The Lab Job, an Urban Fantasy Short Story (featuring Tex Arcana and Nikk Dazzle)

A Tex Arcana and Nikk Dazzle Adventure
A Short Story by Stella Lovecharm inspired by tweets by @WorstDM

Urban Fantasy, ~8300 words divided into 10 chapters

CW: profanity, violence and death, brief sexual descriptions as metaphor, mentions of alcoholism and caffeine abuse, brief mentions of poverty, body-horror-esq magical physical transformations.

"Mister Arcana, I presume?" the woman asked as she took a seat next to the man dressed as a cowboy.

She wished she could say that he stood out, but out here no one really seemed to stand out compared to anyone else. If anything, she was the odd-duck down here on the streets where neon and led signs glared against the rain-wet streets. Only a handful of people jostled among the crowd in suits and most of those were either worn from too many years of use or poorly-fitted. Professors at the local underfunded colleges trying to ride out until retirement on those last sport coats, men overdressed for court appearances in the hopes that the judge might grant leniency if they looked the part of "fine upstanding citizen," and two-bit hustlers with notions of grandeur all rubbed shoulders with everything from low-end cubicle drones to shock-jock YouTubers to street mages to Paladins down for the evening from their monasteries to minister to the wretched.

Down here, far from her corner office and mid-level condo, her freshly-pressed, well-tailored, pinstripe suit was the rarity.

"You can call me Tex, darlin," the cowboy stated without looking up from his bowl of ramen. Not the cheap shit that she had lived off of in college, but proper rāmen. Good-quality tofu and noodles in miso fish broth. For a moment she regretted having dinner before coming down here; she hadn't expected any of the street vendors to smell anywhere near this good and the $15 veggie burger and fries combo she had washed down with what could only be called a bucket of soda seemed lacking in comparison.

"Of course," she replied with only a hint of sarcasm. He could tell that she thought it was an assumed name and she was at best humoring him.

Her voice was tight and nasally, as if she had spent her entire life indoors and her nostrils had simply chosen to close up entirely rather than allow the hot, wet air of the city to enter them.

She swivelled on the little barstool that had been bolted to an arm sticking out from under the food truck and casually stated "Americano, extra sugar," to the robotic cook as she placed a $5 coin on the counter. It was slightly oversized and clunky with too many scratches and dents but from its general shine and still-white casing in comparison to the dingy, stained, and faded appearance of everything else down here it was clear that whoever had salvaged the old military unit and repurposed it as the cook had cared for the robot well. "...um…'Harry'," she finished as she squinted at the label "H4RR7" stamped on the left side of the "chest" portion of its armoured casing.

The cowboy nodded as he scooped a cube of tofu into his mouth with a wide, shallow ceramic spoon. He had to admit he was impressed at how well she pretended to be at-home on the street.

The machine mixed the beverage quickly and delivered it to the woman in a paper cup with a cardboard sleeve before scooping the coin into a slot in its palm and depositing a dollar coin and a quarter in its place from a slot in its index finger.

"Cover?" she asked as she looked down at the steaming brown liquid.

"nO cOvErs," the robot responded in a synthesized voice that sounded stilted awkward, at once too loud and too quiet. "bAd for ThE enVIRonmEnT."

"Fair enough," she replied as she took a sip and sighed with relief. No doubt she had gone quite a while since her last fix. It would have taken at least an hour to get all the way out here from the higher-end office buildings with the kinda traffic the city usually saw.

"Shall we go someplace more private, Mister Arcana?" the woman asked after a moment of watching the cowboy slurp noodles past his beard and into his mouth. Somehow he managed to keep from spilling the broth down the front of himself and only managed a few speckles of liquid that he wiped off with the palm of his hand.

The man picked up his tiny cup of espresso and downed it in one gulp before setting it back on the counter and gesturing towards the robot. "Another one of these on my tab, Harold ol' boy, and some privacy would you kindly?"

The robot's hands moved quickly as its single blue eye swiveled about to focus on each portion of its task, producing another cup of espresso in a matter of seconds before stating "EnGAging pRIVacY MOdE."

Its arms started to move in unusual, choreographed ways as its fingers gestured about to draw several symbols in the air.

The woman could feel the energy rising around them, crackling like electricity in the air, until the spell released and the sound of the city suddenly faded away to nothing. The cowboy nodded to the robot and raised his tiny cup in thanks as they slowly became encircled in a mystical dome of energy tinted just enough that everyone outside faded to simple grey blurs.

"That oughta do the trick," the cowboy stated with a sly smile.

While most more complex magic required a human to channel the energy of the universe and imbue the spell with a level of pure belief that held it together, some simpler rituals could be fueled by nothing more than the electrical current that powered everything non-magical in the city.

She knew from experience that the spell wouldn't last for more than a few minutes without a human mind to anchor it, so she moved onto business quickly.

