Letter? What letter?

“Look, I haven’t been home in a week—“ I cut myself off as I remembered the two assholes from the Concord. “Is this about the letter from the Raven assholes?”

The man’s eyes crinkled in the corners as he suppressed a smile. “They do jobs for us as a favor for certain services we render, but aren’t otherwise affiliated with Elysium.”

Elysium! That’s right. I glanced around one more time before looking at the large man in the nice suit. “This doesn’t look like the halls of the exalted dead.”

I got the impression the man wanted to groan. “The name is a bit of a… self-deprecating joke. One that caught on despite my attempts otherwise,” he opened a drawer and pulled out a thick piece of parchment. Maybe vellum? “If we ever meet again and I’m not wiping you from existence, maybe I’ll tell you about it.”

My anxiety ratcheted, and I took a step back as I centered my balance. If this asshole makes any moves I’m lighting him on fire and then throwing him into a distant wall.

“No need to feel threatened so long as you follow three simple rules,” the man said as he produced a feather quill and ink jar and began writing on the parchment. “That’s the purpose of this meeting, by the way. To show that our reach is long, and to hammer in how important the rules are.”

“And these rules are..?” I asked, not relaxing in the slightest.

“One: Don’t impede, empower, dissolve, install, or otherwise influence any form of current or past government or religion. The one exception is voting if your government or religion has a democratic process.

“Two: Do not put yourself in a position where you command a nation or a religion. You may take part in national or religious leadership positions, so long as they are minor positions. A warning will be issued if you climb too high in an organization. If this warning is not heeded you will be executed.

“Three: You are not allowed to house greater interdimensional beings within your mind, body, soul, or in a phylactery, amulet, charm, talisman, or any other magical equipment, paraphernalia, or ephemera. Any questions?”

I hoped I looked as calm as I was trying to look because my balls jumped up behind my sternum on the last rule. I briefly ran my attention over my guest and sensed something from it that I had never felt before; apprehension.

I wrangled my thoughts away and back onto the subject at hand. Questions? I had plenty. Like how the fuck do people keep FINDING ME?! This asshole not only knew how to find me, but also somehow teleported me! Unless this was a mental construct. No, I ruled that out. My mental defenses were still up and I felt no pressure in the slightest on them. So, I was teleported. Teleporting can be done, but it’s usually such a pain in the ass to travel more than a hundred feet that no one bothered with it unless it was an emergency. The fact that they had just up and snatched me was a very impressive display of power and resources… which was probably the point.

“I assume breaking these rules results in a time-out?” I asked.

“If by ‘time out’ you mean ‘immediate execution,’ then yes,” he replied with a sardonic air.

I sighed and scratched my head, my hair still damp from the shower. The longer it gets the harder it is to dry. Focus, Colm.

“...I’m curious,” I began after a moment, hesitant. “Why those rules? Are you trying to keep magic under wraps? Maintaining the ‘Masquerade?’”

“I meant more pointed questions about what adhering or violating the rules entails—“There was a beep from his suit. He frowned and pulled… a phone? It was phone shaped, but it was made out of a very thin rectangle of geometric black glass. Obsidian? He glanced at it and replaced it in his suit coat. “My nine o’clock just canceled, so I’ve got some more time. To answer your question: We don’t give a shit about whether the general public knows about magic or not. The only thing Elysium cares about is maintaining a certain amount of magical stability in this territory, and these rules have been found to be efficacious when enforced.”

“What about other countries? Or continents? How big is the territory you’re talking about?” I asked. My anxiety had faded into the background, allowing my curiosity to take the reins.

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He gave me a condescending smile. “My territory’s a touch bigger than a continent.”

“The world?”

His smile remained the same.

Okay. That implied a great deal. I stored that line of thinking down for later. “So, what, do you just grab every asshole who learns magic and threaten them with death if they try to become the God-King?”

“Not every asshole, no,” he said. “Just those who seem to have an impact on the future.”

“What?” I blurted, my mind racing.

“Oh, calm down,” he said. “We can’t see the future. At least, not reliably. No one can. Otherwise, everything would be quite boring. A few spells and you know how everything is going to go. No, the future is in constant flux, always changing based on that smidge of ineffable free will we all possess. But if one devotes their time to it, watching the future can reveal… trends. The people who get to come to this room are people who come up more than a few times at pivotal moments of magical upheaval.”

