Chapter 118 “The Field of Fire”
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Thick plumes of smoke unfurled into the sky, flickering with intermittent flashes of fire. The streets were chaotic, filled with people running in every direction, their faces contorted with fear and their shouts urgent. Duncan’s eyes widened as he heard their alarmed cries.
“The museum… The Oceanic Museum near the Crossroad… Nina!”
His mind immediately turned to Nina, who had gone to the Oceanic Museum with her classmates that afternoon. The museum was near the Crossroad, exactly where the towering column of smoke was rising.
Without hesitation, Duncan sprinted toward the museum. However, he soon realized the challenges ahead. The smoke was visible, but the city’s labyrinthine, winding streets would delay him. Hailing a cab wasn’t practical either; public transportation was scarce, and no driver would risk approaching the blaze.
Duncan’s thoughts raced, but he stayed focused and composed. Assessing his options quickly, an audacious idea formed in his mind.
“Ai!” he mentally commanded, quickening his pace before disappearing into the shadow of a nearby alley.
A green, ethereal flame flickered briefly before dissipating. Ai, a mystical dove patrolling nearby, appeared, her wings gracefully fluttering as she descended to land gently on Duncan’s shoulder.
Duncan looked at the dove, formulating a plan. Ai had a special ability: she could transport physical objects through space while maintaining their integrity. Moreover, Ai had an incredibly large carrying capacity, never showing any sign of limitation in their trials and experiments.
Could Ai possibly transport him, a living being, directly to the museum?
The idea crystallized in Duncan’s mind, filled with audacity and awe. He had never attempted to have Ai transport a living person, and the potential risks were high. Initially, he planned to test Ai’s capabilities on an evil cultist—a fitting subject—but the urgency of the situation eclipsed those plans. Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise.
If he couldn’t find another test subject, Duncan was willing to offer himself—both body and soul—as the first living cargo. He had faith in Ai’s ability to carry out the task. Even if some unforeseeable force harmed him during the journey, his ability to reincarnate would provide another chance, albeit in a different body.
“I need you to make a delivery,” Duncan said, gently stroking Ai’s feathers. “Take me to the Oceanic Museum at the Crossroad—the one near that large white building you flew over earlier today.”
Ai cocked her head, her eyes gleaming with intelligence rivaling that of a human. Spotting the rising smoke, the dove quickly understood the urgency on Duncan’s face. “Are we embarking on an impromptu journey?”
“Just confirm whether you can do it or not,” Duncan retorted, impatience creeping into his voice.
“Let’s do it, let’s do it!” Ai declared with unwavering resolve.
Instantly, Ai flapped her wings with immense energy, erupting into a burst of ethereal green flame. The flames consumed her, transmuting her form into a skeletal dove of pure spiritual energy. The spectral bird soared upwards, circling tightly around Duncan. As it did, the otherworldly green flames seemed to consume him too, transforming his physical form into a streak of luminous energy quickly absorbed into a swirling vortex of fiery light.
Moments later, a pristine, snow-white dove emerged from the alley’s shadowy depths, its wings carrying it swiftly toward the ominous smoke plume rising from the Oceanic Museum.
Near the museum at the Crossroad, firefighters had arrived in haste. Given the museum’s prime location and public nature, emergency measures were already in place. Fire hydrants and emergency exits dotted the area, aiding firefighters in subduing the raging inferno. Some panicked visitors had escaped through side exits, now huddled at the plaza’s edge, visibly shaken.
Their conversations were filled with horrific accounts of the sudden fire that had consumed the hallways and galleries. People spoke of unexplained explosions echoing from within the building and strange, twisted shadows dancing in the flames. Some, overwhelmed by stress, claimed to have witnessed grotesque phenomena, amplifying the crowd’s panic.
Amid the chaos, a team of professionals was in motion. Priests and guardians from a nearby chapel, experienced in dealing with psychological trauma and mass hysteria, sprang into action. Two priests waded into the crowd, swinging censers filled with calming incense. Guardians began identifying individuals particularly vulnerable to stress, intending to offer immediate counseling and resilience assessments.
A few dozen meters from the frenzied scene, the air shimmered as a surge of green flame materialized in a building’s shadow. The flames spiraled into a tight vortex, giving the impression of a portal manifesting out of thin air. Duncan stepped out from this mystical gateway, the remaining green fire tendrils dissipating into the wind. Ai, back in her original form, fluttered her wings before landing softly on his shoulder.
As Duncan moved from the shadows, he noted this incredible new experience. Being “live transported” by Ai was unlike anything he had ever felt. Ai had chosen to “fly” him to the museum rather than execute the “instantaneous arrival” it usually performed when moving objects between Duncan’s antique store and the Vanished.
