So they get back to Fulcrum via that portal cinema from before, and Morris sends a prompt that they have less than an hour to get to Open Sky if Nora wants to deliver her protective charm to Ella. It’s a bit slap-dash, though; Morris laments that there wasn’t more time to work on it what with being trapped in a labyrinth for a while. It’s on a microSD in her pocket.
And she does need to get Ella to eat it.
Merlin calls an Uber and complains about his arcane headache. Alkahest offers snausages and aspirin, taking Ursa to one side when Merlin refuses.
“I’m trying real hard here, I mean, the pie went down real well with your folks but…”
“It’s fine, Alkahest, they’re already coming round on you!”
And Merlin does actually apologise. Ursa runs to find something baked when Nora asks, but she only finds prepackaged twinkies.
The uber arrives and whisks them to the cafe near Open Sky. On the way Merlin gets a call from his Mum, and she says they’ll talk about things when he visits tomorrow for lasagna. She’s glad he’s safe.
Arriving near Open Sky, Nora runs into the coffee shop and searches for a baked good to sneak the microchip into. She settles on a flapjack, and a coffee each for her and her sister. Ursa and Alkahest follow, but Nora runs outside as they’re still ordering. Merlin has left the scene, heading home in the uber to sleep.
Nora pauses at the door. She doubles back and asks, “hey, do you want to meet my sister?”
Ursa squees. Outside, in the bus stop where she first met Raoul, Nora actually explains the situation. Honestly. She’s hoping that Ursa will be able to get Ella talking, and if she chokes a bit on a microchip she’s more likely to swallow it to save face if there are strangers present. You know how it is.
Alkahest talks a bit about how there’s no rule against hiring un-snapped vanilla humans in Outsider businesses, but it’s frowned upon. That said, who’s going to tell Laniakea otherwise? Though the Institute might be involved already, in that case, ‘cause it’s part of the Accords.
Nora nods and says she just doesn’t want anything to happen to her sister.
Ursa’s like “Yeah I don’t get on with my sister but I wouldn’t want her to die!!”
Alkahest is like “Mine, actually…?” and trails off.
Nora spots Ella arriving for her interview. She’s early, like a good PA would be.
Meanwhile, Merlin has arrived at his flat. In the lobby though, is a large now-humanoid hellhound – the one Nora befriended previously. Raoul. He says he thought he had followed Nora’s scent here but instead it is the small one. Very well, they will find her together. They will walk.
Merlin’s like “What do you mean we’ll walk?”
And the hound is like “Ah you said the word of power!!”
Merlin sighs and agrees to walk to the cafe where Nora was last, but goes to have a shower first.
Ella is surprised to see Nora, but accepts her offering of coffee and flapjack, even if it’s a bit too hot. Ursa introduces herself and mentions that surely Ella doesn’t want to have a stomach rumble in an interview, that’s the worst! Ella eats some microSD flapjack, chokes a bit, but washes it down with coffee. She’s like ‘look I should head—‘
Laniakea appears. She has a hangover after the Conference. She welcomes Ella, and says “the gang is all here I see”. They look up the street to see Merlin with a large biker guy, rapidly approaching. When the hellhound spots Nora it picks up Merlin and begins sprinting.
Ella’s very confused. As a sort of apology for the hangover, Nora offers the Dragon her coffee. Laniakea says she loves coffee. She then spits it on the floor, saying ‘this is not coffee. Coffee is sweet and has caramel. Adagio brings it.’
Ursa offers hers, as it’s a frappe.
Laniakea spits this on the floor too, because coffee should be hot. She says she’ll show them the canteen, where the coffee is better.
Alkahest stays behind with the hellhound. “Did you only just anthropomorphise, my guy? Look, we’ll head to the park and we can figure some things out for you. There’ll be ducks, eh?”
Inside, Laniakea intends to sit them in the canteen while the initiation takes place. Nora however persuades her to let them shadow the interview process, and Laniakea agrees before going with them to the canteen. Ella, understandably confused at what her interview has become, mouths ‘what the fuck are you doing’ and Nora mouths ‘just trust me’.
In the canteen, Merlin spots Rembra. Apparently she’s still got her job here.
Immediately he goes to tell her off, and she laughs at him for a minute before asking ‘what about Benzene?’
Merlin’s like ‘I dealt with him’.
Rembra is genuinely intimidated; “Look, Merlin I’m just here to get my things from my desk. And the coffee’s a miracle, she steeped the machine in her hoard and now it’s magic. Seriously.”
(It’s long rest coffee. Drink it to get the benefits of a long rest. Helps employees be productive.)
Ursa brings a couple cups and attempts to keep Merlin from losing his shit, and Rembra bolts. Meanwhile, Nora pulls Ella to one side and tells her ‘Look, I know this is really weird but I’m here to help however I can, and if anything starts to feel… unsafe? I’ll get you out.’
‘Is… is this a prank? You can tell me if it is,’ asks Ella.
‘God, I wish it was.’
Cut to the interview itself, in the interrogation room the party had set up in the past, after the theft of the Infernomicon. There’s even a one way mirror, which the three of them stand behind. The interview itself is Laniakea, Ella, and a Dr. Byrne from the Institute. Laniakea begins to explain about the process, which will involve a rock. Dr. Byrne talks a bit about symptoms to mention.
