The storm had begun to return in force. And it sent its first attack force out as I arrived a t my destination. Which is to say, it started raining when I reached the aquarium parking lot. The fat cold drops felt good after my panicked exertion at Barry's, followed by the half-hour walk to the aquarium. As soon as I entered the parking lot, I saw John standing right where I left him.

My feet felt heavy as I walked towards the ghost. Once again, the woman's voice echoed in my ears. "I suppose you can't expect a tortured mind to act rationally, can you?"

I stared at the back of John's head, his brown hair looking as solid and real as any I'd ever seen. If it weren't for the raindrops that fell straight through him, or the glassy look I knew was in his eyes, I could forget that he was dead.

I stopped a couple of feet away from the dead man and closed my eyes.

I hated doing this part. Like viewing memories, unveiling one's sight lets magic affect your mind and soul directly.

Humans had limits, self-imposed, and otherwise. Mages were no different, and neither were Telss. But we could mess with those limits, take away protections that were there for a damn good reason.

I didn't have a choice, though. I had to see it with my own eyes. I had to know.

I took a deep breath, tasting the smell of the storm as I filled my lungs with cold air. As I exhaled, I reached inside and started to remove a different, deeper veil than the one I kept over my aura. It was a slow process. It didn't necessarily have to be. But it wasn't something I wanted to get fast at, that would be a good way to make myself go blind if I was lucky. As I worked, I called out to John. "John. Look at me, please."

I worked for several long seconds, unsure if John had done as I asked. He didn't have to be facing me for this to work, but I thought it was polite to look someone in the eyes when you stared at their soul.

The veil came undone, and the world was washed in color. Suddenly I wasn't standing on the ground but on a mass of brown and green color. I knew that if I looked down, I would see more shades deep beneath the earth. But it would also give me a strong feeling of vertigo.

The forest wasn't made up of trees anymore, but of swaths of deep emerald peppered with other colors in the vague shape of trees. Even the air was filled with colors. The ambient magic aspected and swirled into a fury by the power of the storm. Gales of yellow mixed with red whipped past me. And over all of it, millions of droplets of blue light rained down from above. It was enough to drive someone insane if you tried to take it in all at once. But I knew how to guide my focus, how to narrow it. And the process was always easier when you had something to focus on that was as attention-grabbing as a human soul.

John had a beautiful soul. Or... He'd had a beautiful soul. I had once asked Rogers if everybody saw the world the same once they removed the veil from their site. I can still remember the booming laugh he let out. Everyone saw the world differently. Even when they saw the world at its most fundamental level, the interacting energies of magic and other matter, each person was still different. I... I saw the world in a rather abstract light, everything cast in shades of color. Sometimes though shades coalesced into something more solid, creating a picture of the soul. To my site, John's soul looked like a human skull. Half of it shown with a comforting orange light. Healthy skin and a single brown eye glowed with that light. There were other colors in the man's skin, too minute for me to make out, all of them weaving together to give an impression.

That of a kind and gentle man. One who would be there with a comforting word or teasing joke depending on what the occasion called for. A man full of intelligence matched with restraint and wisdom. Restraint that had probably gotten him killed. The impression that I got from the man's soul. He was a good man. Then my gaze slipped to the other half of that skull. It was like having your gaze track over from a beautiful road to a bloodied car crash. There was no skin on the other side of the skull, and the orange light had long since burned out. The skull's mouth was open in a silent scream. And from the empty eye socket, and the place the tongue should have been, poured an eldritch green light. My gut twisted and clenched, attempting to send up my breakfast. I forced myself to keep looking to not miss a single detail.

The eye and mouth were not the only places that light could be seen. All along the skull, like thousands of tiny scars, were slits of green light dimly shining through. This side of the skull gave a very, very different impression. One of torture and confinement. Of a soul held from moving on for so long that it had begun to fall apart. That couldn't happen to a free ghost. If it could, Noren never would've lasted so long. Someone had held the soul, this person hostage for so long that their soul had begun to move on one tiny piece at a time. I suppose it might've been God's insurance that no soul suffered too long, or maybe it was because nobody could make a perfect trap. Either way, this confirmed the woman's words. With a mental effort akin to closing a heavy trapdoor, I threw the veil back over my eyes, and suddenly the world snapped back into focus. I wasn't staring at a tortured soul, but at John's glassy eyes. The world wasn't a storm of colors, but a literal one. I looked at John, taking deep, ragged breaths as I did.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

I wanted to say more, something that didn't sound so inadequate. But the tiny, tiny smile that formed on John's lips told me he understood. I crouched down for a second, hugging my knees as I took deep breaths. Rain and wind began to plaster my coat and shirt to my back. The waterproof case left a dry square that stood out as I quickly became soaked.

