Archive of Our Own

There were some things living in the back alley behind the Sanctum, Yue decided with weary resignation.  And she was going to have to deal with them.

The last three times she had gone to take out the kitchen garbage, she had caught a flicker of fluorescent pink light out of the corners of her eyes. She could, of course, simply portal the garbage to the dump with her sling ring, but people noticed when brownstones in New York didn't have any garbage to take away. And one of the cardinal rules of magic was, "Be unnoticed." There were always more normals than there were magic workers, and eventually, the magic worker would get tired and the normals would overwhelm them. Ergo, do not be noticed.

The Avengers (of course) didn't play by the same rules, but they had the entire city on the lookout for "weird stuff," simply by virtue of existing and blowing things up continuously, and Yue was not going to be the one to make them - or bystanders - take notice of her Sanctum. So the garbage went out, and she noticed things in the alley.

She frowned. Non-magical people did come to the back door occasionally. After his excellent work with the refrigerator, Yue had Jamal show her around the local bodegas and corner markets. She was traditionalist enough to avoid the super-crunchy trend stores if she could, and picky enough about her food that she preferred to buy it from the growers. That had nonplussed him, and he'd had to pull in a friend or a cousin - he'd been slightly unclear in his terminology - and now she and Aliyah had an agreement. Aliyah would do her general grocery shopping once a week for a fee (not a problem) and also Yue would keep her in stock with snacks from Hong Kong, as she had been introduced to Pocky (that ultimate gateway drug) by someone and was now hooked on interesting sweet Asian snack food, but couldn't read the labels.

Both Aliyah and Jamal came to the back door.

More, the exterior of the building needed repointing, both front and back.  Brownstone mortar lasted for a while, but acid rain was taking its toll, and again, appearances were important. Yue had asked Jamal to find her a mason, which turned out to be more to his taste than grocery shopping.  He told her that things were pretty busy, and she ought to expect him in a couple of weeks, but the masons would be working in the alley as well as out front…and fluorescent things would definitely be remarked upon.

Yue grimaced. "A  bug hunt," she muttered.  "I do not care for these."  She went back inside to plan her attack, thinking that it was a pity that she could not subcontract out this particular chore also. Alas, this was squarely within the realm of the seneschal's responsibilities.

However, she knew that did not mean she had to do it alone.

--

Over dinner - bao of various kinds, with dipping sauce and a big stack of napkins that they were all making extensive use of - she told Dr. Str-- Stephen and Master Wong, "We will have guests in the Sanctum tomorrow night and likely for the next week."

Wong looked impassive, but Stephen raised an eyebrow at her. Neither said anything, so she continued, "We have a bug infestation in the back alley. I've requested three of the juniors, one from Kamar Taj, one from Hong Kong, and one from the Washington D.C. shrine, to come and assist.  We will take rotating shifts in the alley, to note where they are coming from and then eliminate the nest.  The Seneschal logbook indicates that it can take up to a week to note enough incursions to be able to locate the source."

Wong nodded.  She was, after all, doing it by the book.  Stephen frowned.  "Bug infestation?" he said.

Yue realized he hadn't had to take part in one of these exercises before.  Oh, yes, he was the Sorcerer Supreme's direct apprentice.  She did not send him to do this sort of work.  She hid a smile, thinking, And I suspect that the chores she did set him were likely much more hazardous than a bug hunt.

"A bug hunt is shorthand for dealing with a small incursion," Wong supplied.  "It is common to enlist junior sorcerers to assist, as while all incursions can produce casualties, fatalities are very rare in these situations, unless they have been left unchecked."

"And in this case," Yue said, anticipating the question Wong was about to ask her, "I am certain the incursion is less than three weeks old. I first noticed it before the garbage collection two weeks ago."

"Well within acceptable limits for a junior bug hunt," Wong said, nodding his approval.

"So...you won't need me," Stephen said, sounding slightly - slightly - disappointed.

Yue snorted almost in unison with Wong.  "My friend," Wong said, chuckling, "You would find it unutterably dull, and you would turn your attention to astrally projecting into the library to read, and miss the incursion entirely.  Leave this to the apprentices who need the practice."

"If the nest looks like it will be exciting," Yue said, noting Stephen's slightly taken-aback expression, "I promise I will let you know so that you can watch and act as a safety-net for the juniors. Though they will never admit it, if any of them are nervous about the final effort, they will be grateful for knowledge that the Sorcerer Supreme is watching over them -- though some may resent that you feel the need to do so."

"Ah," Stephen said.  "In that case, you should only tell the ones you think need that assurance. But I would appreciate the opportunity to watch."

"But only once," Wong said, laughing. "You will be so bored, you will likely never wish to do so again."

"Yes, well," Stephen murmured, looking slightly abashed.

"Curiosity killed the cat," Yue murmured, "but satisfaction brought it back. I will make sure you are informed when we are ready to tackle the incursion, and in the meantime, you may project to watch whenever I am on the watch. I will not mind in the slightest, si-- Stephen."

She was rewarded with a brief smile, and it warmed her.  It was good to give a gift that cost her nothing, and brought more joy to the world.  Even if she was fairly certain he was going to be extremely unimpressed.

--

After a day of setting up sleeping areas and planning for the Sanctum's occupation by teenagers (Will they be worse - or will the bugs? Yue wondered, I am not certain) , she opened the portal room after dinner to admit two teenage apprentices: a shorter girl who couldn't be more than fourteen, with her black hair pulled back from her round face in a tight bun at the base of her neck, and an older tall, rather emaciated looking dark-skinned boy with a shaved head who Yue vaguely recognized.

Yue nodded to them both, and said, "I am Seneschal Zhao Yue, welcome to New York."

"Chimini," the girl said, folding her hands in front of her and bowing, "Of Kamar Taj."  Nepalese, Yue realized, recognizing the accent. Maybe born in Kathmandu itself, possibly to one of the initiates. She's likely been in training for most of her life.  Still - a bit young for a bug hunt?

