Misthaven - The Bridge to Nowhere

AetherDreaming

Deep Dream Diver
It seemed to stretch on forever. From the charcoal grey of the bridge's walkway to the unreachable beyond of the sky above. Wisps of silvery mist licked his tennis shoes, fading soon after wrapping around the sole of the boy's second hand sneakers. He looked over his shoulder toward the path that lay behind, the same that held footsteps that could not be retraced, and saw the solemn smile of the parents whose love felt of foreign tongue as they had found comfort in letting him go. The pair stood a few feet away from the base of the bridge, as if standing too close might convince them to take their only child home. What is love if not sacrifice? Maybe this was the ultimate show of love...if only for one another.

His attention returned to the infinite mist. Was it calling to him? The voice held neither familiar words and didn't seem to flow in any sort of structure. It stuttered, hissed and rustled like wind slipping along branches and through leaves. Yet, despite the lacking clarity, the curiously communicated message carried a calm and warm sensation with it. The sort that a father's arms held when embracing a child woken from nightmares in the deepest sleep. His sneakers were now surrounded by the mist that now ran down along the footpath, forking along the rubber contours like a weightless river. Turning back once more in hope of seeing his parents, his optimism was instead met with a vast, dark emptyness. “I'll be better! I promise I can be better! Just don't forget me here. Don't leave me...” he wanted to say but that horrible, suffocating silence had seeped into his senses and drowned his tongue.

“August,” called a voice from deep within the mist. That...that was his name. “August...” it called again, more firmly than before. Then again and again, moving through the mist, closer to the edge of the impenetrable curtain. The boy tried to step back, but he was rooted to the spot. Over and over, he urged his legs to move but every command was ignored. “Hey! Old man!”

As if yanked from a hypnotically induced trance, Investigator August Temple stared blankly for a few moments before blinking and then clearing his eyes with the back of his hand. The sounds of the avenue came rushing back. The tip-tapping of foot traffic mixed with casual conversation, the hum of engines and the occasional impatient honking. “Finally here with us, Old Man?” said the officer as she held out a small, rectangular piece of glass, “The avenue had been sealed off. Shouldn't have any interruptions while you're inside. Where's your partner anyway?”

“On the way,” August replied, hardly paying attention the outstretched hand which was, in it's owner's impatience, had begun making small thrusting gestures towards him. Unbothered, he searched the contents of his pockets. Around the wallet, just past the keys until...ah! There it was! The prize, a slim, lightly purple colored and rhombus shaped gem reacted to its owner's touch. The sigils carved along the outer edge came to life and shimmered in sequence before once more fading into the intricate crevices. From his pocket, the gem was retrieved and then deposited into its new resting place, a similarly shaped opening in the butt of the investigator's gun. August then placed the barrel end snugly against the side of his head and pulled the trigger. BLAM! A jet of purple and silver smoke shot out of the other side, billowed as it lost energy and then faded into nothing.

In that moment, the officer had taken a step back and was fumbling for her weapon. But by the time it was unholstered, the investigator had already pulled the trigger. “Old Man!” the officer shouted. Even in Misthaven, there were things that could surprise you. Particularly in the early afternoon.

“There, got space now,” August said, paying half-mind to the shock on the officers face as he returned the gun to the holster and picked up the the rectangular piece of glass from the sidewalk. Like the gem, the object came to life, the details of the day's case scrolled into place. They were soon followed a photograph of a middle aged man who, by all accounts, appeared to be aging poorly. 43 going on 70. “Says here that Mr. Yates can and has only accessed the first portion of his words and only on the premises. Dimensional Contortion? Whatever. Came to Misthaven after they manifested, immediately registered with the Archives and has never been in trouble. So...what's the catch? Why am I here?”

“Let's wait until your partner gets here,” the officer responded, “I don't get it much myself. At least not well enough to want to try and explain it twice.”

August shrugged and leaned back against the hard wood back of the bench that supported him. “Whatever works.”

“Investigator Temple?”

“Yeah?”

“Where were you just now?” The officer asked cautiously.

“A memory,” he said with a sigh, “some poor guy's memory.”

@SweetNerevar @AetherDreaming
 
Ariel Volière stared at the kitchen window. Staring right back, the cheery orange glow of dawn pierced her blinds and wormed its way into her eyes. God, she really hated the sun sometimes. It wasn’t even the real sun, apparently. The mist that surrounded Haven blocked out everything, including the real giant flaming space ball, so they had to have some wizard conjure up a facsimile of it and parade it around. They were pretty good at the illusion, even sprinkling in a splash of the Milky Way and changing the phases of their fake moon, but the appeal was lost on her. Her parents, of course, were awestruck at the sight. According to them, you couldn’t normally see so many stars at night in cities outside because of something called light pollution, but she had no context for that to be impressing. So this whole wizard daylight thing? Overrated.

She blearily reached out and shuttered her blinds. Much better. In the now dimly lit kitchen, she swung around and poured some water in a coffee maker. She patted the thing absently, running her fingers over the concentric circles and sigils inscribed on the plastic. Weren’t worn down too much, that was good. Satisfied with her morning ritual of walking into the kitchen at 6:00 a.m. and staring absently at the window, she walked upstairs to her bathroom and began to get ready.

Originally, she had gotten up this early to make sure she’d have time to get in a morning run and then not struggle to get into the shower. Recently, however, since her parents had been home less and less, staying nights at the Archive to work on the fourth-attainment for their Words, getting up this early was more to just enjoy the silence. Haven was always busy which meant that any stillness was either preciously fleeting or her problem as an investigator. And those tended to stick around.

Her parents were apparently from out in the boonies so they didn’t understand why she needed some nothing every once in a while. Apparently a one week trip to the middle of nowhere Iowa would cure her of that real quick, but she wasn’t convinced.

Well, not like she would ever get to find out, anyways. Getting past the mist just didn’t happen, and she had no intention of getting disappeared. Work was enough thrill for her, thank you very much.

As she came down in full uniform a couple hours later, pulling some reddish-blonde hair out of her comb, she looked at her coffee pot and groaned. Leaving her comb on the table—she basically lived alone, it was fine—Ariel looked on in dismay as she put her hand against the side of the cold coffeepot. She hadn’t turned the damn thing on. And here she was, bragging about her coffee-making skills to Temple and offering to graciously bring her a cup of her famous brew. She chewed the inside of her lip, thinking. Well, maybe she still could.

She’d probably burn the hell out of the coffee, but maybe it would turn out better that way? People made coffee in that Turkish style with the hot sand. Knowing in her heart that this wasn’t that at all, she reached out and gripped the sigil at the top and released.

Much to the disappointment of her parents, Ariel had no aptitude at all with Dead Words. Something about them disagreed with her, went awry whenever she tried. This wasn’t a huge loss; there were plenty of people who got by with only their first word or even none. They made do with using their personal magic, or even carrying around mana batteries that could amplify their own magic, needing only the slightest spark of initial magic to start up. She knew a lot about that stuff.

She was basically a battery herself, after all.

The effect was instantaneous. And not what Ariel wanted at all. First, the sigils immediately liquefied and ran off the side, stopping the magic near immediately. It was a nifty safety precaution. Unfortunately, that brief moment was enough to superheat the water and dump the screaming liquid through the coffee grounds. The brew promptly exploded.

It was by some small miracle and the cleaning enchantment that the scalding brown liquid didn’t drench her uniform. Her kitchen counter and cabinets, however, were not so lucky. She stared at the mess, brown coffee dripping from the bottom of cabinets and pooling in miniature hot springs all over her counter and in her sink. A glance at the coffeemaker told her that the appliance was no longer usable and she’d have to buy another one.

On the bright side, there was still half a pot of superheated coffee. She smiled. Well, this whole mess seemed like it was a problem for future her. The policewoman was going to be late if she spent time cleaning, anyways. Grabbing two thermoses, she filled them up and briskly walked out of the house with the horrid, burnt coffee.

