Date: August 4th, year 1286 (one week before Nyx's trial) Location: Former headquarters of the Fifth Branch, Crystal Rose
Julian and Agnes were standing in the middle of what was left of the mansion that previously housed the Fifth Branch of the Arcane Guard. It was now little more than a relatively flat field of ruins, melted bricks and dust. With them, a team of about fifty investigators from the Fourth Branch was carefully analyzing what could be salvaged.
- "..." Julian impatiently taps his foot on the floor, looking around the ruins with no clear goal.
- "Julian…" Agnes sighs. "I understand that you're worried about Nyx, but please take this seriously. We are lucky enough that Grand Archmage Calliope allowed us to fully search this place on the basis of what you told her."
- "Yeah well it would've been nice to be allowed to earlier. Seriously, what do we even need permission for? We're the goddamned Fourth Branch, and the director of the Fifth just blew their headquarters sky high."
- "I heard that officials from the Fifth Branch were pushing back as much as they could, to the point that they were arrested under suspicion of cooperating with Lady Night."
- "At least that's good… Human politics are so contrived, it's honestly more of a pain than anything."
- "I'll have to agree on that… but that makes our work even more vital. Which is why you should actually TRY, Julian. Worry about Nyx when you're off duty."
- "Little do you know, I AM taking this seriously." Julian's gaze stops on a seemingly random slab of stone lying on the ground. He pushes it with his foot, revealing a small spiral staircase descending far below the ruins.
- "Ah." Agnes walks over to him, her ample purple coat carried by a few pigeons. "It's a lot further away from where I thought."
- "Yeah, gotta account for the twists and turns." He frowns. "I've been waiting to get back to that lab for a while now."
- "I understand. Let me just get a few guards just in case, we never know what could be down there. Plus, I don't know about you but I can't clear the rubble."
A few minutes later, Julian, Agnes and a small group of guards were walking through the partially collapsed underground corridors of the mansion, lined with their multitude of iron doors. There were very clear traces of recent human activity, such as fresh footprints, doors left open and traces on the floor's bricks suggesting large objects had been dragged through the halls. Multiple portions of the walls and ceiling were completely collapsed, and burn marks were visible everywhere around them.
- "What happened here?..." Agnes wonders as they pass by four deep, irregular lines in a wall that looked like the marks of an exceedingly large claw.
- "Maybe a few vigilantes managed to get down here?... But didn't the Fifth Branch lock down the entire perimeter?" Julian replies.
- "They... did."
- "Something's amiss."
- "Agreed."
Subconsciously, Julian's pace gradually accelerates, and the guards are forced to practically run after him to keep up.
- "Julian?!" Agnes calls, her heels disorderly clicking behind him as she struggles to pick up the pace. "Slow down!"
- "We don't have time! I'm not taking any damn chances!" Julian snaps back.
- "...Right." Agnes tosses her heels behind her, and starts running after him. She was still unnaturally fast, and caught up in a matter of seconds, the pigeons lifting up her coat being left behind. She turns to the guards, who weren't able to keep up with them. "Follow my summons, we'll regroup there!"
After a few excruciating minutes of silent running, only cut by Agnes heavily panting due to the strain, they reach a door that was very familiar to Julian. Agnes stops, struggling to catch her breath.
- "Sitting in that office all day really isn't doing me any favors…" She curses.
- "Please, Lord Solomon…" Julian prays as he kicks the door to the laboratory open.
His face turns pale as he steps forward, and witnesses what had happened to the laboratory he had known for all these years. Most of the giant glass tubes that used to be filled with indigo slime and unconscious people were completely empty. Without their light, the laboratory was just a tall, dark room, with a faint glow close to the fifth floor above them. The numerous wooden tables, that originally were full of Sergius' disorganized notes, were now completely barren. Then, something moving in the darkness catches his attention. He turns one second too late to see the tall figure in a white cloak dashing towards him, holding a dagger with both hands. A black star symbol was visible on its chest.
- "Catch!" Agnes yells behind him, a flash of white light illuminating the room.
Six large eagles burst through the doorframe, intercepting the figure in white robes by colliding with it from the side. They then immediately restrain its limbs and head with their talons as Agnes enters the laboratory.
