The night air of Portland was heavy. Then again; having a sack over one’s head would do that. The memory of getting grabbed in broad daylight was still fresh in his head, but since he was still alive and conscious, they didn’t kidnap him for his organs. Once the minivan stopped, a strong hand pulled on Devlin’s body.

As the sack was removed from his head, a group of two dozen people with faces of all ages and ethnicities could be seen standing in a line on both of his sides. Their confused or frightened expression spoke for itself as they stood in front of what seemed to be an old factory. The faint light of an old and flickering street light cast some brightness to the dark black and white night around them.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” a firm voice called to them. “I’m sure that most of you have no idea as to why you were gathered together here.’

The owner of the voice was a well-dressed man who seemed to be in his forties. He was surrounded by bodyguards and a military dress wearing young woman stood next to him, coldly staring at the small crowd.

“As unpleasant your journey was, we gathered you here to offer you a once-in-a-lifetime chan...”

“Bulshit,” a young man spoke up from the line. “You dragged us here because of the five realms.”

“Oh,” the elegant man said. “You seem to be a well-informed young man.”

“It’s not that hard to figure it out if you know where to look on the internet. A tenth of the world’s populace had already left Earth, thanks to those gatekeepers. It’s also easy to guess why you brought us here.”

“Is that so?” Their host seemed genuinely curious about the youth's thoughts now.

“From the way you snatched us from the crowded streets, it’s obvious that you’re either influential or desperate. Three days have passed since the last gatekeeper appeared, but the ambient Aether is still rising.”

His words earned a hushed murmur from the others in the line of people under the silvery grey street light.

“It’s only a matter of time before things start to change and you want more worker ants to gather resources for you once the tug of war begins. Your once-in-a-lifetime chance is also most likely an obvious shake-down you want to strong-arm us into. So go ahead and fuck yourse...” The young man’s voice turned into a gurgling sound as he reached up to his bleeding throat.

“No one gets to disrespect the general.” A cold voice resounded as the army dress wearing woman cleaned her bloody sabre with the corpse's clothes.

The crowd jumped back in fright seeing all this unfold, but Devlin only had a single thought on his mind. He was glad that he learned to keep his mouth shut and blend into the crowd during his years in college. Gatekeepers? Being a worker ant? He understood those seemingly random and strange words. The young man could feel the magic in the air and not in the poetical way. Every one of the people gathered there had some Aether in them, no matter how miniscule. But before he could delve deeper into his thoughts, the well-dressed man spoke up again.

“An unfortunate turn of events, but he sought it for himself. Still; he was right in some areas. We do indeed plan on recruiting you. But first, allow me to introduce myself and explain what’s going on. My name is Simon Ross and thanks to dear Amelia over here, you’ve already found out about my former military rank. As for the reason of your gathering here this night; that requires a thorough explanation.”

The frightened group kept looking at the man, then at the still-bleeding corpse and back at the man again.

“Most of you probably already know that you have Aether coursing through your veins. Some of you are hedge witches or something along those lines, as for the rest of you, magic does indeed exist. It has been, however, thinned out in the past millennia to the point of being almost unusable.

“At least up until a couple of days ago.” The woman called Amelia added.

“I’m sure that all of you have seen the strange recordings or have witnessed yourselves as some of the people’s shadows came to life at the evening, trying to kill them. Those lucky enough to defeat their shadow had gained a gateway coin and with it, the chance to go to another world.”

“It didn’t work,” one of the younger women remarked, seemingly annoyed by her situation. “The coin didn’t do shit for me.”

“Yes,” the general nodded in agreement. “Some of us are unlucky enough to be chained to Earth in the arcane sense, forcing us to stay while others could flee.”

After a long and wishful sigh, the man continued with his monologue.

“To those of you who didn’t manage to find out about the meaning behind the mass migration that occurred due to these... living shadows, let us give you a key piece of information. Think of it as a sort of incentive to make the right choice.”

Here, Simon looked at Amelia, giving her a firm nod.