She’d buy something else for Temple on the way to work to make up for it.



It was afternoon when she finally arrived at the scene. She got a little mixed up trying to find a cafe to buy some scones—and a bear claw, just for her—and finding the house, but she managed. She pulled into the parking spot and unplugged a little syringe with a jeweled tip out of its slot and the car turned off. Normally, when driving, to ensure a constant supply of magic to the vehicle, you had to hook yourself up to a little magic IV, but Ariel rarely needed that kind of juice, so she just used a little needle that her parents got her. She was pretty good at finding a vein at this point.

As she made sure she had everything on her belt and grabbed the pastry bags and thermoses, she heard a gunshot. She gave out a little exasperated sigh and put down the breakfasts. Or were they lunches by now?

Turning around, she unhooked the holster on her gun and saw a tall, morose-looking figure with a gun to his temple. She clucked her tongue in irritation. Got her worked up over nothing. Picking her items back up from the front seat in a huff, she closed the door with her foot and walked over.

Temple shrugged, clearly talking to the other officer—looked like Jannete—and leaned back against a bench.

“Whatever works,” she made out. Or maybe it was “Wherever-Works” which was a pretty good cartography shop downtown, but she doubted he knew about it.

She didn’t manage to catch the rest of the conversation before she walked the rest of the way over to them.

“A memory,” Temple said with a sigh, “some poor guy's memory.”

“So dramatic,” Ariel broke in, waving a thermos and a pastry at him. “Are you shooting yourself with your mind-gun and being cryptic again? ‘Cause you know you’re going to scare people doing that. Anyways, I got coffee and some lunch. Don’t know what flavor you like so I just grabbed an apple scone. Hope you like it, and if you have any comments about the coffee keep it to yourself, capiche?”

She turned around, demeanor much more business-like to the other officer than with her partner, and handed a bag over to Jannete before digging into her own pastry.

“Sorry I’m late, Jan,” she mumbled through a mouthful of bear claw, “anyways, so what’s the sitch?”
 
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August only slightly registered his partner's attempt at humor as the primary investigation file and reports filed the week before had his attention firmly wrapped in the contents. Though barely a moment had passed between first regarding the file and the sound and smell of scones and exploded home-brewed coffee, the inspector had tumbled headlong into the most curious circumstances that brought the three of them to Mr. Yates doorstep. “Officer Lown, says here that you're the the second officer from our division to be dispatched here within a week's time. Something tells me that we're not here to follow up on a noise complaint,” August said as he absently tapped the case-card against his silvery, midnight-purple curls.

Officer Jannete Lown motioned towards the Yates house with a thumb directed over her shoulder, “The sitch is the neighbors called it in early this morning. The Rubens and Hill families woke up to their homes going haywire. Lights burned out of the fixtures, appliances running until the workings quit and the power lines running so hot that the sigils are showing through the damn walls.” She turned on her heel to face the house, “From what I could tell from the outside, there's a lot of power pouring into that house. Up to you two to find out why.”

All this trouble for a house that looked to lost to passing seasons and only stood to house someone who, if to be judged by the home they kept, seemed quite content to be swept up in the ever-flowing current as well. Mr. Yates' home stood in a row of model homes that had been born of the Misthaven's initiative to create more suburban life emulating neighborhoods. They were relatively inexpensive and had all the appeal of small-town living that the Department of City Planning and Development could quite literally imagine. An ideal home to raise your family! Or at least, that's what the advertising said. Had they each not been painted differently, a passerby could very well have mistaken them to be identical or perhaps just one extremely long house with an unusual amount of doors. Mr. Yates' home was painted a rather dreary looking pastel green and was showing signs of aging. Paint chips lay scattered on the sidewalk below where the wooden facade had cast them off, leaving irregularly shaped windows to the wood beneath and cracks running throughout.

August slipped the case-card into the inside pocket of his department issued jacket as Officer Lown wrapped up her report. The sigils were showing through the walls? What the hell was Yates running out of his house that so severely overburdened not only his home's capacity that it had turned to the surrounding homes to satisfy such a need? August had heard of similar situations but the apparent scale was well beyond a complaint about faulty wiring. “When you spoke with the families, did they happen to mention what time the sigils stopped reacting?”

“Stopped?” she responded with a hint of confusion in her tone. “Temple, far as I know, those walls are still glowing like the silos of a distribution hub.” As an officer with more seasons under her belt than August, Jannete's tone not once betrayed how nervous the situation had made her. Years ago she'd transferred for a chance at a more exciting career. At the time it seemed like a great idea, they pay was better and it beat riding a desk until retirement. However, recently some of the cases had hitched a ride in her thoughts and followed her home. This one seemed eager to join the pile. “Now, if you don't mind it's about time the two of you took the baton and started running this case,” Jannete said with a well practiced smile before she took a peek into the small paper bag and mouthed thank you to Ariel.

August pressed his palms against his knees as he stood up, “Alright, let's get to it.” He nodded to Jannete and then towards Ariel before heading across the street towards the Yates house. But just as he was about to reach the steps that lead to the front door, a soft crunch pulled his attention to the scattered paint chips. He paused, knelt down and picked up a chip nearest to his foot and examined it front and back before casting his gaze to the rest of the castoff. Most were the same forgotten pastel green but mixed into it were slivers of blue from the house on the left and white from the house on the right. Interesting...

August dusted off his hands, straightened up, climbed the stairs and knocked firmly on the door. “Mr. Yates, open up. Investigators Temple and Volière from the Department. We'd like to ask you a few questions.” August waited for a few moments for Mr. Yates to make his way to the door but there was no answer. In fact, as far as he could tell, there wasn't so much as a whisper of activity coming from inside the residence. He knocked again, this time hard enough to rattle the frame and cause a few chips of paint to loosen and fall to the sidewalk. Nothing. Then suddenly, CRACK, a portion of blue facade shot across his line of sight, barely missing his nose before it crashed onto the sidewalk and bounced a short distance down the street.

“Don't think we'll have time for a warrant,” he said, glancing back at Ariel. August tried the doorknob and it turned over easily with a soft click. The door moved slightly in the frame, breaching the threshold by half an inch at the most. As if a seal had been broken, the silence was cut by the buzz of magical energy that was coursing from within. Right. It's pulling from the other houses too. He paused for a moment, considering if calling for backup was a better idea than heading in, just the two of them. No. Waiting wasn't an affordable luxury. August took a slow and measured breath, bracing himself for whatever lay beyond and then pushed the door open. “Ah...damn.”

Just a few steps from the front door into Mr. Yates most unassuming home, the hardwood flooring fell away, revealing what could be best described as an expanse. A depth so incredible that looking down could trigger vertigo. But unlike most natural chasms, that which existed within the Yates house was far from empty. It was filled with doors of countless variety in shape and color that extended far out of sight and perfectly symmetrical squares of flooring that shifted position in space, creating temporary pathways from one door to the next before changing position and leading to another.

“Ariel, you're going to want to see this.”
 
Ariel sighed as her attempts at levity once more slid off of the veritable duck’s back that was Senior Investigator August Temple. Well, it was to be expected. He got a mite tunnel-vision-y when it came to cases, which was honestly admirable in some ways. It had sure as heck saved her hide a couple times over, but she knew it put some folks at the precinct off from the guy. She didn’t mind it. Her parents oozed the same kind of dogged, single-mindedness in their pursuit of the arcane, so she’d grown up with. All she hoped was that she hadn’t inherited too much of it.

