‘Courage in a tin can.’

April 20th, 2000 — Evening

They traveled across the boardwalk, smothered underneath the near-summer crowd. Each step Felix takes causes the sea bitten boards to strain and creek, a little sound of protest washed away by the swarms noises of human buzzards and light, cheery rhythms emanating from all directions.

“Let’s take the public route,” Marie had said when they were deliberating on a travel plan. “Not even the maddest mage would want to launch a brazen attack in public.”

“Why’s that?” Felix asked, glancing at the then-distant boardwalk front. It was only a few minutes after six, and there was hardly a spot of path free — the only cleared out spaces were occupied by buskers who were plying their tricks; juggling, song, painting, and more. A tough walk.

“Why? Last thing anybody would want is a Knight, Enforcer, or Exorcist riding their ass. Or, even worse yet, there might be a rare occasion where the big shots work together. That’s slightly terrifying.”

“What… kind of situation would warrant that?”

Marie shrugged and pulled him to his feet. “Cold war comes to mind. Get Erika to tell you about that one — heard that one was a disaster. But enough of the past. We’ve got our own problems to take care of.”

So they went. If the problems were located at Pier 3, that gave them just under two hours to traverse approximately two miles. Even at a maximum caution crawl, they would have no problems making it to the destination in time. They’ve already made it to the cross-intersection entrance of Pier 2, which means Pier 3 is only another 20 minutes away.

But when he turns to inform Marie of the good news, she’s not behind him. She was trailing behind him, moments earlier. Now she isn’t. He spins around, a strange tightening sensation rising in his chest.

Where had she gone? Where was she? The question loops over and over in his mind as he takes in the surroundings — worn wooden railings, storefronts with smatterings of tourists, faceless people, trash cans, red-blue-yellow umbrellas above ice-cream trucks, a red evening sun, the people, the people on the crimson beaches, the river of people that diverge around him, flow disrupted by his mere presence.

Where? Where? Where?

Where was he?

Felix grabs at his forehead, feeling some part of his mind crumpling from a near overwhelming weight. Familiar, yet foreign — distant memory of needles.

“Trial 39, commence. Subject is █████ █████, age █.”

A voice made of liquid metal leaks from the ground. Felix stares at an invasive block of glass that has penetrated the boardwalk. Beyond, a steel room with candles and red wax on the walls.

“Failed,” a different voice says. “Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed.”

A voice, modulated, pitched up, pitched down, stretched out, sped up into blips. It repeats itself. “Failed. Failed. Failed. Failed.” Failed. Failed. Failed.

Failed.

Time resets to 00:00:00. Watch scream.

“—You’re not a failure. Come along, now.”

There is, there was, there will be a hand that reaches out. A soft voice, basked in silver. “You’ll forget about all of the pain and suffering, soon enough. Just another step.”

Who was he?

Answer, replay. Logic gate set. Rewinds to gate: error. Trace failure. A buzzard basking in gold. Filtered sunlight. Three winters in a can, a place that does not exist, a scream with no sound. They melt through the cracks, a bloody blue, dribbling onto a platter of brass; and behind the platter, a blue dress in—

“Oi. Gotcha somefin’.”

Something is in front of him. A little pink cloud on a stick, held out in a limp hand. It smells of caramelized sugar and almost-offensively artificial watermelon, a scent that comes close to what fruit shampoo would taste like if the smell matched the oral components. The visceral sensation blows away the anomaly in his mind, leaving him with a clear head.

A memory? A delusion? A premonition? He can’t tell.

“Yer lookin’ like a lost kid in a grocery store. Or something.”

Marie. The current voice belongs to Marie. The mere sight of her is enough to flush the tension from his chest. “Oh, hey. There you are.”

She’s currently dual wielding two fluffy clouds on sticks. The one in her left hand seems to be offered to him. There’s a brown paper bag hanging from her teeth. “What’s the phone for?” she asks, tilting her head.

