This was the moment: in the blink of an eye, Jessamine was falling towards the capital of the New Roman Union from forty thousand feet above the Earth, dressed not as Jessamine di Cadenza but as the fear-inspiring Domino Witch.
She twirled and tumbled as she fell, letting out a raucous yet jubilant laugh—the last time she had done so was during the Battle of Dover, when she found that her then-untested power allowed her to both vaporize aircraft carriers as well as imprison sailors in the icy depths of Davy Jones' Locker with only a thought.
There will come a day when I do not have to hide this power.
Until then…
…I can be patient.
She righted herself, facing downwards to view her target. The city was quickly approaching, and she knew the nullification zone would be her first obstacle, so she used her All-Seeing Eye in anticipation of the coming trial.
Domino said this body is nigh-indestructible.
Time to put that to the test.
Jessamine plunged through the nullification zone and impacted the center of St. Peter's Square with the force of a conventional bomb; the stone, concrete, soil, and metal nearest to her was liquified and hurled in all directions and merged with solid ejecta from the newly-formed crater.
She waited until the Union's first responders arrived, and she didn't have to wait long—this area was heavily patrolled—before emerging from the crater.
None of the onlookers could see what she saw: the various dandelion-like magic tethers of the nullification zone were leaping at her with a ferocity not unlike a cornered bear, and though she could see the counter-magic sprouting from them she remained completely unharmed.
The counter-magic that had been her greatest fear was constantly attempting to get close to her, yet it was being dispersed upon contact with her bare skin.
She remembered, then, that her new body bore little resemblance to humanity. Her entire being was covered with runes she didn't recognize, runes of Domino's own creation which pulsed like an irregular, arhythmic heartbeat. Jessamine was a creature of magic, and the Roman nullification zone was advanced enough to recognize the magic within her as foreign, hostile—even if it didn't recognize the caster to which it belonged.
And yet, despite its best efforts, the counter-magic could do nothing to her.
This is Domino's doing, she realized. This body of mine… it's truly invulnerable to both physical and magical attacks.
I knew that already, but I guess I didn't fully believe it.
Looking at herself, she saw that the frequencies of her body-magic had changed in response to the counter-magic being thrown at her, as if her body contained a magic nullification zone even more accurate and powerful than the one protecting Rome. To say she was relieved would be an understatement; yet, at the same time, she became conscious of massive inefficiencies within her plan.
All that testing and planning was for nothing.
But now… I can have some fun.
With a long, relaxing sigh, Jessamine threw her head back and let her arms hang behind her. She chuckled, enjoying a moment of moonlight when the cloud of smoke and ash from her arrival parted, before turning her attention back to the matter at hand.
Jessamine only now became aware of the military force surrounding her: two armored patrol cars, each with a rotating turret—likely using conventional rounds due to the nullification zone—with around forty troops forming a perimeter around her impact crater. Each was wielding an MA-M4 with an attached flashlight, providing much of the illumination of the scene and making it difficult for Jessamine to see beyond the encircling men.
She could, however, see the telltale signs of bulletproof clothing in use among her supposed "captors" and laughed quietly to herself.
Her laugh cut through the night wind, silencing the men—They had been speaking? I hadn't noticed.
"Lay on your stomach with your hands behind your head!" she heard, once she focused on the insects before her. "Down on the ground! Now! Or we will open fire!"
At that, Jessamine laughed without bothering to stifle it.
"I just fell from the edge of space and destroyed your lovely square, and yet look at me," she said, gesturing to her still-very-nude-but-inhuman body. "I am unharmed. What do you think a bullet can do to me?"
A hand signal was given and a select group of soldiers opened fire whilst the others moved out of the line of fire.
Each magazine was emptied in approximately ten seconds, each reload cost a second and a half, and the soldiers were equipped with five spare magazines—the onslaught lasted for over a minute, and when they were done, they stepped back and let a new group of executioners take their place.
The crater was now a haze of gunsmoke and ash, but their target couldn't have survived—right?
Laser sights were activated, and as they penetrated the thin smoke, they revealed the shape of a woman, standing, her hands on her hips and her weight distributed towards her back leg.
That is to say, she looked bored.
As the smoke cleared, she became more visible and they could see her expression more clearly; it was indeed one of boredom, and the soldiers were understandably frightened.
"My apologies," she began, "for allowing you to waste your bullets. I was a little delirious from the exhilaration and adrenaline of my landing."
"Identify yourself!"
The voice came from a new direction, causing her to turn around in search of the source; it was an older man, a higher rank—a commander, perhaps?—who had clearly been allowing his subordinates to handle this matter but was now stepping in out of necessity.
"There will be time for introductions," Jessamine replied. "For now—sit there, and wait for my return like a good little doggy."
A single thought paralyzed everyone around her; she alone witnessed her tethers exploding from her core like a virulent plague and wrapping their tendrils around her victims in order to apply the paralysis effect.
