Edge Town-City of Light

"Oh boy," Terry murmured to Tim as he got out of the car. "Is this the cop Jarl was beefing with? Glad he had a sudden attack of not wanting to do the same shit that got him in trouble last time. I wonder if this place just inspires that? It'd be nice to know what a survival instinct feels like. They seem very popular."

Unfortunately the werewolf wasn't particularly good at noticing when people were using mysterious wizard senses for things, or he'd have known to shut up and not be distracting.

Leon, Terry and Tim

Gage looked very typical for a man in his position. That is, he was starting to form dark bags under his eyes and cradled a cup of coffee in his hand like it was a matter of life and death. He waved when he saw Leon, but it was more of a performative measure. He looked pretty beat, if at least in decently high spirits.

"Monsieur Lichtenberg. We meet again." He gestured at the church. "I suspect this is not a social occasion, though."

Meanwhile, in the car, Tim suddenly had a feeling he couldn't quite shake, like a sudden shiver down his spine and the kind of standing-on-edge that increased cortisol levels in your brain chemistry tended to provide. It was like someone had just slapped him in the face with a warning sign full of blinking red lights.

Tim shivered for a moment and his eyes focused on the real world again. "Well, seems Jarl has once again stepped into a wasps nest."

Terry sighed and looked up to the heavens in entreaty. "Man, it'd be nice to have a nice relaxing haunting full of merely average murderghosts some time."

"Well, yeah. The church is haunted, so unless you already have an exorcist in there, I figured we could probably lend a hand. Could probably lend a hand even if you already have someone on it. But, before that, the bust went well right? Do you need anything from me for that?"

Leon, Terry and Tim

"All is well, all is well. In all honesty, the less you get involved with that bust from a strictly-legal perspective, the better. It will be easy for the courts to assemble a case as it is now. Any more details, and things begin to get...messy. Best leave things as they were."

And then, it hit Leon like a ton of bricks, too. It wasn't, in hindsight, like something terrible had just happened. It was just that his survival instincts had suddenly gone into overdrive. Like something he expected to be true, expected to be the case, suddenly wasn't. And then the realization hit both Tim and Leon at exactly the same time.

Before, there had been a sort of persistent low-level 'bad vibe' to the church. They'd felt it as they arrived, and their senses had probably just attributed it to the ghosts inside the church. It wasn't really anything worth being worried about.

Except when it was suddenly gone. It was like something had just, suddenly and very violently, yanked all the bad voodoo out of the church from the outside. This wasn't a peaceful exorcism, either.

And then Gage confirmed as much. "Non, we have no exorcists inside at this time. The Church ran into some problems at a jazz club. You would not happen to know anything about that, would you?"

Tim was hit by the sensation like a punch in the face and he drew in air as if his lungs had been pumpted empty. The sensation had been as if suddenly a sinkhole had opened before his very feet and he struggled for a few moments to regain his metaphorical balance.

And then a hard stare entered his eyes. The stare of someone who had a terrible suspicion.

This did not have the feeling of an act of Faith. It had not the echoes of Ectomancy.

Which in the Sphere's of Ghost and Lemurs left only one major option.

And with that, he began to stride forward, full length steps of 2 meter determined German and only a polite "Well, allow me to confer with them. One professional to the other."

Not that he slowed down, mind.

Terry might not be so hot at noticing when someone was seeing past the veil of the mundane, but he could certainly tell that the wizard had picked up on something fucky. "Tim? You, uh, got some context you wanna share with the class?"

"Maybe." He said, still without stopping. "You remember Alexander's first magic henchperson?"

"God yes, I have never seen a human being take himself so seriously." Terry frowned. "So, what, someone's necromancing them into uberghosts?"

"If my suspicion is right, and I do hope not, more akin on using them as power source." Tim elaborate. "I need a closer look."

"Alright. Makes sense."

Leon suddenly froze has the wave of weirdness hit. He turned towards the source suddenly very very worried that they hadn't gotten to the problem soon enough.

"...well I think the ghost problem might have just been solved, but only to create a new problem."

He noticed Tim and Terrance had left the car and were heading towards him.

"Tim! Please tell me what I think just happened didn't actually happen."

Tim gave his head a tiny shake. "We need to take a look inside."

And get a view on that 'expert'.

Two And A Half Wizards

Gage raised an eyebrow.

