Cormac awoke to pallor.
The fields of green he remembered were gone, or rather, still there in shape but stripped entirely of life.
Every stalk had withered down to a brittle grey husk.
The color instead bled out of the world in a wide and precise ring around him, converging into the flower that he held.
The clearing itself looked wrong, the colors of trees at its edge still standing but somehow muted, as though someone had drained the depth out of the scene and left only a grey, papery sketch of a forest behind.
Even the dirt beneath him had lost its usual dark, damp richness, gone pale and cracked like the bed of an ocean that had forgotten it once held water.
He sat up slowly, taking in his surroundings.
The circle he’d carved into the dirt had darkened considerably, a faint black residue seeping along the lines he’d traced, still wet-looking despite the time that must have passed while he was elsewhere.
It pooled thickest at the three points where he’d planted his flowers, spreading outward in thin, searching tendrils that hadn’t quite reached the edge of the clearing yet, though Cormac suspected, watching them, that they intended to eventually.
The three flowers he’d planted at those points had gone the same lifeless grey as everything else around them, petals curled inward, stems bent and brittle, as though something had reached into them and simply taken whatever had made them flowers in the first place.
He looked around at the dead little clearing with something between alarm and clinical interest.
‘I didn’t expect that.
Although not exactly unexpected either.’
The one exception was the flower still clutched in his hand, the pale bloom he’d used as his catalyst.
It looked, if anything, better than it had before he’d started, petals brighter now, faintly luminous even in the flat grey morning light, as though it had fed on everything around it and came out the other side more full of colors that it drank.
He turned it once between his fingers, considering.
‘Reborn through death, most likely formed from the Twilight and minor Genesis symbolism,’ he thought.
‘Charming.
I didn’t expect to gain a boon of a beyonder item, but this is a nice addition.’
He tucked it carefully into his waistcoat, nestling it against his clothes so it wouldn’t get crushed by his garments.
The other weapons, the swords and wands and the mace he’d used to channel his spirituality through to create the makeshift wall, he gathered up next.
He carried them one at a time from outside the circle’s edge and let them fall into the withered ring.
He performed the sacrificial ritual again but this time it had less theatrics.
It was less dramatic.
Almost underwhelming, the darkness gathering thin and reluctant rather than the thick, breathless weight it had taken on before.
Cormac frowned faintly at the difference, turning the puzzle over as he worked, watching the last of the weapons sink slowly into the vortex.
‘No humans in this one,’ he thought slowly.
‘That’s the variable that’s changed.
Interesting.
I can make a religion out of this.’
He kept one item back.
A slim rapier, elegant, well-balanced, the crystal at its hilt still faintly warm to the touch, went instead into his own coat, tucked away at his hip beneath the overcoat where it settled as though it had always belonged there.
‘A Warrior should carry a proper blade,’ he thought, testing the weight of it against his side.
‘It’s a bit embarrassing to ask sir knight for his.’
He looked down at the circle again, unimpressed with his own craftsmanship now that the adrenaline had worn off.
The lines he’d scratched into the dirt looked almost embarrassingly crude in the daylight, uneven in places, the flowers he’d planted little more than dead stems now, and the whole arrangement had the look of something a child might have attempted rather than a proper working ritualistic magic.
‘A ring scratched into the dirt with a stick was never going to hold up long term,’ he decided.
‘I’ll need proper materials if I want to keep doing this.
Salt would be good, salt circles are associated with containing mystical entities.
Oils.
Candles.
A deck of tarot cards should be on the agenda as well.
And whatever else a proper ritual kit should have.’
With the last of the weapons gone and the circle settled into its quiet, spent stillness, he gathered his suitcase, straightened his coat, and went to find sir knight.
A knight was waiting at the treeline, just enough not to see whatever just happened.
‘How thoughtful’
A patient blue-cloaked shape was staring away from the grey, ruined backdrop of the clearing, standing to watch over a scene opposite of the view actually worth watching.
“Sir knight,” Cormac said, catching up to him, “I believe we’re due a shopping trip.”
Sir knight’s figure seemed to brighten at the very suggestion, delight radiating off him in a way that needed no spirit vision at all to read.
“Someone would be delighted to assist,” he said, already falling into step beside him, “in whatever manner of quest this may prove to be.”
Cormac himself was delighted to spend the money that he got from others.
Five hours after the incident, the response team from the St.
Pavlov Foundation arrived at the lane to find it empty.