"I assume you've read the details of the job that I sent ahead?" she asked simply.

"Sure did," he replied with a sip of his espresso.

"And you believe you can get it done?" she continued.

"I wouldn't sign up for it if I couldn't, ma'am," he stated earnestly as he finally looked at her directly. She was eyeing him intensely like a hawk studying its prey. He could feel her mind probing at him, tapping at his aura in an effort to discern the full extent of his magical ability.

She sipped her coffee and turned away from him. "Forgive me, Mister Arcana," she began as she ran her fingers through her hair before turning back to him "but I don't think your magical ability is quite up to the task."

"Oh, I'll assure you this's well within my wheelhouse," he said in his confident southern drawl. "But I got a friend I intend to take along for backup just in case things go south."

"A friend?" she asked, her eyebrows raised.

"Oh yes, he's the real deal," the cowboy continued as he pushed his thoughts into hers, revealing some of the things he'd seen Nikk do over the years. "A true Magus if ever there was one."

The man in his memories dressed like a clown more than a Wizard and was in many ways acted as ridiculous as he looked, but the acts she saw this Mister Dazzle perform through the cowboy's eyes were beyond skill or talent. This was magic obtainable only by the most diligent of pure studies. Decades of it, lifetimes of it.

And the magic that the cowboy had used to pushed the memories into her head betrayed his own power. She felt it rise sharply as if there was a vast well of magic hidden deep inside him. It quelled as quickly as it had come. It wasn't skilled, not refined or trained, but there was a kind of raw potential for magic within him and it was potent indeed. It gave him an edge that not many would suspect from his aura. Maybe he was the Warlock her contacts had assured her he was, despite this cowboy cosplay he was putting on.

He certainly wouldn't be the first Magicker she'd met with a unique style. She'd worked with Wizards who liked to dress as janitors, Witches who dressed like 1950's housewives, and even one Necromancer who preferred to go around in a full furry costume. She'd honestly never seen the person's face and couldn't tell you from the high-pitched cartoon character voice they put on what their gender was.

"Alright, you're in," she stated simply. "Contract remains the same as discussed. Forty-five for the job, paid upon completion. Split it however you want."

"Fifty," he replied without skipping a beat. "Divides more evenly," he added with a kindly smile. "Wouldn't wanna have to get into an argument with a friend over something as petty as money."

She sighed before replying "Done, the rest of the details are on this pad," as she pulled a small e-ink tablet out of her pocket and placed it face-down on the counter next to his bowl.

The woman mumbled something that sounded like Old English as she waved her hands through the magical barrier and it evaporated away, the sounds and sights of the city flooding in instantly.

"Keep the change Harry," she said as she grabbed her coffee off the counter and started to walk away.

"tHaNK yOu Ma'AM," the robot synthed out as it scooped the remaining coins into its palm. "cOMe aGaIN."

"Thank ya kindly," the cowboy stated to her backside as she made her way into the crowd.

"Thank me by getting it done, Mister Arcana!" she shouted without turning around, waving her hand above her in a casual "goodbye."

***

The man was dressed in a dollar-store magician's costume, something like a tuxedo but poorly made out of a rigid polyester blend that looked more like plastic than fabric. He waved his arms around dramatically as he moved, one white-gloved hand clutching a cheap black cardboard "wand" and the other constantly checking to make sure his polyester top hat was still on straight.

"Alright, put your card back into the deck," he said as he backed a step away from the sweaty tourist, his sweaty tourist wife, and their two sweaty tourist children. No one ever expected Minnesota to be so humid in the summer. It had taken Tex himself years to adjust to the sensation of the air being so "thick" year-round despite the fact that the actual temperature never made it anywhere near the kinda summer temps they used to see back home.

Tex had tried scrying for the man, but it hadn't done any good. The pendant had kept launching violently between pointing directly at this intersection on the map and sticking straight up into the air. He had ultimately decided to check the corner of 7th and Nicollet where the thing had pointed and then follow-up with some of the Magician's other haunts if he wasn't there.

"Now, light the entire deck on fire," he said as he tossed a cheap bic lighter at the man and nodded towards the nearby unlinered metal trash bin.

"Um...alright," the tourist stated as he held the cards over the bin carefully and lit one corner. They went up quickly and he dropped them into the bin after only a few seconds. It burned away for another moment or two but was quickly reduced to ashes and smoke.

"Alright, aaaannnddd…" the Magician drew out as he moved his hands complexly and produced a card from inside his sleeve with a flick. "Is this your card?!" he finished triumphantly as he held it up for the man and his wife to see.

"That's...that's amazing," the man stated in awe.