This observation led Duncan to conclude that Ai’s teleportation abilities operated on an anchor point system. When Ai teleported between the antique shop and the Vanished, the anchor points were “the antique shop owner,” Duncan himself, and “the captain” at the Vanished. But when Ai transported one of these anchor points—like Duncan—she couldn’t teleport instantaneously; instead, she had to fly through real space to reach the destination.
The experience of being “carried” by Ai during this flight was extraordinarily supernatural. Duncan remained conscious throughout the process, but his perceptions were somewhat distorted. Through the connection created by the ethereal green flames, he could loosely share Ai’s point of view—catching glimpses of the landscape from above and feeling the air currents rush past. However, these shared perceptions felt distant, as if obscured by a translucent veil, never as vivid as his own bodily sensations.
Duncan mused that this limitation was likely due to the fundamental differences between Ai’s avian physiology and a human’s, or possibly because Ai possessed her own will, preventing her from being completely controlled by him.
For Duncan, these questions were intriguing but not immediately pertinent. Unlocking Ai’s new form of “transportation” under such urgent circumstances was remarkable. Any nuances or limitations could be studied later. Right now, his primary concern was Nina’s safety.
Even though flying wasn’t as quick as teleportation, it still far exceeded conventional travel. It took Duncan only minutes to fly from a neighboring block to the museum’s vicinity. He could already see the horrifying scene unfold.
The museum, an elegant three-story white building, was engulfed in flames. The fire had consumed the first and second floors, even reaching the third. Dark, heavy smoke billowed from various second-floor windows, punctuated by periodic bursts of angry flames. Above the building, a pillar of smoke ominously hinted at more hidden fires within.
The scene suggested a gigantic column of fire had erupted from the ground floor, shooting upwards through multiple floors and possibly the roof.
Firefighters were on the scene, unspooling hoses from several hydrants around the square. Powerful jets of water aimed at the museum’s exterior walls, trying to lower the temperature and preserve the centuries-old structure. Survivors had assembled at the square’s edge, some consoled by priests, others nervously speaking with officials.
Duncan made a beeline for the survivors, his eyes darting as he scanned their faces for Nina.
Moving through the crowd, he overheard snippets of conversations. Survivors recounted their experiences in trembling voices, faces etched with disbelief and fear.
“…The fire just materialized out of thin air,” one survivor said, voice shaking. “It felt almost… supernatural.”
These accounts sent a shiver down Duncan’s spine, but he couldn’t be distracted. Finding Nina was all that mattered.
Survivors congregated on the square’s outskirts, faces etched with horror as they recounted surreal, terrifying scenes witnessed in the museum.
“There were ungodly howls—sharp, piercing sounds as if from hell, as if demons were mocking us,” one survivor exclaimed, eyes widened in disbelief.
“Listen,” another chimed in, shaking. “I saw a man horribly burned, dressed in clothes from decades ago, crawling out of a room. Even stranger, the room showed no signs of fire before he appeared. It was as if his emergence caused the flames!”
Duncan approached the frenzied group, scanning their faces for Nina. Among them, he noticed a man in the dark robes of the Storm Church, identifiable by his short, neatly trimmed black beard. The priest’s face was a battlefield of emotion, a maelstrom of worry, concentration, and barely contained alarm.
“The level of hysteria is extreme. At least one-third display signs of mental instability, as if touched by malevolent supernatural energy,” the priest spoke in urgent, hushed tones to a guardian nearby.
“Reinforcements from the cathedral will take at least half an hour,” the guardian replied.
“That’s too long,” the priest declared, eyes narrowing at the burning museum. “If there’s something unholy at the core, it could spiral out of control in minutes.”
Turning briskly to an attendant, he ordered, “Inform law enforcement to control the crowd; we have more pressing matters.”
In a fluid motion, the priest removed his ceremonial robe, revealing more functional black garments. He lifted the Storm Codex and began to pray fervently: “Bear witness! We forge ahead with determination!”
The guardians responded in unison, “Bear witness!”
Their collective voice resonated through the air as a faint mist materialized around them, swirling like a mystical ocean, wrapping each member in a protective shroud. With a unified purpose defying the chaos, the priest and guardians charged toward the blazing museum.
Duncan watched, awestruck by their swift, purposeful action, yet unsettled by the survivors’ accounts. If even half were true, what monstrous force were they dealing with? Most pressing, where was Nina in this calamity?
I hope Nina’s okay
Okay I think I have a theory. The fire is actually a city-wide anomaly, one could say that it exists as a plane separate from the space and time of the city in the present. A frozen moment where everything is being destroyed by flames, so Nina nightmares and the city lord visions are reality overlaps of the destruction of the “city at the moment of the anomaly.” That explains why that severely burned person and the museum fire appear simultaneously, it is a synchronization, a momentary union of the 2 planes. It also explains why Lorcan’s memory does not take place in the 4th district, it was probably in another sector of the city that was not “really” affected by the fire, another overlap of the events of destruction and containment.