Phone? He looks down at his right hand, where his phone has spontaneously appeared. His knuckles are bone-white on the shell — the plastic whines underneath his fingers. He loosens up and shoves it in his pocket. “Uh, nothing.” There is a much more immediate issue in front of him. “What’s… this?”

Marie furrows her brows, forces the fluff-stick into his hand, and dislodges the bag from his mouth. “What? You don’t know what this is?”

It appears to be a confection of some sort. He inspects it from multiple angles, analyzing the fine, string-like structure that circles around a paper cone. Are people supposed to eat this? “Is, this, uhh… a confection of some sort?”

She stares at him with an absolutely dumbfounded, open-mouthed look, then looks down at her own fluff-stick. “You… serious right now?”

He nods.

“...Alright. Change of plans.”

With the hand holding the paper bag, she hooks her arm around his and starts dragging him. The distant Pier 3 disappears into the sweltering colours of the crowd, blotted out by other people. His arm is trapped in her armpit — her body is warm, almost scalding. “W-Where are we going?”

Marie looks over her shoulder, a sly smile twisting her lips. “You kidding? We’re going to have some fun, idiot. If you’ve never had cotton candy, then you’ve obviously never lived.”

The mission. “B-But—”

Her eyes shimmer a brilliant emerald as she waves around her cotton candy. “It’s only human to mess about like this. We both have some money and time to burn, so let’s go into tonight with high spirits, eh?”

The mere objects she points at seem to grow vivid, highlighted in his vision by lights that hadn’t existed until now. Ice cream stands. Photo booths. Carnival games. All sorts of artery-clogging fried foods. Other people. A moon hidden away in a pale-blue sky. The sensations, the smells, the colours were previously unknown things to him, as though locked away by some mental prison.

‘You do understand.’

Marie’s words bring a direct contradiction to the twin’s deductions. Would it really be this easy to become ‘alive?’ Surely, the essence of ‘humanity’ cannot be distilled into jovial feasting and frollicking.

Being this close to her induces another emotion as well, something even more potent than physical wounds. Mere verbal jabs and brushes of skin fill him with kaleidoscopes of butterflies, threatening to overload his brain with tingles and jitters. It’s a feeling close to fear and danger, but not quite.

Something might break if he continues like this. Something irreplaceable, invaluable, instrumental. But no matter his mental state, Felix is technically a man of science. This is a personal experiment that must be seen out, regardless of the consequences. He just knows he has to.

So for now, he relents and submits himself into whatever cruel and unusual experiment Marie has decided upon. He walks with her, submerging himself the miasma of happy noises and rainbow lights.

The experiment transpires at an alarming rate. In the first stage, Felix is force fed a variety of confections of Marie’s liking, consuming approximately ten times over the daily recommended limit of sugar and fried carbohydrates.

Fried cinnamon apples. Chicken-fried custard cookies. Cotton candy. Even double fried, double-glazed ice cream sandwiches. It is a relentless stream of life-threatening, unfamiliar sweets — Felix isn’t even sure if he’s alive by the time he finishes the last bite of the fried ice cream abomination.

“See? It’s hot on the outside, cold on the inside,” Marie says, nibbling on her own. “It’s like magic. But not really. Almost.”

The only response Felix can muster is a pained groan.

The second stage consists of many trivial tests that measure reaction time, hand-eye coordination, and several other bodily-kinesthetic factors.

“They’re carnival games,” Marie explains.

Felix can only tilt his head at what looks like a miniature basketball court in a shack. “But why?”

She shoves a ball into his hands. “Yes. Just do it.”

That’s probably the best explanation he’s going to get. He follows her instructions, and surprisingly, they win a small collection of trinkets for their efforts. Several booth owners give them the stink-eye as they walk away, prizes in hand. Marie hands off most of her winnings to awe-struck children, so Felix follows her lead. He is met with loud children and one too many accusations from suspicious parents — maybe he doesn’t have the face for this kind of charity.

“I’m just filling up my good deed quota for the year,” she later says.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Felix mutters, scurrying away from howling soccer mom.

“It’s more of an ego thing. C’mon, we’ve still got some time to burn.”

