The sun shines through an endless sea above. Light cascades, swathing everything in vibrant colors. Tall, shifting trees line the avenue, casting deep shadows along the sidewalk. Iron fences, pikes toward heaven, and earth-colored bricks the armor of garish houses. The greenest grass undulates in a stiff wind.
"If that watch don't continue to swing," Bryan sings energetically, his whole body convulsing to the beat of the song playing intimately in his ears, "or the, fat lady fancies having a sing…" his hair can't keep up with how much bopping he's doing. He's not even watching where he's going most of the time, and his hands pat more intricate patterns on his thighs.
Luca beams the whole time. The cloak didn't come with pockets so Luca shoved Bryan's phone into his own. Bryan, as is always the case, is more stoic, more controlled than Luca. He isn't obnoxiously loud or wild and over-the-top with his dance moves, but he's just as free, and expresses himself as openly as he can while listening to his favorite songs.
They come to a mansion further down a side road. Something about the architecture makes it look like it's perpetually screaming. Mouth agape, eyes blown wide. Pine studded land encaged in a steel-piked fenced is reminiscent of a beast imprisoned. Bryan winces and pulls the earbuds out, stuffing them into Luca's jacket as they approach the gate.
Luca presses the buzzer.
Moments of nothing pass. They trade glances and shift in the silence.
Luca, once more, but more firmly this time, presses the buzzer.
Still nothing.
"Guess we're doing this old school." With a sturdy lift, Luca vaults over the gate and lands smugly on the other side. Looking down, Bryan gestures for him to take a couple of steps back, then motions for him to stop. His eyes flick back up to Luca. Into Luca's shadow, he steps. Darkness curls around his form and licks at his heels. At once, he's there, and not, like he's submerged just below the surface of reality, and Luca just happens to be looking at the right angle. He sees the ripples, wispy like smoke, as Bryan walks right through the gate. Bryan steps out of Luca's shadow; the darkness slithers underneath his cloak. If one listens closely, faint promises could be heard withering into the aether.
The trek wore on until they finally reach the front door. The silence becomes palpable and the world stagnates. They don't bother knocking. Bryan places a hand on the carved, smooth surface and Luca whips out his stele and burns two small runes, lightly over his bones. He barely presses into Bryan's skin, but the conjoined insignias scathe remorselessly nonetheless.
Bryan remains unaffected.
Luca places his hand over Bryan's, fingers between fingers.
"Nous ouvrons," Luca commands, and upon it, the runes burn even more vigilantly with holy fire. The energy transmutes into the doors, which glow faintly in obedience.
The doors open.
Bryan gently closes them after.
Not a single speck of dust gathered on any stretch of surface. Abstract vases polished to a pristine shine sat upon spotless, freshly vacuumed carpet. Memorabilia of events unexperienced, places untraveled, hung in old rigid frames on smooth, painted walls. Placed with meticulous care, an assortment of knick-knacks lined shelves and counters and decorated table tops. Vast shafts of light pour into every corner of every room.
The stair case leading to the second floor welcomes its visitors into a cold, abyssal unknown.
Luca struts in place aimlessly, gesturing likes he's struggling to remember something.
"By the order of the Clave, blah blah blah… Come out. We need to talk," he picks up a figurine, clearly more interested in it than the task at hand. He haphazardly returns it to its spot.
Nothing.
Bryan's eyes are closed and his head is tilted in concentration. His brows furrow.
"Someone's playing a harpsicord."
The question is off his tongue before he realizes what's going on.
"What?"
One by one, objects started floating. Weightless. Poised. They twist and rotate and hover, undulating in waves. Then, one by one, all the knick-knacks freeze. Every painted eye and likelihood trains on them.
Luca can hear the melody now.
"Don't let her escape," Bryan grumbles, throwing on his hood, but Luca is already on it, ignoring the hail of objects swarming toward them.
Into his own skin, Luca carves a different set of runes – two primary ones slightly augmented with smaller runes, all fused together. His eyes screw shut and he suppresses a scream. Kneeling, he slaps the ground and yells, "Ce manoir, une prison." The angelic flame roars across the entire floor space and scales the entire expanse of the wall. When the whole place is engulfed in heavenly fire, Luca stands up and scribbles the rune off his palms, wincing through the pain.
Luca yelps as a magic eightball whizzes by, ticked off course by Bryan's parry.
The swarm moves with sense and purpose, every projectile calculated. But the duo work efficiently in dodging and deflecting the onslaught, protecting each other. Staunch, quick, and tight, yet light on his feet, Luca slaps away objects of mass, while Bryan weaves and curves, cloak flowing as the swarm phases right through.
Then come the knives.
The harpsicord wails.
Flying blades and shards of shattered figurines follow them up the stairs and through corridors, becoming more frenzied the further they went.
"So sick of this," Luca says, breathless, then dives away from an easel. A wall hurdles toward them, but Bryan just spins and flourishes his cloak over them both, and the wall just fades right through.
"Wait…!" Luca coughs. The darkness invades his lungs and chokes his breath. It coils around his skin like a winter wind and the whispers comingle with the haunting tune vibrating through every wall.
Bryan doesn't interrupt. The sooner he's done, the sooner he can return Luca to the real world.
"Gau –" he wheezes, but Bryan is quick to understand.
Luca scribes a simple rune this time, into his weapons.
