Leaves dance around to the rhythm of the blowing breeze. The trees, like unmoving pillars, greet it like an old friend. You can almost hear them talk to each other. The trees, proud of their summer foliage, the breeze, playfully trying to steal one or two, it’s all it can do. Clouds sparsely dot the skies, in hues of whites and grays. The air itself feels charged, you could swear a storm would be coming, but no other signs manifest.

Up there in the sky, a helicopter awaits an opportune moment to land, and thankfully no one in the ground paid much attention to it yet. Inside, four people, one of which the pilot, eagerly await this very same moment. The schedule is incredibly tight however, so the helicopter circles the area one last time, one last stall, hoping for a miraculous change of subject on the news, to land dark. Finally, it came. A last-minute report on some rumors regarding Irish politics, go figure.

As stealthy as the helicopter may be, the moment the pilot begins the landing maneuver, all eyes are on it. The people on the ground wander as close as safely possible to where the helicopter will land, as if hypnotized by the sight. Soft murmurs give way to loud, incoherent rambles, as the twenty-odd people just standing there try to come up with a reason why such a fancy “copter” with such weird symbols on its sides showed up unannounced. The three men inside the cabin take a deep breath and, before opening the door and stepping out of the helicopter, look at the clock one last time.

- Duckett’s Grove, County Carlow, Ireland; 24 of June 2020; 12:00 p.m.; 5 hours until [REDACTED] -

The first to step out of the helicopter is Jude, not that he was the closest to the door when they were all seated, but as the person with the least equipment, and perhaps the most eager to leave the craft, he made sure to reach the door before the other two. He was followed by Allain, who appeared far more composed, and lastly Jon, who kept thinking he’d definitely slip while trying to leave.

The gathered crowd stared at them blankly, having gone silent the moment the helicopter door opened. Jude seemed like he was about to address the crowd, but words failed him, and he turned sheepishly to Allain, who simply raised an eyebrow, sighed, and shouted:

– Right! I don’t know and honestly don’t care if you’ve been informed or not, but this is government business now and we’d really appreciate if you could all kindly fuck off!

– You fuck off! – shouted a brave voice from deep within the crowd.

The crowd seemingly enjoyed this banter and slowly it looked like everyone would join on this clapback. But all the bravado quickly escaped them when out of nowhere Jude pulled out a gun. He’s certainly no public speaker, but he does know how to deal with these tense situations in a very efficient manner. Allain then took the opportunity to address them again.

– All right, let’s not escalate this and get someone needlessly hurt. I’ll say it nicely this time. If you could all kindly leave the premises and go home, that would be great.

While speaking, and without Jude or Jon noticing, Allain shifted his hands ever so slightly, lacing his words with magic and suggestion, ensuring the gathered crowd obeys without a hitch. As they slowly disperse, the three men finally begin approaching the building they came to inspect. Entering through the back door, as the 1933 fire had made entry through the front undoable, they don’t waste time exploring the inner premises of the building; they know what they came for, and they want to get there fast.

A series of narrow, barely lit corridors made of cold, slightly damp stone in the basement area of the building seemingly lead to a dead end, but it is precisely this dead end these men seek. Stepping on a slightly raised, and slightly darker stone barely 2 centimeters away from the wall, Jude kickstarts the hidden mechanism that reveals a hidden door. None of them know what to expect from this point onwards, and so an eerie silence falls over them. Jude motions for the other two members of this party to enter the room, and he follows suit. Mere moments after Jude enters the room, the door shuts behind them, proving that had Jude entered first, they would’ve had to open the door more times than necessary.

A horrifying stench made its way into their noses, the silence from before had gone from eerie to outright uncomfortable, and the absolute darkness in the room helped not to lighten the mood. As if sailors compelled by the singing sirens, they began moving forwards, very slowly, perhaps hoping to bump into a light switch, perhaps hoping the lights are controlled by movement sensors, perhaps… Whatever thought process was occurring within their brains was brought to a screeching halt as Jon, who had the unfortunate luck of being in the front, bumped into something.

– Hey, why did you stop? – whispered Jude

– Oh, I’m sorry, mister “I can’t talk but I sure can pull a gun”, you try and not fall over whatever I just bumped into. – whispered Jon, clearly miffed, not at Jude directly, but at the whole situation

– Whatever it is, just try to walk over it, ok? – whispered Allain, in a soft tone, so as to not escalate the situation.

As if testing the temperature of the water at a beach, Jon carefully traced the shape of the object he bumped into with his right foot. As he learned its vague, irregular form, a new thought arose in Jon’s mind. A dreadful sense of knowing exactly what lay at his feet. But he couldn’t be certain, after all, the room was unnaturally dark, and with his shoes serving as an in-between layer, he could only understand the object’s shape to a degree. As soon as his foot landed on solid ground, Jon pressed onwards, trying not to think about this moment too much. It also relieved him knowing that Allain was just behind him. The other two explorers figuratively followed in Jon’s footsteps, carefully analyzing the floor just as Jon did. However, the experience wasn’t entirely the same for one of them. While Jude did entertain the same idea Jon had, Allain knew it was a body. He had long figured out the room was littered with corpses, from the smell alone, which were he to describe it, would be equal parts rotting flesh, stale blood and magic.