Once Jan began to list off the details of the case, Ariel knew what to do. Springing into action, she began scarfing her pastry as fast as humanly possible. Definitely wasn’t going to be able to finish it before Temple began knocking this guy’s door down otherwise. She faced away from the other two so she looked like she was carefully inspecting a telephone pole instead of stuffing her face, but she technically was doing work. With her hands mostly free save for a couple lingering spots of crumbs and filling, she whipped out a little notebook. In what could be generously described as “scrawl,” she took careful notes of what Janette described, noting down the neighbors names, times, and incident details. She stopped and looked up when the other policewoman began describing the kitchen situation in the neighboring homes.

Huh. Appliances going haywire? She shook her head. Didn’t she know it.

She looked back down at her notepad, and glanced at the telephone pole still in front of her. How much juice, exactly? She reached a hand out for a wire running down the length of the wooden pole. Then, before she could touch it, her body jerked itself back as if she had just plunged her hand into a campfire. God was her hair standing up? The young woman had some passing familiarity with elec-magiktry, and she could tell that whatever was running through those wires was serious. And based on her experience shorting out electronics, that meant that there was some intentional tampering going on. Whatever was happening to this Mr. Yates, it was definitely no accident.

She came back to paying attention as Jan wrapped up. She gave Ariel and her partner a little perfunctory grin, followed up by a more genuine one as she looked into her little pastry bag. Cute. Ariel briefly contemplated making a pass at the older policewoman, but quickly dismissed the idea. A bit too old, probably straight, and office romances were a bad idea in general. Whatever the case, Jan looked happy to be out of there and Ariel couldn’t quite blame her.

Temple clapped his hands onto his knees, standing up.

“Alright, let’s get to it.”

Ooh boy. That sounded like it was going to be a knock-twice and enter kind of day. She didn’t bother to respond to Temple. They had their little routine. As Jan hurried off the scene, Ariel pulled out her Will-Activated Numinist Device (WAND) from her belt. It was in two pieces for easy carrying; one half a gnarled wooden stick tapering off into a point and the other half a rifle stock with an armband and clear tubing running into it. She screwed them together as Temple was investigating paint chips, and pricked herself with the tube. A trickle of blood ran into the weapon, the hum confirming that the thing was juiced up. Then she secured the armband—which had a little needle in it that fed and ran into the tubing—securely onto her upper-arm and cradled the weapon against her body. Now she was ready.

True to her prediction, Temple knocked once and waited about enough time for somebody to come to the door if they were standing right in front of it. Then he knocked on it in the not-a-friendly-neighbor kind of way, but more the you-owe-me-money-or-else kind of way. In response the house tried to take his head off, a chunk of blue masonry the size of a dinner plate whizzing by and exploding on the sidewalk. The exposed innards of the house were glowing with arcane sigils that seemed to simmer and warp at random. Ariel let out a low whistle and took aim at the door. Didn’t even have time to swear.

“Don't think we'll have time for a warrant,” Temple said, glancing back at Ariel and then, anticlimactically, just opened the door.

Classic August Temple with the border-line breaking-and-entering. What were those old CDs that her parents had brought from outside, the buddy cop TV shows? A by-the-book older cop and a loose cannon younger one? She wished. The policewoman pulled at her radio with one hand, keeping aim with her WAND in the other.

“766 to Dispatch, we’re going to be entering a property hot. Officer Lowes has the exact information. Senior Investigator Temple thinks this one is going to be big.”

Or at least she assumed, from the dismay on his face.

“Ariel, you're going to want to see this.”

Yep, definitely bad. She took a peek over his shoulder and was treated to a psychedelic array of doors set into fractal shapes like somebody took all the doors in a neighborhood, threw them into a woodchipper, and made a really shitty kaleidoscope out of the chips as his angry, door-less neighbors kicked his ass.

That was a good simile. She’d run it by Temple later to see if he’d crack a smile.

“Yeah,” she continued over the radio, “I’m looking at some major spatial, possibly temporal anomalies and wires that are running hot enough to burn down the whole block. We’ll be heading in and probably going dark from here. 766 out.”

She covered her radio and came up beside Temple.

“Well, I’m seeing it,” she remarked drily. “I also informed Dispatch so the chief doesn’t roast your ass over an open fire when you come back, your welcome.”

The bluster over, she gulped a little, adjusting her WAND. Then, a thought struck her. Grabbing her crumpled up pastry bag, complete with little bits of bear claw, she tossed the white paper ball into the house. It sailed into the void. After several seconds, it popped back out, landing at their feet. It looked like it had grown mold several years old and, if she wasn’t mistaken, began moving a little. She promptly blasted it with her WAND, leaving an acrid stench in the air and a pile of ashes on the floor.

“Okay,” she said, feigning casualness she did not feel, “what’s the plan here, Temp?”
 
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“Plan?” he replied with a chuckle, his attention still focused on the vast below. So far as he could tell, there was not a single apparent detail in this situation which called back to a single case he'd worked. Not even a tenuous thread upon which even the most open mind would trust to balance upon in order to offer any idea of what to expect. A plan suggested that there was something to grasp onto and much like the spiraling depths of doors and shifting floor, there wasn't seat-belt or railing.

Still, walking away with their hands thrown up in confusion wasn't in the job description. The guttural groaning of the adjacent homes was steadily growing louder, seeping through the walls and hovering just above the noisy ambiance that gushed up from below to be cut by the wooden segments that darted about as if directed by some unseen hand. Perhaps more troubling than the uncompromising strangeness of the situation was the fact that Mr. Yates just wasn't capable of something like this. Or at least, he shouldn't have been.

“If I wasn't looking at it, there's no chance I would have believed it. An oversight like this goes above and beyond even the sloppiest of paper work.” August cautiously stepped across the threshold and into the entryway, each step's sound drowned in the tumult. Despite this, and thankfully so, the creak of the inanimate foyer sprang up through the sole of his shoes, tethering him to something familiar. Before he realized, the tip of his shoe rested just over the precipice . Had he not known any better, he would have assumed that he was being drawn to this great magical funnel. This horribly hungry thing.

Then, as if stirred to order, a number of segments came to form a path leading from the tip of August's shoe, across the chasm and to door that could have rightly been assumed as the house's first inner door. Surprised, he took a step back. Was the house responding to his presence? Was it recognizing their intention? Even with just a minor distance found between August and the edge, the pathway fell away and returned to zipping here and there as it had been before. He smirked, “Onwards, huh? Fine.” Once more he approached the edge and, as the pathway formed in front of him, stepped out onto it.

A shiver shimmered from the right side of his back to the left. Onwards? Easier said. He pressed his weight onto the first panel, testing its ability to hold any kind of weight. It was quite firm, as if being joined to the outside world made it as constant and reliable as well laid bricks or firmly packed road. With a measured breath, August stepped out onto the pathway completely and let out a sigh of relief when it didn't instantly drop out from under him. His nerves slightly calmed, August looked across to where the path now lead, the inner door. Curiously, the large rectangular glass pane didn't seem to allow a view into the room that would naturally lay beyond, instead just a flat, gray, obscuring tint.

“Now that is interesting,” he mused, “let's go Ariel and stay close.” August crossed the pathway and stopped in front of the door. Tap, tap, tap. It certainly felt like glass, but it wasn't quite. Even up close, the window didn't provide a look into what, if anything, awaited the two investigators. Mysteries wrapped up in uncertainties, like wandering through the curtains of a unyielding fog. August pressed his hand against the glass, searching the pane for some sort of crack in the gray. There wasn't any to be found and likewise, he noticed, there wasn't a reflection either. “Fine...have it your way,” he muttered, grasping and turning the doorknob and pushed the door open.

The door swung into a well lit sitting room. It was as pleasant as the picture perfect family home should be, or at least how most would imagine it to be. A dark green couch pushed up against one of the long walls, family photos hung above it and a small coffee table with a scattered assortment of books that were well dusted but probably unread. On either end, a pair of matching chairs. Across from the sitting area, a modestly sized television and windows that, unlike that of the door, let in light from the backyard. Or at least, something that looked like a backyard.

