“Thomas, are you sure you’re ok?” Rissa put a hand on Serenity’s other shoulder and her wrist against his forehead. As she stood with her back to the stranger, Serenity could see her lips move, without any sound. Serenity assumed she was asking if the man was associated with what they were looking for.

Before he could reply, the man spoke excitedly. “Did that slime do that to you? Or was it the explosion?”

Serenity stared over Rissa’s shoulder at the man. “Do what?”

At the same moment, Rissa asked, “Explosion?”

The man glanced back and forth between the two of them before answering Rissa’s question first. “The explosion? The one a minute or so ago? It felt like everything shook for a moment, only physical stuff didn’t move?”

“Oh, that.” Rissa glanced at Serenity, then back at the man.

“You’re covered in black stuff,” the man volunteered. “Really black stuff. Vantablack black. The same color as the slime. It looks really thin, but surely you noticed?”

Serenity looked at himself. He looked normal as far as he could tell. There wasn’t even any obvious deep purple magic. The magic Serenity could see in himself looked like his magic normally did. Serenity tapped his sunglasses to make a point, though the fact that they were outside probably reduced the impact. “I’m blind. So no, I can’t tell.”

He’d said it enough times now that somehow, it didn’t hurt to say anymore. He’d grown used to it. It probably helped that one way or another, he knew he was going to fix it.

“Oh.” The man didn’t seem to spend long considering his faux pas. “Wait, it’s not something on you, it’s a color change? Why is it on your clothes too? Does that mean you know something about the explosion?”

Serenity turned to Rissa. “There was an explosion?”

She looked puzzled. “Only of magic. It was pretty impressive.” She turned her head towards the unknown man. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

“YES! You do know what I’m talking about!” The man shouted, then looked around as though he were worried about someone judging him for it. “Do you know what caused it? There was this amazing resonance…”

“Why don’t we trade?” Serenity suggested. “Tell us about this resonance and what you’re looking for and I’ll tell you what I was doing. It seems to have backfired, after all, so maybe if we put out heads together we can come up with something useful?”

Or at least they might find out what this guy was doing covered in the signs of the magic of the stolen item. He didn’t strike Serenity as someone who would know how to arrange such a thing, but Serenity didn’t really know what he’d expected.

“Sure! Oh, I’m Liam.” The man turned and walked towards his townhouse.

Rissa spoke before Serenity could. “I’m Clarissa - please call me Clara, I don’t like my full name. This is Thomas.”

Serenity thought she should have just said she was Clara, but what did he know? She was better with people than he was.

As Liam opened the door, he asked, “Hey, have you guys been through the Tutorial? I’ve wanted to go, but it isn’t available to me yet.”

Serenity caught the screen door as it tried to swing shut behind Liam. “Yes. You know magic and haven’t been through the Tutorial yet?”

The voidling shifted position on Serenity’s back as he held his arm up. He didn’t think he’d moved his wings, but maybe moving his arm was enough. Serenity felt his attention drift over the voidling and consciously noted something he hadn’t paid attention to before: the voidling wasn’t a monster. There was absolutely no feeling of a core or any excess essence about it.

“Eh, just a little. It’s always been here, you know, it’s just getting more common. And of course more people know about it. I figure the Tutorial will teach me stuff I don’t know. There are supposed to be actual magic classes! I’ve had to learn from old books that were written to conceal instead of reveal! And - you must have learned a lot to do that! Did you learn from the Angel of Death?” Liam led the way through a small hallway to a large room.

The room seemed a lot smaller than its actual size thanks to how cluttered it was. There were stacks of papers and books sliding off a desk, a laptop sitting on the floor, and at least three ritual circles. Serenity winced internally when he realized that all of the ritual circles were slightly distorted because they sat on carpet, and the heavier items pressed farther into the carpet than the simple drawings.

“The Angel of Death? What are you talking about?” Rissa picked out an open spot near one of the circles and sat down.

It wasn’t until Serenity looked closer that he realized why she’d picked that spot: there was an object with six legs that came together at the top in the circle; most of the way to the bottom, it had a flattish circular disc that wasn’t quite level with the floor. The disc did seem to have some depressions in it. It had to be the object they were looking for - only it’d been assembled.

“There’s a teacher that’s only sometimes there, he’s supposed to be the only one that isn’t human. He has wings and claws and weird eyes and he teaches Death magic, so we call him the Angel of Death. He’s supposed to be the best teacher there, the people who study with him progress faster and seem more powerful than those who don’t, even if they don’t use Death magic.” Liam snagged a small rolling chair and pulled it over to near where Rissa was sitting. “Ah! I see you guessed what I was looking at!”

