Per 
It was another dark day in Eventide, the street lit only by ancient gas lamps and the flickering neon sign of a rain-soaked diner, almost devoid of patrons due to the relentless wash. A dour barista obligingly pours another mug of coffee for two unfamiliar customers, bundled in thick trenchcoats and staring out the window through the sheets of rain.
The smaller of the couple reaches into their coat and retrieves a bottle, out of which they pop a couple pills into their mouth.
The alabaster barista glances over at them disapprovingly. "Look, if you are going to get high, do it downtown. People eat here," she says, gesturing to the empty cafe.
Quinn Law, Unusual Incidents Unit, glares at the barista. "It's just vitamin D. I don't think I can rock that whole Bela Lugosi look that you have going here," Law says through a mouthful of pills. She grimaces as she swallows.
"Goddammit, these taste like chalk, why couldn't this place have a normal sun like Three-P?"
The larger figure turns slowly towards Law. Under the brim of a fedora that was stretched to near-flatness, two tiny golden flames pierce through the darkness enshrouding its face.
"Miss Quinn, vitamin D is essential for the proper bone health of an adult. If you are going to refuse the health regimen I prescribed for the duration of this stakeout, maybe eat more vitamin-rich foods, perhaps fish?" Its voice is gravely and low, the sound of a shovel scraping against stone.
Law ignores her companion as she breathes onto the window and draws nonsense sigils and scribbles onto the foggy glass. The golem resumes its vigil, staring into the middle distance of the downpour. Neither of them touch the cooling coffee, which sits nestled in the pile of used plates, mugs, and empty milkshakes that litter the table, all belonging to Quinn, as she is not as metabolically challenged as the golem.
An almost imperceptible creaking is heard, as the golem tightens its grip on its side of the booth, the faded 50's-era leather weakly protesting. Quinn snaps out of her sigil-induced trance and focuses on the outside street.
"That our mule?"
The golem peers through the sheets of rain, their eye-fires shrinking and flickering as it focuses on the opposite side of the street, where a hooded figure is trying to casually stroll down Main in the middle of a thunderstorm, its odd bouncing gait and armful of grocery bags notwithstanding.
"Compound eyes, apparent chitinous exterior, knee hyper-extension. Seems to be one of her retainers, out for a supply run."
Before the golem finishes its sentence, Law slides out of her booth and out the door, hastily throwing a wad of bills onto the diner counter as she leaves. The golem slowly follows suit, pausing at the door to turn around and tip its hat at the bemused barista before exiting.
Law stumbles out of the diner as a wave of precipitation and wind hits her. The golem stoically trudges behind her, rummaging through its bag and producing a bright red umbrella, which seems comically small in the golem's grasp. It offers the umbrella to Law, who takes it gratefully, though she has to clutch onto it against the snatching grasp of the gale.
They follow the retainer on the far sidewalk into the wind funneling down the street, and watch as it ducks into a nearby alleyway. But as they look down the alley, they see nothing but piles of trash and a faceless wall, faintly hued blue by the neon signs decorating the shops on Main.
Stepping forward, Law runs her hand along the rough stone surface, reaching out and trying to feel for any residual—
She pushes hard, and a nearly invisible button depresses in the wall. Lines of white light spin out from the button, quickly tracing a web of sigils, wards, and a symbol of an eight-eyed arachnid figure before the light dissipates, taking the illusory wall with it. Behind the glamour was a metal-gray door, slightly left ajar to leak light, cigar smoke, and the overlapping sounds of crackling laughter from within.
Law looks over at the golem. "Ready?"
The golem rolls its shoulders and cracks its knuckles with the sound of shattering glass. "Affirmative."
Law kicks the door down and bull-rushes through, umbrella raised like a sword to meet the several humanoid insects sitting down on overturned crates playing poker, cigars dangling limply from their mandibles as they stare at the intruders, burgers from the grocery bag mid-masticated. A moment afterwards they, almost in sync, whip out tommy-guns from their bulky trenchcoats and pull the triggers.
Quinn and golem quickly dive to either side of the aisle of the room of the warehouse they find themselves in, racks upon racks of illicit goods and items stretching up into the gloom of the rafters and across the length of the building. Rounds pepper the concrete as the bugs try to track their targets.
"You have the best plans."
"Shut up, you rock head. I don't suppose we could come to some sort of truce?" Her question was directed towards the humanoid insects firing at her, but the gunfire drowns out her words, and the swearwords coming from the delivering end gave her answer enough.
