Dean Henry Fogg sat behind his heavy oak desk, his hands trembling slightly as he reached for his spectacles. Before his fingers could graze the frames, they shivered, lifted into the air, and drifted toward his face with effortless grace.
He settled them onto the bridge of his nose and looked up at Julia. She stood there, her outline defining her to him, "Fuck me," Fogg muttered, the words escaping in a breathy exhale of pure disbelief. He adjusted his vision, staring at her through the enchanted glass. "He actually did it. The little bastard actually rewired a human soul."
Julia nodded, her expression unreadable. "Yeah It's... different." Fogg leaned back, his chair creaking under the weight of his exhaustion. He gestured vaguely at her chest. "And is there more of this? What did you call them again? Cores?"
"No," Julia said firmly. "There were only ten. He used everything he had just to make those. There isn't anything left."
Fogg reached for his glass of Scotch, only to watch as it, too, levitated off the coaster and glided into his hand. He didn't even flinch this time; he just downed the amber liquid in one go, the burn at the back of his throat a welcome distraction.
"And this isn't going to result in another catastrophic shit-storm, is it?" he asked, his voice dripping with cynical weary. "Because my 'Catastrophe' calendar is looking a bit crowded this month."
Julia shrugged. "According to Kai, he's going to force the tap back on. And if the 'Plumbers' don't cooperate, he's just going to bypass them entirely and build a new system. A new Wellspring."
Fogg let out a sharp, dry laugh that sounded more like a bark. "Oh, if only it were that simple. If only he were the first person to think of 'disrupting the industry.'" He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing behind his glasses. "Something happened in Timeline 14, Julia. You. You had that same brilliant spark of an idea. You decided to create a second Wellspring by harvesting the magic of a thousand magical creatures just to power a battery big enough to kill the Beast after he raped and stripped Quentin's bone from his body."
Julia blinked and nearly retched at that information, her steady composure wavering slightly at the absurdity, "What?"
"Ah, yes. It was a magnificent plan," Fogg nodded, a grim smile playing on his lips as he avoided the rape part. "Practical, bold, and utterly doomed. You bit off more than you could chew. You and Penny went after the Guardian of the Underworld to secure the anchor for your new source... and you never came back."
He paused, letting the silence hang heavy in the air. "Well, not all of you. Penny eventually teleported back into a classroom in the middle of a lecture. Unfortunately, he only brought back his upper body. And he was still clutching your left arm. Just the arm, Julia."
Julia swallowed hard, looking down at her own hand as if checking to ensure it was still attached. "Oh. Okay. Well... glad that's behind us, I guess."
"Indeed," Fogg said, standing up and smoothing out his suit jacket. "Now, if that's everything, you'll have to excuse me. I have a class to teach. Even in a magic-less world, the theory of molecular displacement doesn't teach itself."
"Wait," Julia said, stopping him. "What should we do?"
Fogg paused at the door, looking back at her. "I'm sorry?"
"We are living in a world where magic is not working, but we are the only ones who can still use it. What are we supposed to do with that?"
Fogg looked at her through those thick glasses, "This school was built to guide and teach you about magic, Julia. But we have never truly been the ones to decide for the students what to do with it. That burden is, as it always has been, your decision to make. Try not to lose any limbs this time."
————
Kai leaned against the doorframe after returning back and asking Julia and Alicia for help and both of them were now buried behind their laptops doing research on bacchus. Alice and Quentin were a blur of motion, running in and out of the room with a set of brass gauges, shouting something about "testing the gauge limit."
Josh was pacing between Alicia and Julia, a bong in one hand and a half-eaten artisanal grilled cheese sandwich in the other.
"I'm telling you," Josh insisted, gesturing wildly with the sandwich, "it's not a myth! I met the guy by total accident at Art Basel. He kept that party going for eight full days. Best eight days of my life. I think I saw a unicorn, or maybe it was just a very tall dog in a tutu, but whatever! That's his thing. He swings in, steals the party, soaks up the worship like a sponge, and moves on."
He took a hit from the bong and exhaled a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke that lingered in the air. "A 'Moving Feast.' It's hidden behind a layered perception filter that vibrates at the frequency of a fermented grape. It's like a radio station you can only hear if you're already tuned in."
Josh turned his head, his eyes slightly glazed as he looked at Kai.
"To find Bacchus, you don't need a locator spell, man," Josh said, pointing the crust of his sandwich at Kai's chest. "All you need is to be in the mood for a really good time and be prepared for a massive hangover ."
"Bacchus," Kai mused, his voice dripping with a mock-regal tone. "The Roman Dionysus. The god of bad decisions and even worse hangovers. You've gotta love a guy whose entire divinity is based on being the life of a party that literally never ends." He muttered.
Alicia caught the look and immediately narrowed her eyes, pausing her typing. "Okay, spill it. Why exactly are we hunting a party-god? And don't give me that 'adventure' crap."
"Experimental purposes, Alicia. Purely academic," Kai said with a small grin on his face. "I just want to understand a few things about how a minor deity stays so... vibrant and capable of interacting with the world without being invoked and especially now when the rest of the world is running on empty."
He turned his attention back to Josh. "Josh, my man. You always were the most useful person in this room when it came to hedonistic pursuits. You're like a bloodhound for bad behavior."
Alicia sighed, turning her laptop screen so the others could see a flickering, unstable map. "We've narrowed the location to a warehouse district in a pocket-dimension overlap in Portland. But the wards are divine, Kai. Even with these new 'upgrades' humming in our chests, we can't just kick the door down. Divine security doesn't care about your ego."
