[center][h2]Malcador & Jaelle Collab[/h2][/center]
[hr]
Jaelle Codona sat at a tiny, rickety table in a tiny, shitty kitchen beneath a flickering bulb and faded flower-print tile. Her arms were crossed before her, her chin resting atop them, and she could see a sliver of sky between yellowed curtains. It was gray still—growing lighter only in the smallest increments, hardly measurable to her eye. She sank further into her seat, her incorporeal form softening into less and less solid states until she oozed across the table, dripping off the edge or sliding down the legs in fat, viscous drops.

In life, Jaelle had loved the night; in death, she hated it. Nothing was as boring as waiting for the world to wake back up. It was bizarre that all the people she knew had to sleep at the same time! Didn’t they realize she hadn’t been able to since her soul had been shoved in the bloodstone?! YouTube and Netflix wouldn’t play end—

The laptop sitting on one side of the table pinged dully and a discord notification popped up on one side of the screen. Eleanor Tregellan to the Sunday Group.

Jaelle jumped out of the chair, her appearance intact and any leftover spectral liquid disappearing into so much air. She spun, the dirty apartment a blur around her— just a kitchenette and sitting area with three doors. One to the outside, one to a dingy bathroom, and one that used to open to a matching bedroom. Jaelle took the last, stepping through the wood panel and into a roomy, middle-sized house. 

The house was in much better condition than the apartment it hid within–not especially tidy, but comfortable in earth tones and leather, spattered with stacks of arcane books and magical tools. It was, by all rights, the nicer place to spend any time in, if you counted out the fact that pocket realms got horrible wifi and you couldn’t tell what time of day it was from the endless expanse of star-clustered black outside the windows.

Mal’s room was just down the hall. Were she corporeal, Jaelle would have slammed open the door and turned on the lights, but as it was, she could only step through the walls and yell at the nest of blankets on his bed. “Mal, wake up! The Sunday Group needs us!” 

Malcador Ravenwood had been in the midst of a good dream. A soliloquy of self-agrandizement, where the attractive young mage spoke amidst a council of older, far more exalted sorcerers as they spoke and treated with him as an equal, praising his work and tome of spells he had concocted. Just before he was about to shake the arch-mage’s hand to be inducted into the ranks of his esteemed order, a familiar voice tugged at his consciousness and brought him hurtling out of his reverie. 

He gave a very unwelcoming groan, his muscles still aching from his workout the other day. The trim man rolled over on the bed, having not yet opened his eyes except a small peek to confirm that Jaelle was, in fact, hovering about and telling him to get up. Mal yawned, about to tell her to buzz off and wait a bit, like one might tell a dog that was begging to be let out. He quite liked Jaelle but Mal was touchy about sleep when he didn’t have to sacrifice it for work or pleasure, but her mention of the Sunday Group made him reconsider. He pulled himself up into a sitting position, yawning again before stretching his arms. 

Mal wasn’t powerfully built. He couldn’t throw men around with ease or wrestle with a lycanthrope like a warrior of old. But he kept himself in fine shape, his physique sculpted and with very little fat so he could have a chance in surviving encounters with more physical supernatural creatures. Or so he liked to say. That was only half the story, really. The other half was his barely-hidden vanity, something he tried to suppress but something he never did fully keep out of his thoughts. His childhood scar was visible on his left shoulder, masked as a tattoo, it was still horrendously jagged, covering below the neck and snaking down his pectoral.

“What is it, Jaelle? Did they say it was important or is this another frivolous meeting on work regulations?” 

“Really, Mal. Would I wake you if it was nothing?” She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes, even though they both knew perfectly well that not only would she, she certainly had before. In fact, since she couldn’t physically click on the notification to get the full story, it was almost guaranteed that she didn’t actually know. “It was Eleanor! Let’s hurry up and go see what the new case is about!”

He didn’t answer her, just slid out of bed and gave another satisfying stretch and stepping out of his bedroom into the well-furnished hall, the embroidered, soft carpet very comfortable to walk on. It made him sleepy again, but he knew he had to check the message. Planting his ass in the chair, he opened the message and read it silently, knowing Jaelle would be hovering around his shoulder anyway. With all the extra time she had when others were sleeping, learning to read modern English hadn’t seemed too daunting to her. 

She seemed to read it just as quickly as he did, anyway. “Yes! Yes yes yes yes!”

“Dammit, we need to go.” He said, no longer moving about begrudgingly. He went to his room again and changed, throwing on jeans and a button-down, grabbing his staff he transmuted into a pen and placing it in his pocket. He was out of the pocket realm, out of the apartment and down the road in the matter of a minute. Once they arrived, he saw most of the gang had beaten him to the punch. 

Jaelle moved before him, taking in the scene in her quick, curious way while Primrose spoke of cameras and witnesses. It was a sticky day, so humid that sweat pooled, stagnant on skin rather evaporating away, and cicadas hummed despite the early hour. It was no wonder, really, that the corpse was already stinking, but it didn’t seem to bother Jaelle any. She moved through the car, peering in its nooks and crannies. 

“I doubt there are many cameras out here in the middle of nowhere,” she said, the implied eye-roll mostly masked in her voice. “This thing is empty. Like weirdly empty. No coins in the cup holders or wallet on the seat. The guy doesn’t even look like he brought a house key or a pack of smokes. Is it even his car?” 

Maclador stepped out of the vehicle behind Jaelle, donning a pair of glasses. He had 20/20 vision, but the glasses allowed him to see hexes or trails of magical run-off he would normally only be able to detect if he performed a twenty minute ritual. The only downside to the glasses were he had blurry vision in real-space, and they were as easily broken as any pair of spectacles. 

Looking like a suspiciously young college professor, he approached the group and covered his nose, giving a nod of greeting to those already gathered. 

“Well ladies, let’s see what’s…” He started, leaning into the car after Alyx announced her findings. Mal halted his speech when he blinked, his memory tugging on him once he spied the glyphs that shimmered in his vision. He adjusted his glasses and squinted, trying to recall where he might have seem similar etchings. 

“Well, it’s not a curse.” He murmured, contemplating with a professional air. “Whoever wrote these has read a lot of Theodor Ruess, but they don’t entirely match with his magical theorems…” 

He shook his head, pulling himself out of the car and taking in a breath of fresh air, waving a hand before his face to blow away the wafting stench of decay. It didn’t entirely add up, the markings. They were blase in style, too ostentatious for someone who was a true professional. It made him think this case would be solved in a matter of days, or if they were caught in something made by a genius in misdirection. 

“I can’t give an accurate translation, but it’s a message that says ‘Once you discover it, the pain will begin.’” Mal iterated, raising an eyebrow to denote how little the warning impressed him. “A rather vague threat, though one that could potentially be targeted at us, unless we know of someone else who would walk in on something like this.”

[hider]Mal and Jaelle wake up. Mal gives the glyphs a look and sees a message[/hider]