Thaddeus Interlude - Codename: Moonsable

This short story is set concurrently with Book 2, Chapter 8 (PGTS Chapter 45) - “Sirens”

Blurb: Thaddeus plans to introduce the second exercise of the term to his Intro to Practical Will-based Casting students. But when the rogue magic sirens go off, he is called away to deal with the particularly fascinating source of the turmoil.

Spoiler Warning: This short story contains spoilers about some of the Mysteries of the world that will not be revealed in the main story until Books 3 and 4. Specifically, it explores Aberrants, some of the inner workings of the Red Guard, and hints at details of Thaddeus's backstory. If you would like to avoid peeking behind the metaphorical curtain, you'll have to put off reading this.

Please don't repost this story elsewhere.

Thaddeus

Month 12, Day 7, Monday 12:40 p.m.

As Thaddeus actively went about avoiding grading the most recent papers from his Introduction to Practical Will-based Casting class, he found himself looking forward to the time when most of the introductory students would be dropping out. After that, he would have at least until next term before he was required to take on more dimwits who didn’t realize how in over their heads they were.

His provisional apprentice was one of those dimwits, but in an entirely different way, purposefully allowing a magically weaker but more politically powerful student to best him. Damien Westbay might have been the child of Thaddeus’s old friend, but that kind of idiocy only hurt both young men. It served no purpose to Westbay, only making him look slightly more capable in front of those who couldn’t see the farce for what it was—and those people did not matter, anyway. Why Thaddeus still sometimes slipped into the mistake of expecting better from people—who, as a whole, had proved repeatedly that they would disappoint him—he did not know.

Thaddeus let out a small huff and returned his attention to the work at hand.

He was attempting to write a guide to translating a pre-Cataclysm language. Neither history nor languages were originally his area of expertise, but his research into unraveling the mysteries of existence had required he accumulate a breadth and depth of knowledge that few ever obtained. Quality references for such obscure topics were exceedingly rare and of suspect quality, so Thaddeus had decided to create his own. Besides, teaching a topic could significantly help the teacher solidify their own grasp on the subject and bring to light any areas of weak or missing comprehension.

Perhaps he would even be able to get the work published when he was finished, though he had doubts about how many copies such a thing would sell. Still, there were non-monetary benefits. The University would appreciate him being published, as a matter of prestige. They prided themselves on having the best professors in the nation, after all. He had avoided publishing before because of—

The piercing screech that suddenly tore through the air made him jump. He calmed quickly, but it was too late for the accidental jagged line of ink scratched through the diagram he had been so carefully drawing. “Fantastic,” he muttered.

Thaddeus checked the University faculty token hanging against his chest to see if he was needed for an on-campus emergency. That did not seem to be the case, so whatever had caused the alarms was most likely somewhere in the city below. For a moment, he wondered what dangerous thing might be out there, and his bones itched for the old days, to stretch his skills a little, away from the tedium of the University. But no, he would leave it to the Red Guard’s field response team.

He used a simple spell to erase the ink marring the diagram, then finished drawing it out, ignoring the continued screeching of the sirens. After so many years of spell arrays, his hands were steady and sure, the lines of his pen following the image in his mind.

When Thaddeus had finished, he reported to Eagle Tower, where one of the department chairs was assigning tasks. He was late to arrive, drawing a sharp glare from the woman, but he only scowled back, seeing no value in pretending to be cowed just to protect the woman’s sense of self worth.

She assigned Thaddeus to patrol the University grounds—which was at least better than being forced to guard the perimeter, he supposed. He did so, finding no danger because there was none. At least the sirens stopped after a while. Some time later, the Red Guard finally sent the University the all-clear.

As Thaddeus made his way to his classroom, having lost almost two hours of his irreplaceable time, he set aside his irritation. The University’s caution might inconvenience him, but the lives of thaumaturges were precious. The children here were the continuation of their society and the minds that would influence the future. Thaddeus could spare a couple hours if it gave them some moderately increased likelihood of survival. Most often, however, it seemed that the University was simply running through token safety measures, play-acting at caring so that none of the Crown Families could blame them if something happened to one of their scions.

Thaddeus was almost to his classroom’s door when the inner pocket of his long jacket vibrated and flashed with a muted red light. He stopped mid-stride.

Reaching into the jacket, he removed the rectangular metal artifact within, opening it at the hinge. One half displayed the red shield symbol of the Red Guard, as well as Thaddeus’s identification sequence, and the other half held a crystal disk within a tiny, complex spell array.

The crystal disk displayed a terse message under its transparent surface.