Quinn puts the umbrella to the side and rummages around in her pockets, cursing her general untidiness as she produces in order chapstick, spare ammo magazines, a rubber band, and finally a misshapen brown spheroid, which she clutches tightly in her own as she mutters an activation phrase.
As Quinn watches, the sun-dried flesh of the shrunken head begins to peel apart at the forehead, revealing a bloodshot, ice-blue eye, which was necessary as its normal eyes had been sewn up. It glares reproachfully back at Quinn, as if angry for its current situation. The hail of gunfire has presently stopped, and Quinn ignores the silent indignation of the eye to peek out from behind her cover, seeing the retainers frantically reloading and trying to find cover simultaneously.
"Go get 'em, tiger," she whispers to the shrunken head, chucking it over the shelf and towards the encamped enemies, quickly plugging her ears. The head hits the floor with the grace of a package of burger meat and rolls to a stop facing the bugs. They flinch for a moment, expecting a grenade, but stare with bewilderment at their mystery package. The baleful eye returns the favor, soaking in their visual essence before its sewn lips begin to tear apart at the seams, opening to reveal a blackened abyss, from which it screams.
Being on the receiving end of the head, which was emitting the brown note, pink note, and everything in between, is not good for the long term health of any individual caught in the operative area of the head, and the retainers were no exception, quickly reduced to wriggling jelly by the volume of the blast, the very carapace of their bodies shedding layers from the intensity, revealing pulsating and hemorrhaging organs squirting inky green blood. The scream ended as quickly as it began, the eye retreating behind a veil of skin as the head slipped back into dormancy. The golem emerges from cover behind her, tapping his ceramic ears.
"A warning would have been sufficient."
Quinn picks up the shrunken head, dusting it off and puts it back into her pocket, pausing to listen to the frantic chittering coming from the next room. "Always expect the unexpected. I dealt with this wave, you want to handle the next batch?"
Quinn and the golem enter the last room being peppered with gunfire. The golem wades through the pile of insectoid corpses to the last of Seven-Legged Jenny's retainers left standing, the stone hulk's trenchcoat shredding in the hail of bullets. It pushes aside a pallet of assorted narcotics destined to be on the streets of Eventide and grabs the tommy-gun of one of the ants, ripping it out of its hands and cold cocking it with the stock. It then grabs the bug, lifts it above its head, and throws the retainer at another with such force that they hit the wall and slump to the floor, leaving a bloody green streak on the chiseled stone.
The golem swings around ponderously towards the last retainer, standing in the corner of the room with its gun shaking in its claws. As the golem stomps towards the retainer, it makes a small crik! and tries to scamper away, gracefully bounding over the bodies of its fallen colleagues and out the door, only for a folded red umbrella to hit the retainer in the temple with a crunch, dropping it to the ground.
"Thanks, big guy," Law says as she comes from behind the door, stooping to grab the last assailant and dragging it to the center of the room.
The golem rumbles with discontent. "I wager I weigh five pounds more than yesterday from all of the bullets lodged within me," it gently touches the entry wounds, its hand coming away with liquefied clay, seeping from the wounds like caramel from a perforated candy bar.
Quinn huffs, blowing a strand of curly red hair out of her face. "Cool, cool. Maybe start admiring your new piercings after helping me tie the perp up?"
"Is that an order?"
"Do you want it to be?"
The golem grumbles again. "Give me the rope. You use inferior knots anyways."
The golem kneels next to the captive and ties them up, its thick, stubby fingers belying an almost inhuman dexterity as it ties the bug to one of the hidden warehouse's many shelving units. It stands, nodding to Law.
Law squats on her haunches in front of the bug and flicks it between the eyes, A fractal tattooed onto her fingertip releasing a small burst of magic which fires all the neurons in the retainer's carapace at once. The retainer jerks awake, frantically struggling against its bonds. A narrow, lithe tongue flickers in between its mandibles, nervously moistening its multi-faceted eyes.
"Who… who are yous? What do you want? If you are trying to muscle in on our turf, Jenny will have your heads spit-roastin' on a bonfire by Sunday!" Its alien features and voice box mangled the English language, but it was only mildly difficult to parse its words through its thick, warbled accent.
