Since Merlin’s making a phone call, and there’s not a lot of in-flight entertainment on a Green Dragon’s back, both Ursa and Nora decide to make some calls of their own.
‘Sam?’ says Merlin’s mum, by way of greeting. ‘You hung up before!’
‘Yes, mother. Sorry, mother.’
‘This is an emergency, none of the folks at the depot have seen him!’
‘Listen, mother, I’m ringing to make sure you’re safe; there might be people looking for you because of… wait, what do you mean? You aren’t home? Have you been out to the bus depot?’
‘Of course I have. What, you think I should just tell the police and leave it at that? Oh, I’m about to go through a tunnel, I’ll phone you back in a—’
The phone beeps.
Laniakea’s wings beat.
As all this is going on, Ursa has phoned her fiancé and is six rings in when he finally picks up.
‘Ursa! Hey!’
‘Alkahest, hey! How’s it going?’
‘Oh it’s not so bad. How about you?’
‘Good, good… yeah. Hey, are you free right now? We’re headed to the Institute; something kind of big is going down. Might need some backup.’
There’s another beat of Laniakea’s wings.
‘Alkahest?’
His voice on the phone sounds apologetic. ‘I’m still here, sorry,’ he says. ‘Thing is, uh, I’m kinda busy with something myself, y’know? Normally I’d come running, but… Someone called in a favor.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m sorry, Ursa. Maybe if I—’
‘No, don’t worry about it! I can handle myself!’
‘I know that! But I’d much prefer to… look, I’m going to have to call you back, I’m going through a—’
Meanwhile, Nora too is on the phone, because apparently anyone can succumb to peer pressure.
‘What do you mean, you’re in a labyrinth?’
‘Well, technically it’s a maze, not a labyrinth,’ says the Morris Worm on the other end of the line. ‘There’s multiple paths, I mean. But yeah, I tried to check the Institute servers like usual and instead of the ol’ sloppy conjurewall, there’s this thing!’
‘Well… can you get back out?’
‘I appear to be stuck.’
‘Fuck. Okay then. We’ll figure something out as soon as we can but until then, I’m, uh, going through a tunnel, so…’
Meanwhile, back at the convention, we see Mr Pyrite asking Minette to make a phone call to Nora re: protecting his investment. He requests that she not put herself in unnecessary danger, but can’t talk directly as he’s busy accepting his new rank of Third Most Powerful Dragon in All Creation.
Carinae is storming through the convention and demands to see security footage, but finds that no such footage exists thanks to Merlin’s earlier intervention. He goes outside and melts a bus.
‘Well now,’ says a voice from behind, causing Carinae to whirl about and ready another gout of fire.
Benzene smiles. ‘That’s quite the temper,’ he finishes.
‘Who the devil do you think you are, addressing me in such a manner?’
‘I’m someone who witnessed your recent theft. Think of me as… a concerned citizen. Maybe I can point you in the right direction? Let’s talk.’
⁂
Upon arriving at the Institute, Laniakea excuses herself, and walks in front of Alkahest’s horrific car which too has arrived at said Institute. Merlin’s Mum is with him and everyone is like ‘what’.
‘We met at night school,’ says Alkahest, in what was probably one of the better potential explanations. ‘Cookery classes. Faeyore and I struck up a friendship ‘cuz she’d always bring fresh veggies and I’d mooch ’em off of her.’
‘Mm, he was very insistent. Used to bug me until he lent a hand with that nasty business with the Aphid Prince,’ says Merlin’s mum, with a bit of a nostalgic tilt to her head.
‘Hey, I’d never have gotten your corncobs working together if you didn’t give ’em permission first,’ says Alkahest, before pausing. ‘Sorta defeats the purpose of having a union, actually.’
By this point Merlin has his head in his hands. ‘Look, mother, as much as I’d love to further dive into this earth-shattering revelation, we’re on a bit of a time crunch and dad’s still missing. We… wait, what are you doing here, anyway?’
Alkahest grins. His teeth make him look absolutely predatory, but it probably isn’t intentional. ‘Well, Ursa said she was headed to the Institute, and I thought maybe if I took a little detour we could kill two birds with—’
Faeyore leaps up and cuffs him on the side of the head. ‘You’re supposed to be helping look for my husband, not running off to… it’s bad enough she’s all you ever talk about at cheese and wine night…’
Ursa pales. ‘I’m all he ever talks about?’
So too does Merlin. ‘Alkahest gets invited to cheese and wine night?!’ But he recovers. ‘Look, Benzene is probably watching right now, so let’s keep moving before he can catch up. Come on.’
Nora sidles up. ‘That’s a good point, actually,’ she says, and takes Alkahest’s scrying-proof amulet and gives it to Merlin.