"Kamon," the boy said, "Of Hong Kong."  Oh! Yue realized, recognizing them. Yes, they're the one from Thailand that Jing brought in last year - the one who is not a boy.  They're progressing quickly if they've risen to the level of bug hunting already. Good for them.  

Yue gestured them into the antechamber, then closed the portal to Kamar Taj and turned instead to focus on the blank wall next to it, focusing on the image that had been sent to her of the smaller basement room with the two overstuffed chairs and the poster of Martin Luther King at the Million Man March framed on the wall.  She slipped her sling ring onto her fingers and opened a portal on the wall.

A very blond young woman with her hair in a neat plait down her back and rather shockingly green eyes promptly stepped across the portal threshold, bowed precisely, and said, "Thank you for inviting me, Seneshal Zhao.  I am Elizabeth Waters of the Washington, D.C. shrine."

The other two apprentices stiffened, and Yue stifled an immediate grimace only with effort, nodding instead and glancing across the portal to the room beyond. A woman who looked nothing so much like a middle-aged housewife with her greying hair cut in a neat bob and a flowered print dress with an apron over it nodded regally to Yue.  In flawless Cantonese, she said, "May your hunt be swift and fortunate, Seneschal."   Not a hint of concern, nor a hint of subservience.

Yue found herself strangely heartened.  That is a woman who has seen quite a lot, she thought.  I must invite her for tea when this is done.   She nodded back, and closed the portal, turning to find the first two apprentices staring at Elizabeth with nearly identical, distasteful expressions on their faces.  Elizabeth, for her part, was doing her best to look unconcerned.

"Let us see to your rooms," Yue said firmly, "and then we will go over the schedule, and what I expect of you, and answer any questions you may have."

--

By the time the threesome was set up in their cells, Yue had a solid idea of what she was dealing with.

Elizabeth had looked around her room, nodded, put a knapsack containing three books and two changes of clothes in her clothing chest, and was ready to go. She was clearly the most experienced of the trio, and also the lowest in status because she had come from a shrine, not a Sanctum or Kamar Taj.  Yue had been of the other two's mindset once, until a Shrine Keeper had been summoned to the Hong Kong Sanctum by Master Fei to deal with a particularly nasty incursion of Blightswarts - creatures that were well known in Russia and less common in Hong Kong.  And the Shrine Keeper in question had dealt with them and left before dinner, not appearing bothered in the slightest.

That Master Fei found the Shrine Keeper more capable than he was had impressed Yue no end, and she had dropped her attitude of superiority and never looked back.  (After the incursion, Master Petrov had spent several days explaining regional differences in spiritual breaches of the dimensions, and why creatures common in Hong Kong would be unlikely to appear in Siberia, and vice versa.  Most of the Sanctum had attended those lectures.  Yue took extensive notes.)

Kamon had looked at their room, made a face, and left their one change of clothes on the bed.  Then they asked for directions to the Library, which Yue had given - along with strict instructions to not disturb Doctor Strange, should he be in residence.  Kamon had looked quite startled at the idea that the Library was not open to all, but Yue had reminded them that even in Hong Kong, the Library was only open certain hours.  If they hadn't seen fit to bring study materials along, that was their look-out, and it wasn't as if they couldn't request back to Hong Kong for them, though they would presumably get quite a lecture for having forgotten or neglected to bring them.

Chimini had looked at her room, sniffed, informed Yue that Kamar Taj had much better rooms than this, ostentatiously opened a portal to her own room in Kamar Taj with her sling ring - the other two looked on enviously, apparently not having been granted that privilege yet - loaded things through the portal into her room, and then said that it would "do."

Yue was silently grimacing in her head.  A prodigy, but spoiled.  This will not end well.  She is going to find something that is not impressed with her sometime, and she will be both surprised and hurt.  Hopefully, the hurt will not be deadly.

"Give me your sling ring," she merely said when Chimini was done.  Chimini had looked startled, then rebellious.  "Why?" she demanded.

"Because I do not wish to have unknown influences intruding on my Sanctum," Yue said coldly.  "You set no wards before you cast, nor were you in such a state where you did not have time to set wards.  You used magic frivolously, for your own satisfaction, and to show off in front of others.  While that has its place - there are indeed times when being ostentatious will gain you something that is badly needed for your work to succeed - to do so only for your own aggrandizement is excessive when you are only still an apprentice."

Chimini stared at her, then sullenly surrendered the ring.

"You may have it back when it is your turn to be on watch," Yue said serenely.  "As will you, apprentices," she added, nodding to the other two.  "I assume you have been instructed in their use?"

"Yes, Sceneshal," Elizabeth said, followed more quietly by Kamon's, "Yes, Master Zhao."

Yue smiled grimly. "Sceneshal is fine," she told them.  "Now, dinner, and we shall consider the schedule of the watch."

Over dinner, she informed them that the order would be Kamon, then Chimini, then herself, then Elizabeth.  "Elizabeth and I are twelve-hours offset in our sleep cycles. I am aware that for the two of you, this is perhaps better described as breakfast," she added, gesturing at the meal.  "Your task for the first two days is to watch only.  Familiarize yourself with the alley, note any places of dimensional instability, and report back.  You all have been to the mirror dimension?"

A trio of nods, along with a smirk from Chimini, was her answer.  "Good.  Then you will watch from there.  If you are not confident of your ability to step out reliably with a sling ring, I shall not think less of you.  Simply let me know and I or Master Wong will confirm that you entered and left on time."

"Not the Sor -- not the Sanctum Keeper?" Chimini said, sounding disappointed.

"For a bug hunt ?" Kamon shot back, a bit cuttingly, giving her a sidelong glance.  Yue let them have that point - one thing that had been drilled into her back when she was Li Wei's second was that it was vital for other sorcerers to learn to manage their interactions with each other, and that it was best to stay out unless signs pointed toward someone getting hurt, or the property damage was likely to become extreme.

