>>>Play<<<
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Another harsh cut jumps to the spy camera view of the main room. The team standing at the cardboard round table, bags in hand. Much smaller in frame than the previous shot. Tim sits distanced from the two girls, battered and bruised, still in the same seat Judy warned him not to leave.
The overhead light is on but without the sunlight the room isn’t welcoming, the clutter now just seems to get in the team''s way. Shadows from the bright overhead light make the boxes sharp and jagged. The stuffed heads leer down at the center of the room, and the mounted weapons glimmer dangerously. There no longer seems to be secrets in this place, only sharp shadows and dangerous clutter.
“Well, Tim?” Judy tone throws out his name like a blade, he flinches back, “We packed. What''s next? Where to?”
He just looks down and mutters, “I uhm… didn’t plan that far.”
“WHAT-?” Judy takes a threatening step towards Tim. Fumushu catches Judy’s shoulder before she can take another.
“No, Judy. I get it. Tim’s a scumbag, the whole time you’ve known him he’s been lying to you. But he’s trying, when it comes down to it, he’s doing the right thing” Fumushu’s voice of reason is timid and shaky– afraid of more violence, instead of reassuring. “Plus, now is not the time. We should go.”
Judy gently pushes off Fumushu’s hand, “I know we need to leave Fumu… But where? Where can we go? We don''t even know who’s after us. How can we run away if we don’t know what to run away from?”
She is frustrated, tired, and angry, but stands strong.
“Wait… How can we run away if we don’t know who''s after us! I have an idea.” Judy pushes off the tiredness and anger, then smiles, “I hate to say this. Tim, I’m going to give you another chance. We’ll need your help.”
Judy looks energized now that she finally has a problem to set herself against, a puzzle to solve.
Tim looks up, his expression losing some of the fear, and a little hope bleeding into his eyes.
Jujubee is on the case.
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Another hard cut: now the three of them are crouching somewhere outside. In an evergreen grove just off an old dirt trail high in the mountain– wrapped up in coats and hats. Despite the summer season, the high altitude lends the night an extra chill. It is still dark, but the sun has begun to light up the tips of the mountains behind them. The line of dawn, slowly and visibly creeps towards the YouTubers.
“Guys, If we want to make all this into a video, we should explain the plan again for the viewers.” Fumushu peeks out from a bundle of winter clothes, “I can do it while you finish setting up, stop me if I get a part wrong.”
Tim frowns, “We can still just leave, run. Go anywhere else. This is a terrible idea.”
Judy waves a hand at the two of them, “No. Go ahead, Fumu, Tim''s no help. I need to see what I’ve been dragged into.”
Fumushu nods and wiggles closer to the camera recording them, finding a comfy place to sit and begins speaking quickly; she''s so wrapped up in the excitement and tension it seems, for this moment, she forgets that there’s not going to be an AI filter to put her voice through. Her unedited voice is odd, but charming, it has just the right timbre and rumble to it. It’s pleasant to listen to.
“Ok, Jujubees, here we go. Someone from the MWF is going to be coming here soon, Tim thinks he knows who it will be. Some dude named Harold of the End. You’d think he’d change his first name with a bad-*Beep* nickname like ‘of the End’, I mean Harold, seriously-”
Tim cuts her off, “Not Harold. Herald, like messenger. Messenger of the End.”
Fumushu looks satisfied to be messing with Tim again, though there is an extra edge to the back and forth that wasn’t there before, “Ohhh, That fits. Oops. Anyway, Juju wants to get a good look at this guy. You know, see what he’s up to, how he reacts when he can’t find us.”
“So Tim connected his phone to the cameras in the house and did a bit of wizardry-Sorry tech wizardry, not real wizardry- to get some extra distance before connection breaks. I can’t get over how weird it is that Tim is a real wizard.”
Judy comments without looking up from the long distance camera. “ Yeah, weird. If he wasn’t such a lying bastard, it might have been cool.”
Fumushu spreads her jacketed arms to show off the clearing, trying to save the mood. “And now there is nothing to do but sit and wait for the MWF to arrive! Did I miss anything?”
Tim hasn’t been paying attention, so he doesn’t defend himself. For good reason too, he’s been working hard; Doing the signal dance, tapping away on his phone and waving it in the air, around the clearing, “I’ve got it, finally. Connection is crud, but I’m not getting any closer, we’ll get a look at him. Not a good one but a look. Might drop a few frames, though.”
