“No mind control,” Nathanial said, commiserating with his subordinates outside. “I can’t feel anything out of the ordinary at all.”

“You’re shitting me.” Richard said before he bit his tongue.

“I am not shitting you.” Nathanial said, eyeing Richard thoughtfully. “In light of Emilio’s death, I’m going to give that slip a pass.”

He turned back to Stephen and Mark.

“Just because I don’t feel something wrong, magically speaking, doesn’t mean I have holes for eyes. The woman’s been tampered with somehow, and it obviously has something to do with this Edward Bergstrom fellow she’s covering for.”

“Brainwashing?” Finn asked, flinching when the eyes of the four demigod-like men turned toward him.

“It could be brainwashing?” he repeated, nearly whimpering despite his best efforts. “The Intelligence Agency tried something similar, since we don’t have access to magic. It’s more effective with drugs, but still not nearly as effective as magic, and more expensive.”

Nathanial raised a brow.

“Go on.” He said.

“Well, it’s a sort of training. You train them to think however you want. Reward, punishment, the whole deal. If she was brainwashed, well, normally it would have worn off pretty quickly in the absence of reinforcement, so that’s why this is –“

Nathanial stood up so fast his chair clattered to the ground, making Finn flinch. The half-nosed man strode to the holding room with Gloria and slammed the door open, revealing the blonde woman sitting in the interrogation room.

Without warning, he put his palm to Gloria’s head, evoking a yelp from the headmaster.

“Edward Bergstrom.” He said, eyes narrowed.

Gloria shuddered, then stiffened as Nathanial began to peel a crimson strand of mana out of her as the other three Inquisitors and Finn watched from the doorway.

“Damn thing only rose to the surface when it was triggered. That was why it was so hard to find.” The High Inquisitor carefully peeled the spellwork away from Gloria’s head before severing it, causing the tightly wound construct to dissolve into nothing.

“That spell seemed to behave a lot like the one suppressing Leanne’s ability to make more zealots.” Stephen said, frowning.

“I’m aware,” Nathanial said through gritted teeth. He glanced at Gloria and Finn. “We’ll talk about this later.”

They left the room, with Gloria looking dazed behind them. As soon as the door was closed, Nathanial began giving instructions.

“I’m going to hit the Bergstrom household with Richard. Stephen and Mark, you two hit the Denton household. Until reinforcements get here, it’s the buddy system.”

“We killed him, didn’t we?” Richard asked.

“I’ve seen the expression of many men who have been stabbed in the heart, and that was like nothing I’ve seen, meaning one of several things must be true. We didn’t stab him in the heart, he felt he could survive it, or…”

“Or?”

“Or it wasn’t a man.” Nathanial said with a grin.

His severe gaze turned to Finn, making shivers run up his spine.

“You, spend the rest of the evening softening up Ms. Pendleton. I want her deprogrammed as quickly as possible.”

“But it can take months to–“ Finn stammered before he was interrupted.

“Then you better get started right now.”

“Can’t you just,” Mark made a clipping gesture at his head.

“Not without losing a lot of valuable evidence. Forcing the issue will get us only what we know to ask for, but a woman scorned will give us all that and more.”

“Alright, get to it.” he said, dismissing the other two.

Finn was about to leave when Nathanial caught his shoulder, causing his adrenalin to spike. He never knew when the High Inquisitor was going to fly off the into a rage and start murdering people.

“I’m not that bad. Just a minute.” He said before dragging the scribe to his office, Richard trailing close behind, his broken arm splinted and healing quickly due to his high Endurance.

The inquisitor pulled out a piece of paper and wrote a quick letter before dropping wax on it and impressing the High Inquisitor seal on the soft wax. He blew on it a moment to soften it before slipping the entire thing in an envelope and handing it to Finn.

“Take that to the post office, and give them this,” he said, handing him the seal. “Impress upon them that time is of the essence.”

“Sir.” Finn preformed his snappiest salute, to which the High Inquisitor seemed unimpressed.

Finn took off down the hall, aiming to deliver the letter as quickly as possible.

Finn trotted out onto the street and made a hard left turn, aiming for the Post office. It wasn’t his first time being a runner, and he didn’t mind. Messages were important, and someone needed to run them.

He must have been running a bit too fast though, because he got a little lightheaded near one of the alleys, but after a moment of catching his breath, he continued on at a powerwalk.

Once he’d delivered the letter and impressed upon the clerk there the importance of getting it to the capitol in the least amount of time possible, he trotted back to continue interviewing Gloria Bergstrom.

***Garth***

Garth waited in an alley outside the precinct. When he saw the fat scribe take off through his Scry spell that he used to keep tabs on the Inquisitors, he moved to intercept. Sure it could be a trap, but he was having too much fun.

The chubby fellow ran straight through a cloud of Garth’s Forget-Me spores and leaned against the alley wall, panting, his eyes staring into space.

I wonder what he wrote in the letter exactly? Garth thought. he’d been shielding it with his hand, and Garth hadn’t had time to reorient the viewpoint of the Scry spell.