Elizabeth merely nodded.  "In that case, Seneschal, if it is within the plan, I would like to go to bed, so I am rested tomorrow."

"Certainly," Yue said, gesturing. "I will see you in the morning."

Elizabeth excused herself.  Yue stood up, dusted crumbs off her trousers, and nodded to Kamon and Chimini. I could give him her ring -- no. No reason to make her actively hate her.  "Let's get you a sling ring, Apprentice Kamon, and I will show you the area to be watched."

She took the two of them out to the alley, pulled them into the mirror dimension, then had Kamon demonstrate for her - after setting the proper precautionary wards that most sorcerers didn't bother with by the time they were accorded sufficient expertise that they could be trusted to manage their own spells - that he could successfully extract himself from the mirror dimension without assistance.

"Good," she said, nodding. She handed Chimini her ring back.  "Your turn."

Chimini, now on her mettle, set the wards in half the time Kamon had, gave Yue a look that was clearly intended to communicate, See? I can totally do this! Why are you giving me grief about it? And then extracted herself from the mirror realm without incident.

"Good," Yue repeated.  "So.  If both of you wish to share the next twelve hours, to set up your rotation, you may do so. If not, Kamon, you have the first six, Chimini, you have the second. Kamon, I wish to have a written summary of anything you notice.  I will ensure that I am able to take reports from you, but for today, writing will be sufficient."

Chimini looked up - and up - at her very tall fellow apprentice.  "Two and two?" she suggested, apparently now less annoyed that Yue had given her what she thought was her due.  "It will give us time to rest our eyes, and use the bathroom."

Kamon nodded, but amended, "Two and a half by two and a half. If we take fifteen minutes of overlap, coming on or going off at each end, it will give us doubled eyes at the time when we will be most tired."

Chimini frowned, and Kamon added, "I have done one other bug hunt, and by the end of my first shift I was starving for company.  I think you will thank me at the end of your first shift.  If not, we can go back to two and two."

Mollified, Chimini shrugged her agreement, and headed inside with Yue, as Kamon began to prowl around the mirror universe's version of the alley, eying spaces behind trash cans and under window bars.  Once they were inside, Chimini turned and glared at Yue.  "May I keep my sling ring when I am not out there?" she demanded.

"So long as you do not use it without the wards set, I am willing to allow you to retain it."

"Why bother?" Chimini demanded.  "Nothing's going to attack us in here."

Yue glared at her.  "Less than three months ago, everyone in this Sanctum was slaughtered by a group of rogue sorcerers.  There were no survivors.  Prior to that, it has weathered multiple attacks from artifacts waking unexpected, breaches of the dimensional walls, and even the occasional botched spell summoning something unfortunate."  When Chimini opened her mouth to protest, Yue went on, "And lest you say that we had plenty of warning for all of that coming, none of that will help if the things that come in do so through your portal, apprentice! The wards are not just for your protection.  Kamar Taj has the most highly trained enclave of sorcerers in the world. That you have grown so complacent as to rely on their protection explains to me why you were sent to this bug hunt.  You will not be able to always rely on having that backup!"

Chimini shut her mouth.  Then, in a slightly mutinous tone, she muttered, "But the Sorcerer Supreme is here.  If it actually is the Sorcerer Supreme."

Yue, who had picked up some of what Stephen had gone through to get that title, found that her glare had become a downright scowl.  She took a deep breath, pulling her temper back under control.  "And if he is summoned away to deal with something? Or if something comes to attack him through your portal?  Will you be able to contain it for long enough to have him arrive?"

Chimini conceded the point silently, rebelliously, and went to her room.

Yue rubbed her forehead, and went to make herself a very strong cup of oolong.

--

Stephen found her in the library with a lidded thermos of tea, scowling at one of the teaching manuals for intermediate wards.  "Problems?" he asked, sounding sympathetic.

Yue looked over her shoulder at him, and found he had his quirked half-smile on.  She frowned, then smiled back.  "You were watching from the Astral, weren't you," she murmured.

"I haven't had to deal with junior sorcerers much yet," he said.  "I wanted to see what they were like.  The Ancient One --" his voice hitched slightly, "didn't really spend her time with the intermediates.  She only came out to watch the real beginners, and then...well."

"Stay out of this, please, Stephen," she sighed.  

"Why?"

Yue sighed.  "You presumably heard Chimini's crack about you."  When he nodded grimly, she went on, "If I cannot be seen to handle these children for a bug hunt, then my position as Seneschal will be questioned, and your position will be weakened.  They may even suggest that I be replaced, and you will not be strong enough to argue for me."

He opened his mouth, then closed it, his expression set in a perplexed scowl.  "I'm not sure I understand," he said, finally.

Yue gestured to the chair opposite her, and when Stephen sat down, she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and feeling her spine crack and settle after a moment.  "The Seneschal is supposed to deal with issues like this, without concerning the Sanctum Keeper over them."  She gestured into the air, generating a circle of glowing orange light, then drew with one finger to divide it into a yin-yang.  One half, she made glow, except for a dot of darkness.  "This is you," she said, nodding to the glowing half, "and this is me," she said, adding the single dot of light in the yin half of the circle.  "We are supposed to balance each other."

The light and dark comets orbited in the circle for a moment before Yue reached out and disrupted the yin half of the spiral, making it wobble unsteadily.  "I am new to my rank, and while I expect that Master Fei and Master Li have made their confidence in me quite clear to the other Masters - I am not a Master yet.  I'm expected to become one quickly, but in the meantime, there are other Masters with students they would love to put forward for my position, no doubt.  Similarly, there may be Shrine Keepers who would like to step up, and a good number of them are Masters too.  My one advantage is that I helped run the Hong Kong Sanctum as Master Li's second, and so I am supposed to know how a Sanctum is run already, and both New York and London had no one left alive in them with that knowledge."