"Oho, Sleeping Beauty still has a little fire in him, hasn't he? Nah, we aren't here for your—" airquotes "—turf, we just want to have a little talk with your boss. Has she changed her name to 'Seven-Legged Jenny' since last time?"
While the bug's face remained unchanging, its tongue suddenly stopped its wriggling and dangles limp from the retainers mandibles.
"Oh no, no, no, I can't, I won't tell you, she will do things to me, awful things, if I croak! She doesn't tolerate no traitors."
Law grabs him by the lapels of his ill-fitting coat, and slams him into the shelf. "Listen, you bastard, I'm going to find the nearest necroportal and chuck you in if you don't tell me and tell me fast where the hell Jenny is holed-up in this godforsaken Nexus."
Instead of responding, the ant begins chewing hard on something in its mouth, and spits into Law's face.
"Fuck you."
With that, the bug makes what could only be assumed to be an exaggerated swallowing motion, and begins gagging, white froth spilling out of its mouth and onto the concrete floor, as it slumps over, dead. Law touches her face as a powerful burning sensation spreads throughout her face.
"Fuck!"
The golem quickly spins Law around on her heels and vigorously rubs her face and neck with a scrap of its shredded trenchcoat. "Don't let any of the fluid get on you, it is a potent form of formic acid."
The golem pauses, sticks a finger into one of the multiple bullet wounds in its chest, and smears clay across Law's face. "Let that sit for a few hours, and the burns should be healed."
"Thanks, the clay spa mask is really fitting well with the whole 'noir femme fatale' look I had going on here."
"You are welcome Miss Quinn, though I would say that you fit the bill of a hard-boiled detective rather than the role of the femme fatale," The golem responds, obliviously ignoring the barbed remark.
Law hits a nearby pallet stacked with illicit paraweapons and narcotics, sliding to the ground, as a brief respite from the past few hours' carnage.
"God, we are so close to getting her, so—" Law impotently shakes her fist "—fucking close, after weeks of sticking our noses into countless beehives and getting stung, and following all of these false leads and dead ends. I can fucking feel it, we just need a little more—" She drops her hand and gingerly rubs her clay-covered burns.
The golem sidles next to her and slides down the pallet, its bulk making the pallet screech slightly backwards. "So? Why do you continue? Why have you not gone back to the Miami UIU office? You are needed there, why not let other's pick up the mantle, let someone else arrest Jenny?"
Law sighs, looking at the clay residue that stuck to her hand. "I guess… in Miami, when we knocked on doors, did raids, tracking criminals, we never saw it… that bad, I guess. All those bodies, comatose, but still… On almost any other drug, when you overdose, that's it, poof, you're done, unless someone can come over and save your sorry ass. With Wodin—you just overload, you just can't handle the pressure, and your mind cracks. You become aware of everything you have done or ever can do in that singular moment, and you aren't able to do anything but watch yourself. That's hell, and whoever was responsible for putting people in that kind of state must be some kind of devil. I don't want to go back to just giving tickets to unlicensed anartists and rezzing some punks who didn't deserved to get shot. I want to get rid of the trash that put Wodin out on the streets, whether it be the Lighthouse Mafia or… her."
Quinn chuckles, trying to relieve the tension. "I at least want to get the chance to rip off another one of her legs."
The golem hums in thought, the sound reverberating throughout its entire being, and coming out of its mouth with a self-made echo. "When you got me out of the impound, I had just had my shem, who I was, almost completely erased. I had vague memories, of who I was and what I was, where I came from. But my purpose itself was removed. Can you imagine that, having a directive, a goal to achieve, and having it ripped from you as easily as you could tear a piece of paper?"
"Sounds like hell."
The golem turns to look at Law. "It sounds like it what it feels to be human. Lacking a purpose, and having to find it on your own. I became more human that day, and I would never go back." It breathes deeply, its chest cracking and reforming as it inhales and exhales. "Perhaps you have found your new purpose, going after Jenny. Maybe arresting those that do harm to others, beyond being unlicensed artists, is why you are here."
Law hangs her head, staring at her hands in her lap. "If I am being honest, after all this time, I've never even asked you for a name. I don't want to call you Five-Three-One, that sounds… impersonal, but I never actually asked you if you want to have a name."
The golem looks off into the middle distance, not making a sound. After some deliberation, he speaks again.
"Zachariah. I would like to be called Zachariah."
Law grins and looks at her earthy companion. She claps her hands on her knees, stands up, and offers her hand to the golem.