By the time they find the witch, the floor was littered with cotton balls.
They burst open the bedroom doors and huge surge of crackling magic greets them. It feels like being consumed by a fireball and struck by lightning simultaneously, and it blows them impossibly far, into empty space where the third-floor stairs should be. They should be screaming, the sense akin to the moment just before the rollercoaster takes its deepest dive, but Bryan is unafraid, and Luca can't find breath to scream. Bryan wraps him up tight, cleaving him in his embrace. And they fall – impossibly far, crashing into pointed wooden beams, splintering under their force, and skid the rest of the way down.
Their eyes ease open.
"You okay?" He grunts through the throbbing bruises all over. With a pained expression, Luca slowly nods.
"Yeah."
Luca pries himself from Bryan, stands up. When he tries to do the same, his head swims and he stumbles as stars cloud his vision.
"Hey, no. Sit. Catch up when you're good?" It's not a question, so much a firm suggestion.
Bryan just nods and shuts his eyes, a hand over his face as he lays back down.
Luca's already taking the stairs two by two and when he reaches the landing, this time he's ready. The bolt arcs toward him, crackling with electricity and dancing blue lights casting even bluer shadows. He tucks his head in a defensive boxing stance and plants his feet firmly, boots digging into the singed-black carpet. It passes over him like a warm cloud, but smashes into the far wall like a flaming wrecking ball.
"Honestly…"
Through the threshold, he crosses. A beautiful old woman stand there in the middle of what was once an exquisite display of decorum. Her face is wrinkled with age and savagery. Blood-red waterfalls cascade down her slumped shoulders, thin and wispy. Her eyes glint with something primal. Her hands nurse magic to life, indoctrinating it with enmity and loathing for all existence.
"Wa – "
She sends that energy careening toward Luca.
Again, it passes over harmlessly.
"Your house doesn't deserve this kind of abuse," he says wryly, eyebrows arched and thumb pointing.
"Get out of my home!" she screams desperately and attempts to crush him with the force of her will.
"Look, Lady," he gasps, falling to his knees and clawing at his throat. They hear him a split second before they see him, and Luca has to quickly bar Bryan, with an outstretched arm, from assassinating the woman. Luca feels him advance anyway, but his fingers dig into Bryan's thigh authoritatively.
Suddenly, she cries out in agony, clutching her head and reeling back. Luca shoots up and tackles her to the floor, much like a professional footballer taking down a toddler. They're a mess of scrambling limbs, but Luca finally subdues her.
"Are you going to behave now? Can we have a civil discussion, or are you going to keep throwing a tantrum?" Luca heaves. She completely ignores him.
"How dare you break into my home and abuse me like this? Is this how Shadowhunters act? Turning Downworlders own home into a prison?"
A slight shrug and arms falling limp to his side, Bryan shakes his head, "You had a chance to comply. And you didn't."
"Use of deadly force is authorized," Luca sing-songs on reflex, immediately regretting the decision when Bryan shoots him a certain look.
"Order your Mundane monkey off me," she spits bitterly.
"Mundane…?" Luca looks at her funny, but then, "Oh! You can't – boop," he flicks her nose, and suddenly the black tattoo covering his neck appears, in perfect stroke order. An impossibly small rune was emblazoned on his forefinger. Yet another outlines the soft curve of his cheek and dips just below his rounded jawline.
"Why would you be – "
"We came to ask you the questions, so… civil discussion, or interrogation?"
"I'd chose civil discussion," he says sharply, yet softly.
She chooses civil discussion.
Downstairs at a naked dining table, they sit among a mess of clouds and fire. Luca tries to be as impassive as Bryan about the mesmerized shock displayed on the woman's face and in every flit of the eye. He can't contain that smug smile.
"What we are to discuss here is strictly confidential," his tone soft, but brows a rigid line across his stony face.
"We're just going to skip the whole oath thing," he smirks, crossing his arms on the table.
"You talk, you die."
A fear and unease creeps into her tight wrinkles. She nods in grave understanding. Bryan continues.
"The shortest story: we're facing a crisis indiscriminate of Shadowhunters, Downworlders, or Mundanes alike. We'll all be erased if we don't co-operate."
"The world is always on the edge of destruction, give me a better excuse for," her outburst is cut short by Luca tapping the table and shaking his head with that plastered smirk. He puts a teasing index finger over his mouth in warning.
"You have an artifact stolen from the Conclave. We need it back."
All at once, the old woman reveals her frailty as her mind reels through the possibilities. Her eyes glass over and her lips give the slightest tremble. The table somehow becomes the most interesting thing in the room, the thought a single card being flipped over and over. Obsessively.
"No," she brokenly sobs, "we have an arrangement."
"Had. This takes priority."
She's breaking down right there in front of them, and Bryan's panic only makes him more guarded.
"Just hand it to the institute in two days, alright?" and Bryan, courteous and commanding as ever, warns, "Don't make me waste sympathy on a dead woman."
She nods slightly in understanding.
"You know about the light in that stone," Bryan's intense gaze shift its exact location, for a moment only, his nails subtly eating into the wood, "I'm no longer enough, I can't do this by myself anymore."
Luca no longer smiles. His heartbeat echoes the crushing sense of impotence.
"The Clave is appointing you Regent Alpharetta. Use everything in your power to protect the Mundanes from them, Abigail.