Having expended both her cotton candy and fried cinnamon sticks much earlier in the night, she grabs him by the wrist. Felix is dragged to an especially frightening row of American iconography — there are guns laid side by side in a booth, tended to a scraggly man dressed up as a cowboy.

“Test yer luck, pardner,” he says, drawling a bit too hard on partner. It is most likely the worst faux accent Felix has ever heard.

Marie is about to walk past her, but something catches her eye on the top shelf. Felix follows her gaze to what looks like a massive bunny plush wearing a brown jacket — it even has a pair of goggles on its forehead, partially hidden by massive floppy ears.

“Huh,” she says, “it kinda reminds me of you.”

Felix does not need to take another glance to know that he bears little resemblance to such a thing. “Barely. I don’t have fur...”

She looks over at him and smirks. “Hold up five minutes.”

He watches helplessly as Marie storms off with a few tickets in hand to the nearest gun. She handles it with ease — her hands fly over the exterior, inspecting each component with only a graze of her fingers.

“How much for the bun?” she asks, gesturing to the rabbit.

“Ya got eyes for the grand prize, aintcha girl? That’ll be all ten targets with eleven shots — gotta have a crack eye for that one.”

They exchange a brief, intense staring match, then Marie forks over a ticket. Then she aims.

The result can be described as nearly miraculous. Each tin can and glass bottle falls one after another in rapid succession, as though the air rifle unleashed a compact wave of air instead of metal pellets. Felix is about to call out a bolted down tin can after watching a metal pellet merely bounce off, but somehow, the final shot blows the top of the target off.

In another life, she would surely be a genius sniper.

The pretend-cowboy looks at the gun, at Marie, then at Felix, who gives a defeated shrug. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

After patting the thing on the head a few times, Marie shoves the bunny into Felix’s arms — the thing is nearly half his size. There’s no way it can fit in his bag.

“How am I supposed to walk around with this?” Felix asks, hugging the oversized bunny to his chest.

She shrugs. “Give it a piggyback ride. Or something.”

A piggyback ride. Hmm.

Around 7:30 PM, they walk towards the Pier 2 exit, deep into the evening glow. The bunny attracts no shortage of jealous, questioning, and amused glances from passing pedestrians. Marie regards him with a cool, smug satisfaction as they walk on the main street, trailing behind a few steps.

“What?” she says, “think of it like your brother. It looks just like you.”

“Mrmh.” It doesn’t look like him in the slightest, but arguing with her is a completely lost cause. He just hugs the rabbit’s arms to his chest and sighs.

Left with no other carrying options, he has been carrying the rabbit on his back for a while now. While his sense of public embarrassment is barely there, he’s self-conscious enough to know that this looks more than a little ridiculous.

But that hardly seems to bother Marie. Infact, her reaction errs on the side of blissful amusement. She leans up on her tip-toes and gives the rabbit’s ears a flick.

“I don’t even know where I’ll put this… guy,” Felix mutters, glancing sideways at Marie.

“You’ll figure it out.”

Her grin tells him that she’ll enjoy watching him fumble with this thing. But as a sea breeze picks up and brushes against the both of them, her eyes soften. She takes a step directly in front of him and hides her arms behind her back.

“So?”

Her head is leveled at a slight angle, enough of an angle to send her bangs in front of her eyes. She brushes them out of the way and smiles in a different, much less insidious manner — this time, her emerald eyes seem to shimmer with a benevolent glow, a faint sheen of mirth.

Against the darkening blue sky, she almost looks like a witch; A terrible witch, but an angel nonetheless. Only somebody like a witch could defy the night and carry a spark of fleeting daylight in their smile.

“So… what?”

“Did you have fun? We just wasted a hundred dollars in under an hour — you better have had fun.”

Fun. Definition: Enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure.

Felix isn’t entirely sure how to answer her question. While he did find the detour crass and gluttonous, his head feels light — a glimmer of that initial butterfly sensation still remains.

“Well… did you have fun?”

Answering a question with a question is usually a safe bet. If she had fun, then he could base his response off that.