It took a couple of minutes, but I calmed my mind. Well, calming may not be the right word. I didn't feel very calm. I felt furious. Furious that someone had tortured another living being past death and kept going. Furious that they had held such contempt for the dead. And furious that it had been going on in my town without me knowing. No, I wasn't calm. But I was focused. I stood up and laid a hand on John's shoulder, I had to reach up a ways to do it, but it didn't reduce the effect. "Show me another way in. If you know anything that can help me get in there, I need to come at them where they're not expecting it." John looked at me with his patented glassy expression, but it had a different meaning to me now. I knew what was behind that expression. I knew what caused it. We kept staring at each other as the storm picked up more and more. The trees shook, and the clouds churned. It was going to be worse than last night.

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I was considering shattering the glass of the front doors

and storming through. Risks be damned when John moved. He patted my hand, his motions as slow and lethargic as ever, then turned and started walking around the building. I followed. Now would've been a good time to call Ben or Rogers if he was in town. Except my earlier point still stood. Ben was worn out; he had overexerted himself yesterday and needed time to recover. If ghosts taxed themselves too much, they were at risk of losing their minds or going into a trance-like state.

Besides, even if Ben wasn't worn out, he would be of limited help in the aquarium. These people were warded from spirits, so the recon advantage would be gone. In fact, he might distract me at a time when I couldn't afford it. And there was one final reason I couldn't ask a ghost to come help me. The feeling, the pressure on my head, the itch on my skin. The green Eldridge light pouring from John's mouth. "One of them escaped." There was a soul cage here. Somewhere in that building. a prison built not for the living but for the dead. Any ghost that got too close to a soul cage would become trapped themselves. Unable to leave, unable to move on, forced to wallow, and wait. Going slowly and desperately insane as the years ticked past. I couldn't call on any ghost to help me when there was a soul cage in the area. Well, any other ghost. I glanced at John, but he wasn't going inside.

I had suspected that the aquarium was the home base for whoever was coming after me. Since it was the only place that I had gone that was out of my normal routine. Then the woman had confirmed it. And now the soul cage. I had only seen the effects of one once, through the memories of a ghost that it watched their friend go insane, unable to escape. They were exceedingly rare, thankfully, due to the nature of soul magic. But it was thanks to that nature that a soul mage capable of crafting a cage was incredibly dangerous. It was quite a few steps beyond a necromancer. I knew that there are plenty of necromancers that had a friendly relationship with ghosts, asking for their permission before animating their body. Of course, there were also the crazy evil wizard types hell-bent on world domination. Unsurprising, people on average don't handle power very well.

A soul cage was an order of magnitude beyond that because of the requirements it took to make one. To create something that could trap a soul, something so precious and powerful. I mage had to spend months imbuing power into a ward, a permanent ward. And you had to be in one of the two mental states required to use that kind of soul magic. You had to either be so desperate to see a loved one again that it affected the world around you. Or you had to be so desperate for power that you would tamper with something as precious as a soul. I had a strong feeling that this ward gang's boss was the latter of the two. John stopped, and my attention snapped back to my surroundings.

We had walked around to a back-parking lot, one that I had never actually been to before. It was mostly empty, with few moving trucks on one end and a few cargo containers on the other. John had led us straight to a faded red cargo container that was resting on the asphalt. I looked at him and then at the container. "This is a way in?" A glassy stare. I sighed.

"Okay, I'll just have to trust you." And I did trust him. Seeing someone's soul was a fast way to establish a bit of trust. I tended to rush when I got angry, a habit I couldn't afford right now. So, I deliberately force myself not to rush things. I walked a slow circle around the cargo container, examining it. If this was a hidden entrance, then there could very well be traps or some sort of guard. The container's paint was old and faded, marred with the scratches that were accumulated over the years. The asphalt around it was gray and faded. The rest of the parking lot was a deep black. It had recently been redone. Okay, so this thing hadn't moved in a while.

