[New approach on this one. Tried to keep it briefer.]
Merlin, Ursa, and Nora—along with Amyll and Rembra, talking between themselves—follow the red Dragon, who’s now barging through the crowd. Other attendees are avoiding him, meaning he’s either a force to be reckoned with or very annoying.
Above, Merlin spots a pigeon and, suspicious of the fact it keeps making eye contact with him, begins messaging it. He learns that the pigeon is in fact Caesura, who has ostensibly faked her death.
‘I wanted out,’ she says. ‘So, I let him think he was strong enough to defeat me in single combat. Of course, he was not.’
‘Okay, but why are you a pigeon now?’ asks Merlin.
‘Stupid question. Because I am an Angel.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It is a thing Angels do. You see flock of pigeons in the street? A good five to ten percent of them are Angels, believe me.’
‘Oh. Well, uh, that’s… good. Listen, Caesura, what are you doing still here if you wanted out?’
‘I am trying to help you. I would like to see Benzene defeated, so I can reunite with my loved ones.’
Merlin finds his eyes narrowing. ‘How do we know we can trust you on that?’
‘You worry I still work for the Demon? Hmm. Have you discovered his additional sense yet?’
‘No. He’s played it pretty close to the chest.’
‘Then I will tell it to you. If Benzene has spent more than one hour with a person, for the following seven days he can share their senses. See what they see. Hear what they hear.’
‘Oh Christ.’
The pigeon nods gravely. ‘He must focus his attention to do so. And I believe he can only do one person at a time. Like security camera.’
‘It’s a good thing we’re communicating with magic rather than actual sound, then. Listen, speaking of security… I’m going to need a favour and you’re just the bird for it. Can you create a distraction for me in the security room up there?’
‘Hm,’ says Caesura, tilting her head to regard the window. ‘Yes. I can do this. But you will owe me favour in return, yes?’
‘If I get out of this alive, sure.’
Ursa and Nora have split from the two demons who are following Carinae. They go to talk to Laniakea back at the bar. She’s of course still very drunk, and when asked she explains a bit about the red Dragon with the eyepatch and the less than stellar opinions on her.
‘Ha,’ she slurs, despite the word “Ha” not being particularly known to feature sibilants. ‘Eta Carinae is a child. An upstart. Forty years ago he challenged me to a duel, do you know this? Riding on the coattails of his Father. Or Grandfather. I don’t remember which. Eta Argus.’
‘I think he’s both?’ adds Adagio, before leaning in to add a whispered addendum. ‘Uh, Dragons that want to procreate craft eggs out of parts of their hoards. Often by committee, with multiple parents donating items to craft with. It’s. It’s complicated.’
They’d spotted a display of swords provided by one Eta Argus on their way in. Any Dragon who’d managed to be the leading collector of something as ubiquitous as “swords” must be extremely powerful indeed.
‘Yes, Argus was, and is, what you teens would refer to as hot shit,’ agrees Laniakea, when this is pointed out.
‘Oh, we’re not teens—’ begins Ursa, but the Dragon isn’t listening.
‘Carinae has been struggling to choose a topic for his hoard for the past two centuries,’ she says, swirling around a glass of blue liquor. ‘He challenged me to a… challenge. To try and take my hoard subject. He wasn’t even really interested in doomsdays, he just thought it would make him seem cool. He is a poser.
‘The duel itself was like a, like a lamb fighting… a Dragon. Named Lanieakea. He was pathetic. Even more so when I let him live afterwards.’ Laniakea smiles. There’s entirely the wrong kind of joy in it.
Adagio is looking uncharacteristically stern. ‘This was before we’d met,’ she tells them. ‘Lania was… worse, then.’
Laniakea’s expression quickly shifted to one of dismay. ‘I let him live!’
‘Yeah, to humiliate him.’
‘Well. Yes. But, you were telling me about the human philosophy. The outcomes of the action are more important than my motives.’
‘Babe I didn’t teach you about utilitarianism so you could use it to justify torture over murder.’
‘I did not torture him!’ cries Laniakea, aghast.
‘You pulled out one of his teeth.’
