At least its not fish people

“Son of a bitch!”

Deimos groans, head beating against the steel bars of the cell he’d found himself in. This was becoming a pattern, such an awful pattern it drove the normally level headed half-dragon to swearing.

Earlier that week:

The half dragon had been researching D'aathrhu, a type of great old god that had reportedly been ‘killed.’ However, the half dragon had his doubts. Books in his bedroom began to sort themselves infront of Deimos’ opening to a multitude of pages as hours passed. Only for Deimos to look up past his current floating book of focus to a book in the background that lined up perfectly with the spine and the designs of the covers fit far too perfectly to be an accident.

He perks, rotating his current book’s spine to align with the pattern, then another, and another before he knew it he was going through almost his entire book collection. Seemed only the books from an author named Atticus Merlin lined up flawlessly in his quickly developing magic circle of book covers.

Deimos groans only to find himself missing but one tiny piece. Of course he was one short, he was always one book short. He slumps down against his desk, wings flattening out against the wood in a combination of exasperation and caffeine crash. He was so close.

He gives one last angry stare at the incomplete circle before folding his wings back up against his spine, accidentally tipping a precariously stacked pile of books from the corner of his desk… only to see a familiar silver design on an inconspicuous cover.

Upon picking it up he lines it up with the hole in his circle, only to realize this disgustingly old book with no title and no author fit into the puzzle like a glove.

A dim light glows as all 132 books are assembled and arranged. The spines then suddenly creak open, pages fluttering in unison as each book opens to different page numbers all painting a picture of an old abandoned mine that Deimos didn’t recognize immediately, but given the right time, he was sure he could find it.


Find it he did, and he was shocked at how grossly underprepared he was for dealing with a bunch of crazy cultists. The half dragon groans in his cell, examining the other cells to see if he was the only one dealing with a steaming pile of bullshit today.

Across the room from Deimos, stirring from her own cell, Dana groaned. Seems she wasn't the only one to run into this cult, only to get locked up. How kind of them to show mercy to her when she'd killed one of their members outside the mine, and slipped in with one of their robes. Seems the scent of fox musk and the mauve stains of gooified cultist betrayed her presence... let alone the burn mark left in the back of the robe.

Running into the cult in the first place? Well, it seemed they were scarce and secretive enough to avoid giving themselves away in the first place. Most successful cults were. Some weird stuff had been stirring up in the closest settlement to the mines though, and Dana wanted answers. Wasn't easy to press for information, in spite of that unpleasant happenstance. Dana wasn't sure if the local cops were prepared to do a raid on such a cult, or if they just didn't care. For all she knew, there could've been a mole within the force from the cult. Or they could've been in on it wholescale. Some recent phrase about bastard cops having credence.

Whatever the reason, Dana took it upon herself to hound for intel. Archives broken into and escaped from, weathered old weirdos talked to, people who knew too much after all intimidated. All of it culminated into a fateful day where Dana zapped one of the guards from behind, filched the robe from his body after it sloughed apart into slop... and inevitably got caught just a few minutes into her infiltration. She hoped that at the least, they didn't realize her confiscated blaster fired superheated magic.

Cheesy as it was to ask, the groggy fox couldn't help but speak up and say it to the new prisoner. "So. What're you in for?" Maybe it was the musty nature of the mines throwing her scent off, but there was something... off about how this human smelled. A waft of something strange to him. Probably nothing; the cult had plenty of strange-smelling reagents to begin with.

"Yo, bang any harder th'n that and yer gonna off yerself", she groaned, getting off of her threadbare cot and padding to the newcomer. "The intent of those asshats be damned, you killin' yerself wouldn't be good for either of us."