Proceed to field base GB3

Precedence: Priority

Threat Level: Minor

A spark of excitement rose in Thaddeus’s chest. If they were calling him in, that probably meant they had found something interesting. That it was marked priority but not urgent meant he had enough time to let the University know he was leaving, but not enough time to teach his class.

He marched quickly to the library, where the Administration worker he notified of his upcoming absence and the reason—“Red Guard duties”—practically fell over herself to accommodate him.

The woman stared at him with a mixture of lust and gossip-hungry avarice that he was too familiar with, smiling brightly, making too much eye contact, and bending over so he could see down her shirt if he so wished.

He did not wish. To the contrary, he made sure to scowl at her and her curious coworkers with extra force, but they weren’t cowed for long. As he left, excited murmurs trailed after him.

Thaddeus jettisoned down one of the transport tubes that lined the white cliffs below the University grounds, dropped to the spongy ground below with composed poise, then hailed a carriage to take him to a nondescript area of western Gilbratha, where he proceeded on foot.

He stopped outside a shabby little ground floor office that advertised private detective services but looked about as uninviting as possible. He breathed in the air, almost able to smell the mild compulsion spell that was trying to force a sense of distaste and anxiousness on him. The effect was intended to make the office so unappealing that he would be all but sure to look elsewhere for his answers.

But he was not there to hire detective services, and the aversion spell was nothing in the face of his Will.

The receptionist within, chair tilted backward onto two legs and feet propped on the counter, looked up lazily when Thaddeus entered. “I’m on break,” the man said, lifting a pipe packed with etherwood leaves and blowing a lazy blue smoke ring, through which he stared at Thaddeus insolently. “You can leave a note with your issue and your contact information and one of our detectives will contact you when they’re free from their current cases, if they feel they have the expertise to handle it.” He gestured with his foot to a pile of prohibitively tiny cards scattered about the far end of the counter.

Thaddeus ignored the man, striding past the counter to the door at the back of the room, not even slowing down as he flashed his Red Guard badge at the purposefully frustrating receptionist.

The back room was ostensibly full of dusty, poorly maintained files, but Thaddeus stomped heavily on one floorboard, which sank down and gave a distinct clicking sound as the lock slotted into place.

A section of the floor rose up a couple centimeters, and Thaddeus reach down to lift it fully, revealing the stone ramp beneath, wide and gently sloped enough that it wasn’t awkward at all to descend, even if he had been wearing armor or carrying something large.

The tunnel below was rough hewn and dimly lit, with light crystals set into the edge of the ceiling at regular intervals. He caught the faint glimmer of glyphs at the corner of his eyes, meant to keep the tunnel free of water, vermin, and other intruders. It smelled disturbingly similar to frog poop—earthy, wet, and carrying a hint of decay.

Thaddeus didn’t have to walk too far before reaching the edge of the white cliffs, where the dank tunnel expanded into an even larger, sharply cut hallway with clear lighting and railcars that were used for the quick response teams when they left the base.

That hallway quickly met another, coming to a “T.” Huge metal doors blocked off each end of the lengthwise hallway a few meters down, leaving only an unassuming door in front of Thaddeus.

He stepped past the tingling magic of the threshold, his badge shuddering in his hand as he entered a room that, contrary to what one might expect, was large, high-ceilinged, and flooded with natural-seeming light.

Couches, chairs, and a few tables made up a comfortable reception area near the door. Beyond that, people wearing clothing with the eponymous red shield sat behind desks, doing paperwork and chatting.

The chatting cut off as soon as he entered, and all attention turned his way. A young man stood with a huge grin, clearly oblivious to the tense silence.

“Welcome, Grandmaster Lacer!” he called, his voice slightly too loud.

Across the room, a woman wearing a bulky artifact on her head like a helmet jumped at the announcement, stabbing herself with the letter opener she had been using. She hissed, cursing and clutching the minor wound while waving away the attention of her teammates.

Thaddeus was still considering the device on the woman’s head as the young man hurried on with his introduction, speaking over the noise with booming enthusiasm.

“Terrence Berg, at your service! I’m the one who called you in.” He strode forward and shook Thaddeus’s hand, pumping it up and down with that huge grin still on his face.

Thaddeus cleared his throat, forcibly freeing himself. “Well met, Agent Berg. What prompted you to request me?”

“You’re the expert on all kinds of extra-strange and interesting things! And you’re in a research specialist position right now. The protocol is clear. We have to call in the closest Red Guard expert when there’s danger of an uncontained anomalous effect!”

Thaddeus’s eyebrows rose in interest, even as he free-cast subtle shields around his body. “An Aberrant, then? What is its anomalous effect?”

Berg rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. “Well, that’s the thing. We’re not entirely sure. It’s rather different from any of the Aberrants I’ve seen before.”