‘Yes, as a trophy.‘
Adagio raises her hands to make a few little grabbing motions, before giving up. ‘Babe that’s worse,’ she says. ‘You see how—’
Ignoring her protests, Laniakea drunkenly lets slip about the hiring of Nora’s sister being a potential way of recruiting Nora herself to Open Sky Capital. She says that with just a bit more supervision, they probably could have got the Infernomicon back without any fuss.
She also offers to keep Nora’s gun in her hoard for a couple weeks so it can steep in magic, but Nora is suspicious. Also she talks about several zoom calls with Queen Titania that have lead her to see Ursa as too volatile to hire, and Merlin is obviously attached to the Institute with his website, so he’s a no-go.
‘Hold on, go back,’ says Ursa. ‘Zoom calls with Titania? Queen Titania?’
Laniakea waves a hand, sloshing a bit of her drink onto the floor. ‘Yes? We chat.’
‘You and the Summer Queen… chat? And I myself have come up as a topic?’
‘Yes, yes. My Draconic allies are few, but I have many connections.’
Ursa is becoming slightly manic at this point. ‘Okay but why would you possibly be talking about me?’
‘Titania has…’ Laniakea hesitates as she plumbs the depths of her mental thesaurus. ‘Peculiar tastes.’
‘I’m sorry?!’
‘I believe she views your life and—’ again the hesitation, ‘your romantic escapades as something of a… soap opera.’
Here, Ursa looks to Adagio for support, who simply nods her head.
Ursa feels a stress headache coming on. ‘Oh my god,’ she says.
Merlin, meanwhile, has gone to speak with Merensky and learns a bit about Carinae wanting to make a deal with her probably. People think she’s eccentric because of how powerful she is and yet she sits in a museum by herself. She talks about shit a lot, and calls Carinae a haemorrhoid. Merlin gives her a little clockwork robot as a no-strings gift, and she actually shakes his hand.
As he leaves, Ursa and Nora turn up. So do Rembra and Amyl, who say Carinae is coming this way. They don’t have long to make the swap, because if he gives whatever’s in the briefcase to Merensky they’ll never get it, and even if they could it’ll be “stamped” as part of a hoard and much easier to track. Ursa is unfortunately still mortified about zoom Titania. Perhaps not thinking very clearly, she decides to transform into Merensky, after stealing a jumper from a dragon who hoarded jumpers. She doesn’t actually remember if Merensky was wearing a jumper, but the pink suit is probably a bit conspicuous.
It’s at this time that Caesura goes to create her distraction. Merlin sees the pigeon in the security room, flying around and pecking at people’s heads and shitting and just being a general nuisance. He sprints up to put the security cameras on a loop and turn off the alarms with mage hand. He is undetected. Caesura, too, flies out.
Ursa-as-Merensky intercepts Carinae before he spots the real deal, and says they should talk backstage.
‘Why on the stage?’ asks Carinae.
Ursa racks her brains. Queen Titania has taken an interest in my fucking sex life, she thinks. Out loud, she says ‘You’re clearly about to try and bribe me,’ pointing to the briefcase. ‘Wouldn’t you rather not embarrass yourself in public when I tell you no?’
Carinae almost manages to hide his initial obsequious reaction. ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll be interested in what I have to offer when you see this case’s contents.’
Did negging him just work there? Ew. ‘Sure thing, boyo. Come on then.’ “Boyo”? Get it together, Ursa. What would Titania think! Oh god.
Merlin and Amyll follow as Ursa and the Dragon walk away, but Rembra has disappeared so Nora splits from the group to see what she’s up to. As it turns out, Rembra is making her way back to the bus, with Nora in tow unrumbled.
She sees Rembra go to open the door. Only Phency is visible on the bus. And then Nora feels the barrel of a gun being pressed to the small of her back.
‘Now, Nora, did you really think I wouldn’t be paying attention?’ says Benzene from behind her. ‘Why don’t you come inside.’
Back in the convention hall, Carinae opens the briefcase after Ursa gets him talking (he wants to get Merensky’s support in his “upcoming venture”) and reveals what’s inside.
Posing as an expert on clockwork, Ursa can’t just ask what it is. But she manages to phrase her way around it. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
It looks like a heart, made of brass gears and arms, its valves and chambers not quite glinting in the backstage lack-of-light. Softly, it beats, ticking away as the sprockets move. As it expands, the gears separate and touch others, spinning in reverse to make the thing contract.