They head into the Institute and into a private meeting room, and then are relocated to Brynner’s office, and then to Morta’s underground room for privacy.
‘I see,’ is all Brynner says upon being briefed of the situation. ‘And it’s inside that briefcase there, is it?’
From within its container, the heart beats with absolute rhythmic precision, working diligently to push an animating force that wasn’t blood around a non-existent vascular system. The futility of its beating might have been sad, if you looked at it from a certain angle.
Brynner lets out a heaving breath. Something about the gesture seems less of an affectation than usual; less a theatrical outburst and more the sound of someone who doesn’t remember that they no longer have lungs.
‘It’s good that we came down here then,’ he says, perhaps to himself, perhaps to the sculpture-still Morta a few feet away. ‘There are observant forces always in play, and I cannot afford to be seen as biased in any way.
‘We at the Institute are Neutral.’
Everyone could hear the capital letter.
‘And that thing,’ he continues, gesturing vaguely toward the briefcase, ‘Jeopardises that. On a cosmic scale. Even now I can feel its influence.’
‘It’s really yours, then?’ asks Merlin.
‘It was.’
‘Where was it hidden? Obviously we can’t just put it back, but I’d like to know the level of—’
‘I don’t know,’ Brynner interrupts. ‘Penelope handled it last time, and before that… well. That’s unimportant. Suffice it to say I mustn’t know where it is. I have to remain… detached.’
‘We’ll need to hide it then,’ says Ursa.
Merlin’s Mum isn’t too impressed and thinks that trading it for her husband wouldn’t actually be that big a deal. Everyone else is like ‘oh no’ and she drops it.
Heading out, everyone but Merlin goes to get coffee, and both Nora and Merlin have missed calls (Ursa has 7 new subscribers). Nora answers the next one and finds that it’s Minette, who is ringing to inform her that Mr. Pyrite’s presentation was a big success and that if she needs any help to let them know. As she says this, she’s watching Carinae set off in pursuit and Benzene’s bus pulling away. Nora pretends she’s going through a tunnel once more and hangs up.
Meanwhile, Merlin has gone to see Penelope, who informed him that their Labyrinth has caught something. He mostly ignores this, instead asking her where she hid the heart previously.
She tells him that it was hidden on a world far towards death, which was then bound within the index of the Infernomicon of Caravigg. If the heart has been found, then that means someone must’ve damaged the book somehow.
Benzene rings again, but Merlin pretends he’s going through a tunnel and puts the phone down immediately.
Merlin can’t think of a suitable way of hiding the heart on his own, and in desperation ends up reaching out cosmically towards the powers that be,. The Alignment of Order takes notice, brings him to a world where order reigns (everything sorted and categorised on a grid) and grants him the ability to do something about it, telling him ‘A God for a God’. He is then given 10 10th-level spell slots and full access to all the wizard spells. His tattoos are slightly different, more angular and pixelated.
He casts Wish.
‘I wish for this briefcase and its contents to be lost to everyone in existence and who ever could be in existence except for me.’ A portal opens and wrenches the briefcase through. He does NOT disappear along with it as the only person it isn’t lost to.
The spell taxes him greatly, and he finds himself severely weakened. Benzene picks that time to phone Merlin once again, and offers a hostage exchange of sorts – he says to meet him four worlds closer to death at the convention centre, and he will trade his dad for the heart. And he mentions that a rather irate Carinae is on his way, so the pressure’s on. Merlin agrees without much fuss, too weak to argue.
‘That must have been some tunnel!’ says Benzene.
Merlin makes his way out of the Institute and reunites with the others, who are then attacked by Rembra. Rembra’s plan is to loudly make a fuss and get spotted as a Demon, thus having civilians become Auditors to tear them all apart. She’ll escape with the heart at the first sign of a change – however, they are able to fight her off and avoid any Auditors appearing.
The only problem is that it leads to a pile of civilians being nearly killed, though with the intervention of Merlin‘s mum, they’re able to bring them back from the brink.
Ursa charms Rembra into having a casual chat with them, and Rembra tells them that Benzene really will be where he says he’ll be. And that the other crew members will be coming to get them too, as if they get the heart first they can have Caesura’s share. She doesn’t know if it’ll be the real Merlin-Dad; she hadn’t thought of that.
‘You do know Amyll is Benzene’s wife, don’t you?’ she asks.
Everyone spits out their drinks, or would, if they had drinks. Merlin punches the car door.
‘Of course!‘ he shouts. ‘I knew there was something going on with them!’
From there the group gets in the car and decides to get a move on. Merlin texts Brynner to let him know the briefcase has been dealt with.
Roll History 