The screen splits into three parts, like a multiplayer game. Two videos taking up the top half of the screen, one spreading across the bottom. There is some semblance of editing here, a white border separates the split screens and the transition to them wasn’t entirely neglected. It’s likely Tim spent the most time on this section in post.
The splitting view pulls the current video into just the top left side of the screen. On it Judy fidgets with the long lensed camera and a tripod, the other two watch. Fumu, warm and bundled up close to the camera frame, and Tim perched on a branch holding out his phone. He controls the top right side of our screen, now showing a familiar room in grainy night vision. The video quality is even worse than before, fuzzy and stuttering. The main area of the lodge is quiet and dark, but like the slow dawn on the mountain, it may not remain that way for long.
“Nice, I’m getting a nice view of the lodge from here too,” Judy is still perfecting the framing of the camera, “Wish we had some more light to see by, though. Image quality isn’t great.”
The view from Judy’s camera has been edited to fill the bottom of the screen. All is dark and quiet on the outside of the lodge. The camera is struggling with the low light and high zoom, but is much easier on the eyes than Tim’s spyware.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The view of the lodge itself is disappointing, just a normal mountain cabin. Big logs make up its outer walls, and the roof is a bright red corrugated metal, slanted and reinforced to withstand the heavy snows of winter. A few solar panels are set up on the roof, though they can''t be getting much sun this deep into the valley, pointed towards the mountain.
It seems odd that an unassuming building would hold secrets about magic and other worlds. One would expect a building with secrets like that to be entirely different. A grand castle, or if it must be a cabin, surrounded by huge circles of mushrooms, impossibly tall trees, and shimmering cascading waterfalls.
Real life is rarely so poetic, often the buildings hiding great secrets blend right in. Just log cabins in the woods surrounded with evergreens and aspens, a quiet place. All of a sudden the view sharpens, the cabin coming into a shadowy clarity in the predawn light, the slight tilt added to the view gives the cabin a more eerie and ethereal mood. The high angle and still trees leave the impression that the cabin is almost… waiting for something. An end, perhaps.
“*Beep* yeah!” Judy steps away from the camera, careful not to jostle it, “Perfect shot, love it when I get it right.” She does a little fist pump. Then turns to grab a camp chair and sit it up next to Fumushu.
“Oh joy! Time to sit and wait. Anyone want to take turns holding my phone?” Tim looks sullenly at Judy and Fumushu.
“Nope.” responds the two girls.
>>> 2X Speed <<<
The three wait, only moving to take off outer layers as the day quickly warms, the sun coming down the mountain. Then, right before the sun can reach the camp, Tim shouts.
>>> Normal Speed <<<
“I’ve got someone on the cameras!” He’s leaning up to his phone, frantically tapping at something. The left side of the screen rapidly switches through cameras to get the best view of the figure now in the house.
“WHAT? But nobody’s come up the drive?” Fumushu leans over to Judy, “Juju, have you seen anyone in the long distance shot?”
Judy chews at a lip, “Nope,” She gets up and walks over to Tim, “budge over. Do you recognize this guy? Is it Harold? Any idea how he got in the house?”
Fumushu steps up on the other side of Tim, “Ooh, can he teleport, or something?”
“No, but good guess. He can’t teleport, but someone else in the MWF can. I’d bet she ported him in.” Tim grabs onto the tree, needing some more support, the two girls pushing at him to get a better view of the phone,“ Stop pushing, I don’t want to risk moving and dropping the signal now that he’s there. If he finds us, I’d like the chance to try and run.”
Tim’s face has been drained of color, he recognizes the person on the screen. He’s afraid of him.
The figure is tall and slender, though it''s hard to tell how big he is through the robe he wears; the shape of his long robes and wide flared sleeves are all that can be made out. The robes cinch tight around his waist, tied there by a sash, surprisingly thin for the wide flared shoulder pads of the robe. The mess of pixels decorating the robes close clearly indicate that they have several ornate patterns across them, but the specifics are ruined by the low quality. The man''s features are also very hard to make out in the granny camera, his face turned into a messy blob of tan with a few splotches of color for his eyes and mouth.
“He looks like he’s cosplaying some wuxia guy for a convention, or like he just walked out of a Chinese Ren Fair.” Fumushu snorts, “Are his robes glowing? I can’t tell with the camera.”