The yin half dissipated, and the yang spun by itself for a moment before exploding into a soundless shower of sparks.

"So this is an attack on my authority through you?" Stephen asked.

Yue shrugged.  "On yours, on Master Fei's maybe, certainly on the Ancient One now that she's no longer here to defend her choices.  Master Mordo wasn't the only one to be thoroughly horrified that she'd been drawing power from the Dark Dimension all this time."  She'd picked that much up on her last visit back to Hong Kong, when she'd been feted and feasted and warned about what was coming.  "Certainly, it's an attack on mine.  We are sorcerers defending the Earth, Stephen.  I can't afford to be incompetent at my duties any more than you can at yours."

"And if I stay out of it, I show that I trust you to do your job," he said, as if he'd uncovered a realization in a pile of manure.

Yue had to admit she felt similarly, but only to herself. "Yes," she agreed, a bland look on her face.

He quirked his smile at her again. "Well, then. I'll leave you to it.  I will look in from time to time though.  Just in case."

"There's always the Sanctum Bell," Yue pointed out.

"I'd rather not have that go off in my head again, if you don't mind," Stephen said.  "But for what it's worth, Yue - you're doing fine.  I had to deal with medical residents, and they were probably just as full of themselves as Chimini.  Making sure they didn't kill their patients...well, at least I didn't have to make sure they didn't kill themselves too."

"I've heard about what you Americans put your doctors through," Yue countered.  "Don't tell me that twenty four hours of no sleep is good for you, Stephen, or I will dose your tea with a soporific."

He winced, and she saw horror in his expression for a moment.  "Please don't."

What must his dreams must be like… She realized she'd touched a nerve, and dropped her banter.  "Not without your consent," she said gently.  "Or unless you are so unwell that you can't give me consent.  At which point I shall be sure it is strong enough that you sleep dreamlessly."

Stephen sighed.  "I suppose you have that...right," he said, making a face like he'd bitten into a lemon.  "Now, what were you looking for?"

Yue lifted the book.  "This.  I want Chimini to try mastering better warding.  She did just fine with what she was given, and if I give her more complex wards to work on, she'll be better able to defend herself whenever that inevitable overconfident mistake occurs - and it has the additional benefit that she'll be too busy to go looking for combat spells or summonings that will trigger that mistake while she's here ."

"Then I wish you good luck with her," Stephen said, and vanished.

Figured out how to teleport around your Sanctum, have you now? She thought with vague amusement.  Good. That'll help if we're ever in a truly pitched battle. She took the book to Chimini's room, leaving it with a note tucked into the relevant pages that read simply, "Learn these. You're ready for them."

--

The next few days passed relatively uneventfully.  It was, of course, relative because apprentices had a tendency to make everything much more interesting than Yue had become accustomed to.  Elizabeth was centered and professional, but her demeanor meant it was nearly impossible for Yue to determine whether she was angry, bored, or merely amused by her fellow apprentices posturing.

Kamon attempted to position themself as a buffer between Chimini and Yue, to keep the younger girl from antagonizing the Sanctum Keeper while at the same time making themself seem more effective than they actually were.

And Chimini was, in fact, quite brilliant at spellcasting, and had gained the overconfidence to go with it.  Yue would have been delighted if she'd been able to drain off perhaps twenty percent of that overconfidence and sent it back to herself, twenty years earlier when she had been firmly under her mother's thumb and having every ounce of confidence verbally eviscerated from herself.  As it was, she merely found Chimini to be a problem to be solved.  The girl was going to get herself killed in short order if she didn't learn some caution, and she was going to take other sorcerers with her if she did it in a big enough fashion.

In addition to managing all this, Yue had to keep an eye on Stephen, to make sure that he didn't come poking his curious nose into where it was most definitely not needed.  She caught a flash of his astral projection in the mirror dimension more than once, and began wondering if she would have to master astral projection herself just to tell him to stop hovering .

Then Wong dragged him off to deal with something large and unfriendly in upstate New York, and Yue was left to run the Sanctum alone. She spent an hour lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and worrying about Chimini and Kamon, before she broached Wong's little grey book, and the title page made it immediately obvious that she shouldn't be trying those spells without Stephen around to keep an eye on the Sanctum.

On the Mastery of The Golden Stone Wards
by Master Purochana

Yue promptly shut the book, stared at the wall for ten minutes trying to meditate and failing, thinking over and over, He's out of his mind, I can't handle those, those are Master level spells, even the Sorcerer Supreme didn't cast those wards more than four times in the chronicles I've read... Eventually, she calmed down by remembering that he had not given her a timeline on when she was supposed to work on them, and that he'd be the first to tell her she was borrowing trouble she did not need by even considering working on them when she had her hands full with two problematic apprentices and a bug hunt to deal with.

Yue flopped back on her bed, stared at the ceiling for another couple of minutes, and then went to make bread rolls so she could calm her nerves by smacking dough around.  After that, began cutting back on her sleep to make freezable meals and stock the kitchen's freezer during the first half of Chimini and Kamon's shifts, knowing that Elizabeth would be awake during the second half, practicing her spells, just to be sure that she would be available should things go catastrophically awry, and to enjoy the silence.  

Three months ago, I would have been a nervous wreck, Yue realized ruefully.  Now I'm too tired to be nervous about the fact that I'm the de facto guardian of this place in the event of a crisis.

So it continued for the remainder of the week, until Stephen and Wong staggered home, scorched and annoyed but victorious, demolished four rounds of bao and dipping sauce, and crashed into bed.

Which, Yue realized in retrospect, was why Chimini chose that particular day to do something spectacularly stupid.  She had figured out that the Sanctum Keeper wasn't an appreciative audience for her 'brilliance,' but now the Sorcerer Supreme was back in residence, and perhaps he would be properly impressed.