- "Close call." She comments, crouching next to the figure to remove its hood.
It is revealed to be a man, with short, unkept black hair and a similarly unkept beard. His eyes were completely black, and in the darkness it almost seemed like his orbits were empty. He was faintly struggling, while maintaining unwavering eye contact with Julian.
- "It's one of those again?..." Julian complains.
- "Seems like it. A little over ninety five percent of the cultists we captured are the same, mindless thralls that I can't find any records on. And this one doesn't break the trend…"
- "It's like these guys never even existed to begin with… Is Lady Night just spawning her goons out of thin air?"
- "It certainly looks like it. But then, why bother giving them different appearances?..."
- "Beats me. Regardless of this guy…" Julian looks up at the fifth floor of the laboratory, far above them, that was still faintly illuminated.
- "Yes, priority to rescue."
They make their way up the staircase, which had been emptied of Sergius' random assortment of magic items and tools lying around, until they reach the fifth floor. There, three of the twelve glass columns were still filled with their original contents. As Julian looks up at them to find a way to extract the unconscious people floating inside, Agnes leaves his side without a word.
- "Agnes?" He calls.
- "..." Agnes stops in front of one of the columns, looking up at one specific person.
It was a small girl with brown skin and short black hair, peacefully floating in the upper stratum of the column. Agnes' hands quickly begin emitting wild sparks of white light.
- "We need to get them out of here." She declares.
- "Are you good? You sound-"
- "Now."
- "...Got it."
Julian climbs to the top of the column, and finds what he had spotted on the columns on the floors below them: a small trapdoor at the center of its "lid". He opens it, and starts fishing the people out of the slime using a long hook made of solidified air. As he piles them next to the column, Agnes rushes to hold up the head of the little girl.
- "Eva! Eva, it's me!" She desperately calls, almost screaming.
- "Agnes?..." Julian asks from above. "Is that someone you know?"
- "..." Agnes takes a deep breath, a few tears rolling down her cheeks as she turns to face Julian. "That's… that's my daughter."
- "You have a daughter?... I guess that really makes sense, in hindsight."
- "She… is the entire reason I joined the Guard to begin with. Our home was attacked years ago by mage traffickers, seeking to get their hands on the Irregular magic she inherited from me. Her father… My husband died protecting us. And yet, they still managed to get away with her. If only I had been stronger at the time, I…" Agnes forms her hand into a fist, her nails digging so deep into her hand that a small stream of blood begins flowing from her palm.
- "Hey Agnes, take it easy. You-"
- "My career has been dedicated to looking for her." Agnes cuts, looking back at her daughter. "And it turns out she had been right under my nose this entire time. Lady Night sure did a number on me!" She has a laugh devoid of any joy. If anything, it sounded demented more than anything else.
- "...Do you think she's already…"
- "Turned Night Touched? There's only one way to find out."
Agnes carefully pulls up Eva's eyelid with her finger, revealing a window to outer space in place of her eyes, filled with bright stars and distant galaxies.
- "...You know, Nyx managed to cure one before, so maybe…" Julian starts.
- "I hope she can do it, yes." Agnes gets back up, carrying her daughter in her arms. "But regardless of that, this has become very, very, VERY personal. I'm not quitting this job before I get Lady Night's head on a pike."
- "I get how you're feeling but… please don't go berserk like Nyx. You're still the only person I can actually rely on to be smart about things."
- "Oh don't worry, I'm perfectly calm." Agnes gives him a very polite smile. "I'll just need you to be on standby in a few months or so from now."
- "That sounds… bad? What are you plotting?"
- "Bad?" She chuckles. "I hope it turns out a lot worse than that."
A few hours later, Agnes was back in her office, sitting on her chair while facing the bay window. The slits in her yellow eyes were thin as paper, but her expression remained completely neutral. Eva was lying on one of the couches of the office, still unconscious. She could see Julian outside the tower, busy taking care of organizing the transfer of all of Sergius' victims to their colleagues at the Second Branch, who specialized in handling Night Touched.
- "He'll make for a good successor when I step down, I think." Agnes sighs, before looking up at the sky. "But before that… I think I'll work on locating Lady Night and dismantling the Fifth Branch. I'm done playing defense."
