Nine Swords

If I could "LIKE", "Thumbs up" or smily... I would. Very nice!

Scene X: Apples and Blues

As the bodies were not too fresh we decided to not rush off and storm the hippie camp in hopes of perhaps finding someone or something there, but instead went back to the car. Josephine had difficulties with her phone connection in the forest – not a field agent's phone, she said – but she had to report back to her supervisor. Apparently the Templars were thin stretched even over their own country. Then again, it seemed that no big problems had occurred in this area for decades, so no need to have a full garrison of... what? Battlemages? I shook my head over how that sounded, but still – no reason to have many people stationed here in that case. But something had changed, and if that gang of ghouls was any indication, then Josephine alone was in over her head for this one.
“Apple?”
The question threw me out of my thoughts as I looked on the wrinkled things that Josephine was holding with a slightly awkward expression on her face. The two apples looked like they had resided in her car for a while already.
“I know I said we'd be done with this soon, but who would have thought that instead of just incinerating one dead ghoul we'd end up finding the trail of some homicidal ritualist. Or ritualists.”
I looked at the apple and was about to give some sort of declining response, but her phone rang in that same second. Without hesitation she threw me the fruits and took the call. To my own surprise I managed to catch both and then gave them a closer look. Just how many years has it been that I last ate an aged apple? Must have been about twenty years ago, in that gods forsaken farmer's bunker south of Winnyzja. Back then I was actually happy to see a fruit. How times change...
“Yes Sir! Immediately, Sir!”
Her call ended and she had this urgent look on her face that I knew well from people who have given their soul to duty. There was something else, too... but since the man on the phone had been very quiet I did not really catch anything he said.
“Buckle up,”
She said as she made the engine work like that poor car never worked before. I was too lost in thoughts to follow that order fast enough, so I almost squashed the two soft apples in my hands as Josephine accelerated to a much higher speed than one should on this road, let alone in such a car.
After about a minute I decided to carefully inquire as to what was going on.
“Local Doctor,”
a small pause,
“Been to the camp several times over the last month. Gone now, too. Probably to the camp. No time to lose.”
The local Doctor? If he was the one who put together the Illuminati agent, then he wasn't just your regular doc. A magus then?
“Illuminatus has been seen going in that direction now, too. Might turn the mess into a catastrophe. The Council was informed, might send an agent. Next year. Templar operative got dispatched, too. ETA is in half an hour. Through Agartha. Too long. Evil doesn't wait, got to intervene and at least stall until operative arrives. Worst case, but too probable.”
She seemed more focused by the second and I could see the wheels in her head grinding, revealing all the problems that could arise now... most likely the whole town could suffer. She was too driven for 'just' that though, this was personal. So personal it actually made her drift almost professionally onto that uneven forest path, so I had to throw one of the apples on the backseat since I needed to hold onto something. I doubt that even ten minutes had passed until we arrived at a small glade with a couple of caravans parked along the outer edge and a huge tent in the middle of it. Dawn already came and one could see the light breaking through the forest, turning this place into something serene and almost enchanting. If it weren't for the murders, of course. Josephine paid the natural beauty no mind and stormed out of the car immediately – I wasn't sure how clever such an idea was. We pretty much announced our presence loud and clear long before anybody could even see us, and now we were right in possibly enemy territory, sitting out in the open, a welcome present for anybody with a rifle. No need for magic if you can just greet somebody with a bullet to the chest, right?
But there was no shot, no movement... nothing. I got out of the car and tried to carefully look around, but apparently that was not really the Templar's way of doing things. Josephine stomped right to the first caravan, elementalism focus gripped tightly in her left, and kicked the door open. I grabbed one of my pistols and followed, trying to cover her at least a bit. She emerged from the caravan a few seconds later, but she didn't have to tell me a thing. The sweetly smell turned atrociously foul as I got closer to the caravan that apparently had served as somebody's home. Now it served as a grave for at least one rotting corpse.
“Harold! Come out! I know you are here!”
Josephine shouted at the top of her lungs, and I was sure now that the local Doctor must be her husband. So it was not necessarily the Templar's way of doing things, but a woman going mad over a loved one. Looks like it was not the danger to her town that moved her, but her very world that was already crumbling, burning... That's a truly dangerous state to be in. The entrance to the big tent moved, which made me drop to a knee and aim at it – I still kept forgetting how different, how much easier weapons could be used with this whole magic stuff. But the one who emerged from that tent wasn't Harold. Or, at least not her Harold. He might be a Harold, which would be a great coincidence, but the- I cut my thoughts short and focused again on the person stumbling out of the tent - the Illuminati agent. He did not seem wounded, but he was definitely not alright. Something was wrong, and given my extraordinary level of experience in the field of magic, curses and similar afflictions I decided to keep at my distance, with a raised pistol. Better safe than sorry, right?