“Obfuscation is a rich field of magical study. One can change everything from their appearance to the memories others have of them. Of course, not all such magics are equal. Nearly all require contact or proximity to do their work. Without the proper permits, nearly all forms of obfuscation are illegal under US Code Title 6.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

Night had fallen with preternatural speed, draping the world in a suffocating darkness. Now, at least, Bek knew the reason why…the shadow beast.

He sat at his desk, The Book of Lineage open to the page he had shown to Silver the day before. It had not returned to normal yet, if it ever would – the bottom of the page remained stained deep blue, the bleeding edges of the ink shimmering beneath his desk light with a faint silvery sheen. And her name - her family’s names - remained as they had been. Gone. It would have been impossible for him to explain to her why this had happened. It was nearly impossible for him to explain it to himself.

The Book of Lineage was a powerful magical relic. Not once had he known it to be wrong, and there was only one way he knew that it could be misled or damaged; by another spell. Which meant there was a spell on Silver Alurian. That he could not sense it at all meant the spell was remarkably well done. That it had driven the book to its current state made that still more obvious. Since Silver herself had clearly been confused by the change and disturbed by the magic unfolding before her eyes, it was likely she knew nothing about the spell. Most likely, it was meant to prevent people like him, and like the MASO, from discovering who she was.

So, who was she?

Yesterday, he would have determined to wait things out. In a few weeks, she would probably tip her hand. Others in her situation had, in the past. Of course, most of them had paid the big bucks for an obfuscation spell like hers, and were more than aware of it. The MASO agents just had to sit back and wait for their façade to slip.

He had tailed her today with just such an intention, in case she was simply a very good liar. Again, it had been remarkably easy, as so much of his investigation so far had been. He had taken all the regular precautions, even though he doubted she would even once look behind her on the northern mountain roads.

And then he had watched her car spin off the road, had seen the night coalesce above it, desperately seeking a way in. He hardly believed the evidence of his own eyes.

Who was she?

“That thing shouldn’t exist. How did it find her? Why?” he muttered aloud. Without knowing the reasons, he at least knew that things had just gotten very bad, very fast. If he did not handle this well, neither Silver nor her family would be alive much longer. But he could not give the order to bring her in without good reason, and he had no evidence of what he had seen. Memory reads like that he had undergone not long before were difficult, resource intensive, and carried out only by trained professionals on individuals trained in the art of seeking out and committing to memory the right details, at the right times; they worked in situations where the individual was forewarned that observation was needed, not in the harried moments before a potentially fatal accident. Anything anyone could pull from his mind now would by noisy at best, remarkably error prone at worst. There was only one path open to him that he could see.

This weekend, he would take the book to the MASO for analysis. There might be some traces of the spell that had affected it, and they would be enough to force the MASO to move. Silver had miraculously survived her encounter with the beast that had tried to kill her, and he could only hope that if it came down to it, she could survive one more.