“Hey. This isn’t about me, this is about you.” She narrows her eyes, pressing her lips together. “Well? Did you?”

Marie saw right through him. Damn.

He takes a mental step back and re-evaluates the question. Right now, he has no objective way to answer her question. Fun is ultimately a subjective term applied to perceived measures of enjoyment when applied to a task or experience. When he isn’t completely sure how to even begin with that, that lingering sensation remains within him. A moment that will soon become a treasured memory.

Looking at it that way, he may have found a way to describe fun. He rubs the back of his neck, feeling a small smile creep onto his lips.

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

There is a recurring theme in Sapphire Isle and dilapidated architecture. I’m not sure if it was a result of overplanning, under planning, or just a plain old marketing stunt to attract urban explorers, but a few steps away from the glitz and glamour will always lead you to some sort of abandoned building. Pier 3 is, admittedly, more than a few steps away from the main hub of town, but you get the idea.

Once upon a time, the original designers of the revitalized Sapphire Isle thought that the commercial district would be much, much larger. Although they managed to fancy up everything between Pier 1 and Pier 2, Pier 3 was left in the dust. Maybe there just weren’t enough people interested in setting up a third tourist wharf, but the area around Pier 3 falls sharply into residential darkness.

If it weren’t for my flashlight, I probably would’ve taken a hard tumble into an unfortunate place. On this night, the sky seems to have forgotten that it’s no longer daytime — an almost full moon peeks over the horizon, out of place in a slate blue sky. An almost perfect light for a romantic getaway or supernatural gathering of some sort, but not every night can be a full moon night. Sadly.

There are only five working lights on Pier 3, spread out far between empty stalls and worn boards. The lack of workable illumination keeps most casual observers away from the pier at night-time, lest they crack open their head when a board gives underneath their foot.

“Is this place safe?” Felix asks.

Felix has been following my lead, carefully watching my footsteps as I step across the pier. I don’t think the big fuzzy Felix-Rabbit on his back has been doing his situational awareness any favours, but it can’t be helped. Really.

“Definitely not,” I say, slowing my pace. “You know, a lot of people have died here. Like, a lot.”

Both Felix and Felix-Rabbit seem to deflate. “O-Oh.”

“Lotta dudes just come here to end it. I’d say there’s an equal split of accidents and suicides — not that many these days, but y’know how it is.”

I point eastward, where the other two piers are mere strips of glittering light. It’s not quite dark enough to truly show off their flair, but they’re undoubtedly marks of civilization intruding on the sea. “Y’ever read The Great Gatsby?”

Felix shakes his head ‘no,’ and Felix-Rabbit’s droopy ears wiggle with the motion. “I don’t read that much…”

“Ah. Well, no matter.” I take another small detour, stepping to the pier’s eastern edge. My elbows rub against the hard wood railing, a completely unreliable support. I point to the light strip and gesture for him to come over. “I remember reading one of the notes in the obituaries a long time ago. Said something about how the dude couldn’t handle seeing this sight in particular.”

The Felix-stack joins me, trying to see what I’m talking about together. “What do you mean?”

“If you walk far enough, you’ll end up somewhere here. And on the farthest shore, you’ll see something you can’t reach.” I stretch my fingers out to the light, then close them around nothing. “What do you do, then?”

“Uh… walk back?”

I pout. “No, no, go with the metaphor for a second. Trust me.”

“Hum. Well, what’s the point of reaching for something you can’t reach?”

“Exactly.” I hold my fist up and point towards the almost-full moon, grinning. Reflected light drips down my arm, settling in a shimmering puddle atop the waters around me. Hunger. “Everything worthwhile is out of reach, most of the time. I may be saying this only to psyche myself up, but… that desire to reach out is what keeps us going. Can’t really forget what’s at stake.”

But Felix just stares at me, baffled. “I… I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Truth be told, even after forcibly taking a load off, my nerves are still frayed raw. This is the longest I’ve ever been without Erika’s constant supervision — I feel like a kid who’s just taken off their training wheels. It’s a little bit scary. Little bit mortifying. At this point, I’m not even sure what I’m actually fighting for; Aniya has gone out of her way to hide her motives.

