“What’s the bet?”

“Ten years incarnated in a worm against thirty donuts if he gets back here in one place, no visible burns.”

“Who would love you if you were a worm?”

“My husband would! I’m sure of it! I asked!”

“He could have lied, Jonathon.”

“No, he’s not the type. He’s an open book. Literally. He’s a nine inch copy of all the things a man called Arthur Brown did in his life. Pretty boring, but he’s such a sweetheart…”

“You set your bar to low, Jonathon.”

“What would you do when all your exes were literal emotional vampires?”

“THink that maybe you are the problem here, Jonathon.”

“Still. Do we have a bet, or not?”

“Sure thing. Let’s shake on it.”

“What do you think it’s really happening in the office upstairs?”

“I don’t know, but I think we will very soon…”

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

“You are looking at me, right at me, without even lowering your head, and you have the guts to tell me that what you gave the mortal, was the lance of undoings?”

The thunderous voice of, well, what appeared to be a living thunder shook the walls of his office and reverberated through the entire structure. A whimper and a creak could be heard from the reception, weirdly audible even if a long, almost endless corridor separated the two areas.

The lightning looked… furious. Positively and utterly furious. If there had ever been an angry lightning, that was him. The furniture of his office was singed, a small pothos was on fire and the smell of ozone would be sickening if anyone there could actually smell in the most common sense. He zipped from one corner of the room to the other, somehow still looking at the enormous silver lion who just came through his office door. They seemed… weirdly, they did not really seem scared. Just tired, like this was one of the infinite times they were called here for something that wasn’t his fault, couldn’t be done otherwise, or was actually what was asked of them and then retracted later, shifting the blame on their head.

And indeed, this was such a case.

“Not only that”, spoke again the lightning “but it was given to an old man! An old man! What is he supposed to do to the Numens, throw them their dentures? He will fry the second he touches that lance! I would be really surprised if he isn’t already a heap of burned ashes! What were you thinking? What do you have to say for yourself, herald of fucking change?”

The silver lion, or better, the silver daemon, looked toward their manager, well, assistant manager. They could not hide their disappointment. They really hoped the pretentious asshole would admit his misdoings, since the blunder with the date stemmed from a thing he labeled wrong, and try to look together for a solution to this blunder that could, potentially, spell the end of life as they knew. Or give them a promotion. Still, he had probably misheard the lightning.

“What do you mean that I gave him the lance of undoings?”

The lightning stopped. The streaks of plasma in the air made something like a frown.

“Exactly what I said.” the lightning answered, matter of factly. “You gave him the lance of undoings.”

“No, no no, there’s surely an error here. There must be. I gave him the lance of und-ings, that’s the lance of understandings, isn’t it?” Erad looked positively shocked, and quite more anxious then before. “Shortened in ‘und-ings’. Isn’t it?”

A hand made of lighting clapped on the desk, making a noise similar to that of a mortal hitting their own face with a palm.

“Did you get material and hit your head on a rock or something? Did the Everlasting beginning make you fall when you were little? There’s no lance of understandings, you moron! It’s the lance of understanding. Singular. That’s the one we give to fledgling heroes in need of developing their skills, you dumbass. There was probably a smudge on the o, and you read it wrong.” The lighting took a bit of time to somehow put out the fire on the small plant. “Plus, it should have been written in the standard contracts you have on your desk. There are, like, fifty of them with the right one! You literally took the only one that was wrong, you dumb cat!”

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“There was no smudge on it,” answered the silver daemon, upset by the insinuation. “It was a line. A singular, horizontal line. Here, I have it with me, see for yourself.”

They put a paw inside their chest, rummaged a bit, and then took out a brilliant silver scroll, penned in golden ink. They gave it to the lighting, who made it float in front of him. The smell of ozone got a bit more intense.

“It really seems like someone will lose their job today. Who in the right mind would…” He stopped talking. The air seemed to go still for a moment. “Unless… Do you recall if the scroll you took with you was where you left it?”

“I don’t know? Maybe? Probably? I don’t check every day, and the paper and parchment piles on my desk are only ever growing, so no, I can’t be sure they were where I left them a century or so ago. Why? Are you suggesting foul play was involved?”