“I would think you’d be a bit more careful of who you make fun of.” Tim gestures to his phone with his free hand,“ If Granny Trinaday got sent to a fantasy world, where do you think he ended up?”
As he says this, the man on the camera rips one of the bedroom doors off its hinges backwards through the frame, revealing a dresser pulled in front of the door supposedly barricading the room.
“Hmm, that was a good idea Fumu, glad you insisted on it.” The forced cheer in Tim’s voice is obvious.
The two girls are silent as the man continues to literally tear through the house looking for them, ripping through drywall and framing with little distinction. His feet seem to glide across the floor as he moves, the clutter appearing to almost bend out of his way, as if his will warps the space he moves through. Soon he realizes his search is futile, and settles down in the middle of the lodge''s great room.
He sits cross-legged, his eyes closed, his feet naturally falling on top of his knees, his hands meeting in some odd shape at his chest, the camera''s quality not clear enough to make it out. The air warps around him, his closed eyes and clothes begin to glow with power.
Tim panics.“*Beep* nobody move, think dead thoughts, this could be anything. But I’d bet he''s about to try to find us.”
“We’re far enough away.” Reassures Judy.
“I hope so.” Fumushu responds.
Then a wave of white power and distorted air rushes away from the figure, his robe slumps off his shoulders and writhing glowing tattoos can be seen etched across his body. Dragons, the eastern kind, great scaled wyrms twisting across his shoulders; trapped in magic and ink. The camera doesn’t pick up that detail, instead it is felt. The symbology resonates in the same space the Weave does, right in the back of your head.
The wave moves from the view of the spy cameras on the left, and rushes out to the view of the camera pointed at the lodge, at the bottom of the video.
It continues out from the house for a few moments, a ring of light brighter than the dawning line of the sun. Then about seventy-five feet away from the walls of the house it begins to break apart, sections streaming out around rocks and trees radiating out from the lodge like god rays shining between the leaves of a forest.
The waves move through the viewpoint again, now up into the top right, where the YouTubers have made their camp. It has already split before their clearing, the light streaming around them– blowing a gust of wind through their hair and unzipped jackets.
The wave only took a few seconds to complete its clockwise journey around the screen.
“Tim, the *Beep* was that?” Judy whispers.
Tim is equally quiet, “I don''t know, this is why we should’ve run.”
Fumuhsu is the last to speak, “I think it missed.”
They sit there bunched together watching the phone, barely breathing.
The man on the other end keeps glowing, but he opens his eyes, he reaches into his pocket and grabs a phone. Carefully, he presses a few things on the screen, then sets his phone down in front of him. His eyes close again and the glow ramps up.
Fumushu points out toward the lodge. “What is that? He’s got more?”
A ring of red light has surrounded the building. If someone were to carefully observe the footage, they might notice that the ring is not actually there, it does not reflect in the lodge’s windows and casts no red hue onto the foliage near it. It only exists in that instinctual space of the mind left for magic.
Sigils and symbolism spill towards the man, unmoving in his meditation. The formation draws upon deep knowledge of magic and an instinctual feel for the laws of nature. A glance at the work being drawn in the air would tell the observer about fire and smoke, heat and destruction, wrath and ruin. A longer stare would drive a mortal mind insane, these concepts are not meant to be understood in so small a lifetime.
It is likely your ability to see magic might break before your mind, however, leaving you fully isolated from any magical art. In some worlds, that would be a fate worse than death.
The formation draws to a close, drawing another circle a foot around the meditating man.
The lodge erupts in flames.
It burns for a few seconds, the heat so high that Judy, Tim, and Fumushu can''t help but close their eyes and stumble back.
By the time their eyes open, the lodge and anything else inside the formation is a uniform pile of ash. Not melted, Not scorched. All a fine ash. It slowly floats toward the ground like a twisted black snow.
The man is gone.
In the long distance camera, still recording he could be seen standing up for a few seconds, not a burn on his body, his clothes still intact. A flash of light and he vanishes, barely disturbing the ash drifting down from the sky.
“Holy *Beep*!” Fumushu stares stunned.
“Yup, we should be dead.” Tim seems surprised not to be.
“I need to call the fire department.” Judy’s face has the least shock. Instead, she looks at the ashes of her grandma''s lodge, grim and serious.
Jujubee is on the case.
END TRANSCRIPTION — — —