"How did you do that?" his wife asked, her eyes wide with amazement. Despite the fact that magic was very much a real and known force in the world, most non-casters tended to think that it was practiced solely by university professors, corporate mages, and army sorcerers and were usually massively surprised to actually meet a seemingly normal person who practiced the arts.

"Magic," Nikk stated with a sly smile as he pulled off his hat to reveal his expanse of round head topped with an outcrop of black hair and bowed for the applauding crowd.

"Please! Please put any donations for the show in the hat!" he stated with the modesty of a ringleader as he held out the hat for several people to drop coins into.

"And now, for my final trick," he stated as he put his hat back on with the money still in it, pulled it off again without so much as a quarter falling out, and reached in to produce two chocolate bars which he tossed to the children, "a surprise for the kids!"

"Wow!" the boy shouted over the second round of applause as he ripped his bar opened.

"Thank you, thank you," the Magician said as he put the hat back onto his head and bowed again. "You're too kind."

"Thanks!" the girl stated with a gleeful smile.

"Now, now, don't ruin your dinner," the mother said as she quickly grabbed the candy bars and stuffed them in your purse to the twin whines of the children.

"You can have them later," she offered as the crowd started to dissipate.

***

"Man, I dunno how you always manage to look even more like a kid dressed up for Halloween than the last time I saw you," Tex said with a shake of his head. The last time he'd seen Nikk he was performing in a gaudy purple wizard's costume complete with a pointy hat covered in stars. Somehow, this was actively worse.

"You're one to talk, you look like a McCree cosplayer that didn't have enough money for the arm," Nikk shot back quickly as he examined the other man's outfit.

Tex merely shrugged noncommittally. Between the poncho, the beard, and the cowboy hat it was hard to deny. He covered his belt quickly with his hand, trying to make the stance look casual, when he realized the Magician was looking at it.

He wasn't exactly proud of the "BAMF" belt buckle, but when he saw it at the consignment shop where he got second-hand jeans on the cheap he hadn't been able to help himself.

More than once he'd caught himself in the mirror on the way out of his apartment, drawn his pistol at himself, and stated under his breath "it's hiiiiiiiigh noon!" as dramatically as he could.

So far he'd managed to restrain himself from actually firing off a shot but he was deeply afraid that one of these days he would get a little too drunk in the morning or a little too caffeine-jittery at night and he'd have to deal with a very unpleasant visit from an angry neighbor, his super, and the cops. Most of his work happened at night and most of his downtime during the day hours so his alcohol/coffee schedule was generally inverted compared to most people, but one way or another he was almost always on something and really it was only a matter of time.

"Uh huh," Nikk grunted with a sly smile.

"Nice trick, how'd you do it?" Tex asked, hoping to change the subject, as he fought his natural inclination to blush. "Hypnosis cantrip to trick him into picking the card you hid up your sleeve?"

"Naw, nothing so complex," the Magician replied. "Just read his top-layer of thoughts and manifested an illusory card to match," he continued as he reached into his hat and pulled out what looked like a playing card adorned with a pinup of an attractive goth Tex had passed in the street on the way over. He had nodded to her and greeted "ma'am" as he tipped the brim of his hat, to which she had giggled and rolled her eyes.

"Interesting," Nikk commented as he turned the card to look at it. "Someone you know?"

"Not really," Tex replied as emotionlessly as he could, fighting another blush that he hoped his beard covered.

"Shame," the Magician stated as he shook the card and it evaporated into a puff of smoke that dissipated into nothingness. "Attractive one, maybe you should get to know her."

"She's…" he started while his eyes rolled up into his head, revealing nothing but whites. Tex knew from experience that the was channelling the zeitgeist that ran over the surface of the city, his mind racing out across the invisible web of information that linked human lives together. It acted as the temporary memory of society; if the Akashic Record was the hard drive of reality, then the zeitgeist was its RAM. "A fan of that noodle stand you like," he stated finally before his eyes rolled back into their normal position.

"In fact, she's there right now," he finished. "Nine, about an hour after you usually go there. That's her normal time."

Tex simply let the information lay without comment as he watched the other man start to count the heftier coins out of his hat.

"And the hat?" he asked. "A forcefield in the top to keep stuff in place?"

"No, just a simple dimensional bubble tethered to the brim," he replied while he started in on the quarters.

They stood awkwardly for a moment while the other man continued counting. Tex supposed that he should have gotten used to the vast difference between the their definitions of "simple" when it came to magic but it often still shocked him just what the Magician could do casually sometimes.

"Thirty-four seventy-five," he stated finally as he dropped the remaining coins in his hand back into the hat. "Not a bad take for an hour's street magic."

"Make it a solid thirty-five, pardner," Tex stated as he fished a quarter out of his pocket and flicked it into the hat with a sly smile.

"Thankya kindly," the other man replied in a poor imitation of the Warlock's accent before he spun the hat around and placed it back on his head dramatically.

