Hi, Everyone! The usual warning applies here, this is still a rough draft with adult language and situations. Thanks for reading!
The arcane community in Vancouver wasn’t large because magical talent was common. It was large because many of its members did their very best to avoid injury and death at all costs. The community spent more time concerned with things like dental hygiene, home insurance, and dietary fibre than they did on things like calling down lightning and battling the forces of darkness.
They stuck to hobbies that were specifically chosen to keep them away from physical or mental distress. Macrame, bonsai, and for the more adventurous, cheese making, were some of the most popular activities among the ancient and long-established. These were the stalwarts of the arcane community, many of whom had long since navigated their first centuries of existence with the steady deliberation of a heavily-medicated librarian.
This isn’t to say that nothing interesting ever happened in Vancouver, it often did, but it was a safe kind of interesting that you could comment on in the morning and forget by the afternoon. The community had the feel of a very old and well-tended garden.
Not everyone could be as sensible, of course. Every garden, no matter how well looked after, attracted its pests, the young, the transient, and the apt to die. Even so, things usually wrapped up by nine o’clock on weeknights so everyone could get home and settle in with a cup of milky tea.
On a night like this one with a chill wind blowing, and rain coming down in sheets, most of the community were in their warm beds, or failing that, sipping at a hot toddy and exclaiming at the horrendous weather.
This is why it was such a surprise for Aleph when she came through the door of Strangefellows to find the place buzzing with activity and the coppery smell of blood heavy in the air. She had a strong suspicion that whatever had happened here involved Stirling Haig.
The place had been utterly wrecked. A mound of destroyed furniture was piled against one wall, and the floor looked like it had been used as a canvas by a blood-frenzied Jackson Pollock. There were perhaps fifty people still in the room, some sitting, some standing, but all with expressions that ranged from shock to outright weeping.
The club’s dragon was prowling around the back of the room and lashing its tail in agitation. Aleph had known Strangefellows had one, but she’d never expected them to need it.
A man with bright red hair, wearing an unlikely combination of flannel robe and partly laced work boots, was mopping the floors with a bucket of water that looked at least half blood. Aleph recognized him as one of the establishment’s Char Witches. Heads turned and conversation quieted As she came into the room.
She walked up to the man with the mop. “Sam, right?” she asked.
He straightened when he heard his name and flinched back when he saw her face. Maybe she should have worn her makeup after all.
“Uh, yes, what can I do for you…?” he seemed unsure how to address her. She got this a lot.
“Aleph is fine,” she said, though he didn’t look totally convinced.
“What can I do for you, um, Aleph?”
She made a point of looking around at the wrecked furniture, blood-spattered floors and bucket of bloody water before reaching into her jacket and pulling out her badge.
He looked at it blankly then back up at her. A look of realization dawned on his face. “Oh right! Sorry, I’m still a bit shell-shocked.”
“Did you see what happened here?”
He swallowed. “Everyone did.” He stalled, as though wanting to speak but not knowing where to begin.
She gave him a second to compose himself while she took out a pen and notepad before fixing him with her eyes.
He saw her black eyes fixed on him, swallowed and began.“They were all customers we’ve had in here before, a few of them were even regulars. They just came in and started beating on people. I’m not talking about just throwing a punch or two. No, they were actually trying to kill.”
She’d been pumping people for information like this for decades and in very little time she had the story out of him, at least the parts he’d tell her without more prodding.
“I’m assuming Stirling Haig was the one with the charcoal bag on his head?”
“What? No! Who?” His reaction might have been comical if the situation wasn’t so serious.
Aleph gave Sam a very direct look. “He had an empty bag of charcoal on his head. You are a char witch. Where would he get such a thing?”
Sam opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Aleph sighed and paced through the room. Near the centre, she came to a sudden stop and held out her free hand in front of her. She waved it gently through the space at chest level and made a pinching movement as though plucking a thread from mid-air. She turned back to where Sam watched and blew over her fingertips. Her breath turned to heavy mist for the space of half a heartbeat.
“Stirling Haig,” she said again. “I’m guessing he got the empty bag of charcoal from the back room where you keep the crucible?”
Sam’s eyes had turned a bit wild and he looked around to see who was close enough to hear. Maybe he had a point. The middle of a club probably wasn’t the place to speak about rogue necromancers. She decided to change the topic for the moment.
“Have you seen Dimitri Singh tonight? He and one other were to meet me here tonight.”
“Oh, right! Yeah, Dimitri’s here.
When he didn’t move, she gave him an “after you” kind of gesture and he led her to a battered "employees only" door. The door opened out, but someone, or many someones from the look of it, had tried to pound it down from the outside. Amatures.
Sam nodded mutely and held the door open for her.
A narrow hallway led to a well-lit room where the crucible that powered Strangefellows quietly roared. A woman with bright yellow and red hair had her arms up to the shoulder in the burning charcoal, her face less than a half foot from the glowing embers. The updraft from the fire blew the hair back from her face which was facing away from them as she felt her way around the inside of the clay container. A streak of ash ran from her nose up her forehead. A man with dark features sat in a lawn chair against one wall with his head held in his long-fingered hands.
“This doesn’t look good, Dimitri, the woman was saying. The temperature rose too fast, some of these sigils are seriously fucked. I’m not even sure how we’re still getting eighty percent efficiency. We’re going to need to begin work on another one ASAP.”
Sam cleared his throat and Sue finally turned her head to see Aleph standing in the doorway. “Aleph!” carolled Sue, pulling her arm from the crucible and brushing off a few live embers back into the clay vessel. Dimitri lifted his head to look at them with tired, haunted eyes.
Sue straightened and dashed toward her with her arms wide. “Oh my god, it’s amazing to see you!”
“You never get tired of that joke, do you?” Aleph asked, smiling and holding her own arms open.
Sue threw her arms around Aleph’s shoulders and burst into tears. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she sobbed into Aleph’s shoulder. “It was horrible.”
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