Thaddeus’s interest sharpened. “Elucidate, please.”

“It has two forms. One has an Eldritch-type effect, relatively minor, but we’re worried the other might be a Nightmare-type.”

“What leads you to believe that?”

“Well… We figured it’s likely to be a Nightmare-type, because we can’t detect any anomalous effect at all. But Aberrants always have an effect. So if it seems like there isn’t one… Well, hopefully it’s just a really weird Eldritch.”

Thaddeus nodded, though in fact he did not share that hope. He was already thinking over the next steps. “You understand the protocol? I will need to place you all under quarantine while I review the situation. Is there anyone who has had no interaction with the being?”

Berg pointed out the woman who had stabbed herself. “Agent Fike is clear! She’s been looking over all of our notes with the memetic suppressor on, so she should be clean, even if it’s got some sort of Blight-type abilities.”

The woman stood, moving to Berg’s side and bowing respectfully to Thaddeus. “I’m honored to meet you.”

Berg continued, “Captain Goldfisch and Agent Vernor are still at ground zero, clearing everything up and doing the exit interviews on the witnesses. We extracted the Aberrant before they arrived, so I don’t think they would have been exposed. Of course, you never know with these things, but it’s only Apprentice-level, at best, so I’m optimistic!”

Thaddeus doubted Agent Berg was ever anything less than fully, loudly optimistic. “Agent Fike will be aide enough. No need to wait for the captain. I hope none of the rest of you feel the need to protest against a temporary quarantine while I look things over.”

While none of the squad members were particularly enthusiastic about it, none of them protested against the safety protocol. They went through a door to the side of the room, each entering into their own small cell with a cot, table, a nice chamber pot artifact, and a sturdy door with a small slot for food to be pushed through.

Thaddeus put on another of the skull-cap artifacts that Fike wore, since even he couldn’t free-cast the breadth of powerful protective spells that the ugly, bulky artifact could provide. He commandeered some of the field base’s sensory equipment, too, in order to examine Agent Fike and the surrounding area. Everything came back clean. Of course, that didn’t mean much considering the staggering range of possible abilities an Aberrant could manifest. Thaddeus himself could already have been compromised, as unlikely as that might have been for someone with his skills, strength of Will, and expertise, who hadn’t even interacted with the Aberrant yet.

A being at Apprentice-level shouldn’t have either the power or the reach to overcome his strength of mind and Will, even with possible Nightmare, Blight, or Mystic-type abilities. Still, it paid to be cautious.

After that, Thaddeus and Fike spent some time going through the reports the Berg and the others had made on their observations, ensuring that they were consistent and internally logical with each other. Thaddeus quickly formed a hypothesis about the nature of the Aberrant, but didn’t express these thoughts to Fike, attempting to keep an open mind. Deciding on an answer too quickly, without all the relevant data, was one of the easiest ways to believe a falsehood. And once you believed a falsehood, realizing the truth sat somewhere between difficult and impossible. Humans were not built to change their minds, and were more likely to pick and choose the data that reinforced their beliefs, even to the point of absurdity. Even knowing this, Thaddeus himself was not immune to that fallacy. After all, he, too, had a human brain, with all of its shortcomings.

Thaddeus and Fike found nothing anomalous about the reports from the other agents, and were about to move on when Captain Goldfisch and Agent Vernor returned.

Captain Goldfisch looked nothing like his namesake. He was a short, dark-haired man with a wide jaw and sunken eyes. Those eyes narrowed as soon as he saw Thaddeus. He stalked over, managing to look down his nose at Thaddeus despite being almost a foot shorter. “Thaddeus Lacer. By what misfortune are you darkening my doorstep?”

The two female agents shared looks of surprise, though Vernor’s gaze toward Thaddeus quickly turned suspicious.

“Nothing more than protocol, Captain. You do still follow protocol here, do you not?” Thaddeus said, his words enunciated and razor-sharp, the dark mockery in his eyes clear as he looked down at the other man. “I am a specialist, and your base is in need of my expertise.”

“Where are my agents?” Goldfisch demanded, his gaze never leaving Thaddeus.

Fike cleared her throat. “In temporary quarantine, sir. The others interacted with the Aberrant during capture.”

“And what, exactly, warranted bringing him in? Someone vulnerable to exploit? Power to seize? Dark experiments to be carried out under my nose?”

Fike looked between Thaddeus and her superior nervously, but steeled herself to answer for the second time. “We were unable to quantify part of the Aberrant’s effect. Protocol states we call in an expert, and the resident best candidate for that is Special Agent Lacer. Berg requested him,” Fike added, throwing her absent teammate under the metaphorical carriage.