"...Is there a problem? You all seem quite on edge. There is no-one inside the church at the moment. We have no people inside, and we've had guards standing around the premises to make sure nobody got in." He shrugged, leaving an opening in the police tape for them to step through. Well, Tim might have to do a bit of forward limbo, but there were limits to the levels to which the tape would budge. "But you all looked spooked enough that it's probably best I do this rather than spend fifteen minutes arguing with you. Just be quick about getting to the church. There's another officer here who might not be feeling quite as charitable."

Tim gave Gage a thankful nod and, after some wiggling, strode onward into the church as he undid the straps on his bag and got out his heavy iron bound spellbook.

Jarl

Convincing Bruno to help find information on Claude Fontaine was the easiest task in the world. After all, the freshman was fascinated by magic, and restless enough from term finals to welcome any distraction—no matter how detrimental to his grades. After getting a short summary of what was needed from Jarl, the two of them ended up walking across campus to use the University of Sorbonne’s library. Once there, research was as simple as grabbing an empty desk, and having Bruno search up news articles on a computer, then print them out so Jarl could look at them without frying anything.

It was a sharp contrast to Jarl’s time in Las Vegas. There, he’d clearly been an outsider—out of place among the gamblers and tourists. Here, he was surrounded by students his own age—mortals that lived in a world without the supernatural, mortals with classes to pass and tests to study instead of ghosts to put to rest. But they were not worlds apart. Now and then, students would stroll by to chat with Bruno. Some recognized Jarl from the historical fencing club, while to others, he was introduced as a foreign friend of Professor De Normandies.

The difference was that this was a place Jarl could have belonged to. Even as a wizard, with difference choices, he could have ended up studying at Sorbonne during the day, perhaps visiting museums and jazz clubs at night. Tim had done something like that, after all.

It was something to think about.

Meanwhile, news articles started to assemble a better picture of Claude Fontaine. Publically, he was somewhat dull—an upper middle-class success story, a business major who married into Cabarii. Together, he and his wife transitioned the company from electronics to robotics in the nineties. There was little chance his hands were perfectly clean. Cabarii had a history of squabbles with unions, and consumer lawsuits; but as a businessman, there was nothing to distinguish him from any other capitalist.

Claude’s private life was a different affair. The investigation of that resulted in a slew of news articles, all about a half-decade old: “Cabarii CEO and her husband injured in ‘workplace accident,’” “Nina Fontaine, CEO of Cabarii Industries, dies of complications in hospital.” “Claude Fontaine emerges publicly for first time since injury.”

Peeling aside the wild speculation, it looked like his wife had been killed, and Claude crippled in a mysterious workplace accident.

Digging even deeper, a second story emerged:

Claude and Nina had two children. The younger of two was still in high school, and seemed unremarkable.

When Bruno showed Jarl a picture of the second, some pieces fell into place. The photo was a year or two old—a square-jawed university freshmen wearing a ISC Business School letter jacket. Geoff Fontaine. Unmistakably the priest Jarl had exorcised a revolutionary court of ghosts alongside.

The priest who had warned the wizards to stay clear of Fontaine.

It seems as though Claude and his son were estranged.

The timing was probably related.

There didn't seem to be much else to find—though this was more than a start. Jarl and Bruno compiled their findings into a stack of stapled paper, and started to make their way back to Professor De Normandies.

However, when Jarl stepped out into the brisk spring air, he felt something. Warning. The sensation of being watched. Danger.

A brown-haired man with a neat beard, dressed in a tweed suit just a shade darker than his hair was sitting perfectly still on a bench outside the door. He was lanky, and broad-shouldered, and stared at Jarl with unblinking yellow eyes.

Edited by DrTentacles on Mar 26th 2019 at 6:08:18 AM

Leon tilted his head in thanks as he also said, "Thank you," before moving under the line and towards the church. From what little he picked up before the source of the sudden lack of ghosts hadn't actually come from the church but hey Tim was heading there so presumably he had a plan.

Once inside the church he dug out his shield focus and slid it onto his hand hastily tightening the straps down as they moved.

"So odds are we got a necromancer that just what? ate the spirits here?"

"What I'm getting from this is that there was a monkey's paw nearby when I was wishing I wouldn't have to deal with more ghosts. At least he'll be solid so I can hit him properly.

"Er, he will be solid so I can hit him properly, right?"

Jarl

So, Fontaine was a garden-variety robotics CEO whose son had joined the priesthood. And warned him about trusting Fontaine. Well, at least if he needed more information, he could go track down Choir Boy. It might do to have someone else's perspective on the enigmatic, wheelchair-bound man. Maybe the Catholics wouldn't shoot at him. And maybe he'd get run over by a truck-sized Easter Bunny next week.

