“Pardon?”
Umbra blinked slowly, certain she had misheard.
“It’s twenty twenty-nine,” Detective Hudson repeated, his tone careful, like one might use when speaking to someone unstable or very dangerous.
They were seated in a meeting room rather than a proper interrogation room. Umbra was simply far too large for those. Even here, she had to hunch forward awkwardly, shoulders rolled inward, horns angled just so to avoid scraping the ceiling. When she stood earlier, she had come dangerously close to gouging the plaster. The room was not made for her. This world, it seemed, no longer was either.
The trip to the police station had been mostly uneventful. The van ride itself had passed in tense silence. The only real disturbances had been the walk to and from the vehicle. People had stared. Some had frozen in place. One person had screamed outright, a sharp, piercing sound that still rang faintly in her ears.
“That is… impossible,” Umbra said finally, the words leaving her mouth, feeling hollow.
The man questioning her sat across the table, older, broad-shouldered, the sort of build that suggested years of physical work before a transition into administration. His uniform was more casual than she expected, his posture relaxed despite the circumstances. A paper coffee cup sat beside him, untouched, and a notepad lay open beneath his pen.
“Why?” he asked simply.
“I’ve been gone for ten years,” Umbra replied, her voice tightening despite her effort to keep it steady. “How has only two weeks passed since my traversal from this world?”
He paused. “You’re… from here?”
Umbra let out a short, mirthless laugh. “Born and raised. Though not in Wellington. I have family down south.” Her voice softened despite herself. “It’s been so long.”
“So,” the man said, glancing at his notes, “Ms Steelblight—”
“Mrs,” Umbra corrected immediately. “I am married. I will not force my title here, though.”
“Right. Mrs Umbra.” He cleared his throat. “If you were from here, surely there would have been sightings of a woman of your… unique appearance beforehand.”
Umbra leaned back in her chair as far as it would allow, the metal frame creaking beneath her weight. “I was human for the first thirty years of my life,” she said evenly. “I doubt my photo ID would be valid at this point.”
“I see,” he said slowly. “And what was your identity before now?”
“Genevieve Forscythe,” Umbra replied without hesitation. “Birthday is the twelfth of July, nineteen ninety-nine.”
“Thanks. Give me a moment.”
She waited while he tapped at his laptop, the clicking of keys oddly loud in the quiet room. She folded her hands together, claws interlacing carefully, and stared at a faint stain on the table’s surface.
“We have a missing person notice under that name,” the man said at last. “Filed a week ago. By a Dan Mitchells. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Umbra tilted her head back slightly, staring at the ceiling as she searched her memory. It felt strange, even a little embarrassing, to be so casual in front of someone who was neither her wife nor sworn to her service. But the last several months—years, really—had taken their toll. Her mind was tired.
“I believe so,” she said eventually. “I think… a flatmate?”
“You think?”
“Two weeks may have passed here, my good sir,” Umbra said, fixing him with a tired look, “but it was ten years over there. Time flows differently between realms, apparently. All the more reason to wrap this up. Time is of the essence.”
He exhaled slowly. “We can’t exactly let you out into the public. It would cause a panic.”
“Or,” Umbra countered, “people would assume a strange cosplay, for the most part. Regardless, I cannot tarry. The greatest evil must be hunted down before it causes irreversible harm. I am not above taking drastic measures to see this task completed.”
The man’s expression hardened. “Do I need to get enforcement in here?” he asked quietly.
Umbra leaned forward. The table groaned as her bulk shifted, her face coming to rest mere centimetres from his. Her dark eyes locked onto his, unblinking, utterly focused.
“I have taken on legions of the dark in numbers so great they could blot out the sky,” she said, her voice low and deliberate. “And I did so with only my wife at my side. Short of a nuclear solution—which this country does not use—no force you can muster would stop me.”
The man held his breath, but he did not look away.
After a long moment, Umbra leaned back again, the tension easing from her posture. “But,” she added, more calmly, “I am not here to make war. I simply have places to be. Materials to source so I may cast a tracking spell for the Witch’s corpse, purify it, and then determine a way back to my new home.”
She folded her hands once more.
“That is all I ask.”
Detective Hudson sighed like the weight of the entire situation had finally settled onto his shoulders. He rubbed at his temple with two fingers before nodding once.
“Fine,” he said at last. “I’ll need to speak to my higher-ups.”
“As you wish,” Umbra replied calmly, folding her hands together atop the table.
The man drained the last of his cheap coffee in one bitter gulp, grimacing as he did, and pushed himself up from his chair. He didn’t look back as he left the meeting room, the door clicking shut behind him and leaving Umbra alone with her thoughts.
She leaned back slightly, chair creaking beneath her weight, and stared at the glass wall and the Police station beyond it.
What is Farah doing?
Her heart ached at the thought. If time truly flowed at one week here to five years there, then even now nearly half a year would have already passed in the other world. The realization made her chest feel tight.
She wasn’t worried about Farah dying. Her wife was soft in demeanor, gentle in voice, but she was an angel, and she was eternal. Immortality was a curse forced upon them by their new forms, a slow, grinding weight of endless existence, but at least they bore it together.
Perhaps Farah was already searching for a way through. The thought comforted her. It would not surprise Umbra in the slightest. If anyone could bridge realms, it would be her. A priestess, yes, but also a prodigy. There was a reason they had eventually stopped accepting new members into their party. No one could keep up. They either left under the pressure… or they fell.