“While most people were given a chance to migrate into one of the other worlds when the migration period ended and new gatekeepers appeared in the past few days, the cracks between the realms are still open our world keeps getting saturated with raw Aether once more.”

Her words were met with silence, the air filled with a heavy scent of blood and dread as the kidnapped people kept staring at her as if she were a monster in human skin.

“This event of Aether saturation will re-awaken the dormant entities that live here while simultaneously, affecting both the physical and the metaphysical realms,” she continued on. “Our group, amongst others, had been formed by influential people who have been preparing for this outcome. We have the knowledge and resources to ensure your survival and prosperity even after the world begins to change. We will control the media and make sure that the population will slowly come to accept the changes that happen to Earth.”

“As for you,” the general let out a sigh. “You are all without any support. There is no shake-down as this poor young man claimed. The Larson committee offers all of you a safe place and access to its information network in exchange for your cooperation.”

The people looked at each other confused, but the man left them little time to think on the matter.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“In short; this is a job interview. As you might have realized by now, we are in the old industrial area. Your interview has a simple condition for success. There are twenty-two of you and ten valuable items for the taking in the shutdown factory behind me. Go in and find them.”

“What kind of items should we look for?” A man with short stature asked meekly.

“The items themselves look completely ordinary, so you’ll have to find them based on their aura. We want to recruit people that have a keen sense for the arcane. One last thing I must mention is that you only have one chance.”

“What the general means by this is that if the object you bring out is ordinary, then you have failed the interview.” Amelia explained curtly.

“If you fail tonight,” the man continued. “You will be taken home at sunrise and you will be on your own. Believe me when I say that you do not want to be alone once the chaos of the re-awakening begins. You have one hour, starting now. Go!”

The people stood there frozen for a few seconds before the first one snapped out of it, heading inside the dark factory after accepting a flashlight from one of the guards. The rest of the ‘applicants’ followed his example, each heading in a different direction. Devlin was the fifth to leave, his hand gripping the flashlight with surprising strength as he walked through the side door of the building.

His years studying journalism in college coupled with the private investigator course he took on the side helped him keep a cool head despite his situation. The torch in his hand cast a weak grey light upon the factory’s equipment, most of them decades old and heavily in disrepair. ‘This place must have been shut down years ago.’ He thought to himself while brushing one of his fingers along the surface of a piece of heavy machinery.

The thick dust felt dry and smooth against his fingertip, a layer of crumbling paint hiding beneath it. The faint scent of dust, mould and a tinge of Aether shifted his attention toward a nearby set of stairs, an evident sign of a mystical object being nearby. ‘Could you shut up for a minute? I’m trying to think.’ Devlin grumbled inside while walking up the metal stairs. He knew it was pointless to have such thoughts since that was not how things worked.

‘It’s easy for you to say.’ He continued grumbling on. ‘You’re not one with a bloody demon trapped inside their head who’s narrating everything like it was a damn Noir movie.’ His anger was understandable, even if misguided since he knew full well that his Eldritch companion was just as troubled by their unfortunate situation as he was. 'And that you keep on talking like nothing is wrong about this.'

The young man sighed, finally reaching the top of the stairs where he found a wooden door that led to a small office. Meanwhile, the sound of distant conversations and faint lights showed the position of his competitors as they searched through the main floor of the factory. The door in front of him was unlocked, opening up with a slight creaking noise. He flipped on the light switch casting the room in a bleak gray light. As the shadows retreated, he found himself in what seemed to be an office.

Three small work desks, a couple of shelves and other miscellaneous items filled the room, the scent of dust unable to hide the tinge of Aether that crawled its way into Devlin’s senses like an annoying tick. He followed his instinct which led him toward one of the shelves where several bottles of ink were packed inside a paper box. The young man carefully examined them one by one, the third vial in the second row making his skin tingle. ‘This is the one.’ He stated in his mind as he held the thick glass ink bottle.