"Zachariah, Quinn Law."
Zachariah takes the proffered hand and hauls himself up, to the complaint of Quinn's popped shoulder. He looks down at Quinn, the fire in its eyes brightening to an incandescent white, and its mouth crumbling into a smile.
"Quinn Law, Zachariah."
"Hm."
"What 'Hm'?" Quinn looks over at Zachariah, standing over the corpse of the acid-eaten bug.
"How shall we find Jenny now?" Zachariah growled, puzzled.
"Hm."
Quinn grins, looking back to Zachariah. "Pass your bag over, quickly!"
She almost fumbles the bag as it's tossed to her, but she rummages around and finds what she is looking for. "Aha!"
Quinn kneels onto the ground, spreading the map of Eventide across the concrete, smoothing out the creased folds. She gestures over to the golem. "Give me the body, stat."
"The whole body?" Zachariah queried.
"Whole body, top half, doesn't matter, I just need the eyes, the brain, and a limb."
Zachariah fetches the requested materials as Quinn rummages around in her pockets and pulls out the ingredients needed for the working to function: an obsidian knife, chalk, sage, and the Handy-Dandy Quik-N-Easy Ritual Handbook. She flips to a dogeared page and consults the guide while slicing her palm open with the knife.
"Okay, place this here, inscribe that there, stuff sage in there—got it!"
As Zachariah lays the body within the circle that Quinn hastily constructed out of blood and chalk, Quinn begins to chant in a long-dead language, eyes rolling into the back of her head.
The temperature in the warehouse suddenly drops, frost collecting on metal surfaces and Quinn's breath puffs into clouds of steam. The insect torso begins to shake and shudder, all synapses firing at once as Quinn's spell asserts itself.
"—Invenire Aranea Regina!" As a peal of lightning rings outside, Quinn claps the book shut.
With a slick scraping sound, the half-corpse drags itself out of the ritual circle and towards the map, scrabbling against the slick floor for purchase. The ant reaches forward and rests its claw against a section of the map, finally collapsing and crumbling to ash, its purpose fulfilled.
Zachariah sidles next to her as the working dissipates. "You forgot to conjugate most of the verbal components, Miss Quinn."
"You're Jewish, not Roman, don't correct me on my Latin grammar," but a ghost of a smile tugs at her lips as she says this.
"Can I not be a figure of many talents?" The stony facade poorly disguising a tone of pride.
Quinn squats and brushes aside the pile of dust, searching the map for the quadrant the last vestiges of sentience of the ant directed her towards.
"Do you know what is at 301 North Beacon Street?"
The road is narrow and rough, the gray grass on either side and the middle threatening to choke out the dirt path, the generously named "Street" cutting through an unused and underfunded park in the center of town. As they crest the hill to 301 North Beacon Street, the Eventide Moonlight Tower comes into view.
The remnant of a more optimistic era, the tall, gaunt structure looms over the rest of Eventide, fitful, fading bulbs of the tower once bright enough to light the entire town pale in comparison to its namesake, whose waxing form sheds light across the field as the rain gave a slight respite to the city.
It is rusted, ailing with lack of maintenance and care, though a sliver of light leaks through the window of the caretaker's room, built right into the foundation of the tower, a small sign of life amid the thick monochromatic weeds built up around the tower's base.
Quinn surveys the field, trying to find any sign of traps, guards, rabid eye-dogs, anything—
She sees a glimmer of light from a reflective surface in the weeds and reflexively drops to the ground. An earthshaking thud shows Zachariah follows her lead.
Quinn carefully raising her head above the peak of the hill, half-expecting to be sniped by a hidden guard, but with a sigh of relief sees nothing. She peers into the weeds where she saw the glimmer, and with a tilt of her head she sees it.
A slender, silken thread. Crisscrossed across the field, the singular thread nearly invisible to those not searching for it.
"What have you seen?" Zachariah grated in an imitation of a whisper.
"Spidersilk, looks to be covering the entire area around the tower. Anyone within a hundred yards would alert the mafia without them even having to post a watch."
"Anyway through?"
"Not that I could see. Would be too tricky to traipse through the webs, and the chance of getting caught with our pants down is too high."
"We seem to have two options, then. We alert the mafia after setting up an ambush, or we go to the local authorities and alert them to— you have stopped listening to me."