And there’s something else, something more intangible. It glows from within, as if by daylight seen from the bottom of a deep well. From an arcane perspective, it looks unfathomably dense. Leaden with puissance.
‘A clockwork heart and soul,’ breathes Carinae, equal parts smug and reverent. ‘I thought you might be impressed.’
‘Where did you get it?’ says Ursa, forgetting her character for a second.
A short way away, behind a curtain, Merlin and Amyll are waiting to duck in and make the swap. ‘Do we even need the copy now?’ hisses Merlin.
‘It’s a bit risky to just assume he’ll leave after handing it over,’ whispers Amyll. ‘We don’t want him coming after us until we’re in the clear; the copy buys us time.’
‘Alright, where is it then? You’ve seen it and the case now. Get to fabricating!’
‘It’s—going to be hard to copy something like that, Merlin. I’m working on the formulae now.’
‘Just do the briefcase.’
‘No! There’s too much power in it, if I just put a weight inside it’ll be obvious. I need something just… similar. Stop distracting me.’
Merlin shakes his head and readies a spell with which he can blow out the lights. It should be a sufficient distraction. For Carinae, not Amyll.
Carinae is looking very pleased with himself when he answers Ursa’s question. ‘Oh, I made some deals with some… explorers. Dangerous men,’ he adds. ‘And speaking of danger, this particular item is an incredibly potent one. It belongs to the director of the Caliber Institute.’
Ursa takes an involuntary step back. She tries to cover her shock but the reveal of just how important this thing is is too much.
‘I can see you’re impressed,’ says Carinae.
‘Oh, yes,’ says Ursa, attempting to regain composure. ‘I love the, uh—springs. Always my favourite bit of a heart.’
Carinae squints with his uncovered eye. It seems he’s getting suspicious.
Over on the bus, Benzene is holding Nora at gunpoint, but is otherwise polite and affable, if a bit oily. Same as always.
‘Now, Nora, you’re obviously a, ah, smart cookie. I’d wager you can see which way the wind is blowing. How would you like to… hmm. To get out of all this with a few new business connections? To be your own boss?’
Nora looks from him, to the barrel of the gun he’s holding, and back again. ‘I’m popular today… If you’re offering me a place on your crew, I’m fairly sure that would make you my boss. And I can’t say I’m impressed with your office culture.’
‘What, you mean the filth on Rembra’s phone?’ asks Benzene.
This gets a vague grunt of amusement from Rembra herself.
‘No,’ says Nora. ‘I mean Merlin’s mum. The whole kidnapping, hostage-taking thing.’ She nods towards Merlin’s father, sat incredibly still just a few seats behind Benzene.
‘Oh, that?’ says Benzene, holding her gaze without blinking. ‘If you don’t like us keeping hostages, you should have just said so!’
He shoots Merlin’s father in the forehead.
Nora rises from her seat but freezes as she sees Albar—or, the fabrication she’d thought was Albar—unravel in a spool of dark red threads.
Rembra chimes in at this point. ‘Yeah, we needed a tech guy for the job… and a fall guy. And I was still pretty pissed off with Merlin for laughing at my cover story. So we decided to get a little leverage on the guy.’
‘Yes, thank you, Rembra,’ says Benzene, obviously a bit put out at his monologue being interrupted. ‘Amyll is really quite something with her fabrications, though I did worry a little you might notice him not moving when she wasn’t, ah, piloting the thing.’
‘Merlin only came here because his dad told him that… do you even have his mum?!’
At this point, Benzene looks rather like a proud parent at a school play. ‘It’s like Rembra said. Leverage.’
Nora mentally tugs at the magic in her Mountebank jacket, but hesitates. ‘I thought Amyll couldn’t make fabrications without the real deal to study?’
Benzene cocks his head, and smiles. For a moment he seems ready to give a little golf clap, but there’s a gun still in his hand. Nora, sensing that time is running out, uses her jacket and teleports away.
Merlin, hiding backstage, feels his phone buzz. He shuffles away from the concentrating Amyll and answers it, without actually saying anything.
It’s his Mother.
‘Sam? Are you there? Look, it’s a bad signal, but… your dad’s not round at yours, is he? He didn’t come home last night.’
‘…I’ll call you back.’