The clearing that met them bore no resemblance to the battlefield described in the initial distress signal, no bodies, no debris, no sign that a dozen agents had ever stood there at all, only a wide circle surrounded by dead grey grass sitting silent and undisturbed beneath a sky that had gone pale with early morning cloud.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Inside a white office devoid of personality, with only the occasional golden design to disrupt the monotony of the environment.
“The field investigators reported that there were no signs of the suspects,” the woman said, standing at attention before a desk, hands holding a clipboard.
“Neither the male in question nor the figure in the bedsheets.
Nor, for that matter, the nine field agents who had been left to hold the position.”
She paused, choosing her next words with visible care.
“The field investigation team did not pursue further, as ordered.
However, the local division of the Vigiles Bureau has been informed and is currently coordinating with local authorities on the matter.”
The old woman behind the desk said nothing, her back turned, facing the tall painting mounted on the wall behind her chair.
She continued.
“At the scene itself, the dispatched team found the surroundings decayed in a wide radius, consistent with severe and rapid ecological death.
Every living thing near the crime scene, grass, hedgerow, even the surrounding insects and small animals, had been reduced to the same grey, brittle state, ‘as though stripped of their entire being’ as the team captain commented.”
She glanced down briefly, checking the details against her notes.
“At the center was a circle scratched into the ground, leaking a black residue.
Slowly but surely, it moved.
It was spreading outwards from the circle’s edge in thin threads, as though it were searching for or reaching for something.”
“Attempts to collect a sample failed,” she went on.
“Anything used to gather it decayed to grey dust upon contact, gloves included, tongs, sealed containers, all of it.
One field investigator fell into what appears to be a comatose sleep after direct contact with the substance, despite protective equipment.
He has not woken since.”
She flipped through her notes and read from the next page.
“At approximately 6:42 AM, when dawn broke fully over the site, the residue began to smoke upon exposure to sunlight, a thin black vapor rising off of it.
Three additional investigators inhaled the gaseous substance accidentally during the retreat and lost consciousness briefly, but recovered within the hour, unlike the first.”
“By full sunrise, the residue had dissipated entirely, leaving no trace beyond the dead grass itself.
The team withdrew with photographic and video documentation, along with samples of the surrounding decayed flora and fauna, which have been sent for analysis.”
She finished her report and stood in silence, waiting.
The old woman did not turn around.
“Manus Vindictae, perhaps?” the woman offered, after a moment, when the silence stretched too long to comfortably hold.
“Perhaps,” the old woman said, at last, her voice giving away nothing at all.
“But that is not for you to know.
Continue with your duties.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The woman inclined her head and let herself out, closing the door quietly behind her, already turning the shape of the problem over in her mind as she walked down the long, quiet corridor.
‘I should speak with Vertin,’ she thought, her steps quickening slightly.
‘The location where the suspect is believed to have come from is the same site as her previous mission.
That can’t be a coincidence.
Not two events like this, in the same place, so close together.’
Behind her, in the office, the old woman remained facing the painting mounted above her desk.
The painting is “Odin and Fenris”, made in 1909, by Dorothy Hardy, the demonic wolf’s jaws frozen forever mid-lunge against the Allfather who would not escape them, rendered in dark, heavy brushstrokes that seemed to shine whenever light touched the canvas, especially striking due to its lonesome.
Whatever thoughts moved behind her eyes as she studied it stayed entirely her own.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The gunshots came without warning, three sharp cracks somewhere close outside the building’s walls, and Sonetto was on her feet before the third one had finished echoing.
She was a striking figure even while standing still, composed in her high-collared white dress, the fabric cut close and formal, a fine turtleneck rising nearly to her jaw beneath a face that carried the same unbothered elegance no matter what the moment demanded of her.
Long, vibrant orange-red hair that she typically keeps tied or neatly styled , framed features set in permanent, careful calm.
There was a precision to her that made the sudden violence outside feel almost rude by comparison, an interruption to something that preferred order.
“Gunshots ?!
Wha …?
But the arcanists haven’t got here …”
Sonetto said, unnecessary but automatic, the way people state the obvious when their bodies have already decided what to do about it.
Vertin was already moving too, coat snatched up in one hand, the other reaching instinctively for the suitcase propped against the wall.
“…
Damn it.
Let’s go!” Vertin said.
They went out to investigate together with a floating apple, the door swinging shut behind them, the sound of the city rushing in cold and sharp and entirely too quiet in its aftermath.