Jarl could never make his mind up about whether or not he loved or hated being here. On the one hand, he liked the perspective. He liked peering through the looking glass at the people who didn't know just how much bigger the world was. Where the world was just the social and cultural burdens of humanity rather than entire living, breathing cultures that they all happened to share a planet with. He wondered if he could've ever been one of them.

On the other hand, that brought a painful sting of recognition back, one that he'd fought tooth and nail to bury. Every time he imagined his future, he couldn't help but imagine Astrid in it. It had been years now, and he still couldn't, still refused, to let go. Every time he thought about having a future, he lamented that she couldn't be there with him. That she wouldn't get her chance to see Parisian museums, to study, to see Sofie perform on a stage in front of a crowd who'd paid to see her rock out. That's probably why he didn't dwell too much on the future. He was probably not going to live to see it anyway.

That last sting of fatalism was probably also the reason why he couldn't be too surprised when his warning signals went off. He put his hands in the pockets of his jacket, fiddling to put his focus gloves on, and sighed. He paced over to where the Man in Tweed was sitting, eyes narrowed.

"Alright, do me a favor. It's been a long few days, and this is a profoundly busy public space. So if you're going to try and murder me, can we at least take it somewhere where my face isn't going to be plastered all over police sketchbooks? I've got enough bad rep with the cops around here." He shrugged, his mind gathering power, though he didn't speak the words to unleash it. "And if you're just here to do the usual posturing and threats, can we reschedule? Kinda busy here."

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Two And A Half Wizards

The inside of the church was still a mess. There were scorch marks from where a ring of fire had, seemingly, spontaneously erupted, crushed scaffolding and fallen masonry littered the floor, having chipped or damaged the marble floor in several different places. Whatever had happened here, it had been intense. No police were inside, having cordoned the area off in order for the Church, or other interested factions, to investigate.

But according to Gage, none of them had showed up. And indeed, when Tim, Leon and Terry went inside, they didn't see anything at all. They also didn't feel anything, which was the strangest part. Even before he'd directly interacted with the ghosts, Jarl had described a 'bad feeling' about the church, some malign aura that had hung over the place, imperceptible to all but those who knew how magic worked. But there was nothing of the sort. The place felt almost oppressively normal.

Everything was a great, big nothing.

Tim stepped forward and made a gesture towards Leon "Try to keep your Magic calm." he said, almost a whisper and got a small glas vial out of his bag, filled with whispy thin copper shavings.

"This should tell us where the Necromancy was coming from." he said, popped the cork and emptied the shavings into the air in the center of the Church, waiting for them to react to any lingering magic in the room.

Leon nodded as he took a deep breath, closed his eyes and drew his magic and focus inward, stilling his emotions and thoughts. He wasn't an expert at the technique by any margin, but he's practiced it in the past. If only in a vague attempt to get access to technology back.

Two Wizards and A Werewolf

Once again, it seemed like nothing would really behave. Sure, the copper shavings did what they were supposed to do and directed Tim in the direction of a latent flow of magic.

The problem was that it was pointing towards him. Or towards something behind him. It was kind of hard to tell when they couldn't move in three dimensions. Either way, it was another instance of things not working as intended.

Tim gave a furious frown and, maybe out of frustration, opened his Sight.

Because Using the Sight Is A Great Idea

Almost as soon as he opened his Third Eye, a sharp lance of pain seared right through Tim's head, and for a few seconds, all he could see were stars.

This wasn't like looking at something unpleasant or oppressive with the Sight, though. This wasn't the sort of thing that impressed itself on one's memory, etched on the wizard's soul because they saw something they weren't supposed to see.

Rather, it was like the minute Tim had opened his Sight, his Third Eye, someone had jammed a finger into it and twisted it around. It was, to be quite frank, disorienting in the extreme. The only fleeting imprrssion hr got through the pain was that there was still something in the church. Something ancient and powerful.

Something that wasn't, to the best of his knowledge, necromancy. Though it was hard to tell with a disorienting shock of pure, undiluted pain running through his noggin. He had Regrets.

Then, like it had been waiting for someone to be brave enough to open the Sight, a ring of fire suddenly roared into existence around the three. The flames seemed utterly unimpeded by the fact that the floor was marble, but there were no malicious spirits to be found.

Oh very dear.

Tim didn't quite go down to one knee, but his legs were definity wobbly as the pain hit him. "Herrgottverdammte..." he muttered as he tried to force his way through like a swimmer trying to go through a too-high wave instead of away from it.

Only then did he realize there was suddenly fire.

"Was?"