Dáinn Herne Cernunnos was left sipping his strangely bitter, frothy ale, his gaze tracking the orange-haired bartender as she navigated the thrumming chaos. The mark on her back was a brand seared into his mind, a puzzle from the old world sitting in the heart of this new, baffling one. He was so focused on the mystery of Eris that his guard, usually a tangible force field around him, had lowered to a mere simmer.
It happened with a sudden, guttural war-cry that cut through the music and chatter—a sound he hadn't heard in the mortal realm for centuries. His head snapped up. A giant of a man, clad head-to-toe in black armor, was charging through the crowd. The man wielded a colossal, absurdly proportioned sword, its edge gleaming dully under the lights. In the space between heartbeats, Dáinn's ancient programming took over. This was not a game. This was a threat. A berserker, armored and armed, cleaving a path through a crowded hall.
Muscle memory older than the nation itself ignited. The bar stool screeched against the floor as he launched himself forward. In one fluid motion, the air sang with the sound of true, honed steel leaving its scabbard. He met the charging cosplayer head-on, not with a killing blow, but with a disarming flick of his wrist. His ancient, unadorned blade met the plastic Dragonslayer.
There was a dry, pathetic crack-thwump.
The massive prop sword split cleanly in two, the top half clattering to the sticky floor in a spectacle of utter anti-climax.
The music seemed to swallow itself. The entire pub froze, a tableau of suspended animation. A dozen conversations died mid-sentence. The only sound was the tinny echo from a video game and the soft thud of the second piece of plastic hitting the ground.
The man dressed as Guts stared at the hilt still in his hand, then at the pieces on the floor, his face a canvas of pure, unadulterated disbelief.
"Hey, man!" he finally spluttered, his voice cracking. "What the Hell? It took me three weeks and a small fortune in resin to print that! And now you just… you just…" His indignation faltered as his brain finally processed the metallic whisper that still hung in the air. His eyes widened, traveling from the shattered plastic to the simple, lethally functional sword in Dáinn's hand. "Hey, wait. Is that… is that a real sword?"
The spell of shock broke, but not into anger. It melted into a wave of wide-eyed, geeky awe. The crowd's attention pivoted from the broken prop to the glimmer of actual, historical steel.
"Whoa," someone whispered.
"Dude, that's legit!"
"Can I see it?" the cosplayer Guts asked, his anger entirely replaced by a collector's fervor, taking a step forward.
That was the final straw. The intensity of their collective gaze, the sheer, overwhelming pressure of their curiosity, felt heavier than any battlefield glare. These mortals weren't afraid; they were fascinated. They saw a novelty, not a weapon. The dissonance was unbearable.
With a sound somewhere between a growl and a sigh, Dáinn sheathed his blade in a single, sharp movement. The crowd seemed to lean in as one. He couldn't breathe. The air was thick with their attention and the smell of cheap candy and sweat.
Without a word, he turned and shouldered his way through the stunned onlookers, making for the heavy oak door like a stag fleeing a forest fire.
Behind him, he heard the Guts cosplayer getting an earful. "Way to go, Chriss! You scared him off with your stupid charging routine!"
"But his sword…" Mike whined, his voice fading as Dáinn burst out into the cool, blessedly quiet night, leaving the chaos behind, more bewildered by the modern world than he had been by any spectral horror.
*****
The scents of formaldehyde and burnt sugar warred for dominance in the chemistry lab, a room Eris usually found comforting in its rigid logic. Today, however, her focus was split between the precise measurements of her titration experiment and the lingering memory of a mysterious, brooding man with a very real sword. Her professor, a man whose facial expressions had permanently settled into a look of weary anticipation whenever Eris picked up a beaker, watched her from his desk with the tense posture of a bomb disposal expert.
"Just remember, Sylvie," he called out, "slow and steady. It's not a race."