Yue's first hint that something had gone wrong was a sudden tension in the back of her mind that hadn't been there moments earlier.  It felt like the gathering electricity just before a lightning strike, or the stillness that came in the air when a spell had one word or gesture left in it before it let go.

Yue didn't bother washing her hands, she wiped flour straight on the seat of her trousers and bolted for the back door, triggering a spell she had set before Stephen left to deal with whatever-it-was upstate.  "Stephen," she whispered, knowing her words would reach him if he was awake, and would (hopefully) not wake him if he was sleeping, "I think the apprentices may have found something interesting."  She sent the spell on its way with a single complex writhe of her fingers, and summoned her quiang in the other hand.

Reaching the back door, she didn't bother to stop and open it, she merely shifted herself into the Mirror Dimension and ran straight through the wall as if it didn't exist at all - because, at that moment, she and the Sanctum agreed that for her, it did not.

The scene on the other side was much more chaotic than she had hoped, and far more interesting in the sense of 'things have gotten out of control much faster than anyone might have wished.'

Chimini was holding a ward that was rapidly dissolving into blackness and screaming, "Kill it, kill it!"  The fact that the ward was still holding was a testament to her determination.  The fact that it was actively feeding energy to the bugs and making them larger, a testament to her inexperience.

Kamon, to their credit, had a pair of dao swords manifest, and was trying to stab giant pink cockroaches - Yue judged them to be akin in size to a golden retriever dog - but was dealing with the fact that the swords kept dissolving when they stabbed into any given pink thorax.  They did keep trying, however.  

Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen; that at least was correct, as she was either studying or asleep.

I am a first class dolt, Yue realized.  I should have paired with Chimini and let Kamon and Elizabeth partner, there's no way they could have stopped her from this idiocy by themself.   She didn't hesitate however.  With her free hand, she flung up a secondary barrier between Chimini and Kamon and the roaches - what ARE those anyway, I've never seen them in any book - as she ran forward to sweep one away from Kamon's back with her qiang.

"Chimini, stop giving it power," she snapped.  "Kamon, shield Chimini."

To both of their credits, they followed her instructions without hesitation, as Yue cast the ward that Chimini should have been trying to cast, and the roaches discovered that fastening their mouthparts to Yue's ward resulted in the ward sucking power from them , rather than the other way around.  They began to back away, scuttling back toward the nest that Chimini had apparently uncovered.

Yue was somewhat disconcerted to discover that she was heading rapidly for a power high; Chimini had thrown a lot of power into her malformed ward, and now it was heading back into Yue by way of her own casting.  That was the disadvantage of this sort of casting - if the sorcerer couldn't handle the power the ward sucked down, they were in danger of burning out in the opposite direction - rather than becoming a depressed raisin, they became a manic bonfire.

Fortunately, Yue was tied to something substantially larger than herself, and she simply opened a channel to the Sanctum itself, and poured Chimini's absconded strength into the Sanctum's Wards, which glowed infinitesimally stronger in the back of Yue's mind.  For a moment, she thought she heard something purring, and then the sensation dissipated.

In the meantime, she had a pair of shocked apprentices to deal with.  "Kamon, set for defense," she ordered, as she came over to Chimini and began to run the most basic of castings to ascertain how badly the girl was drained.  Chimini protested feebly, but the fact that she couldn't even stand told Yue more than enough.  Then a portal formed behind them both, and Yue had a moment's frantic thought of Stephen, no! before Elizabeth stepped through, a long bo staff shimmering in her hands and her eyes narrowed with focus.

"I sent her," she heard Stephen's voice whisper in her ear, presumably from where he was watching in the astral.  " Your turn, Seneschal."

Yue nodded slightly, hoping Stephen would read it as her acknowledgement, and said, "Elizabeth, set for defense with Kamon."  She turned her attention back to Yue as the roaches skuttled and chittered at each other on the other side of the ward, still trying to find a way through.  The diagnostic spell completed, and Yue sucked air through her teeth.  Another ten seconds, and Chimini would have needed a stretcher to get up.  As it was, the girl was in for a miserable time of it when her adrenaline stopped holding her up.

"Where did they all come from?" Elizabeth said, perplexed.  "I only ever saw two at most, there must be thirty here!"

"I baited them," Chimini said sullenly.  "It would've worked too, if Kamon could've just held up his end of the working --"

"Hey!" Kamon protested, though Yue wasn't sure if it was at the misgendering or at the comment on their skill.

"It's true, though!" Chimini whined.  "I was supposed to bait, you were going to squish.  You said you thought you could take one!"

"One!" Kamon protested, "not thirty! And you didn't even check to see if there were more in the nest, I was telling you it was a bad idea when you just started --"

"Well how was I supposed to know you were so incompetent?" Chimini demanded as she struggled to sit up.  "You said you could take them!"

"You --"  Yue's jaw snapped shut on the rest of the words about to come out of her mouth, as in the back of her mind, her mother's voice screamed at her, trying to come out of Yue's own mouth and assault another girl.  Chimini turned her mutinous glare to Yue's face and it melted like candle wax at whatever she saw in the Sanctum Seneschal's face.

Useless girlchild! Unutterable filth, best left in the gutter, how dare you --

No, mother.  SHUT UP .

The voice she alone could hear in her mind subsided to an angry mutter as she took deep breaths through her nose for a count of ten, before she dared to say - with fingers spread wide and orange electricity sparking around them - in a flat, level tone, "Apprentice Chimini, you will go back inside the Sanctum and lie down . You have powerdrain shock, and it will make itself known the moment your adrenaline crashes.  Cast no spells - they may kill you.  Do you understand?"

The girl nodded silently.

"Go. Use Elizabeth's portal."  She helped Chimini get to her feet, then sent her forward with a push far more gentle than she wanted to use.

Again, in her ears alone, she heard Stephen's voice breathe from the Astral, "I will make sure she gets back to her room. She won't know I am watching."

