[center][b][color=008080]Exeter Parlour[/color][/b][/center]

Though it was not yet the prescribed time for refreshment, Margaret could not stifle her nerves enough to prevent a sip from the crimson bitterness of her wine.  Neither could she stop from downing the entire glass afterward, but still the skin of her hands itched unbearably, inspiring a jitter in her nerves that the steady, thick beat of rain against her parlour’s cross-latticed windows.  From behind their glossy security, Ebb shrouded in lane looked all too much like the ocean, the same primeval sea that lapped in her nightmares for the past fortnight.  “Someone had to do something,” she quavered aloud, watching the blurry yellow-orange lights of the city through the latticed pane.  

The mounting evidence of a lurking continuity beneath the waters of Ebb had forced her hand. Families distraught at their loved ones still, soaked forms laid to barnacled rest by the departing tide, an entire building reduced to ominous nothingness by an impossible whirlpool, and beside it all that accursed phantom submarine.  Before Margaret had sent down the first team, the nearly-nightly sojourns of the Ankou's grim, diving-suited crew turned a smoldering ember of fear into a roaring fire.  Surely no normal citizen could lend a credulous ear to the pleas of those horrid sailors?  And yet, with the recent events, the scuttling, gangly shapes in gutters and murky, foul waters pouring unbidden from sinks and bathtubs, the people of Ebb were in a tumult, and ready to believe anything.

And for now, and amongst other things, they believed that the ill-fated investigation team ventured still beneath the slimy cisterns of the city, pinpointing the source of the dilemma.  In truth not a peep had reached Margaret or her detective since they had departed; the Sensus-laden conduit radio stood silent and untouched upon the coffee table in the parlour's center as it had for days.  Margaret had planned to use it as part of her presentation to the newly-enlisted investigation team B, but now, with her hands trembling and mind clogged with worry, not just for the drowned, or the first team, or herself, but for the whole city, the urge to give in threatened to burst from behind her dike of resolution.  No amount of study in Ebb's college, Tarpon University, could have prepared her for the slow terror of creeping calamity to which only she and her detective were only remotely aware.

But it was too late to back down now, even as she tentatively reached her hand out the window and beheld telltale spatters of red on her palm.  The noise of entrance by way of the front door, and the admittance of entry by the butler, cemented this fact in her mind.  Margaret pulled herself away from the window and placed her glass upon a driftwood-carved cabinet.  She noted with no small degree of wry humor exactly how much Ebb depended on the sea, always assuming that while fickle, the sea held no greater hatred of human life and would never see fit to conspire against mankind.  

Making sure that her nut-brown hair, tinged with streaks of gray, was in order, Margaret cast her cerulean eyes upon the first arrival.  True to form, it was the [url=https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-M3Ga8yhbxDw/VUvlRbFhplI/AAAAAAAABAc/mvhPCMDjq0I/w500-h750-no/OC2%2BUdo%2BKoro%2BKai.png]detective[/url] himself.  No ordinary investigative authority, the strong but silent figure who had assisted her in the organization of her approach to this crisis hailed from a southeastern island chain off the coast of Chalcedony, where cherry blossoms bloomed and the mountains tall, somber dignity served as model for the likes of Udo Koro Kai.  Previously no more than an enigmatic foreigner when he had arrived on foot, Kai had experienced in order to curry her favor a horrible event, made all the more horrible by the admission of so formidable a warrior.  To hear him tell it, the ninja had been prowling the riverbottom canals at the day's lowest tide, and identified a writhing, goopy mass puddled on the canal's edge.  Further investigation proved the sludge to be detestable manlike, fluctuating between an amorphous, runny white gel and pale-skinned person constantly.  When Kai had approached, the creature had oozed into the water, only for clammy, grasping fingers to stretch from the canal seconds later, seize the ninja, and forcibly submerge him underwater.  If Kai's mastery of the Motus affinity hadn't been so great, he surely would have been dragged to the depths, but as it was the man had escaped with his sanity attacked and returned with his tale.  Just the thought of it made Margaret's skin crawl.

Kai's voice yanked her from the past, however, letting her know that a couple distinctly interesting characters were headed this way.  “Time to meet the team, then.  Let us pray to Lugus that they...fare better.”