Chapter 1: 1)

1)

Martin – Behind the counter of the Party-Mart

...what happened?

Why am I on the floor?

I remember...the kid shouting, a gun, noise, pain.

Calling up the mana from my core and the drawing on the vault of the store. Desperately trying to shape a healing spell. Trying to fix the glyphs. Too many for me to keep track of. Seeing patterns I didn't want. Trying to hold the array for healing by pushing more and more mana into it to try to force it to work.

And now…A concerned looking elf was leaning over the counter and asking me about Little Eddie snacks.

“My dude, I don’t have cash on me, not the folding kind, but I can like, give you six real silver coins you can sell off for the metal value. Just tell Khalid at the Exchange that Cory sent you, he usually gives me about $30 each for them. That should more than cover a few bags of snack cakes."

Wait, I know this guy, a regular customer up until he graduated last year. “Cory...you're an elf?"

Cory, wearing a sort of leather armor colored in patches of green and brown like hunter's camouflage looked rather different from his normal collection of hoodies and fashionably torn and faded blue jeans.

Plus the pointed ears were new.

He rolled his eyes at me “Yeah dude, gotta wear a glamour on the top side. You know, the Rules.” He made quotation marks with his fingers. “Can’t freak out the mundanes.”

I pulled myself to my feet and looked down at the counter to see it covered in individual two-packs of Little Eddie snack cakes and Cory sliding a small pile of silver coins toward me with a conspiratorial sideways nod.

Two more elves dressed like extras from the lord of the rings, complete with bows, swords, and a more worn, militant looking versions of fantasy robin hood outfits wandered around the store with wide-eyed looks. Cory was dressed much the same except for a very modern day assault rifle of some sort hanging over his shoulder by a strap.

I just nodded and began scanning and bagging up the knockoff brand junk food. I’d sort out the register later, Khalid was a djinn so he would be good for the money for the coins, and would never try to cheat a member of the Thibedeau family, even an outcast like me.

I looked up absently to look at his store across the street, only to see a barren stony wasteland.

"Ah, Cory...what the heck is going on?”

Cassy: In the parking lot of the Party-Mart

Magic is real, and the people who know about it secretly rule the world, or at least some of them do, the rest of us tend to end up working for them one way or the other.

The secrecy is because while magic is a renewable resource, it is a limited one. If everyone knew about it and started using it, there would not be enough leftover for anyone to do anything useful with it.

Which is why the secret rulers of the world hire people like me, the ones who need to work for a living, to keep magic a secret.

Which is why I now find myself stepping away from a gaping hole where a convenience store had once stood. The pit which had replaced it seemed to go down deep into the clay layer and was already flooded with groundwater. The walls that made up the side of the pit had utility pipes here and there. Which had been cut smooth at a sheer 90-degree angle straight down.

My boss had arrived in a black Helios Landau and her driver had jumped out in time to open the back door for her.

Natalie Thibedeau stepped out of her town car while snapping open her sunglasses and looking around the scene of the disappearance with a look of mild annoyance as she slid them on against the glare of the morning sun. Her hands twitched with the slightest of movements and a shimmer of various lights glimmered over the engraved stones on her bracelets as she added her layer of an aversion ward around the borders of the store’s lot.

The few curious onlookers who had been lingering outside the police tape, despite my own ward’s attempts to drive them away, finally began to wander off. Some because the stronger warding was making them lose interest, but most of them because the power of Natalie Thibedeau’s spell array was enough to let them know they wanted no part of whatever was going on here.

Normally my own Wards were more than enough to chase off normal witnesses, but Burgundy University had a fairly large Arcane studies department folded up within the official Philosophy department.

“Agent Varrow, congratulation on your first field assignment." the slightly older woman said with a warm smile that turned into a smirk as she tilted her sunglasses up and leaned over the pit. Her guard, an orc towering above her in all black field gear under a glamour to look like a large brutal looking man in a suit shifted his weight in disapproval behind her.

I gave him a sympathetic shrug. I had started my career right out of the institute with the very same job and it had taken a few months to learn to pick my battles. “I assume you had something to do with that boss”

The Director for the Regional branch of the Magic Incident Bureau looked up with another smirk, “Observing my protege on her first assignment gave me an excuse to be here, but you were due for the promotion.”

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"So what's the interest?"

“The hole where the store used to be is shaped in the Etruscan ideogram for renewal, at least the outline.’ she wandered off to pick up a broken piece of asphalt and idly tossed it down the hole with a splash.

I let the silence linger a bit before I took the bait “...and this is significant how?’

The boss-lady grinned “The Etruscans used Greek letters for writing things down. The ideograms were kept secret and only used for doing things, magic things. My family are the only ones who still use them.”

She waved her hand around dismissively at the gaping pit "Best seal up the hole with an illusion before anyone from the media shows up”

I pulled out my glamour stone and whispered the command “Rubble” to it before tossing the lithoglyph into the hole.

It fell about a dozen feet before vanishing in a small burst of light blue radiance.

I stared down for a moment in confusion “What on earth?”

My boss looked down to where my very expensive Bureau issued stone had vanished “Or off it by the looks.”

She shook her head with a sad look. “What did you do this time Martin?"

Donovan – Somewhere far from home

I fly through the air and slam into the front door hard enough to rattle it, and then fall back onto my ass, confused as hell.

I hadn't meant to shoot the guy, the gun just went off. It wasn't my fault, if he hadn't been taking so long, he would have been fine.

Just as I grabbed the wad of twenties from the register and was getting ready to head for the door, the guy started muttering from down on the floor behind the counter, his hands pressing down over the blood coming out of his guts.

Then his hands started glowing and that was enough for me. I was running for the front doors as the light flared up behind me and lifted me up into the air in front of it. Even as it felt like I was being torn apart.

Then I hit the door and nothing. No light, no explosion, just….what the hell?

Outside...the sky is on fire, and everywhere I look it’s all burnt trees and jagged sharp stones scattered all over. Some of them sticking up taller than some of the trees.

I just sat there slack-jawed in confusion for a few minutes.

Then it lands in front of the door, coming down hard enough to crack the pavement outside. Tall, taller than the door, with horns reaching out higher. All covered in red and black scales. As it stepped up to the door, its wings folded up behind it, and a long tail covered in two rows of spikes begins to lash back and forth behind him

It pressed one black clawed hand up against the door hard enough that the frame strained against the latch and it talked. “Invite me in.” Its voice sounded raspy, almost metallic.

“Oh, fuck no!” I started to push myself backwards on the floor until my back hit a shelf and fucking cheap ass Little Eddies snacks started falling down on me.

Its head lowered down to the sign in the window, and it grinned. The sign said "Sorry we're closed" on my side, which means the other side sa

id... "Yes, we're open."

Which I guess was enough of an invitation.

It ducked down as he pushed the door in. Then I remembered I still had a gun in my hand.

The bullets that missed him shattered the glass door behind him. The ones that do hit barely break its skin but all they do is seem to annoy him and then he is on me. Lifting me into the air by the neck in one hand. At the same time, I feel a pain in my chest then he holds up to my face a bloody mess in his other hand that is twitching. No, it's beating.

“Why the hell did you shoot me for? Stupid fucker. I just wanted a Frozey. It’s hot as balls out there.”

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