‘Sam, don’t you hang up, this is—’
Merlin blows the lights.
A shower of sparks rains down, planting the idea of fire in the stage curtains. The smell of the air tilts just slightly towards the smell of smoke. The flash and sudden darkness sends Carinae whirling to find its source, only to have Merlin’s Unseen Servant wrench the briefcase from his hands.
He turns again to follow the case, and thus the retreating Merlin, only to have Ursa take off her stolen jumper, stuff it over Carinae’s head, and push him to the ground before running off. She puts her usual face back on… and stops a little way away.
The fire is spreading on the curtains; dirty black smoke billows up to obscure the ceiling. But the Dragons don’t seem to care. After all, no evacuation order has been issued. The alarms have been disabled.
‘You know, it’s possible to take the whole Order thing too far,’ mutters Ursa. Sure, heavy hitters like Pyrite and Carinae’s Dad/Grandad would shrug off a burning building without so much as blinking. Carinae would probably be fine. But there was non-Draconic security, and younger, less-respected Dragons that might—
That settled it. Ursa reaches out with Bardic power and lashes the massive screen above the stage to her will. It had been broadcasting the countdown until the ranking announcements due to happen onstage, but this crackles out of focus as Ursa’s friendliest smile appears onscreen.
‘Excuse me, Draconic attendees!’ says Ursa, in her best like-and-subscribe delivery, hearing the giant televised version of her do the same. ‘There has been a fire, as I’m sure you can see by the smoke around this announcement. Can everyone please calmly make their way to the exit?’
Nora blinks into existence back in the hall, to see multiple calm lines of evacuating Dragons, as well as a hurrying Merlin and Ursa. Amyll bustles up and holds out her hands before Nora can open her mouth.
‘Merlin!’ says Amyll. ‘Give me the heart, quick! We’re almost clear!’
But Nora speaks over her. ‘Merlin, listen, about your Dad—’
‘I know,’ says Merlin, and fires a point-blank Lightning Bolt into Amyll’s outstretched arms.
She skids backwards, eliciting some mild annoyance from the Dragon crowd. For a moment it seems she’s going to retaliate, but instead she pulls out her phone.
‘No you don’t,’ says Ursa, and puts some power in her next Command. ‘Drop it,’ she says. ‘Benzene can stay outside, thanks.’
‘I’m sure he knows already,’ says Merlin. ‘He’ll be watching.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll explain in a minute. Come on. We have to get this to the Institute.’
‘But what about your Mum? And your Dad’s still in the—’
‘I’ll explain in a minute!’
In the day’s single point of good fortune, Laniakea happens to be passing by at just that moment.
‘Laniakea!’ says Merlin, moving over and taking a deep breath. ‘Listen. We need your help.’
Laniakea appears unmoved, but something about Merlin’s voice makes her stop to listen. He sounds almost humble.
‘I need your help. We’ve found something here, something more important by far than anything we expected, and we need to get back to the Institute. My Dad’s in trouble. But we need to get this to Brynner, it’s… more important than me. But I don’t know how to get there in time without your help. So—can you help us? Please?’
Laniakea eyes him. A pinstripe of smoke whistles out from her left nostril. Her mouth opens.
‘I do not particularly wish to mill about in the parking lot while a fire is put out. So yes. I will help you.’
They move.
Rembra blocks the path out, but Nora knocks her on her ass with an Eldritch Blast before she can even get a word in. Laniakea transforms so she can carry them. Adagio casts a spell to make them invisible, just like when they first met.
‘But what about your Dad?!’ repeats Ursa.
‘That’s the thing,’ says Nora, ‘That wasn’t him on the bus. It was a fabrication.’
‘Yeah. I’d suspected that,’ Merlin agrees, holding onto one of Laniakea’s spines for dear life as the Dragon approaches the sound barrier. ‘I’d never have been able to shut off an engine my Dad was supposed to have warded like that.’
Ursa thinks back. ‘Actually, Amyll always did go pretty quiet whenever he was speaking. Makes sense, if she was puppeting him?’
‘Yeah. But she told me herself, she needs to study the real deal to make a proper fabrication.’
‘Which means it wasn’t your Mum they took.’
Merlin nods. ‘Yeah. Speaking of whom… I have to make a quick phone call.’
Roll History 