"I've got this, Dr. Albright!" Eris beamed, her enthusiasm as vibrant as her orange hair from the night before. She carefully combined the solutions, her mind replaying the sight of that swirling birthmark in her bathroom mirror. A connection, something…
The liquid in her beaker fizzed, a happy, promising sound. Then it foamed, cresting over the lip like a tidal wave of soap suds.
"Sylvie—" Dr. Albright began, rising from his chair.
It was too late. With a sound like a giant shaking a carbonated blanket, the foam exploded outward. It wasn't a destructive blast, but an expansive, relentless wave of white froth that filled her workstation, cascaded onto the floor, and, finding the only available outlet, geysered out the open laboratory window in a continuous, bubbling stream. A collective gasp was muffled by the plopping, squelching sound of the eruption.
When the last bubble popped, Eris stood in the center of the mini-apocalypse, a single blob of foam perched on the tip of her nose. She chuckled awkwardly, wiping it away. "Sorry."
Dr. Albright simply sighed, the sound of a man whose will to fight had been dissolved by citric acid and baking soda.
Later, still smelling faintly of laboratory soap, Eris cut across the Ogham Green, the manicured grass a soothing contrast to the chaos of the lab. That's when she saw him. A tall, cloaked figure crouched by a thicket of whisper-vine near the old stone wall, his attention wholly absorbed by the foliage. It was the swordsman from the pub, his dark hair and imposing frame unmistakable even in the daylight.
Cocking her head, she wandered over. "Hey there."
Dáinn jumped to his feet as if she'd fired a crossbow, spinning to face her with a hunter's instinctual grace. His eyes, a startlingly deep blue, scanned her with an intensity that felt both ancient and completely bewildered.
Eris smiled. "Still rockin' the cosplay, I see. Very 'mysterious fantasy ranger.'"
Dáinn's brow furrowed, creating a deep crease above his nose.
"Oh, right," Eris said, her smile faltering slightly. "You probably don't recognize me. I was the one working the bar last night." She struck a quick pose, hands on her hips. "Orange hair? Bikini top? Sandals? Nami? Ringing any bells?"
Dáinn just blinked, his confusion so genuine it was almost painful. Eris began to feel a flush of self-consciousness creep up her neck. "Well, anyway," she pushed on, "I'm Eris. And you are…?"
A long, stretching silence followed. The only sound was the constant, murmuring rustle of the whisper-vine, which seemed to grow louder in the awkwardness. Just as Eris was about to bail, a sleek black cat emerged from the bushes and rubbed insistently against her leg.
"Oh, hey there," Eris cooed, kneeling down to scratch behind its ear. The cat purred, a low, motor-like rumble. "You're awful far from the bar, huh? What are you doing all the way out here?"
Suddenly, Dáinn blurted out, "Looking for my dog."
The cat—Casper—stopped purring. He fixed Dáinn with a glare of pure, unadulterated feline contempt, as if the Huntsman had just suggested they take up underwater basket weaving.
Dáinn muttered a curse under his breath in a language that sounded like stones grinding together.
Eris, blessedly unaware of the telepathic reprimand happening just feet away, played it off. "Your dog, really? What kind? Do you have a picture?"
Dáinn shifted his weight, his eyes darting away as if searching for an escape route. Casper's tail gave a single, sharp twitch.
'Tell her you have a… cell phone… and it is broken,' Casper's voice hissed in Dáinn's mind, laced with sarcastic patience.
Dáinn fumbled over the foreign words. "My… cell phone… is broken?" he said, his deep voice twisting the statement into a confused question.
Casper rolled his eyes so hard his entire head moved, letting out a soft growl of frustration.
Eris, however, just chuckled. "That totally sucks! I hate it when that happens. It's like your whole life is on that thing."
Dáinn cocked his head, utterly baffled by the concept.
Before he could further incriminate himself, Eris's head snapped up as if she'd heard a distant shout. Sarah Torbit had shimmered into view just over Eris's shoulder, wringing her ghostly hands.
"We better go or we're going to be late for our… thing," Eris said quickly, plastering on a bright smile to cover the sudden tension in her shoulders. "Well, I gotta go. Good luck with your search!"