Serenity thought about the statement that one teacher in the Tutorial was significantly better than the others, enough that people could already tell that they were progressing faster. That shouldn’t be the case; if anything, the people he taught ought to start off a little slower, because he taught a harder-to-learn method, even though it had significant advantages.

Just what were the other mages in the Tutorial teaching?

Serenity needed to check on that. Just … not now. He’d wait until they were home, and preferably after he and his gear were no longer lightless.

That had to be why he and everything he wore looked “vantablack”. Serenity hoped it would change soon; he’d seen similar effects before, and they were usually short-lived when they weren’t permanent. Permanent seemed unlikely.

“The candles are still warm,” Rissa stated. “You can see where the wax at the top hasn’t hardened again. They must have been burning for a while to have melted that much.”

Serenity couldn’t tell, but he doubted he’d have been able to tell if the candles were lit without feeling for the heat. All he could tell was that they were the sort of large candle in a glass casing that could burn for dozens of hours.

“I know they’re not the traditional candles,” Liam admitted, “but I’ve never seen anything that actually said what type to use. The most they’ve ever said was that they needed to be beeswax, so I made sure to use that.”

“It’s not beeswax that’s important for a ritual,” Serenity noted. “It’s the fact that beeswax burns cleanly and evenly with very little smoke, unlike tallow. It also smells better and doesn’t distract from any aromatics used for the ritual. It’s used because it’s easy to get, even in most low-tech environments. Almost any modern candle wax should work, though there are a few rituals where the fact that it’s an animal product made without harm to the animal may matter. You will have to be careful about scents, though. I’d recommend unscented candles, unless you find or make a candle specifically for a particular ritual.”

Both Rissa and Liam stared at him, and Serenity realized that he’d just revealed that he knew more than someone who’d only recently been through the Tutorial should.

Oops.

“You did! You studied with the Angel of Death! I heard he taught some other stuff too, did he teach you ritual magic? He told you that, didn’t he?” Liam was positively bouncing.

If Liam thought that was a good explanation, Serenity was willing to roll with it. “You mean Serenity, don’t you?”

“You did! I wouldn’t dare call him that! I can’t afford to not be polite if I want him to teach me. Do you think he’d remember you? Would he be more likely to teach me if I told him I met you?” Liam stood up and was now actually bouncing.

“Serenity would prefer it if you used his name,” Rissa interrupted. “I doubt he’d like being called the Angel of Death. All you’d have to do is ask; I believe he’s taught everyone who’s asked him in any of the Tutorials.”

Liam waved that off. “What else did he tell you? Is there anything I’m doing wrong? Or any way to make it easier? Or more reliable? Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. I know there’s something about astrological positions but I’ve never been able to make sense of that so I just make sure to perform anything that doesn't work a few more times until it does. I had one go really wrong once that way. It was why I had to move out of my old apartment and into this one, Frank wasn’t happy about that. He kept complaining about something under the floor. It did kinda melt a hole but it wasn’t that bad!”

Serenity stared at Liam. He’d already gathered that the man was a motormouth and a bit of a geek about rituals, and this sealed it. He was the sort of person you’d want doing crazy magical research, not the sort of person who’d know who to talk to for an anonymous theft. He’d want the mystical mcguffin, but it was unlikely he’d know anyone who could arrange its theft. There had to be someone behind him.

Either that, or he was doing an extremely good job of snowing Serenity. That was always possible. Maybe he wanted to find himself a slightly accident-prone researcher?

“Astrology is important for some rituals and not others. That’s one thing. The other is that you’re doing them on carpet. That warps the symbols.” Serenity wasn’t sure how much of a headache Liam was going to be, but he was already certain Liam was going to be a headache. It was better if he managed to make him a helpful “weird magic researcher” headache instead of an “accidentally did a failed ritual and got possessed by a Great Old One” headache.

Not that the Lovecraftian Great Old Ones existed, exactly, but there were enough things out there that something very similar probably did. Serenity suspected that the Void creature - collective? - he’d encountered was on the friendly side of that spectrum. Serenity vaguely remembered killing some things that were somewhat similar but much less friendly in the Final Reaper’s timeline, after all.

The conversation had gotten totally off track, and Serenity was afraid it was his fault. He shouldn’t have said anything about candle wax. He needed to get things back on track. “So, Liam. Can you tell us about what you saw? I know what I did, but I’m not sure why or how you’d have seen a - did you call it a resonance?”