If my purpose is to become a key for some unknown gate, I’d at least like to know what said gate actually is. Erika herself seems to be rather accepting of an ordinary life these days, so giving away what’s behind door #3 might be more productive than fighting.

Infact, everybody involved in this seems to be committed to secrecy. This would all be over if we could settle it with a good ol’ fist fight or two — suppose I’ll never understand other people at this rate. Maybe I can beat some answers out of Gabriel, for a start.

“Ah, don’t worry about it.” I wave for him to follow me and continue on my way. “Just a girl’s ramblings. C’mon, we’ve got a secret meeting to attend.”

The final light at the end of Pier 3 belongs to a ruin, a black and white pillar of brick that juts from a convenient rock plateau on the ocean’s surface. The spire casts a single, feeble ray towards the ocean, a faded beam of golden light. I slow down as I approach the entrance, holding out my arm to stop Felix.

“Stay frosty,” I say, looking around us.

While the immediate area is clear, there’s no telling what awaits us inside. “Stay behind me. I don’t want you getting in my way, you hear?”

Felix and Felix-Rabbit both nod. I take a few steps away from him and focus my senses.

Most magi are utterly incapable of seeing raw mana. It would certainly drive someone insane — a Sigil that could do that would be like if somebody suddenly began to see the atoms and quarks and whatever subatomic particles that make up everything in terrifying high definition.

For the rest of us, we’re forced to follow vague sensations and images in our mind’s eye. I activate my ether circuits and slowly build up a profile of the surrounding area in my head.

A cool, motionless wind blows against my nerves. A tugging sensation towards the light house. Streaks of blue leaking between bricks. I open my eyes and raise my palm, ready to shoot.

“There’s active mana in the area,” I say. I turn and gesture for Felix to move with my chin. “Give Gabriel a call. See if he’s still in there.”

Felix obliges. He digs out his phone and thumbs over the digit pad — a few seconds later, he holds it against his ear. “Gabriel? Are you at the meeting location?”

Moments pass. Felix lowers his phone and looks at me. “He says he’s hiding in the tower. Door should be unlocked.”

I lower my hand and shake my head. “...We’re just walking into an ambush, aren’t we?”

No response from him. An ocean breeze rushes past me, ruffling my loose hair.

In a worst case situation, I can activate my circuits and release a raw blast of mana in around half a second. It’ll probably end up destroying everything around me and burn up my entire internal reserve, but it’s a last resort that’s theoretically possible. Maybe one second for a snapfire. My defenses are quite low — without my magi robes to soak up blows, I’m left with just my body and whatever my pseudo-Reinforcement techniques can handle.

There’s a faint magical signature somewhere inside the lighthouse. At worst, it could be a runic trap. If I speed up my thoughts, then I can probably decipher and counterspell it in time.

Right. I can probably survive whatever comes. “Alright,” I say, psyching myself up, “Let’s do this.”

The rusted white entrance is left a crack open. I slowly nudge it forward with my elbow, letting my torch do the heavy lifting. Inside: checkerboard flooring, abandoned reception, limescale on concrete walls. Typewriter on counter. Footprints in dust. They lead up the stairs.

I follow my harsh circle of my torch, shining it up the twisted iron staircase. It ends at a solid black platform — the top of the lighthouse.

Each step rings. A grating sound, clattering and bouncing off worn brick. Two tone echoes, tumbling through brine. I can barely hear Felix behind me; by some unknown method, his steps are little droplets of noise, feather falls compared to my steps. I quietly hope that our noise won’t give us away.

The top of the lighthouse is a hatch we push open, a glass-walled octagon room containing a rotating, reflective sphere. A golden beam weeps from the middle of the sphere, where disjointed, layered disks converge; a pupil standing vigil against the night.

Gabriel and Adrian are waiting on the outside railing, two outlines against the dark sky; broad versus scrawny. Their backs are turned on us — they seem to be conversing about something. Can’t read their lips at this angle.

