Hearing the strange sounds, Jenkins frowned and hesitated for a mont before cautiously making his way forward, his eyes scanning for any spiritual glow. He imdiately recognized the aura—it belonged to Mr. Hood. Quickening his pace, he ducked into the alley. Beside a foul-slling garbage bin lay the corpses of several ghouls. Further ahead, he saw Mr. Hood slumped against a low wall.
He was in a wretched state. His right arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, while his left barely propped him up, keeping him from collapsing completely. The fabric of his trousers had been shredded, as if by sharp blades, and warm blood oozed from a mangled wound beneath. By the ti Jenkins reached him, it was already pooling on the ground.
He was barely conscious, his face spattered with blood. But judging by the foul odor, it was the ghouls' blood, not his own.
“Mr. Hood? Oh, gods, what happened to you?”
Jenkins rushed to his side, but as he reached out, he felt Mr. Hood instinctively flinch away. He spoke quickly to reassure him:
“It’s , Mr. Candle—without the cat. What’s happened to you?”
He pressed his hand to Mr. Hood’s chest, a soft green light glowing from his palm. Under its influence, Mr. Hood’s shallow breathing slowly began to steady.
“How do you feel? Can you hear ?”
he asked quietly. A mont ago, Mr. Hood’s life had been like a candle sputtering in a downpour; now, it was rely flickering in a storm. The healing couldn't stop.
“I hear you... Mr. Candle, you’ve saved again... What ti is it now?”
Mr. Hood asked weakly, trying to straighten up, but his arm refused to cooperate.
“You can thank when you’ve recovered,” Jenkins said. “For now, just focus on the flow of life energy... It’s ten o’clock on Sunday night. Thirteen hours ago, you, Mr. White Cat, and I saw each other. Do you rember? We were at the coffee shop. When I walked in, you and Mr. White Cat were discussing how much to tip.”
“Yes, it really is you... Is it still Sunday? That’s good, then. There’s still ti. Mr. White Cat... Mr. White Cat, he... he...”
“What happened to him?”
Jenkins asked, a knot of anxiety tightening in his chest. He didn't have many friends.
“He’s missing!”
“Missing? Just missing? Oh, thank the gods—no, I an, that’s terrible. Don’t talk right now, let finish healing you. You’re seriously injured. If I hadn’t found you, you’d be thinking about writing your will.”
Mr. White Cat had tried to gather everyone today, but in the end, only he and Mr. Hood had shown up. Silver Flute Miss was unable to enter the city, Jenkins had been searching for the mad poet, Hathaway was with Briny, and no one knew what Magic Miss was doing. In theory, if Jenkins hadn't 'happened' to stumble upon Mr. Hood, he would never have learned what had transpired during the day.
The secluded alley was no place to perform a proper healing. After doing just enough to keep Mr. Hood from death's door, Jenkins supported him as they made their way to his residence in the city. Mr. Hood was a successful businessman—and though Jenkins had no idea what his business was, it was clear he owned a great deal of property in Nolan.
“I feel like I’m alive again.”
Once they were settled, Mr. Hood, shirtless with his left arm in a makeshift sling, picked up a glass with his right hand and drained it. The bottle of brandy sat on a small round table beside him. It wasn't that Jenkins couldn't fix the man's right arm; rather, the curse afflicting it was peculiar, resistant to both his purification candle and his life energy. For the ti being, Mr. Hood would have to heal on his own.
“You probably shouldn’t be drinking in your condition,” Jenkins began. “So, what on earth happened? You know I was out of Nolan on business today. How did everything fall apart by the ti I returned?”
Jenkins asked, settling into an armchair across the coffee table.
“If I told you everything in detail, we’d be here until morning.”
Mr. Hood grimaced in pain as he set down his glass.
“To put it simply, those aberrations weren’t after so treasure. They were searching for a suitable place to conduct a ritual—one to open a portal connecting to a realm beyond our material world. As luck would have it, Mr. White Cat and I were lying in wait nearby and got dragged into the whole ss. I can’t recall exactly what happened. When I ca to, Mr. White Cat was gone, and I was surrounded by a horde of frenzied demons...”
His voice grew heavier with despair as he spoke. He refilled his glass and tossed back the brandy, choking and breaking into a violent fit of coughs.
“Are you saying the ritual took place at the bank construction site? That’s impossible,” Jenkins countered. “I scouted the area before I found you, but aside from a few suspicious bloodstains, there was no sign of a portal. Portals don’t just move, do they?”
Jenkins said, frowning. He had the sudden urge to stroke his cat, only to rember the feline was still back in Ruen, guarding his room in the church.
“Opening a portal to an outer realm is no simple feat. If they were relying solely on a ritual, even a decade of preparation wouldn’t suffice. Those wicked aberrations possess dreadful knowledge from other worlds, so they took a shortcut. First, they connected to an ancillary dinsion outside the material plane, and then used that dinsion as a bridge to the outer realm... To be honest, I don’t fully grasp the chanics. It’s the kind of thing Magic Miss excels at.”
“An ancillary dinsion outside the material plane?” Jenkins echoed. “You an...”
Realization dawned on Jenkins.
“Yes. A Mysterious Realm. I suspect that’s where the missing Mr. White Cat was dragged into. There was an entrance on the second floor of the bank construction site, but it collapsed after unleashing too many of those otherworldly aberrations at once. In my experience, however, an entrance collapsing like that doesn’t harm the Mysterious Realm itself. That ans a new entrance, connecting to the very sa realm, is bound to open sowhere else in Nolan. The aberrations are probably looking for it, too. If they find it, they can pull a third wave of their kind into our city. That’s right—we’ve already faced two waves. The third will likely be even larger, and since they’ll be passing through a Mysterious Realm to get here, I fear they’ll be tainted by the properties of Cursed Items... No, this is too dangerous. I have to report this to the Church!”
He struggled to get up as he spoke, but his injuries were too severe, and Jenkins gently pressed him back down.
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