“So where were you assholes when I was fighting the Doorman last year?” I asked, surprising myself with how harsh I sounded.

“Just because we have eyes doesn’t mean we can see everything, Mr. Avery,” he said just as sharply. However, when he spoke, his presence swelled until I felt a weight press on me, making me want to take a step back from him. Suddenly the large man felt much larger, much more dangerous.

He sighed, and the weight disappeared as if it hadn’t been. “That… incident, was one of the reasons I wanted to meet you personally. If you hadn’t intervened, we would have likely needed to step in once we became aware of the situation. The Doorman isn’t a great threat, as IDBs go, but it can wreak havoc on a population if left to its own devices.”

The acronym confused me for a second before I realized it was likely a shortening of "interdimensional being." “So you can pin a medal on me and give me a pat on the back?” I asked sarcastically.

“If I had the sense that you had done it out of the goodness of your own heart, and weren’t just blindly struggling to save your own skin… perhaps,” he replied, clasping his hand in front of him. “No, I wanted to make sure nothing had jumped the Veil and was hitching a ride in you.”

I tried very hard not to think of my guest. “That can happen?” I asked woodenly.

“When holes are punched in the dimensional membrane, such things have been known to happen,” he said. “It’s not common, but one can only watch a civilization cannibalize itself once before you learn to look for the signs.”

“Since I’m still alive, I assume I passed muster,” I said, trying to sound a lot more confident than I thought.

“You did,” he replied. “And, for what it’s worth, I do thank you for stopping that thing.” He said. “Whether you did it for personal reasons or not. My only regret is you didn’t find a way to kill it.”

My blood ran cold. Trix didn’t kill it?!

“It’s still alive?!”

He raised his eyebrows. “I thought you knew.”

“I—the last I saw of it, it was being dragged through a portal by a giant monster hand! I assumed the next thing to happen was ‘smash smash!’” My voice had raised an octave and was a whole lot louder.

“Sadly not,” the man said. The more rational part of my mind berated me for not asking his name yet. “I don’t know what happened on the other side of that portal, but I have had recent reports of its movements.”

“Not in our reality,” he was quick to add when he saw my horror.

I placed a hand on my heart. It was beating so hard I could hear it in my head. “Jesus,” I muttered. "Just about gave me a heart attack."

I felt a nearly forgotten fear rise up and put its hands on my shoulders. Like an old friend giving me a surprise visit. I had thought I was done with that fucking prick. I—shit. I—I don’t know what to do.

I pulled a cigarette pack from my pocket and palmed one out. The man at the desk frowned as I lit it with a thought and took a deep drag.

Okay, first thing.

“What do I call you?” I asked.

“Jager,” he replied.

“Okay, Jager,” I said. “So, you scared the bejeezus out of me and gave me some incredibly worrying news. Anything else I gotta do to get out of here?”

Jager took the parchment he had set aside earlier and pushed it towards me, holding out the feather quill with his other hand. “Need your signature that you understand the rules as given, and no tricks or subterfuge was used to mislead you.”

“I mean, if I was misled, would I know?” I asked. “I never heard of you until a few days ago.”

He shrugged. “Just a formality I have to observe to keep the machine running.”

I sighed and approached the desk for the first time since I was brought here. As I got closer I suddenly realized that the floor of this room was slightly curved, like a shallow, inverted bowl. I soon realized that the big man behind the desk was actually a huge man behind a large desk. The top of the desk came up to just above my navel. Jager, seated, was of similar height to me.

I turned to look behind me and… okay, the room wasn’t slightly curved. There was something with the jagged designs in the floor and walls that messed with my perception. When I turned back, Jager hadn’t moved and was watching me expectantly. I resisted the urge to sigh again and took my time reading over what was on the parchment, which wasn’t much. I ran my magical senses over it and the quill and found no trace that I could detect. It was basically a promissory note.

I took the quill, dipped it in the ink, and signed my sloppy signature.

“That’s it?” I asked, handing back the quill.

“That’s it,” he said, tucking the quill, ink, and parchment away in his desk. “Follow the rules and we’ll luckily never see each other again.”

“Super, I guess,” I said without enthusiasm.

The world flashed and I was back in the parking lot.

I was then tackled.

“Boof!”