“Keep that basher of yours ready,” I say, clicking off my torch.

Felix nods hesitantly. “If… you say so.”

The black door’s handle gives way to a pull. A wall of wind meets me — I wince and step out onto the narrow ring platform.

The safety railing only comes up to my breast. Only comes up to Felix’s sternum. One push from anybody could cause a nasty tumble, the kind that ends in a sleep nobody wakes from. I keep my hand on top of the worn rail, feeling burst bubbles of white paint and fletched rust drag by. Could maybe swing myself or hold on long enough to blast any attackers.

“Oi, Gabriel. We’re here.”

I keep a fair distance from him as I call out, around five paces. Enough to fire a shot. Felix stands behind me, both hands occupied. Not very helpful in a fight.

Gabriel looks up at us, a one-sided grin on his face. “Kept us waiting, huh?”

He straightens up to his full height, a head over even Felix, resting his hands on his nape — completely ignorant of the tension in the air. Even Adrian is cowering, shivering in his sneakers with both hands on the rail.

“I thought we were going to meet on the ground,” I say, resting my free hand on my shoulder. Faster firing position. “Any reason we’re all the way up… here?”

“Well, ain’t that the question.” He gestures across the darkened horizon, then abruptly stops when he gets to Felix. “—What’s… with the bunny?”

I turn around and look at Felix. He’s still piggybacking the look-a-like rabbit, wearing it like an oversized backpack. His expression is unreadable, a thousand yard stare into the night.

I may have forgotten to tell him to put the plush down somewhere reasonable. “Uh… don’t worry about it. What’s all the privacy for, man? You trying to hide something?”

Gabriel just scoffs at me, giving Adrian a ‘get-a-load-of-this-guy’ nudge to the ribs. The gesture nearly sends the poor kid to his doom. “Of course I am. Been sleeping on a huge fuckin’ conspiracy, this town has. Think I’m about ready to blow it wide open.”

His body language is casual and friendly — if Aniya’s words are true, then he might be a spy. It’s easy enough to control the impression one’s body gives off. I’m not sure how much I can trust either of them, but her confession weighs down my mind. I have to stay as sharp as possible.

I feign wide eyes and a tight smile. “What’ve you got?”

“So you know that dude she’s been hanging around with? I followed them around a bit, did some scouting. Seems like Aniya’s reporting any supposed supernatural activity to him. Crazy, or what?”

“Huh.”

“There’s a reason I’m telling you directly — she’s been monitoring you. I don’t know what for, but she’s been keeping tabs on you for a long while. Not just you, but all of us. And some other sketchy shit.” He elbows Adrian again. “Come on, show her the pictures.”

Poor Adrian looks like he’s about to vomit as he hands me a strap with a digital camera attached to it; his other hand doesn’t leave the railing for a second.

“Take a look,” Gabrial boasts, “Pictures speak louder than words.”

“Think you got that idiom wrong,” I mutter. Nevertheless, I page through the camera’s digital storage.

Slideshows of moments play out on the tiny screen. Aniya handing over a white book to Greyvest. An exchange of dossiers. I can’t make out the names, but there are five of them going back and forth. A review session. One particular shot shows the inside of Greyvest’s wallet: I can faintly make out a red circle on a business card. I learn over to let Felix see; he nods absentmindedly at the photos, distracted with some other thought.

“And here’s the final nail,” Gabriel says, handing me a card from his jacket. I take it and read it:

Raldin Arseniy Moroz

Researcher, BIOENGINEERING & INORGANIC STUDIES

MIT Center for Theoretical Physics

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States

That’s it. No contact information at all, not even a disposable email. I frown and hand it back. “Where did you get this from?”

“I’ve never seen or heard of this guy in my life,” Felix protests. He looks genuinely confused — I don’t think he has any idea on what’s going on.

“I’ve got a sly hand and an even slyer mind,” Gabriel says, slipping the card into his pocket. “You see where it all connects now? It’s them. Now riddle me this — why would a big shot university be interested in a shitty town like this one? Why would there be multiple researchers from different departments sent here?”

