Butler- Barrel of Fat

We have other tricks, thought Holly. We have magic. No1 will knock your socks off.

Butler dragged something into the room on a trolley. A steel barrel with runes etched on the metal.

What’s this? What’s he doing?

No1 managed to get off a single bolt; indoor lightning that scorched Butler’s shirt, knocking him back a pace. But even as he stumbled backward, the bodyguard swung the trolley past him, slingshotting it into the room. A thick slime slopped from its open mouth, splashing on No1’s legs. The barrel trundled forward, knocking Holly and No1 aside like skittles.

No1 stared at his fingers as the magic on each tip winked out like candles in a breeze.

“I don’t feel so great,” he groaned, then keeled over, eyes flickering, lips muttering ancient spells that did not one iota of good.

What is in that barrel? wondered Holly, releasing her suit’s wings from their sheath. Butler grabbed Holly’s ankle as she ascended, flipping her ignominiously into the barrel. She felt the thick gunk close over her like a wet fist, blocking her nose and filling her throat. The smell was repulsive.

Animal fat, she realized with a spasmodic shudder of horror. Pure rendered fat with a few hexes stirred into it.

Animal fat had been used as a magic suppressor for millennia. Even the most powerful warlock was helpless when dipped in rendered fat. You throw a warlock in a barrel of fat, seal it with woven willow bark, and bury it in a consecrated human graveyard, then that warlock is as helpless as a kitten in a sack. The experience would be made even more terrible by the fact that most fairies are devout vegetarians and would be perfectly aware of how many animals had to die to produce an entire barrel of fat.

Who told Butler about this? Holly wondered. Who is controlling him?

-The Time Paradox, Chapter 14