He made his way back into the main room where the unlucky initiate still lay half shattered on the eye-shaped carpet. He approached the spell on the door, tracing his personal sigil across the wood and energy grid imbedded within. The spell glowed, fizzled, then faded from view. The hallway beyond still had the fragrance of drywall and cheap flowery perfumes thick in the air. This complex was nice for the area but still, there is a limit to quality on the south side of the city. The three flights of steps lead him down to the entry where the polite young woman was still lazily scrolling through her phone.
She must have just seen Kathlan reach the bottom step out of the corner of her eye, she slightly adjusted her shoulder up and forward, revealing her now undone top button of her uniform. She smiled her green eyes at him and watched him walk across the lobby. He gently nodded his head toward her and continued. He wished that his taste in woman were as open and kind as her while he considered her rosy blush transposed on the stern cheeks of Lorai Highpower. He supposed it wasn’t polite to imagine a holy woman in such a compromising position.
He smiled at the thought of her prying into his mind and seeing that stashed away. Kathlan forgot himself though as the giggle of the young woman called him back from his thoughts, as she caught him staring into her eyes from her chest.
“I could just send you one if you asked nicely.” she said coyly, now leaning further over the desk in the misunderstanding.
“Well, I do have your number now, I’ll let you know.” He replied dryly but politely. He was beginning to understand that polite and innocent weren’t mutually exclusive.
What was mutually exclusive was the idea of a quiet day in New York. Kathlan was immediately blasted with the waves of horns, radios, and engines of the city. That at least that was bearable compared to the month in the resonant cambers among the Tibetan Monks he was forced to spend in preparing to face a Yuki-Onba. It had taken five days of recovery to regain his sight. The offensive clatter of the people that crowded the streets of the city ground at his mind like no other psionic probe ever could. He considered for a moment if that was what made him so resistant to such techniques; the ever-present intrusion of the buzzing cicadian city.
Kathlan quickly found an alley off to the side of the apartment and located a door at the end of the building on the right. He produced his pouch from within his coat and selected the bright green chalk labeled “office”. The structure of this spell was fairly simple as far as Arcanum goes. The door acts as the container for the energy, the interior then becomes the canvas for the rune craft. Enter the appropriate coordinates, draw the sister sigil, and power the seal. The application of such spells was a much more dangerous endeavor.
He finished the rune with a flourish as the spell glowed and the handle shifted colors from a rain worn grey to a brass color. He wiped his boots against the mat, which he cleverly had written into the clausal runes, and stepped through the threshold into the lobby of his office. As always, Dali’s “Decomposition of Time” greeted him in the vibrant splash and drip against the large portrait frame. The hanger beside the main entrance to the office had two items hung on it.
The first item was a long black wool scarf with green and purple embroidery in a twisted knot pattern. The scarf belonged to Geneva, who no doubt was sitting behind her desk hidden past the door on his left. The second item told him everything else he needed to know about who and what was about to annoy him next. A well-kept grey trilby, with a gold and red band around it. The front part of the ribbon was adorned with a silver owl whose sapphire eyes shone with magic.
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“I’d say it’s a pleasure, but it’s cliché, overused, and frankly insincere.” Kathlan stated as he took a step in and closed the door. Geneva sat behind her desk as he had suspected, noticing that she was still wearing the red overcoat she presumably had walked in with. The low cut of the coat revealed the more modestly cut green dress she wore past the black leather trim. Her annoyed and passionless expression glaring at him from her brown leather seat.
To her left was the hulking form of Quintus Metrose. Kathlan still hadn’t figured out what specifically he was outside of terrifying and hideous. Luckily, the creature seemed to take his previous advice and now sported a porcelain mask painted blue-green and with two large horns protruding from the forehead. Metrose stood with his large misshapen arms at his side; his mere presence threat enough. The one who currently employed the homunculus brute was the Lieutenant commander of the New York chapter of the Warlocks Association. Legally speaking he was a no one, however, due to his ability to ease the severity of rogue magic outbreaks amongst the warlocks he held a massive sway amongst the factions of the occult.
“Save the snarky remarks, Revenant. I’m here on business and contrary to what it may seem, the security over there is for my personal safety. I, unlike many others in this city, know how poorly such tactics are taken by your…” he paused to inspect the foyer. “Agency?” he asked politely.
“I never really call it anything.” Kathlan replied honestly.
“Well, that seems a bit depressing. I’m sorry to have caused offense.” He replied, the continued annoyance of his politeness grinded against Kathlan’s ears. He figured his annoyance must have been easy to read on his face and scratched at his short beard to regain his composure.
"Again, I’m not sure any was taken. Is there a specific reason you happened to stop by?” Kathlan asked pointedly, suddenly finding himself tired of the small talk.
The man sighed and sat against ledge of the window that looked into Kathlan’s study. He rubbed at his clean shaven face and ran his fingers through the graying black hair on his head, slicked back until the gray turned to white. Two short bumps protruded from the crown of his head, no more than two inches tall.
“It is with great regret that I inform you, my lord and patron has been murdered, and his soul unable to be located.” The lieutenant finally said with a sigh, and what Kathlan almost thought could have been grief. “The entirety of the association, the hunter’s guild, and the divine sanctum of thought are currently searching for any clue as to what actually happened.”
“You really expect me to believe Mephistopheles, prince of terror and king of the crossroads, was murdered?” Kathlan questioned, deciding to cross the room and remove his coat and place it next to Geneva’s scarf. He sensed that he was at a limited risk of inconvenient death with the way the man was talking. However, the extra work on his plate would certainly leave him with a much similar headache. “As far as I was aware, the whole cosmos would shake if such a thing DID happen.” He turned to address the man.
“And further, you want me to believe that you are without any means to protect yourself because of it?” pointing at the brute in the corner, who was inspecting the stitching on his fingers mindlessly. “The mighty William Hudsley, reduced to a mortal hiring homunculi for bodyguards.”
“Kath…” Geneva called dryly from her desk. “Don’t be an ass. Yes,” she turned her head to lieutenant Hudsley. “He fucked us pretty bad on the Deckwood case...” she paused and lifted a second finger, “and the ogre mafia job, the payment on the Geist bounty, the referral for my medal, and broke our door.” Raising fingers as she listed incidents. “However, Ruby called me out of the blue on the way in. Said she had something come in that might need your, personal, touch.” she paused and looked at Kathlan, her bored eyes asking him to trust her. “All she told me was that a Sequoia fell in New York, and it didn’t make a sound.”