“Nice place, “ August said as he made his way into the room. It was like stepping onto the set of a television show or perhaps a well dressed stage play. Everything was in its place, almost so perfectly that if you were to try and move them, August imagined that they would instantly revert to their original position. But what he was having trouble reconciling was the incredible order and calm of the room in comparison to the reality they were leaving behind. And what was it about this setting that they now stood in which made allowed it to stand out and exist as it did in such stark contrast. All the more concerning, there was something oddly familiar about it but he couldn't quite place it.

“What the hell does it all mean? Ariel? Thoughts?”
 
“Plan?”

He chuckled. Temp was chuckling. In response to her partner’s frankly terrifying mirth, Ariel tightened the grip on her WAND. It was going to be one of those days, huh? They were going to walk into that hungry maw of front doors and welcome mats, and she probably wasn’t even going to get that much hazard pay. Could this possibly get worse?

Ariel tried to stop the thought before she could finish it, but it was far too late. She had forgotten. Tempt fate in a place where reality was folding into itself and normal laws held no more sway than a drunken toddler’s—as was often the case when Temple, regular bloodhound for weird crap that he was, sniffed them out trouble—then fate might just decide to bash you over the head with a metal folding chair. Ariel watched as Temple walked on thin air and crossed the chasm.

“Now that is interesting,” he mused.

Don’t make me cross, don’t make me cross, don’t make me cross.

“Let's go Ariel, and stay close.”

“Damnit,” she whispered to herself.

Screwing her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to see herself tip over and fall into the endless abyss of glass and wood, she took a step. And then another. Standing right behind Temple, she finally dared crack open her eyes. Horrifying swirling maelstrom beneath her trying to suck her into its depths was still there, but she wasn’t in there.

Huh. She’d take it.

Then: Stay close, she fumed, as if I was going to get separated from you in here.

Getting stuck in here permanently was quite low on her priorities in life. Getting stuck in here alone was just a little bit lower, because if she got stuck in here with Temple, then at least one of them could eat the other or something. That was probably what happened in situations like this.

As Ariel followed Temple, close enough to grab onto his coat and drag him into the abyss with her if need be, she heard him mutter and then open a door that hadn’t been there before. Well, that figured. On her tippy-toes, she tried to get a peek at what was through the door, and was treated to what looked like a sitcom TV set. Maybe she’d get to hear a laugh track?

Alas, the laugh track didn’t seem to be in the cards. However, the room had plenty of other goodies for her to examine, from the books on the shelf to the soft light that was filtering in. She wondered if it was the same fake-sunlight that they usually got outside. It was a little surreal for her to examine the entire room as mundane as this one and then look back at the topsy-turvy mess that was directly outside. She ran a finger over a nearby shelf full of personal effects, finding it spotless. Did they hire a maid for this place? The cleanliness was bizarre, but, she had to admit to herself, not any more than the rest of the place.

Temple broke into her thoughts.

“What the hell does it all mean, Ariel?”

She was the junior investigator—she had no idea.

Damnit Temple, you’re the detective here, we were on scene for the same amount of time! You should be finding the clues.

“Thoughts?” he prompted.

“Uh,” she said eloquently. Then she thought about it, really thought. And came up with not a whole lot of nothing. Ah, forget it, may as well have fun with it.

“Alright, I got a working theory here, Temp, check it out,” she said, inviting her partner to follow her around. “So, look at this couch, right? Real green, huh?

“Well, that’s not the color of your clothes,” she nodded, face grim. No laugh track. Unfortunate, but she’d keep at it.

“And that’s not all,” she continued, stroking her chin sagaciously, “look at those family photos. Look at the spotless shelves. How cozy this whole place is.”

Ariel turned around, arms outstretched, lips twitching.

“It’s clean. A family-friendly establishment! And you know what that means?”

She paused dramatically then pointed an accusatory finger at Temple.

This is absolutely not where you live. You said we were going to crash at your place. And don’t try to lie to me, August, I know you live in an absolute bachelor pad! Admit your sins and we might yet get out of this one alive!”

That was almost certainly untrue, but hey, she might get lucky. And she’d get to know some more about how people from the outside live. Win-win.
 
August slowly turned about on his heel, his gaze narrowing to regard his partner with a mix of emotion so pointedly drawn the surface that it would have passed as a A+ visual sting on a day-time television soap opera. For a brief moment it crossed his mind that his partner may have fancied herself an aspiring comedian, one so impressively undeterred or perhaps, uninterested with the audience response that their appreciation of the canned 15 minutes was immeterial to the proceedings. That train of thought was soon interrupted when it struck August that amid the routine, Ariel had mentioned something of true significance.

It’s clean. A family-friendly establishment! Family friendly was exactly what the scene they'd become part and bit-players in. There was something he had to confirm and hopefully, there was still a means of doing so in the house. August retrieved the data-shard from his pocket, pressing his thumb firmly to the surface, holding his breath as he waited for a response. The shard chimed and stirred to life. Thank you. With one hurdle mercifully passed, the next would, if luck was truly on their side, much easier on the legs. August began running search terms through the network. It took mere moments for the search to return results and multiple tabs populated the top-level navigation, humming and pinging as they went. One in particular caught August's attention and with a few taps of his thumb, the tab projected its contents onto the nearby wall.

A chipper, summery sounding voice filled the room as the advertisement played against the wall. A slender man in a pin-stripe suit stood in the entryway of a model home, a template of what would soon become the foundation of a suburban community. Comfortable, unremarkable, “perfect.” “Family, it's what wakes you up in the morning and welcomes you home after a long day. So don't they deserve better? Don't they deserve your best?” The paid-actor made a wide, sweeping gesture from left to right, ushering the camera into the house and into a living-room space that was nearly indistinguishable from that which August and Ariel occupied. “In a Greenway House, you'll always feel at-.” August paused the video.

While the rooms were quite similar, they weren't the same. There were details that August assumed were informed by Mr. Yates day-to-day life. The books and magazines on the table, the make and model of the television, the family photographs. Of course! August typed as quickly as his thumbs could carry his thoughts and run with them. The tabs which previously populated the projection were swept away and replaced with the contents of the Yates' family registration documents. At the top of the screen acting as header for the text were pictures of the Yates family. Husband, wife and child.

August began to read aloud, “Relocated to Misthaven in his 30's after his Dead Words manifested. Settled with a life long resident, Melinda Wilks, married soon after. One child...” August paused, his gaze wandered to the array of family photographs which hung above the couch. Much like the room itself, there was something peculiar about them. Without a second thought, August stepped onto the couch to get a better look at each of the family scenes, the file continued to slowly scroll automatically.

“Sometimes I remember the lake that my father used to take us to when the summers were particularly hot. We'd sit on the edge of the pier, legs dangling over the side, fishing poles at the ready just in case the fish were biting, I can smell the beer-battered bass frying in the kitchen, the sweet corn caramelizing on the grill. Or was that a movie I saw? Memory can be so unreliable,” he said, tapping the frame infront of him before stepping down from the sofa. It wasn't certain, but August was fairly confident that the family photos were composites. And if they were, why?

Before he was able to give the question much thought, a pulsing red square captured his attention. With a single tap, the flashing light was dimmed and the general family file was replaced with several new and concerning windows: the primary police report dating back several months, files of related inquiry with internal investigations, missing person report filed not once but twice and last but not least, a coroner's report. August looked back at the photographs, they all seemed so much more macabre. It was one thing to grieve, to think of your daughter in the fondest memories, even those not entirely your own, but it was another thing to cast them into charicature. The ideal family home, the ideal family life.

“Mr. Yates...you haven't been a family man in months.”
 
Temple kind of just peered down his nose at Ariel, which, if she was being honest, was a fair reaction. She let her finger drop, walked over to a nearby chair and then fell into it, heaving a dramatic sigh. At least her partner had that “ah-hah” expression now. Generally, that meant he was coming up with something useful.

