September in Salus

September 3rd

 "You left him alone? Caelum!" Victoria paused in cutting her pancakes to throw Caelum an admonishing look.

"I didn't have any other choice!" Caelum said. "I couldn't relocate him along with me while he was covered in flames!"

Victoria pursed her lips. "I guess you couldn't." She stabbed a piece of pancake. "Where is Dom, by the way?"

"Dr. Nichols wanted to talk to him. I think this is a continuation of the interrogation. Putting him in the cell was the precaution, the bad cop, if you will. Now he's trying the good cop thing to see if anything else can be coaxed out of him."

Shaking her head, Victoria took another bite of pancake. "Poor Dom."

Caelum was about to reply when his phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket and turned it on to read the message notification. "Oh, ew."

"What's up?" Victoria leaned over his shoulder to read the message. "They want you to go on another quest? Didn't you just go on one yesterday?"

"Supposedly, they're all busy trying to figure out how Dom got into Salus. They don't have enough Council members to investigate the magical borders and go after threats."

Victoria frowned. "So they're making you do all the work?"

"Not really. It's just a normal part of my duties. Don't worry about it." Caelum scrolled down to inspect the details of the message.

Caelum, we have a suspected threat in State College, Pennsylvania. It's a bit far, but I know you'll be able to handle it. Thanks!

Caelum rolled his eyes at the thanks on the end. Like that made this any more appealing. Relocating to Pennsylvania and back would completely drain him, and that was in addition to exhaustion from fighting the threat.

It wasn't like he had any choice. Caelum pushed back his chair and got up, pulling his charys gun out of his bag.

"Good quest," Victoria said, giving him a reassuring smile.

"Good working," Caelum replied. It was a common Salusian exchange, a wishing of luck to the quester and an acknowledgement that the person remaining behind would work to support the quester by doing their own work for Salus.

Caelum dropped his bag off on one of the shelves in the lobby, then headed for the doors. Speed was of the essence with any magical threat, but Caelum couldn't stop himself from stopping a moment in the garden. He paused in front of the statue of the man and woman with their arms around each other and traced the inscription below their names. Justin and Camille Gray. After spending a minute with his parents' statue, he shook himself out of his daze and headed toward the Arch.

Magical law dictated that relocation into and out of Salus was impossible, as a safeguard against potential enemies. Though relocation within Salus was possible, Caelum couldn't simply relocate from the lobby to Pennsylvania. He walked through the barrier, stopping a moment to take in the city. It was still cast in the bright light of early morning, but it was alive and bustling. Even though he knew it was impossible for outsiders to see him relocate, he still looked around to make sure he was alone before taking a step forward into nothingness.

Caelum had gotten used to relocation by now, but it was still a disorienting feeling. He had the sense of being lost in an entirely empty universe as he was enveloped in complete darkness.

The next second the darkness vanished and he blinked at the sunny day. He appeared to be on a street of a college campus. No wonder Dr. Nichols had sent him here so urgently- some magical threats could be considered low-level, meaning that they were weak or in a place where they were relatively harmless. If a threat was in a highly-populated area, though, that could make if a definite high-level threat, something that needed to be dealt with as quickly as possible.