Half-way through the sentence, Quinn grabs her knife from Zachariah's bag and marches down the hill, getting to one knee, grabbing the first thread she sees and slices it, the dark stone making quick work of the tough silk. With a metallic twang the thread snaps with tremendous force, unraveling the entire structure, as silk limply settles to the ground.
Jenny exits the building, flanked by a dozen of her goons, all wielding guns. Jenny has a eight-shooter.
They are in a standoff, with Jenny berating Quinn for the loss of her leg, and promising to wreak hell upon her and those she loves.
"Seven-Legged Jenny, formerly Eight-Legged Jenny of the Lighthouse Mafia. I am placing you under arrest for the production and distribution of illegal paranarcotics, and the murder of several UIU agents. If you do not come quietly, I'll have to use force." Quinn narrows her eyes. "Please, don't come quietly."
Jennifer grins, revealing teeth sharpened to a point and a forked tongue, licking her salivating maw. "Oh you trust me, I won't."
She looks back at her goon squad, "Get her, boys!"
Fight scene here.
Law touches her fingertips against the damp, moss-covered dirt, and tries to extend beyond herself, tasting the dark soil and cold rock as thin feelers probe the ground for something, anything, that she could use. And as quick as a flash, she forms a fist and punches the ground, releasing a shockwave of magic that penetrates deep into the earth, which grabs hold of exactly the things she was looking for. As an intricate tattoo on her wrist glows blood red, she pulls upwards, summoning her trap.
The ground around them shook with minor tremors, the crumbling structure of the tower ominously creaking, sprinkling the battle with flakes of rust. Jenny sways unsteadily on her legs, her eyes darting around, looking for what might be causing the earthquake.
But she wasn't looking down.
In a shower of dirt and roots, dozens of skeletal hands burst from the dirt, clutching onto Jenny's legs as they pull themselves from the grip of the earth, sensing fresh air for the first time in hundreds of years.
Some of the skeletons were almost human, with supernumerary fingers and third eye sockets, but some were more alien, with indescribable features or animal heads, all shrouded in plant matter and fungus in an interconnected structure that rooted deep within the ground, the sudden overturning of so much earth by the raising of the dead revealing a hole, the bottom carpeted with fungus. Bio-luminescent tendrils undulated and gravitated towards Jenny, as if gazing at their next meal.
Jenny tried to stagger away, firing blindly into the thrusting mass of skeletal horror to no avail. The endless hands scrabble against her hard exoskeleton, finally finding purchase in small cracks and joints, and pull. The pit belched a thick cloud of dark spores and shreds of bone, the creaking of the moonlight tower becoming more pronounced as huge amounts of mass had shifted beneath its foundations.
Jenny frantically looks around and all eight eyes affix upon Quinn with an inhuman rage.
"You bitch!"
Law pants with the exertion of maintaining the spell, a manic grin on her face. "Go to hell."
The skeletons pull Jenny with a single-minded purpose to pull her into the gaping, awaiting maw of the earth from which they came. As the skeletal mass slowly sinks back into the hole, Jenny grabs onto one of her silken threads that stretched across the field, desperately trying to keep herself from sliding into the terror below her.
With superhuman strength she tries to haul herself back, her carapace creaking from the effort. And with the sickening sound of tearing flesh and and a metallic twang, Seven-Legged Jenny launched into the darkness of the night. The mass of skeletons and fungus fall back into the pit from the release of tension, the impact collapsing loose dirt around the hole, covering up the animated mass grave.
Quinn releases the spell and collapses to the ground, her energy drained from the massive necromantic spell she had channeled.
Zachariah punches the last lackey and lumbers over to her, his stony countenance almost projecting a look of concern on his face. He kneels down and places his hand on her shoulder. "Miss Quinn, are you quite alright?"
Quinn tries to rest her hand on his arm to reassure him, but could only feebly brush against his coat. She saw two Zachariahs as her visioned doubled and blurred. "That was a… biggie. Urgh, I'm just gonna lie down for a bit. Did I get her?"
Zachariah looked at the trail of black blood that led away from the now-sinkhole at the base of the tower. "No, but I believe you have injured her severely. She may be missing another leg."
"Heh, Six-legged Jenny. Not much of a spider now, is she?"
And with that, Quinn Law, Unusual Incidents Unit, and resident necromancer, collapses into unconsciousness.
Quadraginta, positive
Quinn Law & Zachariah Stone: The Eventide Enigma