The small square bottle was made of clear glass but the ink was so dark it made it hard to see it as anything but black. ‘And whose fault is that?’ Devlin brought up the age-old argument in vain. ‘Oh, fuck you! Last time I checked it wasn’t my fault that I’m colour-blind you prick!’ He vented his frustration at his companion for the hundredth time this week, knowing well that it was a pointless argument since none of them could change things.

Except, now they could. The ink bottle in his hand held the answer to this problem. ‘I’m not drinking it, you ink junkie.’ The young man stated. ‘The last time you made me drink ink, I was sick for two days.’ He brought up the event from half a month ago when he got his hands on a vial of Atherite ink which he decided to consume after his companion’s explanation that their shared bond would help him absorb the power hidden within the ink. ‘All you helped me absorb was the stain. Otherwise, I would have looked ridiculous with a jet-black set of gums and teeth in my mouth.’ Devlin remembered with a shudder.

As he stared at the bottle, he could feel an unnatural force drawing him to the strange, Aether-infused ink. His companion also stared at the vial thanks to their shared senses, trying to convince him that this time it would be different. That this time, he wouldn’t get sick but would gain something very precious from consuming it. ‘All right.’ The young man relented with a growing headache. ‘But this better be worth it.’ Making up his mind, Devlin opened the ink bottle and drank its contents in a single large gulp. The acrid taste of the thick ink made him gag and shudder as he felt it flow down his throat.

A moment later it spread through his body in the form of a searing heat that rushed up toward his eyes. Tears began to fall due to the pain which he forced himself to push through, a strange sensation and thought forming in his mind. ‘Red.’ Was the word he managed to connect to the thing that made him lose his voice. After months of being trapped in a world of different shades of black, grey and white, the sight of a cherry red pen made him shed tears of joy.

Looking around, he began to notice different hues of red tint some of the items he had previously only seen in dark gray. 'You knew it would give me back the ability to see a colour?' The relieved young man asked from his eldritch companion, with a sense of hope blooming inside him. That hope was soon replaced by worry as he looked at the empty ink bottle.

'This was the only thing that had Aether in it. Shit. The others must have already found whatever those committee guys hid in the factory.' He thought, but the truth of the matter was that the ink vial in his hand was just as valuable as the ink that resided in it. He only had to ask the people outside to form any act of magic while being close to the opened mouth of the bottle.

'You're saying that this thing has powers of its own? I don't sense any Aether in it. Corrupted or otherwise.' Devlin argued, but he then decided to just go with it as it was better to have at least some chance at success than having none. As he left the building, he found several of the ‘applicants’ already outside with a wide smile on their faces. They must have succeeded. He remarked. Walking closer, the scrutinizing gaze of the general and his... shapely assistant felt heavy on Devlin's shoulder.

"Another failure." Amelia said as he looked at the young man.

"Nope." He replied, holding out the open-mouthed ink bottle.

“Do not argue with me,” she said with a cold tone. “That bottle of ink was one of the duds we left around by our co-workers. The Aetherite ink in it was meant to be bait to see if you could only sense the presence of Aether in the objects around you but unable to judge their purpose or value.”

“How about a little test then,” Devlin said, trying to capitalise on his companion’s advice. “Why don’t you do a bit of magic in front of the bottle?”

“I...”

“Amelia,” the general called out to the woman while not taking his eyes off Devlin and the small square bottle for a moment. “Humour him.”

“As you command, general.” She nodded, holding her hand out, a flicker of grey flame appearing on top of her index finger for a moment before being sucked away by the bottle.

A tiny droplet of ink formed at the bottom of the vial, making the woman gawk at it with a flustered surprise while the man slowly clapped.

“A Paracelsus bottle,” the man said with a sigh. “It seems we’ll have to make our storage personnel go through some training again. To think they would dismiss such a valuable item as a mere ink bottle.”

While the general was musing about the true value of the vial, Devlin was already sure that he had succeeded in the so-called job interview. Now he just had to get out of whatever obviously unfair contracts they would try to force him. It seemed impossible, given the armed guards and the woman with the sword, but in truth, he only needed an empty sheet of paper and a needle. A single drop of his blood would be more than enough to solve the issue.