The counter-magic fought back, but now that Jessamine understood some of its principal mechanics, she too could fight.
The nullification zone was still in its first phase: eliminate magical effects present within the radius. It logically sought to remove the paralysis effects, but Jessamine used her own synchronicity to prevent the counter-magic from taking effect.
Stay.
Her magic obeyed. It was breathtaking, really, watching her magic act with an apparent will of its own—which was in reality merely an extension of her own will—but she didn't allow herself to get distracted by the beauty unfolding before her. For every instance of detection magic applied by the nullification zone (since the first step of the zone was to detect the usage of specific magics), her own magic stepped in and thwarted the accuracy of the detection.
What happens when the wrong counter-magic is applied in a situation?
Nothing.
Such is the nature of counter-magic.
Jessamine could see that some of the soldiers, especially the commander, were struggling against the paralysis. But their struggle was in vain, for they could not move even a single muscular fiber—the real struggle was in understanding that magic was being used within their formerly-impregnable nullification zone.
She turned towards the Basilica and examined its defenses. Due to the immense amount of effort and resources the Union had expended to prevent any sort of magical interference reaching Rome, let alone the Vatican itself, MI7 had little information on what other countermeasures had been deployed.
Being able to see the place with her All-Seeing Eye, though, robbed the palatial building of its secrets. It practically hummed with magical energy, and only a little inference was needed to understand everything it had to offer.
There are three levels of security.
A generalized ward prevents any unauthorized entry; this likely uses the same method of "marking" a person as does their counter-magic system.
A more-targeted form of shield magic is used to identify any data transference devices and remove them from existence on either side of the ward. Probably to prevent intelligence leakages. Smart. That means the only way to bring intelligence inside is to contain it within a person's memory.
As for memory—there's a lot of power being circulated to the doors. Memory-wiping magic? That consumes a lot of power, and it's also deadly if even the slightest degree of error enters the picture.
Knowledge is power, and secret knowledge even more so—they place a high priority on knowledge management.
I'm impressed.
If that's the case, I wouldn't have found any actionable intelligence in Reims, or in any other city for that matter.
Jessamine turned back and scanned the group of prisoners behind her, looking for the commander who had spoken up just a few minutes earlier. Finding him with his eyes clenched shut in useless prayer, she sauntered over and gently stroked the side of his face with her hand.
"Oh, you poor thing," she said, adopting a motherly tone, "you must be scared out of your mind. Imagine that—your entire worldview being shattered in an instant."
Jessamine's paralysis prevented him from speaking: only his eyes retained a modicum of freedom, and they were full of the tears this man had been holding back for decades.
"Why don't you come with me?" she asked, dismissing the paralysis on him alone. "Though, I will warn you—act against me, and everyone here will die an excruciating death."
The man took one look at his treasured comrades before nodding his agreement to the mysterious woman.
"Very good, then."
She led him to a side door of the Basilica; the main door was too much of a hassle to open, and she had a hunch that this door led to the first objective.
"Open it," she commanded. "You, of all people here, would have permission to enter."
Once again, the man wordlessly—and hesitantly—agreed.
There was no need for this display of authority, as Jessamine's new body appeared to be completely invulnerable to magic, but she had in mind a plan to permanently cripple this officer's pride.
The door was open now and the pair stepped through the threshold. A glimmer of truth was beginning to dawn on the commander, who had entered first, and now watched Jessamine pass through the ward without batting an eye. A deep, gnawing fear took root in his heart as they continued into the building.
"You are an administrator, ma'am?"
"Ah! He speaks." Jessamine flashed a charming smile, successfully easing the tension of the situation. "No, I am not one of your officials."
"Who are you, then?"
"The Domino Witch," she replied. "Have you heard of me?"
He stayed silent. Surprisingly, his state of mind did not seem to be adversely affected by this revelation: it was as if he expected her to be the Domino Witch.
The pair stopped before the hallway which held, as Jessamine had surmised, memory-erasure devices; she could now tell from his apprehension that the commander knew what their function was, but had rarely experienced memory loss personally.
She asked another disarming question:
"Are you married?"
"W-What? I mean, yes," he said, a new breed of anxiety entering his eyes.
"What's her name?"
"—Maddalena."
"Can I see a picture?"
He nodded, reaching into his jacket to pull out a compact wallet and handed it to her. She opened the faux leather article to see a picture of a moderately-pretty woman. The woman wasn't exceptional by any means, but then again, neither was her husband.
He may have been handsome in his prime, Jessamine reflected apathetically.
The picture was clearly outdated, but that worked to her advantage.
Jessamine smiled and looked back at the commander:
"You have a lovely wife."
"Thank you, yes, I love—"
But he didn't get to finish, because Jessamine shoved him through the memory-erasure apparatus.
As far as she could tell, the device was designed to only remove recent memories; it was another stopgap against information leaving the building. An infiltrator wouldn't remember anything they learned inside, and their agents could only bring in knowledge which they had possessed for quite some time.
