Yue

 11th January

17:34 GMT +2

Seven attackers, four of which survived their injuries and one of whom is conscious. Also worth noting that Zatanna is now strong enough to swing the Staff of Love hard enough to mash someone's skull. And not realise that she's done that until she tried neutralising their invisibility and the target body area was missing. Exercise, or arcane enhancement? I'll ask after the mission is over.

And she's still on my arm for some reason, Ms Vadim's book floating in front of her. "Do you have any contact with the local gnome warren?"

Ms Vadim shakes her head. "I don't even know where it is."

Inspector Gherea sighs the long-suffering sigh of a police officer who knows he's in danger of falling down the rabbit hole but whose sense of duty won't let him break off. I've noticed that I've heard quite a few of those since becoming a superhero. "What is a gnome warren?"

Zatanna floats the book towards him, and he nearly steps back before taking it. He looks it over quickly, then shakes his head. "As informative as the pictures are, I can't read Latin."

Ms Vadim takes it from him. "Gnomes mostly live in large underground structures called 'warrens'. Some are thousands of years old, built of stone long before humans settled those parts of Europe. Others are more recent. Gnomes seldom live on their own. They can use their magic to prevent humans finding them."

"And it could be anywhere?"

"They prefer to live away from towns and cities. Their magic isn't strong enough to force thousands of people to ignore them." Her eyes narrow as she looks at our prisoners. "Usually. These are something new. Or possibly something old."

"I don't know." Zatanna appears unconvinced. "It's just one picture. Didn't Anton Arcane-" Ms Vadim actually shudders, and her right hand makes a very small horns gesture. "-used to live in this country? If he'd gotten hold of a gnome, he might have turned them into something like this."

I shake my head. "I've scanned unman biological material before. While I can't categorically say this wasn't him, it doesn't have any sign of the usual biological agents he used. And he seldom repeated himself."

Inspector Gherea frowns. "Who is Anton Arcane?"

"Romanian Nazi and biomancer. He's dead now, but his work still sticks around."

"'Nazi' as in 'far right', or-?"

"No, a proper Second World War, used to work in death camps Nazi. Hang on, I'll send Cranius a picture."

Ring, scan. Message: Dear Doctor Cranius, recently encountered physiological abnormalities in Romania. Do not believe them to be Arcanian but would appreciate your confirmation. Yours, Orange Lantern.

Message sent.

The Inspector frowns, glancing at the maybe-gnomes. "Can they understand us?"

"My scan of the one Ms Vadim stabbed suggests that they have the neural complexity to understand complex speech. As such, my rings ensure that they can understand me-" I make eye contact with the one I electrocuted, and his eyes widen slightly. Yes, not as cunning as you thought. "-but I don't know whether they speak English or Romanian or something else. Ms Vadim, can you think of any reason why mutant gnomes would be targeting you?"

"The only reason I can think of is that I have heard of them, where most people-" She glances at the Inspector. "-are ignorant."

"The Inspector mentioned that you had certain.. unusual contacts. I would normally respect your privacy, but if there's some sort of proxy conflict-."

"No."

"The thefts are happening over all of Eastern Europe. We were assuming that they were stealing for the value of the metal, but the other possibility is that they're looking for a particular artefact and only have an approximate description to work from. The United States has a deal with Atlantis for checking artefacts for magic before putting them in museums, but most places don't. If they're prepared to come after you in your place of business-."

"Then I will contact people who can protect me."

"Give them this." I take a bag of cloned, purple healing rayed blood out of subspace.

"Why are you assuming they're vampires?"

"The bite marks."

Her right hand goes to her neck. "What.. bite marks?"

I raise my eyebrows. "You really want me to say out loud?" Her eyes widen. "I used to work with John Constantine, and I'm still alive. When I'm invited to meet a dodgy street magician I do scan them first." I shake my head. Which she can't-. I switch back to my lighter armour and shake my head again. "Look, it's not a big deal for me. We sell this stuff to vampires in America, it's in the KordTech catalogue. I met.. seventeen? Back when we were testing it. They're all still… Animate, if not exactly alive."

She nods a little nervously, and takes it. "That… Thank you. And I will ask, but I do not believe that my contacts are doing anything which would threaten gnomes."

I turn to Zatanna. "Anything about the odd-looking gnomes in there?"

"No, not really. The author says that the work they took the picture from said that these creatures served as foot soldiers for dragons, but… They don't seem to have been convinced that the older source was authentic. They met gnomes, and none looked like that or acted aggressively. Gnomes don't make good soldiers."

"Dragons."

"The last semi-reliable sighting of a dragon in Europe was in the twelfth century. I think if there was a giant fire-breathing lizard around then someone would have spotted it."

"Inspector, does Bucharest do emergency evacuation drills?"

"We have.. civil contingency plans for fires and terrorist attacks, but-. Are we going to be attacked by a dragon?"

"If one hasn't attacked in the last nine hundred years, I'd guess not. If one was hibernating or something… I can't think of anything that's changed in the last few months that would have woken it up. Heck, we don't even know that the other thefts were conducted by these things." I frown. "Zatanna, these are the same creatures as-?"

"It's the same magic, and they're roughly the right size and have the climbing ability. I don't know if it was these ones personally…" She frowns. "Hm." She releases my arm and walks over to where the blood splattered from the brain she crushed and kneels down, right hand on the staff and left hand touching the blood. Threads of violet light worm their way down from the star sapphire, along her right arm and down her left, flowing into the blood. A small violet model monster gnome appears floating just over it, and Zatanna's eyes unfocus slightly.

"Zatanna?"

"No. They came right here. They smelled her magic." She stands, the mini-monster fading and the blood on her fingers evaporating.

I nod. "Would you please update Kaldur?" I turn back to my electrocutee and put my power armour back on. "I need to ask this one some questions."