Silence. My mind is still stuck on the combination of fields. Bioengineering, Inorganic Studies, and Theoretical Physics are very far away from one another.

“Marie, there’s something big going on here. I think MIT is competing over something in this town. I’m not sure how involved Felix is, but Aniya and this dude are totally in on it. Something with the oceans, I think.”

It’s true. MIT has been involved in whatever’s going on from the very start, but I initially disregarded them. Now that Gabriel’s pointing it out to me, the link of causality is almost painful to look at.

The tools from MIT. The grant money. Felix himself. It all might be a coverup by the Syndicate, but it’s getting too messy to really keep track of. Too many moving parts.

All I can really piece together is that these dueling departments at MIT might be aware of me and Erika. I’m not sure how the secret got out, but there’s a very real possibility that they may be working with the enemy mage. Hell, they might be the organization the mage belongs to.

“I didn’t expect any of this,” I admit. “I only found Ren and Pelchat and inexplicable comas that seemed to relate to the white book.”

“Right?” Gabriel puts his hand to his chin, nodding. “I think the only way we can narrow down our answers is to catch one of these dudes and make ‘em spill the beans. There’s just too much noise right now to make any deductions.”

And he doesn’t even know the magical end of things. Nightmare summons. The key and the gate.

“—that’s where you come in, Marie.”

Eh? “M-Me?”

“You said Aniya confessed to you, right? Must mean she has some emotional stake in your well-being — you’re basically our only shot at getting clear answers.” He points at me, a big grin on his mug.

Aniya also told me to avoid Gabriel tonight in specific. Did she not want me to hear what he had to say, or something else entirely? I don’t even know what to think — I’m not a genius; I can’t process all of these facts and details and inconsistencies at once. “If it has to come to that,” I utter, taking a deep breath.

“I know what you’re thinking. It’s insane that I, a random jock, have been looking into all of this. But I’ve got a personal stake here, too.” He thumps his chest, nearly bursting with determination.

I look back to Felix, who looks just about as lost as I am. Even his bunny looks confused. Adrian looks like a statue that’s been tuned out for a while now. Seems like Gabriel’s the only one with any idea of what’s going on here.

I’ll need to clear things up with Erika when I get home tonight. Maybe she has a better idea of what’s actually going on — I get the feeling that she’s not fully telling me what she’s been doing these past few nights. “Let’s meet up tomorrow and try to figure this situation out fully. I think I’m completely lost.”

“Yeah. I just wanted to let you know what I found. I’ll refine my theories tonight and—”

Gabriel’s stops in the middle of his sentence, abruptly. The smile slides off his face — his lips pull back, wide with fear. His wide blue eyes snap between the pier and I at an alarming rate, almost as though they’re jittering in their socket. Hysteria manifest.

The only reaction I can muster is a weak ‘huh?’

“No time to explain,” he says, breathlessly, “we need to go.”

My senses haven’t picked up anything — shouldn’t be anything to worry about. I step in front of him and hold out my arms. “Hold on, what were you saying?”

Gabriel pushes past me, trying to drag me with him. I hold my ground using the rail as leverage.

“We need to go. Now!”

“The hell are you — calm down…!”

“Go!”

But he says that final word, a headache pierces through my right eye like an iron stake. Pain spreads out, saturating my head with white—

Time loses its meaning.

Aniya’s warning.

Something important breaks. Air refuses to come into my lungs — hands clench on railing, refusing to move. Hands grasp, tearing pieces off me.

Something explodes — my vision snaps back into clarity. Screaming in my ear.

Endless sea of blue.

Teal blue flames dance on the pier, eating away at the worn wood. They leap from stall to stall, leak through the planks, crawl underneath and chew at the supports; all lashing out towards the heavens in a furious waltz of combustion. The main path of destruction trails behind a single vague humanoid figure standing in the center of the pier — a ring of flame surrounds them, a summoning circle written in fire and ash. The epicenter, like an invisible meteor struck and spread out in a wave.

The creature of blue flame looks towards me, craning its head upwards. Then it tilts its head.