Thaddeus gave her a reassuring nod, which brought a flush of anger to Goldfisch’s face. “Your team did the right thing, Agent Fike. The captain might not appreciate me personally, but no one can deny that the safety of the Red Guard members is above any personal opinions or vendettas.” He raised an eyebrow at Goldfisch, daring him to rebut that statement. “Especially with the horrors that a Nightmare-type Aberrant can inflict.”

Captain Goldfisch ground his teeth, but after only a couple seconds of fuming, he asked. “What is the assessed danger level, Agent Lacer?”

“Special Agent Lacer,” Thaddeus corrected. “Or Grandmaster Lacer, if you prefer.” He was not above petty vindictiveness. Like sleep, it was one of the few indulgences he allowed himself.

Agent Fike’s eyes widened with scandalized horror at the disrespect, while Agent Vernor turned pink in angry rapport with Captain Goldfisch.

Thaddeus resisted the urge to push the rudeness further. “I estimate the danger level to be low. I need to assess the Aberrant. If it is capable, I will also be conducting an interview.”

“You think it might be lucid?” Goldfisch asked. “The girl was barely trained, likely only at a few hundred thaums when she broke.”

Thaddeus raised his eyebrows, rather than his shoulders, in a dispassionate shrug. “Most lucid Aberrants do come from the stronger thaumaturges, but the only constant with these beings is that they are all different, and we do not understand them. Not truly. You are welcome to accompany me through the examination, as long as you had no contact with the Aberrant, no reason to believe you encountered Blight-type lingering effects, and are willing to submit to a quick interview beforehand while wearing a memetic suppression helmet.”

“I’m not letting you in there alone,” Goldfisch said with a nod of concession.

Thaddeus and Fike interviewed the two new additions, who passed the questioning with no strange or suspicious answers, missing memories, or questionable opinions about the captured Aberrant.

Beyond the desks, at the back of the large open room, stood another set of large metal doors, each wide enough for four people to pass through abreast. The hallway beyond that led to the right and left. To the right, Thaddeus saw stations for each individual member of the squad, with their emergency equipment laid out for the fastest possible time to array themselves in the necessary armor and artifacts.

Thaddeus turned to the left instead, down the side of the hallway with warded steel doors fixed along its side. Each door stood with a tangible air of ominous warning, the contents protected within declared by a coded label that would have been incomprehensible to those who did not know the key.

“I heard you consulted on this new case regarding some thaumaturge calling herself the Raven Queen,” Goldfisch said, his tone less confrontational than it had been. “Are you doing Red Guard work outside of our purview, outside the limitations of our oversight?”

“I consulted on the case at the request of the Westbay Family heir, because he understands the value of my expertise, and the coppers have been having trouble bringing the sorcerer to heel. It was not Red Guard work.”

“Are you sure? The coppers have occasionally been known to ‘mistakenly’ fail to call in help to keep us from infringing on what they see as their territory. Some people care more about their budget renewal and their pride than being cautious, when the situation could be a fringe case. This Raven Queen isn’t a threat?”

“She is far from harmless, but not the kind of thing the Red Guard is sworn to fight against. A powerful free-caster with a sensationalized reputation. But perhaps you are less interested in the safety of Gilbratha than you are in the woman’s exploits? Both the University and the Crowns want to retrieve whatever she took. Do not tell me the Red Guard has charged you with something similar, Captain?”

Goldfisch snorted. “Stop right there, Lacer. I hope you don’t think you can manipulate information out of me. Perhaps the reason you agreed to ‘consult’ is that you’realso ‘interested’ in the book.” There was some insinuation about Thaddeus’s trustworthiness hidden in that statement, but he wasn’t going to take the bait.

“I am interested, largely because I have no idea what could have caused such a fervent response from such powerful people. I have managed to suss out that the goods came from what they believe to be Myrddin’s hermitage. Presumably, it would have something to do with whatever he was working on during his last few decades in seclusion. Do you have any ideas?”

“Isn’t the research into esoteric knowledge your area of expertise? I’m surprised the University kept you out of it. Perhaps they don’t trust you, either.”

The only member that had made it back alive went quite mad from overexposure to the Black Wastes, so while Thaddeus trusted his own capabilities, he had decided it was fine that he was not chosen for the archaeological expedition. He sighed. “I take it you have no idea, then. The leadership isn’t concerned?”

“The University has been keeping that whole expedition’s haul to themselves. That can’t last forever, of course. If the leadership is concerned, they haven’t shared it with me. You know our tenet is to stay out of politics, unless said politics endangers the future of the world. Whatever the University found, our people probably know more about what it could have been than anyone else, but it was obviously not deemed dangerous enough for us to stop the retrieval.”