"Technically, my head's in another dimension when I'm wearing it," he stated matter-of-factly.

"Huh," Tex grunted. That explained why he had been so difficult to track. He wasn't even entirely in this realm.

"So, what brings you to my humble corner? Hustling at the arcade?" he asked with a nod towards one of the nearby storefronts.

He had made a decent amount of money over the years betting tourists over various quickdraw and zombie-shooting games at the local arcades. It had gotten him through more than once when business was slow.

"Got a job," the Warlock said simply.

"Really?" Nikk replied with a raise of his eyebrows. It had been quite a while. "Do tell."

***

"Well, we ain't climbin' it, that's for damn sure," Tex stated as he eyed up the brick wall. They could both feel the energy radiating off of it. This was more than a mystic alarm system, by a lot. No doubt it'd fry them to dust if they so much as touched it.

The Warlock shifted around uncomfortably as he noticed the black dust lining the sidewalk and couldn't help but wonder how many random people and animals had made contact with the wall already.

"Don't worry, I got it," Nikk stated as he started to move his hands around in complex motions. Ribbons of energy formed around his fingertips, slowly spreading into a series of delicate geometric shapes that flew off of his hands and attached themselves to the wall.

Steadily, a hole began to form in the wall as it seemed to bend around itself.

"That oughta do it," the Magician stated once an opening big enough for a human to duck through had been created. It was like a donut had been placed in the wall and Tex could tell that Nikk had bent the wall around itself, folding its space inward so that it stretched out in directions it wasn't meant to and forming a "hole" in it as a result. "After you, good sir," he continued with a welcoming gesture through the opening.

The job was simple enough. The suit represented one of the many companies that dealt in power-syncs, something like batteries for magical work. Their Clairvoyant division had sensed a build-up of magical energy at this building, far more than anyone would ever create just doing routine spells and rituals. On top of that, a new black-market magical source had started to hit the streets, something potent that the street wizards were really loving, and it was helping to drive their profits down. Rather than risk their own people on dealing with the problem they had opted to hire "outside contractors" to stamp out the potential competition and, to a lesser extent, perform a public good by protecting a significant portion of their customer base from blowing up thanks to amateur energy work.

It wasn't as uncommon as you'd hope. A few times a year a place like this went up in flames when someone did their calculations wrong and fouled-up an energy concentration ritual.

Once they stepped through the opening, Tex mumbled a simple spell under his breath and ran his hand over his eyes quickly. His irises dilated to fill the entirety of his eyes and his eyesight in the dark night enhanced significantly as he blinked to adjust to the new vision.

"We got…" he began as he looked around the inside of the compound. The lawn stretched out from the edge of the wall to the mansion in its center for a couple acres on every side with only a few trees and bushes scattered here and there. "Fifteen guards," he finished. "Basic hired goon suits."

"How you wanna do this?" Nikk asked in a whisper while he waved behind them to dispel the ritual that was keeping the wall bent around itself. "Quiet and stealthy or loud and messy?" he continued with a sly smile. Tex knew perfectly well which one the Magician preferred, but he intended to keep this quiet until they knew exactly what was going on here.

"Doncha worry ‘bout a thing," he said confidently with his own sly smile. "I got this," he finished as he mumbled another incantation and disappeared in a puff of shadow.

***

More than anything, what Tex knew about magic was cantips. Dozens of cantrips, maybe even hundreds. Nikk really didn't know how many he'd seen the other man use over the years and he wouldn't even hazard a guess as to how many his repertoire might encompass, but one thing that he did know was that almost all of them were useful in combat.

Good, tight incantations useable on-the-fly with only the tiniest amount of magical reserves, quick-draw spells to match his quick-draw with a pistol, Tex had the kind of grimoire that only came from generations of a family being asked by fate to fuck other people's shit up, and to fuck it up hardcore.

His "Shadowform" was one of his more impressive ones. With just a few words and a minor expenditure of energy he could cloak himself in the surrounding shadows. Which, in addition to looking fucking terrifying in the daytime, rendered him basically invisible on a night like this.

Nikk cast his own version of a "vision spell" so he could follow Tex's progress: leaving his body so his mind could roam around freely over the surface of the Earth just barely on this side of the astral plane. As his eyes started to roll back in his head from the rapid retreat of his soul, he moved his hands and mouth quickly to cast a basic light-refraction spell around himself. It wasn't as elegantly simple as Tex's solution, and it required a far greater investment of mystical energy, but it would do the trick. If anyone looked in his direction all they would see was the wall behind him.

He watched as Tex took out half of the rent-a-goons before any of them even noticed something was amiss. He would approach quickly and silently, cloaked in his swath of shadow, before delivering a quick jab to the back of the head or reaching out and wrapping his arm around their neck to choke them down. For two of them he had enough time to mumble a short incantation before placing his hand on top of their head and zapping them with a sleeping spell.