Alas, was this to be her role perpetual? Life as a dumb thug with a big gun that could only be counted on for the occasional accidental insight, that insight to gleaned by the real brains of the operation? She swooned, the back of her hand on her forehead as she damned contemptible fate.

Then she straightened back up in the chair. Honestly, walking around with a WAND all day and following Temple around didn’t sound bad at all. That made up about 75% of her job already, not counting the 25% paperwork. She’d have to ask Temple later what he thought about running a PI office.

Suddenly, a 1950s-style advert appeared on the wall with a Trans-Atlantic accent galore. Ariel nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden commercial break, shooting a glare at Temple which he promptly ignored. Caught up in those opaque thought processes of his, he then switched the commercial to a messy desktop filled with police and government records. A whole family, then. They looked like nice people.

Temple seemed to agree, breaking off mid-exposition to gawk at a family photo on the wall. Before Ariel could so much as open her mouth to scold the man for putting his dirty shoes onto that nice couch, he began talking.

“Sometimes I remember the lake that my father used to take us to when the summers were particularly hot,” August said.

A hot summer? That didn’t exist, not when they regulated the sun inside—Ariel stopped cold.

Ah, she thought, I remember now, why I stick to him as much as I do.

“We'd sit on the edge of the pier, legs dangling over the side, fishing poles at the ready just in case the fish were biting.”

That dream-like quality to his voice was an aspect that the policewoman drank in like the greedy sand at the edge of an oasis. To flourish, she needed to get closer, she needed more. All those juicy tidbits did was leave her grasping for another.

“I can smell the beer-battered bass frying in the kitchen, the sweet corn caramelizing on the grill. Or was that a movie I saw? Memory can be so unreliable.”

Perhaps unreliable to him. To her, it was gospel. That heady feeling when those moments of lucidity broke through in Temple had her spellbound. Ah, but if only they weren’t stuck in the middle of this grief-riddled horror-house. Grief, because while Temple was scrolling through the police reports and the pictures of a young woman with grey, clammy skin, Ariel remembered. She remembered that balding, pudgy man in a sweater coming to file a report, once, twice, and then the third to identify a body. His wife was there too, lending support to him as he staggered towards the morgue.

Where was his wife now?

That wasn’t important. What was important here was what Temple had identified; that connection between a father’s loss and this howling, whirlpool of dimensional torment. She wasn’t good at dealing with grieving parents. Hadn’t met too many of them in her life, and had conversations with even fewer. Other, older people usually handled that. What did she know about kids?

Admittedly, not a lot. But there was something that she could do. Had to do, really. Grief was inherently something that ate at you from the inside. But once it swallowed you full and was yet to be sated? It turned outwards. And that’s when it turned into something that other people had to deal with.

“Mr. Yates… you haven't been a family man in months.”

Ariel stood up, slinging her wand over her back.

“No, he certainly hasn’t. Hey, Temp, I’ve got an idea that you’re going to hate. You should probably take cover behind that couch.”

Not waiting for him to respond, she marched over to the TV. Then she gripped the two sides of it, feeling the greedy circuits gleefully open up. Seeing no reason to deny the appliance, Ariel dumped mana through her hands, flooding the television. Immediately, it began shaking, and the screen flickered on, playing a different television show with every moment, the switches getting faster and more erratic. Eventually, the garbled voices became static, and then a high pitch whine as the screen turned pure white and smoke billowed out of the side. That was the cue to leave.

Ripping her hands off of the sides of the TV and finding them blackened, Ariel immediately ran towards the ugly green couch and leapt over it. No sooner had she landed behind the furniture and covered her ears did an earth-shattering bang rattle the house, unsettling the carefully laid home.

Ariel took a peek over the couch, finding a smoking crater and glass shrapnel lodged everywhere. And also, happy coincidence, a jagged hole in the wall leading somewhere, heavily obscured by black smoke. She nodded. That would certainly get any mourners attention, and indeed, anybody else in the vicinity. She turned to look at Temple and shot him some finger-guns.

“Alright, so, you want to go first?”
 
August carefully brushed the shards of glass out of his hair, the debris turning to a fine powder just before reaching the floor. Ariel was right, he definitely didn't appreciate that course of action, not simply because it was reckless, but if the proverbial coin-flip hadn't gone their way, the search party wouldn't have any bodies to find. Best to not let her know how close she was to reducing the culmination of every last detail of their lives to an indistinguishable mound of ash. Not that he was against cremation, August simply wasn't in a hurry for his ticket to be called. “Pulling stunts like that, you'll be 'going first' long before I do,” he said, stepping out from behind the couch.

The investigator braced himself against the edge of the jagged hole and peered into space beyond, the dust and smoke settling upon the arms of his jacket, the knee of his pants and the tip of his shoe, like some sort of unkept antique. The expectation of a similar swirling mass of the front section of the home was quickly discarded as August realized that there wasn't any smoke or debris obscuring what he was looking at. The space was as dark and as infinite as an inkwell drowning in pitch. Such a peculiarly unnatural sort of dark that might confuse the senses for sudden onset blindness. He couldn't recall who coined the idiom, but the wisdom rang true, don't stare long into the void, else it will stare back into you.

Fortunately the status-quo wouldn't hold. A dim orange light broke through the entrenched black, illuminating a what seemed to be a wall that was actually, quite close to the hole. August reached towards the surface, only hesitating when he noticed a set of semi-translucent stairs had formed at the tip of his shoe. “As much as things change, eh?” he muttered, ducking into the hole and taking the first couple steps into the intermittent darkness. For a moment and for reasons that at that instance escaped him, August cast his gaze over his shoulder and back towards the hole and to his partner. Good, it was still there. He hadn't been swallowed up. “Let's go,” he said, exhaling and somewhat shaken breath.

The stairs held tightly to the interior wall which made following them down, down and further down still, a less daunting task. The pulsing orange on the far wall illuminated the innerworkings of what the investigator could only assume was the neighborhood's energy grid. Every couple of seconds, as if run by clockwork, the darkness wrapped the investigators in its blanket only to slightly retreat when the light returned. Each time the light breached the darkness like a lantern the sigils coursed with the power that the house was pulling from the neighborhood. They were holding, for now. Yet, August's knowledge of the cities infrastructure was limited so he couldn't quite tell if these illuminations were acting as reminder to the world outside waiting for them, or just another manifestation of Mr. Yates situation. Again, they were plunged into darkness. When the light returned for a moment, his question was answered.

The far wall had dropped away a considerable distance and, instead of illuminating pipes and tubes, there was a veritable scattered jigsaw of rooms wholly disconnected from the interior structure. August paused and peered out over the void, waiting for the next flash so he might manage a better look at one of the drifting spaces. The beacons glowed again and this time, August concentrated his attention upon a room that was drifting nearby. It looked like a master bedroom. Probably the same that Mr. and Mrs. Yates had shared before the tragedy had made the space unlivable. The sheets were turned down, the bedside tables lightly cluttered, the top of the dresser drawers held a small collection of boxes and clear plastic racks filled with earrings of varying styles. Darkness. When light returned, the room had drifted too far away for August to make any further detail, so he continued downwards.

The stairwell seemed to continue endlessly. Was there any end to it all? Or were they, like the ill-fated pastry bag, doomed to turn up covered in mold after a journey into infinity? Still, there were more important concerns at hand. Despite the inescapable, insistent truth of their situation, August couldn't shake the notion that there was something truly wrong here. For the sake of argument, he entertained the possibility that, despite what the records showed, Mr. Yates indeed had access to the entirety of his Dead Words. But that didn't explain the scale or the complexity of what surrounded them. How the hell did a man who, according to record, showed little interest in his Dead Words manage all of this? Before August could pursue that line of questions, another room came into view, this one much closer to the stairs than the master bedroom.