Thaddeus considered, for a moment, that the Raven Queen could actually be working for the Red Guard, simply under one of their other cells. Compartmentalization and redundancy of knowledge and skills were important considering the danger of their line of work. Those with lower clearance could only speculate about the greater machinations of the Red Guard as a whole. And, at the moment, Thaddeus had lower clearance.

Inside one of the steel doors, which swung open with defiant slowness, was a viewing room, directly attached to a containment cell by a second steel door. A complicated control desk sat beneath a single large window, which took up most of the adjoining wall. The Red Guard had used the same half-silvered mirror technique that the coppers had newly implemented in one of their own interrogation rooms, allowing for one-way viewing.

The Red Guard viewing chamber, unlike the coppers’ plain interrogation room, was a marvel of artificery with a focus on warding. Spell arrays were hidden under the stone and carved into the structural supports, protecting every inch of the containment cell and viewing room from all the possible magical effects some very clever people had been able to think of.

The Red Guard needed that level of care, for what they were keeping within.

The dozen-plus light crystal fixtures embedded into the ceiling of the containment cell were all on, flooding the room with a harsh brightness that failed to mimic sunlight, instead feeling harsher and colder.

A single chair of wrought iron, similarly warded against tampering, was welded into the floor in the center of the cell.

Huddled in a cramped position half beneath that chair, its arms around its head as if it were trying to hide, was a trembling humanoid form of naked flesh.

It didn’t respond as Thaddeus and the other three entered the room.

“We’ve given it the temporary codename Moonsable,” Agent Fike explained, more for the benefit of the other two than Thaddeus.

They peered at the being with wary curiosity. “What is it doing?” Agent Vernor asked.

“It doesn’t like the light,” Fike said. “Like this, it doesn’t seem to have any anomalous effects. It’s possible we’re failing to detect them, but Moonsable’s extreme desire for shadow, and the obvious anomalous effect it displays when those conditions are met, suggests that the light is keeping it from employing its abilities.”

“The reports indicated it has some level of lucidity at this point. Is it receptive to communication?” Thaddeus asked.

Fike shook her head, sitting at the control desk and adjusting some of the switches and knobs that controlled the containment cell. “Not since the squad put it in the cell.” She leaned forward, speaking into a magically powered megaphone. “Come out from under the chair.”

Thaddeus knew the words were echoed in the containment cell, slightly distorted via artifact, but couldn’t hear anything past the thickness of the walls and the strength of the wards.

The Aberrant, still stuffed halfway underneath the chair, continued to tremble.

“If you fail to comply, you will receive a painful jolt,” Fike added.

The Aberrant only attempted to squeeze its body further underneath the chair.

Thaddeus frowned. “Please do not threaten punishment without my approval.”

Fike looked at him in surprise, as did the others.

“Go ahead.” Thaddeus waved a hand impatiently. “A mild shock only. You promised, already, after all. We cannot be seen to be untrustworthy.”

“You want it to trust us?” Goldfisch scoffed. “It’s a monster. If it’s coherent enough to understand, all you’ll accomplish is to give it leverage with which to manipulate us. Or even worse, a foothold to try and bargain with us until we accidentally sell our souls.”

Thaddeus responded mildly, his attention largely focused on the being. “If we had an Aberrant that wanted to trade for our souls, perhaps it would help us understand if the soul actually exists, and allow us to quantify that existence. I, for one, would welcome such a being.” He watched as the Aberrant stiffened in response to the electric shock channeled through the floor. It then began to convulse in what looked suspiciously like sobs.

Thaddeus leaned in to the megaphone cone and pressed the switch to relay his words into the cell. “Hello. I am Agent Lacer. I am going to dim the lights slowly.” He straightened, motioning to Fike. “Demonstrate the Aberrant’s transformation, please.”

Agent Fike used the control desk to turn off the cell’s light crystals, one by one.

Once about half of them were off, the Aberrant relaxed from its cramped position, letting its legs stretch out into the room. Both limbs were horribly deformed, scarred and twisted in such a way that they would have been horribly excruciating to walk on, if they worked at all.

“As far as we can tell, this form is consistent with Millie Parker’s original human form,” Fike said. “Parker was maimed a short while before her break event. She almost died, and, even after healing, was left crippled and scarred. We believe the injuries were inflicted by one of her clients.”

“Prostitute?” Goldfisch asked.

Fike nodded, continuing to dim the lights as the Aberrant relaxed, its arms dropping to show a human face with unfortunate features and a hair lip. “She had some experience as a thaumaturge. Glamour spells, and a couple of simple alchemical concoctions, as far as we could tell. She was born with that hair lip, and her parents either couldn’t afford or refused to get it treated at birth, which probably spurred her interest in glamours.”