As she rushed off, Casper narrowed his eyes, a low, suspicious growl rumbling in his chest. He'd seen the girl's eyes flicker to empty space, her posture shift in response to a voice only she could hear. Dáinn, however, remained utterly dumbstruck, watching the busty blonde disappear between the red-brick buildings, more convinced than ever that the human realm was a theater of the profoundly strange, and he had just missed his cue.
The air in The Magic Wand, Magic Store was thick with the smell of old paper, melting candle wax, and the faint, metallic tang of cheap stage props. Otto Gordon was in his element, meticulously arranging a display of 'authentic' scrying crystals, his movements a little too frantic, his brow furrowed in concentration over a task he'd already completed three times. The bell above the door gave a frantic, jangling shriek as the door burst open.
Eris Sylvie tumbled inside, her chest heaving, her face a mask of controlled panic. Right behind her, Sarah Torbit floated through the solid wood, her form shimmering with excited energy. "Tell him, tell him!" Sarah urged, her voice a whisper only Eris could hear.
Otto looked up, his eyes wide. They met Eris's gaze, and for a moment, the entire world narrowed to the shared, unspoken understanding that something had gone terribly, supernaturally wrong. This was the moment he'd read about in all his books.
"I need your help," Eris gasped, rushing toward the counter.
Otto blinked, his mind already leaping to the most dramatic conclusion. "The ritual? The spell? Did it work? Did you summon a minor principality? A duke of Hell?" he asked, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
The bell on the door jingled again as a customer wandered in, browsing a rack of silk scarves. Eris leaned across the counter, her voice low and intense. "We need to talk. Where can we go?"
Noting the genuine, unvarnished seriousness in her tone—a rarity in his life of self-generated crises—Otto's heart hammered against his ribs. This was it. Real drama. He took her by the hand, his own slightly clammy, and quickly led her past a curtain of hanging beads into the cramped, cluttered back room. Boxes of unsorted tarot cards and bulk incense were stacked precariously against the walls. He shut the door, plunging them into a gloom lit only by a single bare bulb. "Okay," he breathed, his eyes shining. "Tell me everything."
Eris launched into a dramatic recap, her hands flying as she described the crypt, the circle, the chanting. "And then there was this… this massive, gaping hole! And something came through it!" she finished, her voice cracking with the memory. "What do we do? Is there a book here or something? Is Mrs.—"
"Is out of town," Otto interrupted, holding his chin and beginning to pace in the small space, nearly tripping over a box of plastic vampire fangs. "Something about a grandchild being born. A tragically mundane sabbatical. We will have to figure this out on our own." He stopped and struck a thoughtful pose, one he'd practiced in the mirror. "A nascent portal… a breach in the fabric of the mundane… this is a Levistus-level conundrum!"
"Have any ideas?" Eris asked, her hope clinging to his occult vocabulary.
Otto's brow furrowed into what he hoped was a look of grim determination. "We go back. Tonight. We must observe the phenomenon firsthand. Perhaps together, with our combined… expertise… we can discern its nature and a potential counter-ritual."
Eris wrung her hands. "But what if we can't? What if it's worse now?"
"We can do this!" Otto declared, his voice gaining a shaky confidence. He swept his arm out dramatically, accidentally knocking a feather boa from a hook. "You still have the arcane text? The… the big one?"
Eris nodded.
"Good! Bring it. Its secrets may be our only guide through this looming cataclysm." He placed a hand on her shoulder, his expression solemn. "We stand on the precipice, Eris. We must be brave."
Eris took a deep breath, feeding off his manufactured courage. "Okay. It's a plan, then. I'll meet you there after my shift tonight."
"I shall prepare," Otto vowed, his mind already racing with which of his many notebooks to bring. As Eris slipped back out into the world, Otto stood amidst the cardboard boxes and cheap novelties, feeling for the first time that his life of paranoid preparation was not in vain. The real drama had finally found him.