Your flight is a mad one partly due to the wandering nature of the streets, but mostly due to the seemingly inexhaustible woman next to you. In the beginning you managed a breath to ask a name and received a terse “Kael”. You haven't found the oxygen to ask anything else.

Several times you are forced into alleys and blind corners where she makes you stand facing a certain direction with the briefcase clutched to your chest. You wait for several minutes, chest heaving as she mutters and swears under her breath in Greek and when that doesn't work, a German dialect. She eyes the case occasionally and winces, but passes no comment.

The day is dawning in earnest and with it come crowds to each of the squares, shops spilling their lights and merchandise out onto the sidewalk. This slows you down considerably, but actually seems to help in the long run forcing you to stop and hide less and less. The human tide washes away your trial.

By the time you get to your destination you are completely exhausted, a bone deep thing that is not just from the run. Constant fear and guilt have a way of stripping the energy from you. That, coupled with the jetlag, has left you a broken man.

You enter the door and collapse to the ground, breath coming in short gasps. You barely register as Kael grabs your briefcase and throws it into a rusted metal safe. She doesn’t take the necklace from your neck, though, perhaps because it doesn’t glow with power.

Your breathing slows as you survey the room with tired eyes.

There is little to say about the room besides that it is old and dark and ugly. Ragged curtains hang from the ceiling obscuring windows and broken plaster. Several doorways form dark holes, leading off into the unknown. Couches and blankets litter the floor, relenting only to form small bare paths through the room. People eye you from the couches.

That snaps you awake again, body reluctantly supplying more adrenaline even though you've had your fill. You sit up.

Kael had left the room, but she returns now, tossing a few alka seltzer into a bottle of water and taking several deep drinks. “I’m going to have a hell of a hangover thanks to you,” she says, perching on the arm of a couch.

You finally get a good look at her face and are surprised to find age lines there. She is a woman in her forties, though she moves like and acrobat in the prime of her life.

You don’t say anything, just now examining the box in the corner of the room where they locked your briefcase. It’s a rough thing, rusted but covered in random shiny welds like they couldn’t afford a full sheet of metal. The only other notable thing is the high-tech number pad attached to the front, glowing orange.

Kael snaps her fingers right in front of your face and you flinch back. Exhaustion has you spacing. Dangerous in such an uncertain place.

“What the hell are you doing bringing that shit into my city?” she says, angry, but not furious, you would guess this isn’t the first time she’s had to ask this question. A harsh crackling in the next room and hissing sound comes from one of the empty doorways.

“It’s just some research documents,” you demur, still disbelieving that she knows what’s in the briefcase when you haven’t even opened it in this country.

“Lie to me again,” she says, going perfectly still. “See what happens”

Maybe you were a bit hasty when you categorized her as not furious.

“I don’t know,” you say, suddenly angry and helpless all at once. “I don’t know, nothing makes sense and I…” Your brain finally gives up and the story of the Temple of the blue rose comes spilling out. You are about to mention Dr. Caville and the Eaters, when the jarring image of Kael with glowing green eyes flashes through your head. You can’t trust her. You can’t trust anyone in this room. You snap your mouth shut.

Kael’s face goes through a series of complex emotions as you tell her about the temple. She looks less combative and more resigned when you finish, bowing her head with some measure of understanding.

When you are done, she tosses you the now cloudy bottle of water, seltzer tablets still bubbling at the bottom. You take a few cautious swigs and let the silence grow, a hollow feeling in your guts despite the ball of anxiety that is festering there.

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“Shit,” she finally says, rubbing her face with a hand, “You picked about the worst city this side of the globe.

“Can I have them back now?” you ask, then admit somewhat embarrassed, “They help me relax”

“No” she says the moment you ask the question then freezes at the last part.

Everyone in the room stops what they are doing and turns to you. One of the men working in the corner drops a wrench to the floor with a clang that echoes in the silent room.

“Say that again,” Kael commands, spine straightening.

“They feel warm,” you say slowly, palms up. “Except the knife. The knife is cold.”

“Liar,” A woman with shorter hair and a pinched face interjects in Greek as she wraps bandages over a burn on her leg. She hasn’t taken her eyes off you this entire time. Eyes like chips of jade.

Kael looks over and weighs the comment then crosses the room to the safe and taps a code into it. The door clicks then pops open. She reaches in and removes two items, carefully keeping her body covering the door.

The object in her right hand is a stylized pen, studded with a bright blue gemstone and gold etching. The other is a dull pewter mug that looks like it belonged in the trenches of World War II.

She looks at you expectantly. You return it blankly.

She frowns. “Which one has power?” she asks impatiently.

You reach for the objects and suddenly everyone in the room drops a hand out of view, some reaching for their waistbands, others inside their jackets.

Kael hands them to you without batting an eyelash.

They are both cold, as metal often is, though the mug reflects some heat from where Kael touched it. You hold them for a moment then shrug. “I don’t feel anything.”

“I told you he was lying,” the woman with short hair says.

“Maybe Opal,” Kael says, then plucks a ring off her finger and gives it to you.

It’s warm from her finger, but it is more than that. The ring radiates heat through your hands like a tiny sun, washing away your exhaustion with its fiery heat. You missed this feeling, though it is quite a bit different from the items in the case. It calls to you somehow, like you are two halves of the same whole.

Reluctantly you hand it back to Kael. “How come you can carry something like that, but my briefcase is too obvious?”

“I know how to hide it,” she says, caught somewhere between a smile and a frown. “Can you tell the magic where to go?”

You take the ring back and once again the warmth brushes your skin, like sinking into a scalding bath. You tug on the feeling, experimentally, but nothing happens. You try to push it out of the ring and into your palms but it is like trying to push an anvil while standing in oil.

Around the room, everyone’s shoulders drop and they go back to what they were doing. The short haired woman, Opal apparently, lets out a snort of contempt and goes back to bandaging her leg. Kael frowns but declines to comment.

“Who are you people?” you ask, emboldened by the power you feel in the ring.

Kael plucks it out of your hand and returns it to her finger. “We are Oracles.”

“This is Athens, not Delphi.”

“Not literal oracles, you idiot,” Opal says, still in greek. Maybe she thinks that your degrees are for show and you can’t understand her.

“Opal,” Kael says to her warningly then turns back to you. “Being an Oracle means that you can see magic, an ability that helped our ancestors find ley lines and nodes to restock. They would lead Artificers there where they could absorb small parts and use objects handed down by their fathers. You are an Artificer, albeit a not very sensitive one, still rare”

“There were others once,” she continues, “rarer still. Enchanters, who could change the power into something else.”

“We would have killed you on sight if you were,” Opal says softly to the ceiling, “Enchanters are the reason we are in this mess. Gods damn Apollo”

This is the second time you’ve heard that name and the way she says it makes you shiver.

Kael glares at her, but she is saved a rebuke as the curtain over one of the doors sweeps open and a man brings out a rusty metal box covered in new welds. She grabs the box and opens it to reveal an interior that was every bit as ugly as the exterior then crosses to the safe and empties your briefcase into this new one without ceremony.

The desire to push her aside and clutch it to your chest grips you suddenly.

You must have twitched because she shoots you a look out of the corner of her eye before snapping the metal case closed and locking a padlock on it.

To your surprise, she hands it to you along with the key.

You grab it and look at her quizzically.

“That metal is a lead alloy that will block the aura the magic gives off,” she explains. “It’s a gift from us on one condition.”

“Yeah,” you say, warily.

Her face goes cold, colder even than the ice of death when your soul was nearly sucked from your body. You take an involuntary step back.

“Get the hell out of my city.”