Catherine was etched into a decorative wooden plaque that hung above the door. Though the room was fully furnished, the cleanliness gave the impression that it hadn't been lived in. The few framed photos which were close enough to discern the still figures showed neither friends nor fond family scenes, instead they were distorted in the most unusual fashion. To say that young Catherine looked more peaceful on the cold slab at the morgue was a kindness when compared to how she and her mother appeared in one of the frames. It was just for a few moments, but August clearly saw that both had taken the appearance of misshapen, ghoulish versions of themselves. A stark contrast to the otherwise clean and untouched room.

August paused on the stairs as he watched the room slowly drift by and eventually out of sight. Everything we've seen today hasn't been quite right. It's like he's looking for something but his memory isn't clear on what's what. Like he's pulling together the sharpest versions of his memories. Overly positive, overly negative, but in the end it's confused. The only constant is him...the only constant is Mr. Yates. As August silently turned over the details, the rooms which had, up until that point, appeared close enough periodically, began to do so more rapidly. Some appeared next to the investigators so suddenly that it was like they'd materialized instead of traveling through the space which the others inhabited. Appearing and disappearing in blurs, pausing just long enough for brief consideration before returning to nothingness again.

August watched them for a while, catching glimpses into the rooms as they appeared before him. It was almost like watching a slideshow that was in a hurry to get through all of the boring vacation shots to get to the good stuff. Though there was little time for true examination, the varying states of the rooms further cemented his suspicions. It was like a collage of half-truths, vibrant depictions of unconditional love and bitter memories clashing and colliding in a poorly constructed mask that hoped to hide away the truth. “Ariel, I'm tired of this. I think it's time that we meet Mr. Yates. Lies are only ever at their best when the foundation of the truth remains a mystery.”

August stepped out onto a landing and like a stone striking the surface of a lake, the darkness rippled away into a light grey-blue. The space was completely empty aside from a slightly chipped painted door that stood alone before them. August strode across the expanse, took hold of the door knob and pushed the door open. Inside the room, seated at a single chair facing the entrance, was Mr. Yates, albeit a withered version of himself. As August crossed the threshold, he could hear a faint muttering, “Daddy misses you. Forgive me. Daddy misses you. Forgive me.” It also became clear that Mr. Yates wasn't alone. On either side of the desiccated Mr. Yates, holding firmly to his boney shoulders, fingers caked in dried blood around the puncture wounds, stood two recreations of Catherine and Melinda, cast in the gold and brass of the tubes that routed power throughout the city. They were decorated from head to toe with sigils. In a morbid way, they were a beautiful recreation of the family that had since been lost. The perfect memory. The sigils glowed and hummed, the power flowing into the house coursed through their delicate features and directly into Mr. Yates. Rather, what was left of him.

“Mr. Yates?” he asked. “Mr. Yates, can you hear me? Are you alright?”

“Daddy misses you. Forgive me. Daddy misses you...” he muttered continuously. It was reflexive. Mr. Yates wasn't talking to anyone in particular. Could he even hear those endless appeals? Those endless apologies?

“This is bad. Real damn bad.”
 
Temp stared at Ariel blankly. Then he stood up, brushing shards of glass off of himself.

“Pulling stunts like that, you'll be 'going first' long before I do,” he said, stepping out from behind the couch.

Ouch. That felt something like a threat. Well, she couldn’t quite refute him, so she just looked off to the side, mildly abashed. She’d make it up to him later. The two approached the hole, and Ariel breathed in sharply when the smoke cleared and revealed the inky-black portal. Now she felt even more bad about telling him to forge ahead in front of her. He did it without complaint either, which was the most damning thing.

Ariel hovered behind her partner as he took a step forward, ready to snatch him back out at the slightest sign he wasn’t in any danger. As he took a step, they both paused, and a moment that felt like an eternity passed. Nothing happened.

She exhaled at the same time as Temp.

“Let’s go,” he said, and Ariel pretended not to notice the quiver in his voice.

She descended down the stairwell, the distant oranges flickering. Everytime it did, she could feel a pull. The tugging sensation got stronger and stronger with every step, and when Temp suddenly stopped to peer at a room, she couldn’t help but utter a yelp. It was almost as if the house wanted her to trip, and she knew that if she did she would fall. Faster and faster to the heart of this place.

A room came, drifting almost peacefully beside the endless staircase. Ariel’s calves had begun to hurt from the constant effort of keeping herself upright against the invisible tide, so she didn’t make much out of the room beside the nameplate.

It was a bad idea, but the policewoman closed her eyes, focusing on maintaining a steady pace behind August. Even as the rooms began to whiz by their small staircase, smears of color hurtling through blackness, she had to fight the descent, lest she break out into a run. The stairs had begun to feel like an escalator down.

The darkness lent a certain amount of coolness that Ariel could appreciate. After a while, it felt soothing and between the flashing maelstrom of rooms and the incessant lurching she was fighting, it was a relief. So Ariel twitched her clenched jaw in irritation as Temp dispelled the darkness around him with a footstep, revealing a simple, rough door.

Did Temp not notice how hot it was all of the sudden?

It felt like her stomach was trying to claw its way out of her throat now. He hadn’t even heard whatever Temp had said before he opened the door. He couldn’t feel it, could he? The grief and ache—he probably could, that was his whole shtick, after all—was thick enough in the air to sink your teeth into and chew, but it wasn’t what she was buckling under. There was a void, pure emptiness at the heart of the desiccated corpse and the facsimile family of pipes. It demanded something to fill it. Maybe the convenient juicy mana battery that had conveniently walked in would do, because clearly the entire block’s mana supply wasn’t cutting it.

Ariel’s legs shook. Speaking of cutting, it felt like there were tenderhooks in her skin.

She was sweating, shivering from the pure thrum of energy concentrated in this room. Little wonder that Mr. Yates was mummified there, if anyone was exposed to that much energy they’d probably shrivel into an unrecognizable corpse as well. She pulled at her collar, desperate for some air to cool her burning skin, but there was no breeze here. Only absolute stillness.

“This is bad. Real damn bad,” August said.

Oh, she hadn’t even told August about this, hadn’t she? She loved complaining, this house was really doing a number on her. Ariel tried working her tongue, finding her mouth like sand. And when she moved her tongue, it wanted to stay pressed up against her teeth.

“Hey, Temp,” she finally managed to say, before collapsing on the ground.

To her horror, she realized that she was slowly, painfully inching towards the macabre display of pipes and death at the center of the room. The floor was rough, and just hot enough to be painful without burning her. She didn’t have the strength to stand anymore, staying put on the ground was all she could do.

“Temp,” she gasped, “you better think of something quick. I got two shots in me. I let ‘em loose though, you better be fast. Cause after I shoot, I’m not sure I’m gonna be strong enough to stay put, yeah?”

Grimly, she stuck her cheek on the hot, concrete floor, and aimed.
 
August turned back just in time to see Ariel draw her weapon and immediately stepped between her and Mr. Yates, “You don't want to do that,” he said, hand raised in a steadying gesture. The shards of flying glass and billowing smoke, the products of the exploded family entertainment system flashed across his mind. If all the energy that surged through the house was a humming vortex of mana being funneled into a single point, what would happen if that nexus was to be violently interrupted? “Remember the television? This place is sucking up the power from an entire neighborhood. You put a hole in Mr. Yates and BOOM! He goes. We go. The whole thing goes up.”

Uncertain of how to help Ariel in that moment, the investigator stood his ground and watched as his partner resigned herself to laying on the floor. Steadily, August lowered his hand, making sure that the message rang loud and clear. For someone who normally shot first and seldom asked questions later, August was glad for her restraint in that moment. Though had she ushered them both to the afterlife in that split second, he might have forgiven her on account of the pain that was etched into her features. Whatever was happening here, somehow it was drawing additional energy from Ariel. Yet even if there wasn't a chance that they wouldn't blow up, there was a chance that Mr. Yates was still alive.