Only a quarter of the light crystals remained on within the containment room, leaving one side dimmer than the other. The Aberrant scrambled out from underneath the protection of the chair toward the darker side of the room, naked limbs fumbling awkwardly—painfully—as it threw itself away from the light. It—she—Thaddeus thought, adjusting the way he labeled the girl, huddled in the far corner, pressing herself into the wall as if she wanted to melt into it, her bare backside to the viewing window.

Fike looked to Thaddeus. “Should I continue dimming the room? It shouldn’t be much longer now.”

“Why don’t we ask her?” Thaddeus leaned in to the megaphone artifact. “Should I continue to dim the lights?”

The woman inside turned toward the window, which to her would have only been a mirror, and then looked up to the ceiling, where his voice was coming from. She nodded frantically.

“I need you to say it,” Thaddeus said.

She hesitated, her lips trembling, slightly parted. “Lights…off,” she said eventually, her mouth awkward around the words, as if she didn’t quite remember how to speak. Her voice was replicated and changed slightly by the artifact that conveyed it to the viewing room, just in case the sound of it was capable of carrying an anomalous effect.

Thaddeus straightened, crossing his arms with satisfaction. “That is indeed a strong sign of lucidity, since it is unlikely she plucked those words from one of our minds past all these protective measures. Go ahead and turn off a few more. Slowly.”

The transformation was pronounced.

As the far side of the room went from merely “dim” to “in shadow,” the frightened, naked, crippled woman metamorphosed into a creature of fey, supple grace. It turned toward them.

Its form did not change at all, still crippled and scarred, but that did not matter. Thaddeus had never seen anything more perfect. Every slight movement was a dance, resonating with the fluid perfection of magic in motion, and when Moonsable stilled, now facing them, it was a statue of a goddess, worthy of worship. The twists and scars in its flesh were only keys for the melody of movement to play off of.

Behind his wards, both the personal ones and those worked into his clunky-looking helmet, Thaddeus watched impassively, protected from the magic warping reality around the Aberrant. “Preternatural grace,” he said.

The others turned toward him in surprise, as if his words had broken a geas.

He frowned. “You are protected from its anomalous effects. If it manages to ensnare you anyway, that is a weakness of Will.”

Agent Vernor flushed with embarrassment, ducking her head to her papers, while Fike ignored him and Goldfisch gave him an irritated scowl.

Moonsable was looking at the window. With a normal half-silvered mirror, dimming the lights on her end might have allowed her to see the four of them through the glass, but transmogrification magic had been added to theirs to avoid that.

It turned, taking a few rippling steps away from the corner, the foot of her more twisted leg sliding across the floor in a fluid glissade.

She wasn’t watching them; she was watching herself in the mirror.

“Millie was always an ugly girl,” Thaddeus murmured. “I speculate that she craved the affection that the pretty girls around her were getting, so she learned some glamour spells somewhere. They did not get her what she wanted, but they were enough to get her work as a prostitute, when she had no other options. Perhaps she even had a lover.” Some of that was conjecture based on her Aberrant form, some of it from the testimonies of those who knew her. “But things went wrong, and her pretty glamour was not enough to protect her. Did the attack that almost killed her happen at night?”

Vernor quickly looked through her notes. “I’m not sure. The report we got from the coppers about that incident isn’t particularly thorough.”

Thaddeus sneered. “Of course not.”

Not all of the coppers were useless, but the best of the force was assigned elsewhere or promoted out of the Mires. Few with both the desire and ability to make a difference remained on such a shit assignment. Even fewer placed enough value on the life of a poor prostitute to put themselves at risk digging into the matter. People went missing or died in the Mires every day, after all.

“They suspected one of her various clients,” Vernor continued, “but Parker maintained that she couldn’t remember who attacked her. She could have been protecting a lover, or afraid of retaliation.”

Thaddeus watched Moonsable’s movements carefully as he worked to put the pieces together in his mind. “So, Millie was maimed, and her glamour spells were no longer enough. But magic had been the answer for her before. She searched for a spell that could make her beautiful again, not only of face but also of body. Something that could let her move with the ease and grace so irrevocably lost to her. No, not lost. That which was takenfrom her. Perhaps she did not understand the danger of new magic, and attempted to combine a spell for both glamour and grace. She lost control, and her Will broke, leaving what we see before us.”

Moonsable moved toward the door, its fey fingers flowing over the almost invisible seams that marked the exit’s edge. There was no handle on that side, no way to get out.