- "I heard that!" An enthusiastic voice exclaims from behind her. "You're planning to leave us so soon?"
She spins her chair around to look at the rest of the office. In one of the sofas adjacent to the one her daughter was on, an exceptionally short boy was sitting, kicking his feet in the air. On his head, thousands of strands of flowing white mist were carefully woven together to resemble hair. His eyes were completely white, his irises being outlined by a thin layer of clouds swirling in a vortex. He was wearing simple gray shorts and a white T-shirt with the symbol of the Arcane Guard woven in golden thread on its chest. He had a faint grin on his face, and was holding a large purple book in his right hand.
- "...Director." Agnes replies. "It's rare to see you around the headquarters."
- "It is I!" The boy jumps down and walks over to her desk. "So? Just so you know, I would be very sad if you left!"
- "Don't act like you didn't hear everything we said in that laboratory. Or like you didn't know about me searching for my daughter."
- "Aww you can tell? That's no fun."
- "Like you would miss an opportunity to listen in on a case that grave. How many people are you monitoring with your Wind magic right now?"
- "Excluding everyone in the tower, about sixty thousand!"
- "Still as prying as ever, I see."
- "I am a Wind spirit after all! It comes naturally to want to listen to stuff."
- "...What did the Church of Solomon decide for Nyx?"
- "Who knows!"
- "You spend the vast majority of your time with them. Just get to the point, we both know you are listening to their officials right now."
- "Haha, you got me." The boy drops his grin. "She'll undergo her trial in seven days. The judge is Verissimus, and the prosecutor is Calliope. It's not looking good at all."
- "...I see."
- "You know, I like her odds if you decide to step up as her attorney!" He has a mischievous smile.
- "Stop. You already know I can't defend her."
- "There definitely was a better way!"
- "Why didn't you stop her? Or tell us that she was doing that?"
- "You think I was listening to her in particular?"
- "..." Agnes deeply frowns.
- "You'd be right! And I was interested in what would happen."
- "There is no way your analysis was so shallow. I know you."
- "Oh, stop it with the flattery!"
- "..." Her right hand twitches, and a white glow courses through her fingers.
- "Fine, fine. I heard that the director of the Fifth was planning to move Sergius' lab in the near future, because of Angelica's and Julian's raid. Nyx's attack sure threw a wrench in her plans! Knowing Lady Night, she was guaranteed to fall for the bait and reveal herself, throwing away all of her plans to face whoever disrespected her."
- "And you believe this was… worth it?"
- "I don't know, do you?" He glances at Eva on the sofa. "Who knows where they would've taken their test subjects?"
- "..." Agnes glances at her daughter, doubts piling up in her mind.
- "Haha, I love exposing the truth. And don't worry, I know you think I'm insane for letting this happen. But I didn't know the whole cultist attack was going to happen! I thought I accounted for everything… I had even whispered to all the patrols in the area to leave prior to the fight, and I organized evacuations from where I was."
- "From the headquarters of the Church?... No wonder our forces were so coordinated that night…"
- "Thanks for the compliment! I have a zero casualty policy to uphold, you know?"
- "Is that so."
- "What's with the sarcasm?! If you're referring to the cultist stuff, that's not on me."
- "Of course you'd say that."
- "Am I wrong? You humans have such a funny habit to blame yourselves for things you can't control. Sometimes, nature just does its thing, and it doesn't care what you had planned for it! No sense in beating yourself up over it."
- "...Perhaps you are right. Regardless, respectfully, I've had enough of you Director. I'd love it if you could leave my office."
- "Roger, Roger!" The Director of the Fourth Branch laughs as he runs out of the room. "By the way, if you need me to help you with your plans before you step down, just give me a call and I'll make some time! I'd be more than happy to assist with your final case!"
Silence returns to the office, and Agnes spins her chair back to face the bay window as she sighs.
- "I'll probably at least tell Julian about the trial…" She is interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on her office's door.
- "Lady Agnes, we discovered something very concerning in the tunnels below the former headquarters of the Fifth Branch." One of her private investigators says as he steps into the office.
- "...when we have more time on our hands." She concludes.