In the viewing room, Merlin is like ‘Nora, what the hell are we doing here?’
Nora explains that it’s her sister, being hired by Laniakea. Merlin laughs.
‘She’s a vanilla human, Merlin.’
Merlin stops laughing. ‘…Fuck,’ he says.
In the interview itself, Ella has been asked to look at a stone which has been carved with arcane, non-euclidean designs. She keeps questioning if it’s like a Rorschach test as the DM keeps rolling to see if she Snaps or gets Audited.
Suddenly she freezes up and goes pale. A tap on the wrist from Morris tells Nora that the program has begun running. Ella looks very afraid, suddenly seeing Laniakea’s scales.
‘The program is pulling a lot more computational power than I’d hoped,’ says Morris.
Merlin tells Nora to get in there, and she goes, after Mage Handing the latch on the door’s other side.
Inside, Ella gets up, relieved to see her sister. But she stumbles, and as Nora goes and catches her, that’s when the mantle fully descends. Her clothes fade to static grey. Her face disappears.
Nora turns to Laniakea. ‘You have to make this stop.’
Laniakea flexes a claw. ‘I can only end it one way. If the mantle has not fully descended, that is.’
‘No. That’s not good enough.’
Auditor-Ella slams Nora to one side, and smashes the rock that sparked this with a hammering fist. Usually, with the triggering magic destroyed, the mantle would pass at this point—leaving its bearer dead. However, with Morris’ program running, things are more complex. The auditor makes to leave. Its arm stretches out and floors Laniakea.
Ursa tries to Hold Person but the magic fizzles, the Auditor immune. Merlin breaks a Reality Marble (taken from the footwell of Alkahest’s car) and challenges Ella—not the Auditor—to take back control. The Auditor pauses, and looks back, but is unfazed. This however gives Nora time to reach it, risking another assault.
‘Ella, Ella, I know you’re in there, you can fight this. I’m here, don’t worry, you’ve just got to… hey, remember the bad wine from the other month!? Or, or, remember when we tried to make scrambled eggs for the first time and we burned them, but we ate them anyway because we didn’t know what burnt scrambled eggs tasted like? Remember that time when we were teens and I’d drank all that red wine ‘cause I thought it was berry juice, and you held my hair the whole time I was puking?! Or, uh, when—‘
There are tears rolling down the Auditor’s cheeks, even without eyes. And then it’s Ella again, though still wearing the grey-static suit. ‘I’m scared, Nora. I can hear that you’re there, but it’s all so bright and so loud…’
‘It’s ok. Nothing here is going to hurt you, not with me here.’
‘It’s not them I’m worried about. It’s ME. It wants me to kill someone.’
‘What?’ says Nora, alarmed. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know! There’s just this line leading to him I have to follow.’
Her face blanks again, and the Auditor rips open the lift doors and leaps down. Nora leaps down after her, Merlin only just getting a Featherfall on her in time. Ursa follows too, though via the stairs.
In the lobby, it seems the Auditor has severely wounded the security guards. Nora passes them without checking to see if they’re alive. Ursa stops, though.
Upstairs, Dr. Byrne finds Merlin trying to track them out of the window. ‘What a mess,’ she says. ‘Usually an Auditor leaves its host and dies when the source of its triggering incident is destroyed. If the mantle is evolving? That’s a REAL mess. I’ll let the Institute know… but I think I’m needed downstairs.’
Merlin doesn’t mention anything about Morris’ involvement.
He breaks the window and leaps out, with Featherfall and Invisibility.
Ursa is joined by Dr. Byrne who’s like ‘I’ll look over these two. Hold this.’ She hands Ursa her head. Ursa freaks out a bit, not knowing before this second that the Doc is a Dullahan. She sort of stammers that they’re Institute too, and they’ll get in pursuit. Byrne is grumpy about it but agrees.
Outside Nora has lost track of the Auditor, even after firing her gun up to clear the crowd. She goes to try and hotwire a car. Laniakea has gotten up and joined them.
‘Fffffffiddle-di-dee,’ she says, before seeing the looks. ‘Oh. Adagio says I should curse less.’
‘Now’s not the time for that,’ says Ursa.
‘Yeah, swearing is very appropriate here!’ says Merlin, popping into visibility.
‘Fuck!’ says Laniakea.
‘What was even your plan here?’ Merlin asks her. ‘What were you expecting?’
Laniakea watches as Nora works on the car door, despite the crowd of gawkers. ‘Well, I assumed she would acclimatise without issue. If she was of sufficient quality of—‘
Nora casts Eldritch Blast on Laniakea, who is taken aback. One member of the crowd seeing the magic gets Audited, and advances.
Nora sees and swears, getting in the car. ‘Let’s GO,’ she says.
The auditor’s arms stretches to catch the car’s wing mirror, but it snaps off as they drive away. It pursues slowly and implacably.
Laniakea sighs and dusts herself off, before calling Adagio to cast her shroud. She blasts the Auditor with her breath weapon when successfully invisible, holding it in place long enough for the mantle to wear off.
After some detective work on where one might get a magical stone for an interview, Nora and the other two drive towards a stoneworker’s named ‘Magical Masonry’ which was on BlinkedIn, in the Little Outside district.
Roll History 