Seemingly frustrated, it spun back into the middle of the room, climbing onto the chair like a flowering tree reaching for the sun. That didn’t last long, as a handful of the lights were still on, and the center of the room was apparently too close to them for comfort.

Moonsable let out a catlike hiss, throwing itself back toward the shadowed corner, anger and condemnation apparent in every movement.

“Moonsable is offered the worship, the gifts, and the love that Millie never got,” Thaddeus murmured. “Eldritch-type, based on worship-inspiring gracefulness. Berg was right about that.”

“Eldritch-types, the ones with the abstract effects, are rather rare, aren’t they?” Vernor asked. “I’ve only seen a couple.”

“They are middlingly rare,” Thaddeus said. “Hopefully, you will never meet any of the rarer types. An Eldritch Aberrant might have an abstract effect, or one based around an abstract concept, but at the lower power levels they’re still manageable, assuming the appropriate training and preparation.”

Vernor made a note in her papers. “But it’s definitely not a Nightmare-type? The desire among its victims to worship and give gifts seems like mental subversion.”

“Moonsable here is simple enough to control. The emotional compulsion wears off quickly once she is out of sight, and it is not so strong as to keep a well-ordered mind from attacking and subduing her, even under its effects. With a true Nightmare-type, even at Apprentice level, things would not be so simple. That classification is reserved for the Aberrants who deserve it, and I can firmly say that this one does not.”

Fike nodded. “Interesting. About what you mentioned before, we think the break event happened in the evening. Could that explain its affinity with darkness?”

“Perhaps. I cannot state anything for certain.”

Fike kept going, looking to Thaddeus with the kind of determined, hopeful expression people often got when they needed him to fix a problem for them. “The alarms were set off in the morning, once the crowd of sycophants struggling to fit inside her house became noticeable and strange enough for one of the neighbors to call in the coppers. This form isn’t responsive to communication, but becomes frustrated and even violent if its wiles are resisted.”

“Turn the lights on again,” Thaddeus ordered. “About half of them. Just bright enough to have Millie Parker back and uncomfortable, but not hysterical and hiding under the chair. And Agent Vernor, go get her some clothes and something to shield her eyes from the light.”

Goldfisch scoffed, raising a hand to stop Vernor from leaving. “I cannot imagine you truly succumbed to that thing’s wiles. Why are you giving it an offering? Bribery will not make it less malicious, it will only make us seem weak.”

“I am not in the classroom, and you are not my student. It is not my job to explain everything. Bring clothes for her.”

“For it,” Goldfisch insisted. “Do not speak of it as if it is a person. Whatever Millie Parker was, she was scoured away and replaced with a creature of evil.”

Thaddeus turned toward the window, gesturing sharply at the woman, who had lost her grace and confidence, and was once more huddled up in the corner, her arms covering her body as best she could manage, her head tucked into her knees with her tangled hair hanging over her face like a veil against the light. “We just saw Moonsable, the being without mortal thoughts or memories, interested only in propagating its effect. This could be a benign lucid Aberrant, but judging by the lack of anomalous effect, I am inclined to believe it is Millie, a foolish, damaged thaumaturge suffering the severe effects of magical backlash. She may not be what she once was, but I believe some remnant of her remains.”

“That is impossible.”

Thaddeus threw back his head, letting out a single, breathy laugh. “Hah! How foolish. Impossible is a word used only by those who will never achieve greatness or real understanding, their beliefs creating blinders that they mistake as walls natural to the world. Trust me, Garett. The damage caused by a break event comes in almost any possible permutation, not only the ones that are most convenient. She is not the first, and she will not be the last. Perhaps it is above your clearance level, but the truth is right in front of you. I invite you to experience it for yourself as I catalogue it.” He turned to Vernor. “The clothes, please.” His tone brooked no room for argument or hesitation, and the woman hurried off without a glance spared for her captain.

Fike seemed uncomfortable, her lips pressed tightly together, but she was looking not at Thaddeus or her captain, but at the cowering woman within.

Vernor returned with the things Thaddeus had requested, though she’d found a strip of cloth for Millie to tie around her eyes, rather than the hat Thaddeus had been expecting.

Still, he took a seat in front of the control table, speaking gently through the megaphone, as one might to a spooked horse, as two of the others fed the clothes through the unlocking slot in the steel doorway.

Millie was hesitant at first, either having trouble understanding Thaddeus, or not believing him. Eventually, though, she scuttled over to the door, picking up the bundle of clothes off the floor and fumbling them on. The simple linen shift was backward, but she didn’t seem to notice or care, squinting as she struggled to wrap the strip of cloth around her eyes. She had even more trouble with the knot.