Step by step, August cautiously approached the grim display. Up-close the recreations of Catherine and Melinda were far more unsettling than August had observed from the door. Somehow they seemed colder when just a foot or so away from them, like the intricacies in the layering and arrangement of tubes, once observable, distracted the eye and made their features blend into themselves. Grimacing slightly, August turned his attention to Mr. Yates who, to his surprise, was still breathing. Albeit very shallowly. The problem was, Mr. Yates didn't appear to be reacting to outside stimulus. His eyes were open but they weren't seeing. At least not what was directly in front of them.

“Any chance you just snap out of this, stand up and make this all go away?” August offered hopefully. He paused, hope against hope that the playful banter would get a chuckle out of the poor man. Of course, Mr. Yates didn't stir. He could hear Ariel's labored breathing, time was beating against his eardrums. He'd have to apologize to Mr. Yates later. No matter how many times he did it, scrying the human mind never seemed to get any easier. Though he had spent many hours in practice in the R&D offices, the process never felt as directed as he would have liked. Like diving into all that gray matter was like having waves crash over your head at the same time the undertow sucked you into the depths. August gently placed his hands on Mr. Yates head and exhaled softly as he silently invoked the first level of his Dead Words. Please...at least be near the damn surface. I don't have time to dig around.

The silver strands mixed in with the midnight-purples began to shimmer against the deepening purples, as August's mana responded to the call of the Dead Words. In an instant, though only seen by the investigator, the room was consumed by a sea of stars which cast August and Mr. Yates in their cosmic light, the silver shimmering more vibrantly, almost as if they too were part of that stellar tapestry. Then, just as he secured stable footing for scrying, a tumult of fractured memories erupted all around him. Chaotic was a kind word to describe the ravaged landscape of the mind that was unfolding before him. In the past, August had described diving into the human mind like prying open a locked safe only to find a jigsaw puzzle that, when assembled, held a picture of yet another safe. This time however, was beyond anything he'd experienced before. This time, he was greeted by something he could not have anticipated, the near deafening sound of Mr. Yates Dead Words.

The invasion of sound nearly forced August to his knees. Each thunderous segment pounded against his ribs, shaking his bones. They boomed over and over again. August had barely managed to steady himself when the barrage of memories crashed over him like panes of glass. They pounded against him in time with the Dead Words, battered his form and lacerating his hands. Each twisted memory was as vivid as it was confused, like a television scanning through channels incessantly. August drew upon his mana further in hopes of buffering the onslaught but he couldn't find footing. The moment his focus slipped, he was forced out.

“Damn it!” he gasped, clutching his heaving chest, the Dead Words still ringing in his ears. August raised his eyes to meet Mr. Yates' unblinking stare. How was it possible? What little still remained in the tortured form Mr. Yates, those fragments which allowed him to cling so desperately to life had been purposed entirely to the continued invocation of his Dead Words. The larger picture came into focus. The apologetic muttering shot through August like a whistling wind on a frigid winter day. The menagerie of drifting rooms, the snapshots of memory, those pounding Dead Words. He was searching for Catherine. Somehow he'd become convinced that accessing the entirety of his Dead Words would allow him to see her again. To create a space where they could be happy again.

August glanced over his shoulder at Ariel, she'd only gotten worse. He retrieved his weapon from its holster and pointed it at Mr. Yates. “I'm sorry.” A whirl of purple and silver mist whirled around the barrel of the weapon, collecting into the opening as the magic of the Dead Words flowed through August into its inner workings. August squeezed the trigger and the weapon fired and instantly a jet of purple and black dust shot out of the back of Mr. Yates head, striking the headboard. Every last one of Mr. Yates's memories had been wiped away as if they'd never once been thought in the first place. Tabula Rasa. Gone forever. The sigils stopped humming.

As the investigator lowered his weapon, the room reverted to an unassuming office. There, the evidence of a desperate search for answers filled the room in stacks of books and heaps of paper. Mr. Yates wasn't muttering anymore. His eyes now closed. Though there was nothing more to see, August couldn't help but linger on the scene. The constructed gazes of Catherine and Melinda looked out vacantly, their hands still holding firmly to the empty vessel that had once been a loving family man. August tore himself away from the scene and walked over to Ariel, crouching down and offered his hand, “Let's get out of here.”
 
“Remember the television? This place is sucking up the power from an entire neighborhood. You put a hole in Mr. Yates and BOOM! He goes. We go. The whole thing goes up.”

"Yeah, I know," Ariel said, gritting her teeth, "I can see that. Just let me know if you need it though."

Satisfied that she was unneeded, she focused on breathing while August simply walked over to the horrifying maelstrom of energy that was Mr. Yates. She didn't know if he was a corpse now, but from the looks of it, it sure beat whatever was currently happening to him. She vaguely heard her partner crack a joke as she felt her fingernails slide against the concrete. Well, he wasn't having any more fun than she was, so that was some comfort.

As if to punctuate that thought, Ariel vaguely heard him fall hard onto his knees. That wasn't good. It was all she could do not to look up and stare, because she felt like if she put her head up her eyelids would be stripped off of her eyes. Over the blood pounding in her ears, she finally August take out his weapon and mutter an apology.

Then a shot.

It was a terrible shot. Not a bad shot as in poor marksmanship, but a bad shot because of how immediate the absence felt. As soon as she walked down that horrible set of stairs leading down from the blown-open hole in the wall, she had felt that aching, grieving hole punched in the heart of Mr. Yates. It was what powered the entire place, and was likely the only thing that still pumped the blood in that poor father’s veins.

And now there was nothing.

All at once, she could feel the relief as her muscles stopped tensing against the pull. Of course, that didn't mean that she wasn't absolutely about to turn her stomach inside out of course, or that she didn't suddenly jerk forth as the pressure released faster than her muscles could react. She ended up somewhat concussed, about to vomit, and with a walk up a long magical flight of stairs ahead of he.

"Let's get out of here."

Temp offered her a hand, and she gratefully took it, getting unsteadily onto her feet.

"Yeah," Ariel panted, "let's."

While she was winding up to ask Temp to carry her up the stairs, she noticed that the stairs had reverted back to normal. She was only slightly disappointed. As she got her bearings, Ariel took in the room filled with stacks of papers and documents that all had the desperate scrawl of somebody who was deeply lost. She glanced back at Mr. Yates, which was more the purple-black dust that splattered across the headboard than the body itself. She didn't like that at all, but what was Temp to do? Let her and the entire city block die because of somebody's grief? She shook her head and followed Temp up the stairs.

Something was bugging her, though. How did Mr. Yates do all this? Certainly, he could research something fierce, and there was nothing more that desperation couldn't speed up, but the level here was unreal. And there was also the deliberate tampering of the power supply outside. There was something to this.

“There’s something about this,” she said quietly, “the power lines were tampered. He was slinging Dead Words way outside of his pay grade, Temp. Some sick motherfucker was behind this, swooped down and found this grieving father and made him do this, I know it. Fuck, I—”

Ariel stopped, realizing how keyed-up she was. She let out a long breath that she didn’t know that she was holding, letting her shoulders sag.

“Well. Damn shame we can’t look in his memory now. Not that you’re to blame for that, you did what you had to do.”

They walked outside. It was a normal day, and there were songbirds chirping somewhere on power lines that suddenly were no longer humming. It seemed like too nice of a day for what had just happened, but that was everyday when you had fake weather.

“You okay, Temp?” she asked, her voice soft. “About the whole wipe? It was a hell of a thing, and I know you’ve got your own thing with memory…”

Ariel trailed off. Well hopefully she’d get an answer to that. She worried about her partner sometimes, not that he needed someone younger to worry over him. But, hey, what could she do?
 