Elizabeth and Kamon stared at her, somewhere between impressed and horrified, as Yue stood up and turned away from Chimini and toward the seething mass of brilliant pink cockroaches scuttling over and around each other in a kind of amorphous morass.  "Apprentice Kamon," she said, her voice shaking with rage, "now that we have a moment, would you be so kind as to tell me what the protocol is for a creature capable of absorbing the caster's magic."

It wasn't a request, and they knew it. With their voice shaking, they said, "Uh, yes Seneschal."

"Apprentice Elizabeth, close your portal.  We do not need these parasites to have an easy way within the Sanctum."  Elizabeth didn't even say anything, she just gestured the portal closed.  

Yue tilted her head, just slightly, in a nod, but Kamon apparently took it as encouragement to go on and said, "The, the protocol for such creatures is to retreat and gather assistance.  Creatures of this ilk," they went on, their voice getting more steady as they found the cadence of recitation calming, "most often have limitations for how much they can absorb at once. Should the channels of absorption become overwhelmed, they will be unable to drain all of their opponents strength before succumbing to the force being cast at them."

"Good," Yue said shortly.  "Apprentice Elizabeth, do you believe that we three currently here have sufficient strength to deal with the class of creature we are facing, with the knowledge that these creatures have already absorbed Apprentice Chimini's abortive casting?"

Elizabeth was just as shaken as Kamon, but she hid it better. "I am not entirely certain of your strength, Seneschal Zhao," she said, her voice a little husky from shock.  "These, uh, roaches appear to have gained power up to approximately sixth ken, on the Firth classification scale, which would mean that we would need to cast --" she paused, doing math in her head, glanced at Kamon, and said, "Apprentice Kamon, would you confirm my math for me? If Seneschal Zhao's ability to cast is at this level -" and she began to sketch maths in the air with her fingers, leaving trails of orange light behind.

Yue kept half her attention on their math, and the other half on the cockroaches chewing at her shield spell. "Please do not take excessive time confirming your math, Apprentice Elizabeth," she said dryly. "If you must err in one direction, err on the side of caution for now. We are not currently in crisis where we must assume there are minimal resources available to us."

"Yes, Seneschal," Elizabeth said, finishing up and stepping back, "but as a Shrinekeeper, I am to assume assistance is never available to me.  Is my math correct, Kamon?"

"It looks correct to me," Kamon admitted. "Assuming that I am still capable of casting at the level you have indicated. I am...nervous."

Yue barked out a short laugh at that, and then gave them a smile.  "That is a healthy reaction to have, Apprentice.  Well?"

"We can do it," Elizabeth said, trying for firm and mostly succeeding.

"Very good.  As it happens, you have underestimated how capable I am of casting just now, Apprentice Elizabeth, as I am quite angry and that is often, but not always, a boost. Let us destroy this infestation and then return to the Sanctum to recover."

"Yes seneschal," they agreed quickly.

"I instructed the two of you to work on paired castings. Have you managed to succeed at doing so yet?"  She let the silence stretch awkwardly for a moment, then added, "I shall not be angry unless you exaggerate."

"It is still a work in progress," Kamon finally admitted.

Yue let out another laugh. "Very well," she said. "In that case, I shall lead the casting. Please both of you cast the second incantation of Soroth and leave a gap in the fourth quadrant for me to access."  She turned her attention to two cockroaches that had scuttled away from the main mass, summoning her ethereal quiang and using it as a lance with which she neatly pithed both roaches in the skull.  She felt them suck futilely at her core before dying in a spurt of angry pink excrement that splattered the walls of the alley and dissolved into smoky nothingness.

Behind her, she heard the chiming noise of two power spells being conjured into being, and she spared a quick glance from the nest to see that both the apprentices had done exactly as she'd asked.  Carefully - they were, after all, still battling from the aftereffects of a nasty shock to their  confidence - Yue slipped her own casting into the gaps they had left for her, and pulled the two junior sorcerers into a mesh with her.  More power surged down her qiang, and she immediately turned her attention and its point back to the heart of the nest where the focal point of the infestation - and presumably the gateway to this dimension from their own - lurked.

With perfect, precise form - Good, Master Mordo's memory said in her mind - she lunged forward, slid the quiang between her hands, and pierced both mass and portal to the heart, channeling her own fury, along with the power she borrowed from the two willing apprentices. And then as she withdrew, she ignited it all, and it exploded quite dramatically.

"We had best get indoors now," she said wearily, "as I do not care to explain to Iron Man or Captain America precisely what that was."

"O-of course, Seneschal," Kamon said, and the three of them beat a hasty retreat back inside the Sanctum wards.

--

Stephen was waiting for them in the kitchen. The kettle was boiling, and Yue made a face - she didn't like her tea leaves boiled, but the adrenaline crash she could feel coming didn't care about that - so she let him make the tea.  Instead, she pulled a plate of rice balls out of the refrigerator and plopped them down on the center of the table, sitting down to eat a little too quickly.

"Should we…" Elizabeth asked, looking slightly torn between collapsing herself or taking over from the Sorcerer Supreme.

"Sit down and eat something before you collapse," Stephen said calmly, but there was no mistaking his tone for anything but an order.  "How much did those things manage to absorb from you before you realized they were parasites?  And then Yue pulled from you further?"

"Oh," Kamon said, and sat down hard himself.  Elizabeth quickly followed.

Yue pushed rice balls in front of both of them, then grimaced as Stephen put a cup of boiled tea reeking of honey in front of her. She knew that the glucose would be welcome to her own system, but the taste… "I have to teach you how to make tea properly," she groused at Stephen, rescued from her anxiety for the moment by an adrenaline crash that prevented just about every emotion but resignation.

He nearly laughed, she could tell, but managed to keep a straight face. "Well, you must be fine if you're complaining about my tea."