Not too long after, the three men find themselves assaulted by new stimuli. Their steps no longer echoed on stone, but on metallic platforms. A new fear, that of falling into a presumed abyss, comes into the minds of two of the three. As much as he’d like to have those fears, Allain knows no harm would come to him were that to happen.

– I really hope we can get some light any moment now. – quietly muses Jude, his words laced with frustration and a bit of fear.

– I wish we’d brought some flashlights with us. – cries out Jon, failing to keep his voice hushed.

– We brought some glow sticks, but they’re gonna be useless. – whispered Allain. – But hey, if they make you feel better, be my guest.

Allain reaches his bag, grabs three glow sticks, cracks them, and hands one to each of his companions. He was right, they don’t provide that much light, but for now, it’ll do. The walkway thankfully has a railing, so no falling off of it, for now. Unfortunately, the room they’re in still isn’t keen on ceasing hostilities, as the walkway, now visible, is missing a few parts. While not a certain plunge into below, if stumbled into without light, it would’ve been quite the scare. Jude uses the light to try and see the time in his watch, noticing it has only been 1 hour since they arrived, but it surely feels like they’ve been down here much longer. What he forgot to do was see where he was going, and sure enough, with a misstep, there he goes. All Allain and Jon hear before turning around is a sudden scream, and once they do, they’re greeted with the sight of a terrified Jude, one leg dangling into the presumed abyss, and the other awkwardly tucked against his chest.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

– For the love of God, don’t just fucking stare! Help me out of here, damn it! – Jude yells, throwing all caution in the wind in this moment of panic.

Allain just casually strolls next to him, grabs him by the collar, and lifts him up with one hand. He then hands over his glow stick to him, as Jude’s fell down, and ends the interaction by just glaring at him, and signaling him to shut up. Jude is left speechless, not only because of the scare, but also because of this sudden display of strength. Unnoticed by any of them, maybe, something was left behind. A very small pile of brown clay, smudging the metal that edges the hole where Jude was seconds ago. The party continues to press onwards, less one light, hoping to, at any moment, getting rid of all this darkness. Finally, the metal walkway ends, and once again solid stone is the floor they tread through. A large lever rests against a wall, suspiciously next to an electric box. To everyone’s surprise, for all intents and purposes, it seems to be switched on. As Jon approaches the lever, Allain stops him.

– Don’t touch it. – Allain says, with a somber tone. – There’s something very wrong with this, all of this. – he suddenly turns to Jude – How long have we been here, according to your watch?

– About an hour? An hour and two, three minutes? – Jude says, without even questioning the fact Allain isn’t whispering anymore.

– Yeah, about that. It took us like, 40 minutes to explore the fucking premises up there, and almost as much time or even more trying to figure out our way through here. We’re missing almost 20 minutes of time.

– How can you know how much time has passed? – asked Jon, extremely confused.

– Easy, look at your clock, or hell, mine. – Allain says this while moving his left wrist close to Jon’s light stick.

In fact, while Jude’s watch showed the time to be 1:03 p.m., both Allain’s and Jon’s showed the time to be 1:26 p.m., a revelation that threw a spanner in the works in the effort of trying to figure out what was going on around them. What was the reason behind this mismatch? Did Jude’s watch desync? Did the other two? Was there some form of magical time dilation going on that was somehow not affecting someone among them? Certainly, the latter makes the least sense, right? Magical time dilation is impossible, even for powerful magic users. And they’re not even that common, magic-based Anomalies manifesting in humans or human-interacting forms happen once in a blue moon, maybe once in two blue moons. That’s what Jude is thinking about, all of these propositions and questions and assumptions are running through his head. As for Jon, he’s too confused by all this to give it any thought. And Allain… well, not exactly something Allain would know, but there’s someone in there, inside him, who does. And while he’d hate to resort to Siegfried right now, he has to. But before he has time to mull over it, a blinding flash of light takes everyone’s attention.

The room is flooded with light, and the true horror of the room they were in is finally revealed to them. Countless mangled, torn apart bodies littered both the stone floors and the various metal walkways connecting these stone shelfs. The presumed abyss is just more layers of this layout, more solid stone alcoves interconnected with metal walkways. A few stairs between layers exist in this area, but not enough to connect them all. But as many of these structures there are, there are also bodies there. Blood is scattered near the bodies, but also splattered on the walls, in such patterns and placements that would suggest something thrashed and flung bodies around. The gaps in the walkways now shown clearly as the result of whatever happened here and not just poor maintenance. The sudden sensory overload made it seem like the smell had gotten worse, from either the now accompanying imagery or the intensity of the light. Jude’s light stick could be seen, lodged almost comically in a corpse’s mouth, if one could draw humor from this sight. Jon wanted to throw up, Jude was almost catatonic, and Allain felt the very familiar righteous fury he had become accustomed to.