The ninth one turned in time to spot him as he came in, nothing but a shadowy blob moving quickly across the grass but still a recognizable threat. He reached for the pistol at his hip but he was slow and Tex was not. The Warlock had enough time to pull his pistol, unleash a crude wave of energy that was more pure intention backed-up by power than anything that could be called a "spell," and squeeze off a shot into the man's skull before the guard even managed to fully raise his gun.

Nikk winced as he saw the flash from the muzzle blast out across the yard, his soul rushing back into his body in an instant of pure panic. While Tex's spell had silenced the sound, it had done nothing to stop the light. The Magician started to move his arms quickly and precisely as he rushed to get off a complex spell. Some of the guards might have taken it for a blast of lightning or the momentary flash of headlights from the road, but some of them would likely be suspicious and they would alert the others.

He closed one eye as he measured off the distances as best he could and shifted his hands precisely to match. He would have to be careful to include the entire yard while isolating the house entirely from the effect. If it affected the people inside the structure it would no doubt give them away.

Finally, the Shadow energies shifting and twisting around him in a concentration of magic, he lifted a single finger to his lips, anchored the entirety of the spell to it, and hissed a long, drawn out "shhhhhhh" as he unleashed it.

In an instant, the spell expanded out across the grounds, blanketing the entirety of the expanse of grass in silence and darkness.

***

The Warlock had realized quickly what his friend had done, and he immediately started moving to take full advantage of the spell. He was already running to where he was fairly certain the next guard was as he mumbled a spell that made his eyes glow yellow as the sun and cleared the magical fog for him and him alone, the well of magical energy he normally kept at bay rising intoxicatingly. He had to stifle a giddy giggle against the sensation and forced his face into a determined scowl.

His arm was fully extended, pistol fully drawn, as he stopped and fired, pivoted and fired again, pivoted and fired again, before starting off at a full run again. He didn't need to look to know that three men's heads had just exploded as he felt Nikk's influence in his own head. It was less of a message and more of a series of simple images that guided him to the next target.

The remaining five - his count had been slightly off thanks to two on the other side of the building - were easy to pick off. He didn't feel great about it; he always hoped to deal with people who were just doing their jobs as non-lethally as he could, but at the end of the day this was the kinda career where killing was simply considered part of the expected duties. Whatever, he'd worry about it later. Or never. That usually worked out pretty well. As long as he "medicated" hard enough with either caffeine or alcohol in his downtime.

Five more clean headshots and the rest were dealt with. He heard a finger snap as he started to make towards the front door and saw the magical fog lift in an instant, the sounds of the city distant outside the wall reaching his ears again. He didn't need to look to know that Nikk had closed the distance between them and was walking nearby.

"How we wanna do this?" he asked the other man, to which the Magician responded simply "I got the inside if you got the door," as he retwisted the residue of energy still stuck to him from the light bending spell he had used earlier to cover both the men. He almost always managed to cast too hard, no matter how much he tried to better control his expenditure of energy, and as such there was almost always enough of any given spell still dusted across his person to cast it a second time without much real effort. It was useful sometimes, but most often it just left him too hungry and too tired from too much unnecessary exertion.

"Easy peasy," the Warlock replied as he touched the door and instantly caused its deadbolt to click open audibly without much more than a stray thought. Warlocks were good at that kinda thing: changing one thing into another. Closed to open, locked to unlocked. It was useful to have a talent for editing the base nature of reality when your magic was often channelled from sources that were unpredictable at best. Sometimes, all you were gonna get was Shadow from your source but what you needed was Primal Fire; being able to turn one into the other at a moment's notice often meant the difference that let you see the next day.

***

The canister held a strange gas that glowed a putrid fluorescent green and seemed to constantly move about behind the glass as if it were trying to somehow break free.

"Is that what I think it is?" Nikk asked as his eyes went wide.

"Fuck," Tex replied in confirmation. He could feel the sickening feeling even from this distance.

Getting through the upstairs of the mansion had been remarkably easy. The foyer had been grand but unguarded and there was no one to notice the suddenly unlocked door.

The entirety of the main house was swarming with various low-level Magickers buzzing about, each doing a single small task like a mystical assembly line. Most of them were clearly street mages, barely trained city kids with the talent for magic but none of the training to perform it competently.

They were collecting down some kind of mystical energy from the space between spaces. Something that felt strange and somehow wrong but was in too small of quantities to identify with any certainty. It was clearly something not native to this reality; it had that sensation...that smell...to it that made it clear it didn't belong.

Between the universes that made up the multiverse, in the gaps where the spaces slotted together like puzzle pieces, were vast spans of nothingness in which things tended to get stuck like lint in your pocket. Artifacts, supernatural beings, wayward wizards, even common everyday people unlucky enough to slip through a crack. And, of course, excess magical energies. It was common enough for people to tap into those places to salvage useful things.