It was a primitive yet clever method of protecting their secrets, especially when combined with the other two layers of security.
As Jessamine followed her prey through the apparatus, she applied a new glamour: that of the young newlywed Maddalena, a berry ripe off the vine, only ever so slightly more beautiful than her picture.
"My love, are you okay?!" the false Maddalena cried, helping the recovering commander to his feet. "What happened to you, my darling?"
"Dear—oh, my God, I don't—I can't—"
"It's okay, darling," cooed Maddalena, stroking the back of his head. "Take your time."
"All I know—an emergency deployment," he stuttered. "What happened? Where are we, my dear?"
"Don't you know?" The woman who appeared to be Maddalena gestured to the room around them. "We're deep inside the Basilica. It's okay, we're safe here."
She figured the commander only had a couple more minutes before lucidity returned, so she decided to advance ahead of schedule. She took his head in her hands and pulled him close, wrapping him into a warm, open-mouthed kiss, and he accepted eagerly. She could feel his passion grow with every second, and the efficacy of her plan forced her to stifle an ironic chuckle lest her ploy be discovered.
At a moment designed to maximize his delirium, she pulled away.
"My love, they said the Domino Witch attacked," whispered Maddalena, her tone overflowing with eagerness. "Are you okay? Are we safe?"
"The Domino Witch—you mean, the Moriarty girl?"
For a reason the commander couldn't comprehend, this question brought a wolfish Cheshire grin to his young wife's face.
"Never mind that," he continued, separating himself from her. "We're safe here—the nullification core is close. She can't touch us here."
He now looked once more at his wife:
"Dear, aren't you cold? How could you go outside—"
He cut his question short as he saw his wife's lovely form transform inch by inch into something decidedly not-her.
"My god—!"
Jessamine chortled as she backed away from the horrified husband.
"Thank you, my love, for telling me all I need to know," she cried, mimicking the voice she had used for Maddalena. "I'll be back soon, so stay right there, okay?"
The man found himself suddenly paralyzed and experienced a strange sense of deja vu, but he had no time to dwell on that:
The Domino Witch is mere meters away from the nullification core, he thought.
God help us all.
The core was indeed close by, and when Jessamine saw it through her All-Seeing Eye, she couldn't help but be impressed by its construction. She was particularly struck by its similarity to what she had seen of a human brain—
Is that how runes work? she wondered. Do they mimic the magic of the human brain?
Or is it intentional?
No, it can't be—that would mean that multiple ancient cultures knew about the magic of their brains and were able to replicate it through runes.
It must've been an accidental discovery.
The core was much smaller than she had expected, yet was still larger than the average runic device, no doubt due to the amount and complexity of runes involved. Runes had long ago been compressed to ridiculously small sizes to the point where the inscriptions within a modern runic device appeared like grains of wood; when combined, these "microrunes" formed a "complex rune" which was able to perform much more advanced magic than the standard runes of old.
Because all magic is conducted through altering the natural flows of energy, it was discovered that microrunes can be used to structure a field of energy in such a way as that it was a rune of its own—a "virtual rune"—and it was these virtual runes which were the product of complex runes.
The core of Rome's nullification field was a cuboid device about fifty centimeters in width resting on a pedestal; the entire outer layer was covered in complex runes, and Jessamine had no doubt that there were multitudes of complex runes housed within.
Truly a wonder of technology.
Power appeared to be supplied through the pillar on which the core sat. While the core was an ethereal work of art, the pillar itself was industrial and pragmatic. Pipes insulating the power supply were visible amidst the sparce steel scaffolding, but what caught Jessamine's eye was a small bundle of fiber-optic cable paralleling the power supply.
Ah.
A dead man's switch. Classic.
They must not expect anyone to be able to substitute the heartbeat signal using magic due the nullification zone…
To spend all that money on protecting their capital and to fail in the most critical task? How tragic.
Removing the core without taking precautions would undoubtedly trigger alarms throughout the Union, and while Jessamine had no fear of repercussion, she had another game in mind.
Preparing a substitute was easy, as she was able to use magic to duplicate the core whilst continuing to fight off the interference from the Roman counter-magic. The substitute was a very poor clay imitation of the core—she couldn't very well give them a new one—which had the sole functionality of maintaining the dead man's switch mechanism as long as she desired.
Jessamine held the substitute up to the overhead light to examine it, found it to be acceptable, and smiled to herself.
She snapped her fingers, and the two cubes swapped places instantaneously.
The nullification core continued operating, however, likely due to an internal battery as a safeguard against sudden power loss. It was a commendable measure, except that the Union was now facing Jessamine di Cadenza, the Domino Witch.
She grasped the core with both hands and twisted, shattering the device with her physical strength alone.
Domino truly gave me a wonderful gift. The strength of this body is unbelievable.
Now, then…
…back to business.