– Let’s keep going, we may know what happened, but we still don’t know why it did. – Allain said, his words charged with a calm fury.

With no way to go down from this layer to the next from the place they were, their only option was to go through the door next to the electric box, made visible after the lights came on. As Allain put his hand on the door knob, he heard whispers, then shrieks, then one single voice, calling out to him. He knew that if he looked back, it would get him, so he gripped the handle harder and opened the door. The voice stopped immediately, the second of the trials awaiting them here passed. Beyond the door lay just a stairway going down, all the way down, to the last of the levels in the structure.

– “Shitty ass fucking architecture” – he thought to himself, before sighing.

– You… ok? – Jon managed to ask, still trying to keep his breakfast in his stomach.

– Yes, I’m ok. Just my brain thinking of a joke at the worst possible moment. How about you?

– I’m… holding on… I gw- Jon was forced to stop by his body, and, unable to reach a bag in time, he spilled all his stomach held moments prior onto the floor.

Jude, whilst silent, did keep up with them, and tried his best to nonverbally reassure Jon that everything was fine, patting him in the back slightly as Jon tried to recompose himself. The three then continued down the stairs, in contemplative silence, finally free of the uncertainty they had when they first entered the “facility”, and free of the horrible sight they witnessed moments ago. As the stairs ended, a new room revealed itself to them. One that was a bit hard to understand at first. Perhaps some sort of server room, as several cables and wiring ran through the floor connecting various devices piled in dull racks. A few computers, some intact, some broken, were also on the room, atop uninteresting desks. Overlooking all this computing mess, it’s quite a spacious room, and since it’s currently the only room in the facility that isn’t littered with bodies, it’s also the perfect place for our trio to rest a bit and try to figure something out.

Allain puts down his bag, grabs a piece of chalk, and draws a circle around him. Jude looks puzzled, while Jon just pretends like nothing is going on. He’s learned not to ask questions he might not want the answer to when it comes to Allain’s magic. After the circle is done, Allain writes some letters, that seem Greek, on the inner side of the circumference. He finishes the drawing by adding a heptagram, connecting to some of the various letters he wrote. After tossing the chalk away, Allain places the golden coin in the center of the entire drawing. He positions himself right above the coin, and using his index and middle fingers he traces the shape of a circle in the back of his hands, first the right fingers on the left hand, and then the left on the right. He takes a deep breath, his golden eyes glow a hypnotic mint green, and his voice vibrates with a commanding tone:

– Oh Argus, bless me with your all-seeing eyes, and reveal to me what mine own are blind to. Gaze upon this world, oh Panoptes. The House of Dis asks of thee!

The chalk drawing is set ablaze, the flames the same mint green as Allain’s eyes had just glowed. From the crackling flames, a few embers swirled in the air and took the shape of eyes. Slowly the chalk began to disappear, and as it did, so did the flames, but the embers remained, and soon hundreds of these ember eyes floated around the room; the coin, now a bit more worn-out, remained. Once Allain picked the coin up, the eyes began moving, scattering themselves across the room, and through the walls, into the other areas of the structure. Four of those eyes took great interest in Jude, circling him for a while, before moving on to other areas of the room. One approached Jon and fizzled out in front of his stomach area, and Jon soon felt his queasiness disappear. Allain’s eyes still glowed, and every now and then he seemed to whisper something, albeit incomprehensible.

As some of the eyes began fizzling out in some places on the room, string-like energy constructs began appearing, some thicker than others, all leading to one particular location within the room. One eye approached Allain’s forehead and fizzled out there, and soon after, a drawing of an open eye, glowing the same mint green, appeared. Allain’s eyes stopped glowing, but his control over the spell did not end, having clearly used that eye to shift the spell from active to passive control. Four eyes, perhaps the same from before, once again began circling Jude, and remained there, trying to but unable to fizzle out and affect him in some way. Jude however, doesn’t react to this whatsoever, and only begins moving after Allain and Jon move towards the connection point of what was clearly now a net of magical energy, all gathering in one point. This locus, vaguely spherical in shape, acted almost like a heart, pulsating every now and then, and with each pulse swaying the various string-like constructs connected to it.

– A cocoon, interesting… very interesting indeed. – Allain mutters.

– Wouldn’t “chrysalis” make more sense? Color and all? – Jon inquires, immediately understanding the implications of Allain’s remark.

– Perhaps, but this is no butterfly pupa. It’s worse, much worse.