They were compacting it down into vials and crystals, slowly, one microscopic drop at a time. But each seemed to be tasked with one tiny part of whatever the overall process was and the two men had decided to simply leave them be. No doubt the entire operation would collapse on itself if they could find and kill the leadership. Even if all of the street mages decided to band together to continue the work, which in itself would be a minor miracle given how frequently they usually broke down into gang wars the instant more than a few of them were together, there seemed to be some crucial part of the process that wasn't even being done on the above-ground floors of the building.

It wasn't until they got into the basement levels that they started to see the real work. It was more medical down here, each floor made of a long linoleum hallway lined with doors to individual rooms like a converted hospital.

Ritual rooms, vast and covered on every surface with mystical symbols and formulas, stretched out on either side of the main hallway. Some held artifacts on stands and pedestals that were imbued with small amounts of whatever this power was. Stones, swords, staffs, orbs, they had a little bit of everything.

It wasn't until they reached the fourth basement that they saw the real work being done, and the cultists doing it.

"Fucking cultists," Tex had commented under his breath.

"I know, right?" Nikk had agreed. "I mean, black robes with red stitching? Deep-set hoods? Demon masks? Talk about a stereotype."

"Not really what I meant," Tex had replied with a sarcastically raised eyebrow before Nikk had shushed him and pointed to one of the canisters.

The two men were hiding just around a corner before the last few feet of hallway that led into the lab. This area was more technological than the rest of the building. Vast, twisting spans of tubes ran above a mystic circle etched into the floor where the cultists were standing and chanting around a glowing green crystal. No doubt it was one of the many that the street kids upstairs had created. Droplets of the energy were slowly being sucked into the tubes, becoming brighter and more potent as they travelled through the twists and bends to be deposited in a canister at the end of the line.

A computer nearby attached to a sensor near the middle of the tube array beeped off a reading of the potency of the droplets. 22kW 0Ω, BING, 16kW 1Ω, BING, 2kW 8Ω. The last one caused the computer to emit a deeper note of rejection and flick a shunt that diverted the drop into a different tube that poured into a drain in the floor.

"Fel," he continued. "It's goddamned Fel energy."

Fel was nothing short of a complete perversion of magic. A deep, dark magic, darker than Eldritch, darker than Shadow, darker than pure Necrotic. It was chaos magic from another realm that had been twisted and imbued with pure evilness to make it a mockery of every magic that any Magicker in this universe would ever know. It didn't even belong in this multiverse chain.

Small amounts of it would seep into the local multiverse naturally at the gaps where the universes fit together, seeping from reality to reality until it finally found its way back out and into its native realm, but it was never enough to actually do anything with. Occasionally some small wildflower would sup on it and temporarily hold a drop or two in its veins, but there was rarely enough to even cast the tiniest of spells with.

Somehow, these people had managed to concentrate out entire canisters of the stuff. There were three already sitting on the steel surgical table near the entrance to the room and they were over halfway to making it four. It was more than energy in this quantity, it was a weapon of mass destruction. Channelled correctly, stretched out and allowed to expand, that level of Fel could take out most of the state, levelling everything manmade and twisting and bending the plant and animal life into strange abominations for hundreds of years.

***

"Hey! Who the FUCK are you?!" one of the cultists shouted from the circle.

They had been sneaking towards the surgical table to steal the three canisters the cult had already created when one of them had, by chance, looked up from their ritual and spotted them.

Their plan wasn't sophisticated, not going much further than "What'da'ya think?" and "I tell you what, we bring evidence of someone channelling Fel to the police and they'll crack this nut open for us," but it would likely work out in their favor if they could pull it off.

Even as he froze in surprise, Nikk was secretly relieved that the fucker didn't say something kitchy like "Who DARES to pervert The Sanctum with their foul presence?" He'd dealt with guys like that before, cultist who took themselves way too goddamned seriously. Those guys were the fucking worst.

"Ummm...contractors?" Nikk managed without much conviction, but Tex was already in motion.

"Run pardner!" he shouted as he chucked one of the canisters at the cultists and shot it in the air.

The magical fluid exploded in a mist that sprayed over the cultists and even as he grabbed one of the canisters and took off at a full run Nikk could see tentacles, claws, and horns starting to sprout randomly from the men's bodies.

***

"Shit, shit, shit, shit," The Magician stated to himself as he pounded the "↑" button on the elevator. "C'mon, c'mon you bastard. Why the fuck didn't they put stairs on this floor? Isn't that a code violation?"

It was a valid complaint. The other floors had stairs and no elevator access but for some reason the transition between the first basement and the ground floor only had an elevator and no stairs. And they had found on the way down that it was slower than molasses.