Garth slipped his hand in to the man’s vest and came away with the letter. Still whistling a jaunty theme song, he pulled out Emilio the Plant from his Storage band.

“HAAAAH.” The potted, brain shaped plant gave an audible gasp of air as Garth pulled him up to look at the letter.

“It’s so stuffy in there!”

“Take a look at this,” Garth said, holding Em up. A pair of eyes opened at the front of the pink cauliflower.

It had taken some tinkering, but Emilio the Plant was as happy and chipper as could be. it involved creating a distinct separation between his personal identity and that of the man whose memories he had, and a few choice modifications to the way he processed fear and helplessness, and the desire for autonomy, which Garth intended to carry forward into the design of future Brain ‘Flowers.

“Looks like a Discard stamp.”

“Huh?” Garth asked.

“The little loop at the bottom of the seal is missing, along with the fifth bar on the Eagle symbol. It’s a decoy.”

Garth opened the letter and pretended to read while looking around with a tiny Arcane eye.

Sure enough, the two men he had fought a couple days ago were peering at him from the next building over, being all sneaky like.

They weren’t moving to capture him, though. They were probably trying to suss out more of his abilities before going on the attack.

Garth refocused on the letter in his hand.

High Inquisitor Nathanial urgently requests reinforcements from Central Command. One Inquisitor is down, Enemy unknown, but suspected to be a Prima Regula in command of Third Tier power. A Platoon of High Inquisitors is requested to prevent any more casualties.

“Well this is boring.” Garth said, running his hand over the letter, rearranging the ink and fixing the wax seal on the back to be an official one, keeping it covered with his other hand.

High Inquisitor Nathanial urgently requests reinforcements from Central Command. The Forgotten Queen has been sighted, and has access to a Gate. Requesting reinforcements from the Dan Ui clan to prevent her escape to another Layer. Swift and overwhelming force recommended.

“We call them the Saviors, and the Forgotten Queen is a reverential term used by people who work for her. We call her the Apostle of Kolath.”

“Oh, it’s Leanne!” Garth said, facepalming. “Boy do I feel dumb now. That white hair and the age threw me off. And she’s not nearly so…spiteful. Really mellowed out.”

He chuckled and shook his head as he finished modifying the letter before he slipped it back into the fat guy’s vest before pinching him on his chubby cheeks, putting his hands in his pockets and walking out of the alley, scanning both directions carefully like he was still on guard. He even threw a glance up at the building across the street, just to make sure that they believed they managed to sneak by him.

I wonder if this is a double fake out or a triple fake out. I’m having a hard time keeping track. In any case, I got my work cut out for me. Keeping myself secret and hidden and Patient for years on end isn’t really my strong suit, so we’ll make some chaos and see how it goes.

***Richard***

So we’re being watched.

“No doubt about it, it was the same guy. Didn’t seem stabbed either, so he’s got access to some kind of healing,” Richard said.

Healing wasn’t exactly commonplace, not even among the Inquisitors. The royal family didn’t want the spell making it out into the general populace. It was one of the carrots they could hold over their heads, and so they guarded the secret jealously. It was why Richard’s arm was still in a brace.

“I felt Nature mana in the cloud that Finn walked through. All the other spells the suspect used were neutral, raw mana or simple, common ones like force and space. Nature mana? That’s the sort of thing you have to work at to get good at. For a cloud whose effects are easily copied by a Befuddle? That’s the boy’s specialty. He’s been trying not to tip his hand, I think.”

“A Druid from the South?” Richard asked.

“Something about that seems wrong. He doesn’t look the part, and he doesn’t have a stupid snake wrapped around his neck, and that potted brain…I don’t know. I’m thinking it wasn’t a druid.” Nathanial squinted as Finn shook off the spell and began trotting away like he hadn’t noticed a couple minutes of lost time.

“So we’ve got Tier Three spell work, a nature focus, an obviously modified body, healing, teleportation, and a very powerful Lantern…I’m drawing a blank. There shouldn’t be anyone on Earth alive or dead like that.” Richard said.

“Obviously there is someone on Earth like that. We just need to figure out where he came from. It’s possible Leanne’s brought in a specialist from outside Earth, someone polymorphed to look human.”

“She can’t use her power on people stronger willed than her, which precludes the possibility of recruiting someone stronger than her to save her ass, which matched the fight we had earlier. If he were on The Apostle of Kolath’s level, we would have died instantly.”

“I don’t think he was trying to kill us.” Nathanial said. “As a third Tier, she should be able to convert him, but the look he gave us…was not that of a zealot. I don’t know why she would let him float around as a free agent.”

“Maybe she did it the old-fashioned way,” Richard hazarded. “With money.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions. There’s no evidence that thing is from offplanet, and until there is, let’s focus on who on Earth matches that description.” Nathanial said.

“Roger.”

“In the meantime, let’s check the Bergstrom manor then get some ice cream.”

Richard paused, giving Nathaniel a double-take. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, if this guy who uses their name had any contact with the Bergstroms in the last few months, he should’ve disappeared the entire household the day we showed up, which means we'll have plenty of time for a snack on the way back to the precinct.”