“Be calm, you can do it,” Thaddeus encouraged her. Perhaps this form had lost some of its grace and dexterity, even as Moonsable gained an unnatural abundance of it. He made a note of this.

When she was less exposed and feeling more comfortable, she hobbled to the chair at his request, sitting hunched over in it, her head down and her shoulders tucked in.

“I am going to ask you some questions, Millie. Will you answer them, please?” The gentle tone did not come naturally to him, but he was adaptable.

“...Lights off, again?” she croaked back in a dry voice.

“Perhaps if you answer all my questions helpfully. In the meantime, it is much dimmer than it was before, you have clothes to keep the light off you, and I might have some water brought, if you are thirsty.”

She didn’t seem that interested in the water, which Thaddeus made a note of, but she was eager enough to answer questions in return for the promise of some time out of the harsh light.

Thaddeus began with questions about her life, which would help to assess the likelihood that Millie had at least partial personality retention, in addition to the previously displayed lucidity. This was hard to be sure of, since none of them had known her beforehand, but there were always markers.

She answered hesitantly, in broken sentences, distracted by her aversion to the light and ongoing desire for darkness, often having to search for the words to convey her meaning. While much of her memories seemed to be missing, some—those conceptually relating to the pain that had led her to her break event, either good or bad—remained.

Aberrants had been known to pull answers to questions like these from the researchers’ minds, and though Thaddeus had no fear of that with this one, displaying a few memories from the original thaumaturge was not enough to prove personality retention.

He asked her hypothetical questions about how she would respond to ethical dilemmas, such as the well-known trolley problem, but also more personal versions of those problems, inserting characters from her life.

Millie struggled more with these, finding the abstract concepts difficult to grasp, but her answers skewed toward holding affection for her deceased father and a couple of the young children who were her neighbors, with their best interest coming out above others, who she either had forgotten entirely or was actively malicious toward. Her own self-interest won out above all, however.

He asked her how she felt about memories that she’d mentioned.

Her vocabulary was not rich enough to fully explore her emotions, but when he brought up the man who had maimed her, Millie’s head snapped up in a feral snarl of anguish and hatred. She was able to give his name, whatever had kept her from doing so before no longer relevant, or perhaps forgotten.

Agent Fike wrote it down. “I will follow up on that,” she said in a hard voice.

Finally, he asked her what she wanted.

“Light hurts, I’m ugly. I want darkness,” she said in that raspy, desiccated voice.

“Do you remember what happens when it gets dark?” Thaddeus asked.

“Stops hurting,” she answered simply.

“Do you remember what you do when its dark? Or how the people around you act?”

This question, she either could not or would not answer, simply shaking her head no matter how he tried to approach the query.

“Do you understand where you are?”

“I’m…here.”

“Where is here?”

Her face remained blank beneath the strips wrapped around her eyes, her head tilted as if she were staring vacuously into the corner of the room.

“How did you try to fix your problem, before you hated the light? Before you were here? What happened to you?” Even among the handful of Aberrants who were both lucid and had retained some measure of their original personalities, none that Thaddeus was aware of remembered their own break event. Of course, the sample size was less than impressive.

Millie was no different, again unable to answer.

Thaddeus spent a tedious amount of time asking different versions of the same questions, trying to learn everything he could about what she knew. Any data point—her past, her ancestry, the type of thaumaturgical training she’d been through, where and how she had cast the spell that overwhelmed her Will—could be useful to figuring out why she broke exactly the way she did.

Millie was generally unhelpful, and to be honest, rather boring. Most of that information would have to be collected through indirect means. There would be many more interviews with those who had known her, and whole teams would be responsible for reconstructing the circumstances at the time of her break event through deduction and divination. Thaddeus would not be involved in that.

Goldfisch eventually grew bored, and when he realized Thaddeus really had no plans to do anything nefarious, left to attend to his own duties, leaving only the two female agents to watch over Thaddeus.

When Millie grew tired and irritable from the questioning, they allowed her a few moments as Moonsable, who was more like the standard Aberrant, lacking all lucidity except what was necessary for the drive to propagate its anomalous effect.

Thaddeus sighed, rolling his tired shoulders. This Aberrant was unlikely to create the breakthrough, the insight, that he needed. Especially with him being involved only in the preliminary interview and report, not any of the subsequent tests or examinations.

Even if this field base was set up for that, a team from one of the Red Guard black sites would soon be coming to take her away. Berg had already submitted the report to the higher-ups, so that wouldn’t be long.

Thaddeus would have to request the information on Moonsable later. He was unsure if he would be able to access the files with his current reduced clearance levels, despite his history and area of expertise. Sacrifices had been made.

But that was alright. His current research was more promising, anyway.

Author Note:

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