And too many had fallen.
Umbra had hated her form at first. The claws, the horns, the towering, lithe form. But the strength it gave her, the power to protect, to endure, to win—that was undeniable. Farah, for her part, hadn’t seemed bothered at all. In fact…
Umbra let out a quiet chuckle, the sound rough and low. Farah had been very into it. Almost from the start.
She’ll find a way, Umbra thought firmly, of that, she was certain.
In the meantime, there were obstacles to overcome. Namely, the police being as obstinate as ever. At least this was a relatively non-violent nation, even if it proved deeply inconvenient for anyone who did not fit neatly into its expectations. Well they were more talk first, then force, then guns as a last resort. Swine.
Her gaze lifted as she noticed movement beyond the glass wall. Detective Hudson walked past, accompanied by another man. Both glanced at her briefly before stopping and opening the door.
The newcomer looked to be in his late fifties, with a thinning bald patch and a face worn by years of bureaucracy. He wore a similar outfit to Hudson’s, though with a few more pins, a few more insignias, small signs of authority.
“Hello,” he said, stepping inside. “I’m Sergeant Jacobs. You’re Genevieve Forscythe?”
“That was my last identity,” Umbra replied evenly.
“Do you have anything to prove it?”
Umbra tapped her clawed finger against the table in a slow, rhythmic pattern. Tap. Tap. “Assuming it has truly only been two weeks,” she said, “and my belongings remain in my room, I could log into my computer without issue. My smartphone as well. I believe I could also retrieve my birth certificate, and I could answer almost any questions to validate myself, should that be needed.”
“We have an address here,” Jacobs said, glancing down at a file. “Can you confirm it?”
Umbra pursed her lips, thinking. “Sixty-five Avon Road, Mount Cook. I moved there in twenty-twenty-seven.”
Jacobs blinked. “That’s… correct. What about family?”
“All reside in Christchurch,” Umbra replied. “Save for a few cousins, several times removed. My mother is Mary Nolan. I changed my name in twenty-nineteen.” She paused. “I will not repeat the previous one.”
“Why?” Detective Hudson asked.
“Because I said so,” Umbra replied firmly, her tone brooking no argument.
Jacobs studied her for a long moment before nodding. “Well. It appears you are who you say you are. We’ll need that birth certificate, but otherwise… you’ll be free to go. We can’t legally hold you here. That said, there will be attention. People will be curious about… what you are.”
“I agree,” Umbra said calmly. “You cannot hold me. And I will be retrieving my arms and armour as well.”
Jacobs hesitated. “We can return them, but you are not permitted to brandish weapons in public. We can escort you back to your residence.”
“Unacceptable.” Umbra’s voice hardened. She leaned forward slightly, horns casting a shadow across the table. “I require those protections while I hunt the corpse of the Witch of the Void. You humans do not understand the threat she poses to this world, even in death. My spear was created by the Triumvirate specifically for this task. My shield was forged by the elder dragons of the Mountain of Fire to withstand any attack.”
Her gaze locked onto both men, dark and unyielding.
“I need my arms,” she said quietly, “to do my job.”
“We’ll need to contact Parliament,” Sergeant Jacobs began carefully, choosing his words as if each one might explode. “And we’ll have to investigate these claims thoroughly. New Zealand is a peaceful nation, and allowing a vigilante to operate—”
“NO!”
Umbra’s voice thundered through the room, deep and overwhelming, reverberating off the walls. Her hand came down on the table with terrifying force. Wood splintered instantly beneath her palm, a jagged hole punched clean through it, cracks spiderwebbing outward. The sound alone made both men flinch violently where they stood.
“You do not understand!” Umbra roared, rising partway to her feet despite the low ceiling, her horns nearly scraping it. Her chest heaved as she drew in breath after breath, barely containing the fury boiling inside her. “I have been patient. Far more patient than I have any right to be. And I will not be dragged down by bureaucracy while a catastrophe looms!”
She leaned forward, claws digging into the ruined table. “If you knew a terrorist was roaming free with a nuclear weapon, one capable of forcing Lake Taupō to erupt within the next few days, would you spend weeks debating procedures? Filing forms? Seeking approval from people who do not even understand the threat?”
Her eyes burned. “Because let me be perfectly clear. This is worse. Gods are real and I have killed one. And now her corpse—still very much dangerous—is unaccounted for!”
Silence crashed down over the room.
Both men stared at her, frozen, fear plain on their faces. The air felt heavier somehow, as if the weight of her words had settled into the walls themselves.
Detective Hudson was the first to recover. He swallowed hard and raised his hands slightly, palms outward in a placating gesture. “Please,” he said, his voice strained but earnest. “We need to do this properly. If we don’t, there will be chaos.”
Umbra’s lips curled back slightly, her needle-like teeth glinting. “If we do this properly,” she hissed, her voice dropping to a low growl, “there will be chaos. You are thinking in terms of laws and appearances. I am thinking in terms of extinction-level consequences.”
She straightened as much as she could without poking her head straight through the ceiling, no longer bothering to mask her dominance. “I have wasted enough time here. Every moment we argue, corruption spreads. We can worry about doing things the right way after the missing corpse has been found and purified.”
Her gaze locked onto both men, unblinking and absolute.
“Get me my equipment,” she said coldly, “or I will take it by force.”