"Spose we should be happy there ain't no card-reader to bypass on it," Tex drawled as he held his gun nervously. His eyes darted around for any advantage as the cultists, or rather the creatures they had been transformed into, noisily made their way up the last flight of stairs.

Only one had been spared from the greater effects of the Fel spray; the one that had spotted them had enough time to pull up a barrier to protect himself when Tex had thrown the canister and only his legs had been affected, transformed into a flailing mass of tentacles that he had managed to learn to control surprisingly quickly.

At the end of the lowest basement, just before the stairs, the remaining cultist had managed to get off a few words of a spell that made Tex stop in his tracks.

"What the fuck're you doing, man?" Nikk had asked as Tex raised his pistol slowly towards his friend.

The man seemed to be fighting the impulse and Nikk quickly realized that what the cultist was mumbling at the two men in a strange, nearly deranged form of Old English was a hypnosis spell. Even with his significant effort of self-control, Tex's eyes were quickly going blank and it was clear that the other man was rapidly losing the fight. And yet, Nikk felt entirely unaffected.

It only took him an instant to realize why. He glanced up at his hat quickly and smiled. His brain wasn't even in this realm, and it would take a lot more than a high-school-level hypnosis spell to get to it.

"Nice try douchebarge," Nikk stated as he threw out a simple silencing cantrip across the hall before Tex's pistol managed to reach its destination at his temple.

"Thanks pardner," Tex stated quickly as he shook his head.

The Magician couldn't help but smile at the shocked look on the cultist's face as he whacked the Warlock on the shoulder and started up the stairs again. "No worries, mate, let's get going," he said as he ran the stairs two at a time.

Though having portions of their limbs transformed into tentacles, excess skittering legs, and strange plant-like appendages had slowed them down, so far nothing had worked to stop the cultists. The two men had tried fire blasts and flame walls, lightning bolts, wind gusts, and two reloads worth of bullets, all to no effect. Nikk had even summoned a deluge on B2, flooding the entire floor up to the ceiling, but the cultists had simply trudged slowly through it as if breathing was optional for them.

"Got any ideas?" Nikk asked as he turned to face the stairs. He wiped his hands across the surface of his arms to gather the residual energy of the earlier spell and cast it out with a flick of his fingers to summon another flame wall at the end of the hallway that he knew would do little more than slow the creatures down. He could feel sweat dripping down his face and into his cheap polyester collar where it sat against his neck uncomfortably.

"Just one," Tex stated as he snatched a Vis-a-Vis off one of the nearby whiteboards, drew a rough circle around the two men on the linoleum floor, held out his hands, closed his eyes, and started chanting something in a deep Cajun drawl. While Magickers across the Western world favoured Latin and Old English for their rituals, casters from the Southern United States had long made use of a deep, nearly incomprehensible version of French Creole that had seeped into neighboring states thanks to migrating magic users out of Louisiana.

Nikk could follow it, just barely. It would have been easier had it been in Latin. He had been classically trained and that meant training in the language of the Romans, as well as dialects of Cantonese and Japanese that had seen significant use in magic circles. But, he could still follow the ritual well enough and he smiled as he realized it was some kind of backwoods protection spell, something strange and complex that played with the fabric of reality itself; the kinda thing that only a mind given long stretches of quietude to contemplate could come up with. It probably wouldn't save them for long, but long enough to figure out their next move.

As the Warlock carried on and the power swirling around them began to reach a fever pitch, Nikk started to feel something else. This always happened in the rare instances that Tex attempted anything more complex than a simple cantrip. Something began to bubble up through the man, something that almost always remained hidden pushing its way to the surface. It was strong and ancient and intelligent with a fierceness and potency the Magician had only ever felt from powerful daemon. And, it was utterly alien to the familiar aura of the Texan. It was as if a second intelligence shared the man's body with him and it was in these moments that Nikk realized why Tex and his family called themselves "Warlocks" rather than "Wizards" or "Magicians" or "Sorcerers." There was something great and magical that was linked to them, possibly irrevocably, that provided their power every bit as much as they themselves did.

The magician let his spell down as he felt the Warlock's ritual reaching its end. It was a kind of rushing feeling like pressure dropping, a moment of pure sensation just before something else leapt forward. More than once he'd equated it to the moments just before tipping into orgasm.

"Ha!" Tex finished dramatically as he pushed his hands forward an inch and the two men warbled just outside of reality.

The creatures approached, confused, as their heads cocked back and forth. One attempted to pierce the circle but its pincer passed straight through both the barrier and Nikk's side without resistance as if neither was there.

"Whatcha gonna do now, motherfucker?" the Magician asked with a sly smile as he realized that the two men had passed just out of phase with the normal plane. They were in the middle now, between the physical and astral in that space that ghosts often inhabited during the moments when they were spotted or managed to push something off a shelf. He had been in this space many times in spiritual form, but this was the first time he'd ever entered it physically. It was a truly fascinating experience, warm and tingly like a medium-temperature hot tub. He could see why ghosts liked it here so much.