“Couldn't have gotten anything from it. It was like trying to pick a needle out of haystack in the middle of a storm...or like trying to get the facts from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from another,” he explained as if not completely sure of the details himself. “In the end, what's the choice between a 'living' bomb and a neighborhood? No choice at all, I imagine.”

August led his partner to an ambulance that had recently turned onto the avenue and parked a short distance away from the scene. The medics were waiting patiently by the open back door and while they'd done their best to convince him that a brief checkup was in his best interest, then remind him that it was department policy, he waved it off and shifted their focus to Ariel who was, clearly in far worse shape. “Careful with this one, she might look like hell but she can still blow up this bus,” August said before leaving Ariel in their care, turning away from the scene and walking down the street, heading nowhere in particular.

A few nights later...

August's eyebrow twitched slightly at the chime sounding from the pocket of his pants which were slung carelessly over the arm of his couch. The glow of the front screen just barely illuminating the surrounding darkness. It wasn't until the vibrations had loosened the fabric's hold on the phone, sending the device crashing to the hard-wood floor, did August lurch forward out of bed, as if woken suddenly from a bad dream. August briefly regarded the dark emptiness of his apartment, his semi-consciousness attempting to reconcile his sudden awakening with the cause. The phone chimed again, buzzing and rattled against the floor.

“What is it?” he asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“There's been a break-in,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Get down to Southeastern Bank as soon as possible.”

On the scene at Southeastern Bank...

As soon as August had laid eyes on the crime scene, it became quite clear why this break-in couldn't wait til a more reasonable hour. Hell, it might have even stood up to the hot pancake test. In the place of where a quite substantial and expensive safe door should have been, there was a gaping hole, the perimeter of which was a jagged mess of twisted steel and reinforced concrete. Bits of the intricate locking mechanism protruded from the recesses that had housed them, like a mouthful of broken teeth. The immense safe door lay amid a pile of shattered and powdered marble flooring, deposit and transaction slips and splintered wood on the far-side of the bank lobby. Impressively, the usually slow moving tons of steel had tumbled down the hall, tore through the retaining wall, completely obliterated a series of desks and, by some miracle, stopped before exiting the building entirely.

August carefully stepped over the bottom row of broken locking pistons and into the vault's hold. Even with a cursory glance around the room, the scope of the plunder was astonishing. Had he not been there to see it himself, the Investigator would have disregarded a description of the scene as hyperbole. Something straight out of a cartoon or out of a completely unrealistic heist movie. But yet, before him was the sort of scene that bashed you over the head with its ham-fisted symbolism; this was the big one. From the floor to the ceiling, from wall to wall, each and every lock and storage box was open, the contents gone. Not just some of it. All of it. Gone. The vault, minus the destruction, was as clean as the day it had been fitted.

“Listen, Gus. After we do this, I walk away,” August grumbled, leaning up against an imaginary wall, peering around the invisible corner. His most trusted partner, the cold steel and stock of his equally imaginary blunderbuss gripped tightly in calloused and motor oil stained hands. “I can't keep lying to her, Gus. Can't keep lying to the kids. This is the big one. The last one. Make it count.”

“What was that?” Officer Lown asked, turning towards August. “Sorry, still having trouble hearing. Took half an hour to get the damn alarm turned off,” she said as she prodded and agitated the inside of her ear, hoping perhaps to somehow dislodge the lingering ringing with just the tip of her finger.

“When does the Manager get here?”

“Any minute now, your partner was sent to pick him up.”
 
“Couldn't have gotten anything from it. It was like trying to pick a needle out of a haystack in the middle of a storm… or like trying to get the facts from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from another,” he said. He kept stopping. “In the end, what's the choice between a 'living' bomb and a neighborhood? No choice at all, I imagine.”

Ariel would have scoffed if she had the air. Deflecting with work when she asked about him. Typical. He even ran from the waiting medics, tossing her like bait. At least the worry was genuine. She’d let it slide this time.

“Don’t worry about him too much, he needs a psych checkup more than a physical,” Ariel said. She glanced over at an EMT, who backed up slightly. “And don’t worry about his little joke. I’m not going to blow anything up.”

She paused.

“So long as you don’t hook anything up to me that uses the patient’s mana. Here.”

Ariel handed the paramedics a little metal tag, a medical ID bracelet. It told the EMTs about her prodigious mana pool and to treat her as if she had a severe mana deficiency. The medic looked back at the various coils of glowing, colorful tubing bubbling over with potions.

“I’ll be okay with some aspirin,” Ariel said. She should have followed Temp. Could have gotten a stiff drink, at least.

Several nights later

It was just in the midst of one, perhaps two, glasses that she got a call. The pretty lady who bought them for her looked puzzled. Ariel was off tomorrow, so late it really wrapped to morning, so she was enjoying herself. Unfortunately, she technically was on-call and she technically was still within her hours. The conversation was going so well too. They were talking about magically-aged vintages and the drapes that the woman—still hadn’t gotten a name yet, she was working on it—had back at her place. Ariel seriously considered letting the phone ring.

She sighed. That wouldn’t do. Even if she flaked, Temp would come running. And then he’d be off on his own. Diligent guy. Ariel stood up, made her excuses to her would-be hook-up, and left the bar.

Several minutes later, she sobered up courtesy to a little poultice she kept at all times, and fetched the manager for the Southeastern Bank. Apparently there was a break-in. She didn’t do her banking there, she preferred the police credit union. Still, did her parents have their accounts there? She didn’t remember. Eventually, she pulled up to the house, a somber little number with some out-of-place pink highlights. All the lights were out. Was this guy even awake?

Probably not, but if she wasn’t getting any sleep tonight, she’d do her darndest to ensure that neither did anyone else. Ariel marched up to the front door, and lifted the heavy brass knocker. It made a sound like a gong as it struck, much to her delight, and the entire house reverberated with it. She promptly knocked several more times. Enough times that some footsteps rushed to the front door to stop her. Then the door opened and Ariel was no longer eager to wake this man.

Timothy Craeke, the manager of the Southeastern Bank and presumably the guy in charge of the vault, was a large, imposing man, with shoulders wide enough to force you off the sidewalk. He had gleaming muscles that Ariel might have given a second look had they not been covered by sheer, pink lingerie. She opened her mouth, then closed it.

“Yes?” the man asked, looking over at Ariel’s badge.

Ariel did her best not to judge.

“Mr. Craeke?”

“That’s me.”

“Cool. Uh, your bank vault’s been blown off the hinges. We need you to come down and take a look at it.”

He glowered at Ariel, as if she were personally responsible. Then he let out a string of curses that would have expanded a toddler’s entire vocabulary three-fold. He ripped a suit off a coat rack right next to the door, hopping around as he shimmied into his too-tight pants.

Ariel was really glad she brought around a squad car. They got inside, and she offered him some snacks that she’d picked up at the bar. He declined, instead choosing to mutter to himself. One uncomfortable car ride later, they arrived at the dragon’s maw of twisted metal.

She whistled, walking up to Temp’s familiar silhouette. He was with Officer Lown, who seemed to be cleaning her ears.

“Hey! Lown! You guys screwed me out of a date. This better be good.”

She tossed her a paper bag, which the other officer managed to catch. She looked into it, some deep-fried bar food, and tucked it back, looking indulgent.

“You can pick up a date whenever you want, Ariel, eh, Officer Temple?” Officer Lown elbowed him. “And yeah, this one should be good. You bring the manager?”

“Yep. Right behind me.”

Craeke shivered with anger, rushing forward to inspect the damage. Meanwhile, Ariel stepped around to her partner.

“Hey, Temp,” she said, poking him with a paper bag, “this looks like a shitshow, but you should see what the manager’s wearing underneath that wrinkled suit. Anyways, you hungry?”
 
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