I walked around to its doors. They were unlocked. Strange.

I bent down and saw a padlock discarded on the ground. It was dull gray without a hint of rust on it. Odd that a well-cared for lock had just been dumped. Someone did come through here in a hurry. If my instincts were right, it had probably been Miss crazy. I pulled out my sidearm and opened the door while keeping myself out of view. No slavering monstrosities came rushing out, and I couldn't hear anything. I peeked around the door, nothing. I holstered my gun and stepped inside. John stood at the entrance, his toes a fraction of an inch crossing over. "Stay out here and keep watch buddy, I got this." His expression didn't change, but I felt like his glassy eyes were slightly dubious.

The inside of the cargo container was lined with dim fluorescent lights, illuminating the mat gray interior. And revealed the open trap door in the center of the floor. A strip of the lights went into the hole, allowing me to see down it. The hole was more like a shoot in the ground, the dull metal of the cargo container switching to grimy dark steel. There were ladder rungs welded to one wall of the shoot, and it went down at least a few stories. I checked the strap at my shoulder and made sure my pistol was loaded. I considered checking my hiking boots shoelaces and sighed. Don't procrastinate Alder, go into the hole you pansy. So, I did, cautiously. Last night had given me a reason to distrust ladders, even if they were metal. A few cautious minutes later, I had almost made it to the bottom. The shoot had been even deeper than it looked, and I had climbed at least five stories down. Now the LED strip went and took a sharp right, leading off into a tunnel. I had yet to lower any part of myself into view of the tunnel.

If I was designing a trap for someone, I would let them get in through the front door, then have the floorboards explode in their face. Well, I didn't have the money for explosives, but the reasoning was what mattered. I lowered myself slowly, keeping my body in a tight ball, my hands and feet only to ladder rungs apart. Then I let go of the latter with one hand and drew my nineteen eleven. I lowered myself a little more, just enough to get a look down the tunnel. Nothing. A little anticlimactic, but I wasn't complaining.

I lowered myself the last couple yards to the shoot floor. "Remember, Alder, the second you lower your guard is when the floorboards explode." My voice echoed back to me, distorted by the metal walls. My mocking tone came back sounding impish, and more than a little creepy. I decided that maybe it was best to be quiet while walking through the spooky tunnel. I was no stranger to fear. I had tasted most of its flavors by now. And one positive thing from having so many horrible memories was that I knew what it felt like when panic was beginning to overthrow your thinking. The tunnel had gone on for a couple hundred feet. I was guessing it was heading for the bowels of the aquarium. The light was pretty dim overall, and some patches were out altogether. Leaving inky black pools of shadow in my path. Each time I walked through one, I was certain something was going to reach out and drag me down. I knew, rationally, that this was likely a secret entrance used by the ward gang, and it was hidden well enough that it probably didn't have some crazy monster security. But that was a rational thought. And walking through darkness when you know for a fact that there's a monster that wants you dead in the immediate area inspired feelings that had nothing to do with rational thought.

I stopped, deliberately picking one of the darkened areas to wait in. Then I took deep breaths and went over the situation. It had always been my counter to this slow and creeping fear. When everything was going wild in the moment, I didn't usually have a problem. But this slow stuff, the creeping tension, the uncertainty. That got to me. But the situation was simple. I needed to get into the aquarium. This was the best way for me to do it. This was the most rational, well, least insane choice I could settle with right now.

With the knowledge in place, I turned to the other fuel-the still-burning pit of indignation and rage that John's soul had lit. I was not going to let fear stop me from shoving it to whoever had come after me, to whoever had tortured ghosts. I started walking again and didn't stop until I heard the noises. They had been quiet at first, like an echo heard from a distance. But as I cautiously made my way forward, the sounds grew louder and louder until it was a cacophony. A cacophony of clicks and clacks, like a thousand dogs sprinting on hardwood. What the hell?

It was such an odd sound that when my mind tried to come up with what horrors could be making it, it came up blank. Strange enough that even my brain can't come up with a proper monster to match it. I snorted, but my steps were hesitant as I moved forward. When the tunnel curved slightly and then opened up into a room the size of a small gymnasium, I stopped. The air smelled like the docks, rotting fish, and copper. The stench was so overwhelming that it made my eyes water. I gagged and thought, "well, at least I know what's making all that racket."