“Either that, or you, stupid cat, are involved in a conspiracy against the constituted order - which I find very unbelievable. You are the parent of change, not of ends, and this could spell the end for all of us. Forever.”

“Still”, Erad said to the lightning, that now was sitting on a reclining chair “there’s a bit of a problem, here.”

“What problem?”

“It was you that recorded the content of the prophetic scroll, and that put it up for delivery to the descendant of Nothing. There was your name on the receipt of the delivery package.”

“Are you implying I made a mistake?” he thundered, instantly incensed. “Are you really trying to shift the blame on me?”

“No. Since you are suspecting foul play… I am, too. Who told you to put that date on it? Did you copy it from the original prophecy?”

“I did not copy it from the prophecy. I know for a fact that we never owned a copy of that one. Still… Oh. Right. It was too long ago, so I don’t recall it clearly, but it came from outside the office.”

“Stuff can come from out of here?” Erad was a bit flabbergasted by this information. “Aren’t we the only ones managing the base layer of reality, here?”

“We are, but sometimes there’s stuff even we can’t comprehend. Forces to which we can only say ‘yes sir, absolutely sir, do you want that with a side of fried pomato roots?’ and never, ever look at them.” the lighting made a pause, and seemed to recall more about the event. “ Especially when they are vouchsafed by your superiors.”

“The Numens put you up to this?” Erad bellowed. Could this be bigger then he thought?

“Keep your voice down, you stupid cat!” he roared. Then, he calmed down. “I don’t know. I don’t believe they would, they risk to lose more than they could gain.”

“There’s a more pressing matter, tho.”

“What?”

“From what was written on the scroll I had at my disposal, which iat this point I don’t know how much I can trust, and from the time frame given, the Night should already be happening. The mortal world should be covered in eternal blackness. What is going on? Is it just a clerical error, or is the wrong timeframe the right one, meaning that we only have fifty moons or so?”

“I don’t know.” replied the lightning, drily. “ The Night protocol did not start, those who should be incarnated weren’t sent over, and no group of heroes has yet been born.” The lightning snorted, and it sounded like a mix of a thunderclap and a gasp. “Except for the weird fucker in the Deinish lands, but that was a mistake from another branch and shouldn’t concern us. Bunch of stuck up light based assholes. This is all very weird. We need to look into it.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“We were waiting to have this conversation.” The lighting made a weird contraption float in front of it. It seemed like a cone, and it had a long wire coming from the tip of it. The lightning spoke into the base.. “Doris? Yes? Pass me the snoopers. Yes, intern four. No, four, not forty. Four! Are you deaf! Oh, sorry, right, you are. You are reading this from a terminal and the writing software is writing the words wrong. Please don’t call HR on me. I’m sorry. I’ll buy you dinner. Ok, yes. F-o-u-r. Thank you. Yes, I need to check something. Could you check the content of the original scroll of prophecy made by Saint Gervaise?” He shut up, and a finger made of lighting started tapping rhythmically on the desk. After a while, a weird shift in the air could be perceived. “What do you mean you can’t do that? They tore it apart and put them into sanctuaries dedicated to the Numens so we can’t look inside? Are they idiots? Who tears something like that? Ok, then please check on the mortal who has the lance of undoing.” He started to tap the finger again, adding one every ten seconds. A cacophony of taps filled the room. “You can’t?” shouted the assistant manager when the answer came, “Why?”

The lightning listened, very attentively, to whatever Doris was telling him. It seemed like a long string of words. It lasted for more than ten minutes.

“They say there’s magic and a weird dimensional dissonance which causes them not to be able to look at them. Or their surroundings.” He pinched his lightning brows with lightning fingers. I believe that someone has to go down.”

“Let me guess,” Erad said, nonplussed, “that someone would be me?”

“That someone is y-fucking-ou, Erad. Pull up your sorry ass, go ask for an incarnation suit to the out of bounds division, and be quick to find them. The process takes an entire moon of mortal time. Find them before something bad happens, get the lance back, and report to me and only me.”

“The man was an old fart,” the silver daemon said, looking at the assistant manager “What could even happen in just a moon?