"Something my granddaddy once showed me," Tex explained with a proud smile.

"Thank you grandpa Alvin," Nikk stated in a voice that clearly showed how impressed he was by the other man's handiwork. They had talked about Tex's grandfather on numerous occasions and Nikk had gathered that the man had been a truly powerful Magus. Sadly, while his friend had the potential to be as well, a mystical birthright that the Magician could always feel pulsing just below the other man's skin, he doubted the dedicated gunslinger would ever have enough interest or reason to actually develop it.

***

"You got what you need yet, pardner?" Tex asked as his hands shook against the effort of maintaining their balance between the realms. Bodies tended to gravitate towards the physical realm and souls tended towards the astral, keeping the two tightroped between the realms was difficult at the best of times. It was nearly impossible when someone was trying to push you over as the one cultist who could still speak was trying to do with a complex ritual he kept chanting over and over.

"Yeah, I got it," Nikk stated as he finally finished draining the canister of its power.The Texan had noticed the other man starting the process as soon as he had gotten his hands on the thing. He wasn't sure if it was due to caution or preminition but Nikk had always been equal parts prescient and over-prepared, a combination that often left him ready for things long before anyone else even knew there was a need to be ready.

"I'll fucking say," Tex stated as he looked over at the other man. His eyes were glowing...no flaming...with the Fel energy. It was rippling out of them like he was a freaking videogame character.

The Magician moved his arms rapidly in a series of complex gestures reminiscent of an anime-style ki attack as he channeled the fluorescent green energy into a tight, potent ball in his hands. Just being near it made Tex want to retch all over the floor from the sickening sensation it filled the air with. He had no idea how the other man was able to hold it, let alone have it rippling through his body, so calmly.

"Let it drop," Nikk stated with a nod as he allowed the canister to clatter to the ground where it shattered and a small puff of blank white energy dissipated into the ether.

Tex let his hands down and the circle fell with a thud back into normal reality. Before the creatures could do anything, before the last of the robed cultists could even prepare a cantrip, the Magician raised his hands above him and unleashed the Fel into the room.

The ball pulsed just once before exploding into a rippling green flame that tore through the room. The creatures were incinerated instantly, the whiteboards and signs on the walls melted into twisted sculptures of liquid plastic, the linoleum tiles tore up off the floor and burned away into puffs of black smoke. The final cultist was just barely able to pull up an instinctive barrier cantrip while his friends closer to the blast burned away into nothing. It held long enough to save him from the flames, but not from the blast of energy that bashed him against the wall behind him with such force that he broke through it with a sickening crack of beams, drywall, and bones.

Only the two men were fully protected at the center of the storm of Fel flames.

Finally, after what seemed like hours but was only a few seconds, the gout dissipated and the Magician collapsed to his knees. The sensation was at once both amazing and exhausting, like ejaculating every ounce of fluid in your body out through your hands, and Nikk felt both elated and like he was going to die at the same time.

"Jeezus, you alright?" Tex asked quickly as he moved to help his friend up.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm good," Nikk stated as he got his footing again.

Tex whistled as he looked around the room. "Nice work, pardner," he said with a tip of his hat in an accent so deep Nikk couldn't help but wonder if he was affecting it.

"Not too bad," the Magician stated as he nodded with satisfaction. "Think he's dead?" he continued with a nod towards the cultist.

From the amount of blood that was pouring down the wall where the man had lodged Tex was fairly certain of it, but he fired one shot expertly into the man's forehead for good measure, drawing his gun, squeezing the trigger, and returning the pistol to its holster in one fluid movement that never rose above his hip. "He is now," Tex stated.

"Yeah, that oughta do it," the Magician said sarcastically as he cocked his head and raised one eyebrow as if to ask "really?"

"Better saf'n'sorry," the Texan replied with a shrug and a grin.

The Magician allowed a sideways smile to creep across his face as he shrugged as well and stated "guess I can't argue with that."

The elevator doors slid open behind them.

"Fucking finally!" Nikk shouted at the elevator as he gestured angrily at it.

"C'mon, let's get out of here," he continued as he gave a casual tug to the other man's sleeve and stepped in.

They could already hear sirens in the distance. No doubt one of the cultists had set off an alarm somewhere along the way.

Even that would work to their benefit. The cops would find a Fel lab and obvious signs of combat and the two men could claim both responsibility and the reward.

And, if the corporate suit tried to fight them on it, Tex could tell that Nikk still had more than enough Fel energy still held in reserve to make her life truly unpleasant and that he wouldn't hold many reservations about using it if his half of $50k was on the line.