preparations, then left instructions with Angelo and Faye on how to handle my affairs if I was gone for longer than I expected. We’d done this sort of thing in the past, and they could handle most of my routine business. I empowered my interns, Bridget McCormik and Faye Wheeler to handle most emergencies— they couldn’t write prescriptions, but I trusted them to handle nearly anything short of that, and there was a list of other veterinary and medical professionals in the area that they could refer patients to if they required care beyond their abilities.
I called Zed and let him know that Anne had been called away for a family emergency and that she wouldn't be able to be in contact until she got back; he took it surprisingly well, leading me to suspect that he had already guessed something of the nature of Anne's clandestine affairs. It didn't really surprise me; he was a cop, after all, and a good one, from what I'd seen.

Finally, I called one last person. This wasn’t a conversation I was looking forward to, but it needed to be done.
I reached out and sent my voice through her microbug; I wasn’t certain if she would still be wearing it, given that Network had been out of touch for over a week, now, but I was positive no one else was going to be sending signals through it, and I didn’t want this message being heard by any more people than were absolutely necessary.
“Lady Quantum,” I said, “this is Tyche. Can you spare a little time for a quick meeting?”

**************************************************************************************************

So, now we find out who Network calls when she figures she's in a bind... Tyche isn't the most powerful of my heroines by a long shot, but she's remarkably tough and capable and, besides that, she's also Network's best friend and medical doctor.

This story is the second of three parts. It began here:
and it ends here:

A First Small Apocalypse takes place in and involves events that are a part of .

Tyche, Network, Faye Wheeler, Angelo Troisi, James Harkness, and Captain Zed Slade belong to and may only be used with permission.
Dal-Lii Ha-Chak belongs to and is used with permission.
Bridget McCormik belongs to and is used with permission.
Lady Quantum belongs to and is used with permission.