The apprentices looked back and forth between them with expressions slightly awed, and Yue had a momentary flash where she thought of Master Fei and Master Li Wei bicker-teasing each other after a particularly spectacular moment, and of her own awe that anyone would tease a Sanctum Master like that.  Oh , she thought, surprised and enheartened, and tore into her rice ball. At least the sesame and ginger in the fish filling would drown out the taste of the tea.

When they'd all finished eating, Yue put a cup of tea on the plate with the last two rice balls, and said to Elizabeth, "Please take these to Chimini. Tell her she is allowed to leave her room for necessary trips, but that if I catch her in the Library or the Relic Room, she will regret it."  She knew her voice was very cold, and also knew that if she went anywhere near Chimini right now, it wouldn't be her own words that came out of her mouth, but her mother's.  "I will see her in the morning with the rest of you, to discuss things before you all return home."

"Yes, Seneschal," Elizabeth said weakly.

"You did well today," Yue told her. "Both of you," she added, turning to include Kamon. "And so shall my report to your mentors say.  I will look forward to seeing your next work.  I will also give you my contact information tomorrow morning, and you may contact me as you see fit."

That gave the young woman a sparkle in her eyes that hadn't been there before, and Kamon bowed to her before they both headed back upstairs to shower and rest.  Yue let herself sit back down and her head thump forward onto her hands for a moment before Stephen said, "Well.  Is that what we should expect next month? More like this?"

"What?" Yue said, straightening up.

Stephen gave her a grim smile.  "The Council of Masters has determined that the New York Sanctum has stabilized enough - and that the planes have recovered enough from Dormammu's invasion - that we are likely to see an increase in the amount of extra-dimensional activity. As such, they believe we warrant the 'assistance'," she could hear the quotation marks he put around the word, "of additional mid-ranked sorcerers. And that I am expected to take at least one apprentice of my own, to, ah, ensure an orderly transition of knowledge, should it become necessary."

"Have they taken complete leave of their senses?" Yue demanded.  "Assistance, certainly, but an apprentice of your own? They were complaining not two months ago that you were too inexperienced to be Sorcerer Supreme! You are still studying with Wong to make up for the knowledge you haven't had time to gain yet - what are they thinking?"  She frowned.  "I wish to be having words with them."

Stephen looked startled.  "If you can change their minds, I'll be impressed.  They seemed pretty set on it."

"混蛋," she muttered.  Going up against the complete might of the assembled Masters would likely put her straight into a panic attack, and she knew it.  Whatever she wished, a frontal assault would gain her nothing.  Maybe she could enlist Wong's help, though she suspected the other Masters thought him hopelessly partisan where Stephen was concerned.  But this was too important. The Sorcerer Supreme was supposed to teach, yes, but only when stable in their power.  Stephen was certain of his own power - and also walking wounded.  Like her.

Something would need to be done, and she knew she would need to be the one to do it, but what?  It was a thought she had to set aside, until she completed her work with the apprentices under her for now.

--

Yue met with Kamon first, to discuss with them what they thought they'd learned in their time on the bug hunt.  This was not technically required of the Seneschal, and Yue knew that the apprentices' teachers would likely be doing something similar with all of them once they returned home, but she felt it was important.  Master Fei had done it for her several times, and she had found it instructively.  And if the apprentices' teachers did not do it, Yue wanted to make sure someone did.

"I...probably should have told you that Chimini was trying to bully me into helping her, shouldn't I," Kamon volunteered before Yue even said anything, and they looked more than a little ashamed.

"Probably," Yue agreed, smiling, "but you are neither the first nor the last apprentice who will make this sort of mistake.  Have you learned from it?"

"I think so?" Kamon said.  "At the least, I know what overconfidence looks like now," they added with an expression rather like they'd bitten into a rotten pickle.

"Then that's all that needs to be said," Yue agreed.  "Bug hunts are given to apprentices to perform for a reason - to practice for things where there won't necessarily be someone more powerful able to come to your aid.  And now I will be able to get the exterior of the building repaired without worrying that pink cockroaches will attack the masons."

Kamon bowed.  "It is a pleasure to serve, Seneschal," they said.  "I wish you good fortune in your efforts here.  May I return sometime with my Master, to see the library under less...fraught? Circumstances?"

Yue thought about it, then nodded.  "I see no reason why not.  Simply warn me at least three days in advance."

"Thank you, Seneschal."  They bowed, and Yue said, "You may go have a look at it now, if you wish.  I need to speak to Apprentice Chimini before I open the gateway to Kamar Taj for you both."  (Chimini was in no shape to be using her sling ring, and they both knew it.)

" Thank you Seneschal!" they said, and walked - almost ran - from the room for the library.  Yue shook her head, smiling faintly, and went next door to speak to Chimini.

Chimini was flopped on her bed, staring at the ceiling.  "I already know I'm useless," she said, "you don't need to come tell me so before I leave."

"Is that what you think?" Yue said, half-leaning, half-sitting on the desk.  "That isn't my impression."

"I'm going to be months coming back from this," Chimini said, rolling slightly to stare balefully at Yue.  "I put you in danger, I had to be rescued by a shrine apprentice ," and the loathing there was audible, "and I didn't even manage to squish one of the bugs.  What good am I?"

"Was this your first attempt where you haven't succeeded?  How unfortunate for you," Yue said, meaning it.

"What?" Chimini demanded, pushing herself up on her elbows to glare at Yue.

"I'm not mocking you, Chimini," Yue said, holding up her hands.  "Too much failure is bad for the soul, but no failure is terrible for the mind.  It nearly got you killed in this instance, did it not?"

Chimini planted her face in her pillow. Her 'yes' was nearly so muffled as to be inaudible.

"So.  You've learned you can fail," Yue said.  "But you did not die, and you are not even permanently damaged, though as you say you will be some time recovering your strength.  Have you learned something?"

Chimini lay face down on her pillow and didn't move.  "Mm," Yue said.  "I thought not."