"Which is why we're going as guests," Kai said, reaching over and snatching the last corner of Josh's grilled cheese. "Bacchus is a creature of habit. He loves three things: wine, worship, and people who are more interesting than him. Julia, you've got that 'pissed-off goddess' vibe down perfectly. Alicia, you're the brains. I'm the... Well, obviously, I'm the main event."
"We need a gift," Julia noted, her voice cool and clinical. "You don't visit a god of revelry empty-handed. Not if you actually want to leave with your liver intact."
Kai reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a small, ornate vial. Inside, a swirl of liquid starlight danced and pulsed with a hypnotic rhythm. The residue harvested from the Plumber's essence.
"I think a taste of 'The Pure Stuff' should get us through the VIP line," Kai remarked, holding the vial up to the light. "Nothing opens a door quite like a hit of raw, unrefined reality."
——-
While Kai was planning a divine heist, Penny was experiencing a different kind of intoxication: the intoxicating, stifling silence of the Neitherlands.
Usually, the Library was a place of clockwork order with books flying to their shelves on invisible currents, the soft glow of automated lamps, the feeling of a machine perfectly oiled. But with magic on a global freeze, the systems were dead. The elder Librarians looked frazzled, their usual stoic masks replaced by the weary sweat of manual labor. Books were being moved by hand, piled onto creaking wooden carts. The Great Ledger was being updated with the scratching of actual quills and jars of ink.
'That has gotta be a lot of work, Penny thought, glancing at the endless miles of shelving. Imagine filing the history of the multiverse by hand because some gods decided to pull the plug.
Penny approached the main desk, Zelda was there, meticulously organizing a mountain of index cards by candlelight.
"I'm here for my payment," Penny said, his voice cutting through the quiet. "A read at one possible future. That was the deal."
As he spoke, he dropped one of the heavy, leather-bound books he'd been sent to collect onto the desk. The thump made Zelda flinch.
She finally looked up, her thick glasses reflecting the flickering orange flame of a nearby candle. "The Library does not provide spoilers, Mr. Adiyodi. We provide context. If you wish to read the future, we shall provide something more... peregrine."
She reached beneath the desk and pulled out a slim, ancient volume. The cover was blank, but the spine read: The Tales of the Seven Keys.
Penny frowned, looking at the book as if it were a trap. "Why exactly do you want me to have that one? And why choose that for me? I asked for a future, not a bedtime story."
Zelda let out a short, dry chuckle. "Oh, because it will help put things back in motion, Penny." She paused, looking at him weirdly, her gaze drifting to his chest where his new core pulsed beneath his skin.
"Get this book. Please," she said, her tone suddenly shifting from professional to urgent. Then, without another word, she turned back to her index cards, dismissing him.
"Right," Penny muttered, feeling the weight of the book in his hand. He looked confused, his mind racing. What could possibly go wrong?
———-
The warehouse in Portland looked like a condemned relic of the industrial age, but as the four of them drew closer, the physical world began to lose its grip. The scent of rust and damp concrete was replaced by the heavy, intoxicating aroma of expensive Cabernet and crushed violets. The very air felt thicker, velvet-like, and the brick walls rippled with a heat haze that had nothing to do with the temperature.
"Remember," Kai whispered, his voice cutting through the localized distortion. "Bacchus isn't a 'god' in the way the Old Ones are, the ones who built the stars. He's more like a divine squatter. He found a shortcut to the VIP lounge of existence, but he's been there so long he owns the furniture. And he is incredibly, dangerously powerful. Think of him as a nuclear reactor wrapped in a toga."
Kai turned to the group, his eyes dancing with a manic energy. "And look alive, people! Loosen up. Be in a party mood, okay? If you walk in there looking like you're heading to a funeral, he'll turn your blood into vinegar just to kill the vibe."
Kai let out a sharp, genuine laugh as he adjusted his jacket, his own "party mode" clicking into place like a predator donning a colorful costume. With a jaunty wave, he stepped through the shimmer along with Josh, the reality behind the veil swallowing them whole.
The interior was a kaleidoscopic assault on the senses. The music didn't just play; it throbbed, a rhythmic pulse that synchronized with the heartbeat of everyone in the room. Light fractured through spinning prisms, casting neon shadows over the crowd. People, some clearly mortal, others looked different but their eyes glowed like embers locked in a rhythmic trance, moving as one cohesive, hedonistic machine.
In the center of the room, lounging deep within a mountain of violet silk pillows, sat Bacchus. He held a chalice that seemed to refill itself with a swirling, dark vintage, "New faces!" Bacchus roared, his voice booming over the bass and vibrating through the very floorboards. "And they smell... interesting! Like a fresh breeze in a stagnant room! Like something... new in a world that's supposed to be out of batteries!"
Kai stepped forward, he had to raise his voice to be heard over the deafening beat, but his tone remained dripping with his signature diabolical sarcasm.
"Oh, don't mind us, Big B!" Kai shouted, his eyes scanning the room with mocking delight. "We just heard there was a party so exclusive that even the laws of physics weren't invited. And honestly? I figured after ten thousand years of drinking the same fermented juice and listening to the same three chords, you'd be desperate for someone who doesn't smell like desperation and cheap worship. We're here to upgrade the guest list and maybe show you what a real drink looks like when it isn't just a byproduct of a very long happy hour."
"But hey, nice pillows. Did they come with godhood, or did you have to kill a sentient cloud to get them that fluffy?"