Magum Imperatoria, Part Twenty-Seven

From the records of Lord Hudson

The locus at the cult was corrupted, and feeding too much power to the cultists. It had to be decommissioned until this matter was under control. It simply couldn’t be allowed to continue playing a role in this investigation if we expected to resolve it effectively. I didn’t tell the others the plan, of course. Matteson knew his part, but he didn’t need to understand what I was going to do with it and I didn’t have time to explain anything unnecessary. And the others…well, I don’t know how much Alice even understands about magic yet, and I know how badly the other two would react to the idea of neutralizing a locus. I knew the damage from doing so would be much more widespread than we needed, but the ley network will recover in a matter of hours, drawing energy from other loci. It was a price worth paying, even if they wouldn’t see that.

I could sense the presence of Benedict and Akshainie as they lingered in the house for a minute or two after stepping into the spiritual realm, but I didn’t concern myself with them. Soon they were gone, and I was able to focus on the task at hand. The concept was simple enough; tracking spells usually look for some kind of trail to follow, and all I had to do was isolate the trail formed by the specific magic used by the cult. I drew from my pocket a trinket I’d pulled from the body of the cultist I’d interrogated. It was likely this small runic inscription was meant to be destroyed when his body was—it did appear to be made of a flammable material after all—but since he wasn’t clothed when he died I still had it. Once the ritual was set up, I used it to isolate the magical signature he’d been using and seek any trail it may have left.

At first, there was too much noise. Between the recent spell and all the magic flowing along the ley line, I could barely make out anything specific. But magic using this much power is uncommon, and if I could just get a lead in a direction different than the ley lines I would be able to track movement. So I waited, and focused, and after a while I started to get a vague sense of what I was looking for. I stepped outside of the house, and was able to see a fuzzy path. It was too fuzzy and wide to reliably trust for tracking, but it pointed me in a general direction, so I took a few steps along, checked my watch, and waited. If I had mapped out Matteson’s travel time properly, and my studies on what would be required for him to silence the locus were accurate, things would change within the next few minutes.

​Sure enough, four minutes later, I felt the ambient magic in the air shatter, and the line before me suddenly came into focus in the lack of distracting energy. In the distance, I could see pillars of light, no doubt marking the location of concentrations of Nechashic magic; the cultists. I smiled, ran to the car, and made my way to the closest beacon. It would be hours before they would go dark, but only hours. Now was the time to strike.

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