That got a reaction.  "All right fine, I can't do it by myself, and I should make sure I know what I'm doing before I get myself into trouble, right?" Chimini snapped, rolling over to glare at Yue.  "Happy now?"

Yue quirked an eyebrow.  "Ecstatic," she said dryly, feeling grateful that Chimini's self-loathing and adolescent rage was about to devolve back to being her master's problem.  "I'll be opening the gateways to Kamar Taj and Hong Kong in ten minutes.  Would you like help getting there, or do you feel recovered enough to walk?"

Chimini snarled something irritable, and held out an imperious hand for help to stand up, and Yue, more amused than anything else, helped the girl to the gateway room.

Kamon was already there, waiting, with a book under their arm. "The Sorcerer Supreme said I could borrow it!" they said, their face almost glowing with delight.  "It's supposed to be a bestiary of Lemnos but he says it's probably got some of Kanorid in it too!"

"You make sure to bring that back intact, or I will tell Master Wong," Yue said, annoyed at Stephen for letting things out of the Sanctum without talking to her first, though it technically was his right to do so.

"Yes Seneschal!" Kamon agreed breathlessly, while Chimini just rolled her eyes.  Yue opened the gateways, let the two younger apprentices through, and then blew out her breath in a long exhalation.

Elizabeth's voice from the door behind her made her twitch.  "Relieved?"

Yue turned to face the remaining apprentice, and saw no condemnation, merely amusement on her face.  "Apprentice Elizabeth," she said, after a moment, "how close are you to taking your examinations for the second rank?"

"Mother said I would likely be ready when I was done with this hunt," Elizabeth said, serenely.  "I believe she sent me mostly to make your acquaintance, so that you could provide an introduction.  I'm aware how Shrine keepers are regarded in Kamar Taj," she added, with a hint of asperity to her voice.

"Which is, of course, why you haven't taken the examinations yet," Yue sighed.

"Well, that and the fact that things were all kinds of screwed up," Elizabeth added, apparently taking Yue's lack of disdain to finally drop the formality she'd maintained like a shield against the other two apprentices.  "It seemed, I don't know, selfish?  To demand to take my examinations while all the Masters who were left were grieving for dead friends.  It wasn't going to hurt me to wait, anyway.  Mother doesn't let me rest on my laurels or anything. And it wasn't as if she didn't treat me like I was her full assistant - I was basically acting as Shrine Keeper for the last two weeks before she sent me up here."

Yue felt the kindling of an idea in her head.  "Hmm," she said, slowly.  "How would you feel about engaging in a small act of rebellion to grant someone else some needed respite?"

Elizabeth cocked her head.  "Would it prevent me taking my examinations?" she asked.  "I'd really like to get them out of the way soonish.  If nothing else, Mother's not really ready to retire yet, and if I do well enough, I'm sure there's some older Shrine Keeper who'd like to take a reasonable retirement before some multi-tentacular horror decides today's the day to go testing the wards."

"My intention is that it would grant you the opportunity to take them rather sooner," Yue said.  "The Council of Masters is of the belief that the Sanctum Master is in need of an apprentice."  Elizabeth looked concerned, and Yue added hastily, "I am not saying you should be his apprentice. What I have in mind is this: set up a gathering of those who are ready to take their examinations, and some of the juniors who wish to pursue independent research on the artifacts in this Sanctum. I believe that this would be a more productive use of the Sanctum Master's time than taking an individual apprentice."

Elizabeth considered, then nodded slowly. "The previous Sorcerer Supreme did take apprentices," she said, her voice thoughtful, "but she had been in residence for nearly 700 years, and as such was not generally of a mind toward pursuing independent research."

Yue let out a silent breath of relief.  "Exactly."

"If you do choose to pursue this path," Elizabeth said, quirking a smile, "then I shall be happy to take my examinations under the watchful eye of the Sanctum Master."

"Thank you," Yue said.  "If you wish to take your sling ring with you to return home, please feel free. I believe you will make very good use of it."

Elizabeth visibly suppressed a smirk.  "As long as I remember to set my wards first," she said.

"Yes," Yue agreed, serious in mein, though she tell she was doing a bad job keeping her mirth out of her eyes..  "Did you learn anything on this trip, apprentice?"

"That the New York Sanctum is in good hands," the apprentice answered promptly, "and that mother needn't worry that our webline will go down anytime soon.  I will be passing that along to the other Shrine Keepers we know as well.  Also I learned that if there is another bug hunt, that you will treat any Shrine apprentices fairly, which is something the other apprentices will be very relieved to know."

Yue smiled.  "Travel well."

With that, Elizabeth set her wards, opened a portal to the Washington Shrine - the Shrine Keeper was not in immediate evidence, but Yue suspected she would be getting an update shortly, and stepped through, dismissing the portal behind her.

Yue sagged against the Sanctum wall for a moment, wondering if she had just done the right thing, before shrugging her shoulders back and going to find Stephen to tell him what she was planning on his behalf.

Dinner that night was a somewhat jovial affair, as Yue ordered out for pizza in celebration of not needing to keep tabs on anyone for the evening.  Wong even toasted her with a slice and a cup of that alcoholic swill that had the name of "Long Island Ice Tea," but which was more suitable for drain cleaner, in Yue's opinion.

"To the Seneschal of the New York Sanctum," he declared, his eyes dancing, even as his voice was utterly deadpan.  "For having survived that which is more dangerous than a horde of extraplanar beings."

Yue decided against throwing one of the rolls that had come with the pizza at his head, and settled for getting herself a proper cup of tea.  "Hmph," she said.  "Well, Stephen, are you satisfied that I was not keeping anything amusing from you?"

The Sorcerer Supreme raised his hands in defeat.  "I defer to your wise judgement, Yue, and next time I will not question.  All future bug hunts shall be solely within your remit."

Yue changed her mind, and threw a bread roll at both of them.