7 In a storm of papers and flames

Julian clicked his tongue and rammed the bomber's picture back into his pockets. A town hall clerk shook their head and turned his attention back to the mountain of paperwork in front of him. Julian ruffled through his hair as he fell unto one of the many leather-lined benches in the town hall's entryway.

"This is getting us nowhere." Julian inspected his hair in the shiny marble floor's reflection and looked at the glass ceiling. The sky already coloured orange; they'd been going at it for over half a day now. And while he didn't even get to talk to half of the town hall clerks, Julian knew there was nothing to find here. He understood why. He'd seen about a thousand people enter and leave the town hall. It would be murderous on anyone's mind to keep track of every single face. The sound of clicking heels alerted the young man.

"Judging by your expression, I guess it was a bust on your end as well?" Carmilla brushed her long curling purple hair behind her ears as she flopped down in a nearby seat. She adjusted her glasses and rubbed her temples. The sound of her heels tapping on the marble floor drowned in the sea of noise around them. Even with the evening hour, the town hall was a busy place.

"Tell me about it. I went through more than 400 clerks, and none of them knew anything. So what's our next move? Still planning on pressing the train station's staff next?" Julian crossed his arms. His stomach growled, and he didn't feel optimal either. Walking around in a stuffy environment like this one really took it out of him.

"No, we'll have to think of another way. Gah, it sucks we can't ask the governor. I don't want to deal with any prickly questions right now." Carmila yawned and made her way towards the exit. However, when she got closed to the glass sliding doors, she jumped behind a cream-coloured marble pillar and tugged Julian into her shadow.

"Ow, what are you doing?!" Julian nursed his right cheek as he stood squashed face-first against the wall with Carmilla's hand pressing on his lower back. He followed Carmilla's gaze and saw a small group of stiff green uniforms marching into the town hall.

"Keep quiet and don't move." Carmilla pulled her hood over her long purple curls and intently watched the men talk to one of the reception clerks. After they had exchanged a few words, the clerk immediately jumped from her chair and guided the green-suited soldiers deeper into the complex. People who happened to be in their path dropped everything they were doing and scattered to the winds.

Their gazes inspected every nook and cranny in their vicinity. Luckily, the pillar Carmilla and Julian hid behind was quite a ways away from their path. However, in front of them, there walked a peculiar figure.

He had rust-coloured hair and preening golden eyes. He was immaculately dressed in a butler's uniform, and his strides revealed a confident gait. With one hand on his back and the other resting near his right hip, his coattails danced after him as he paced ahead of the soldiers. And his gaze went much further than the ordinary soldiers. Julian had no idea who that man was, but he didn't like him. The young man kept the rust-haired butler in his sight until the butler suddenly twirled around on the back of his heels.

Julian didn't have the time to turn his gaze, so he forced his head to remain perfectly still. He managed to adopt a forced curious yet fearing expression. However, the reflection of his face on the marble floor looked more like he was swallowing something bitter. Julian felt his body temperature spike when he noticed the man flash a weak smirk at him. However, it passed so quickly Julian was sure he'd imagined it.

After that, they rounded a corner and disappeared into one of the town hall's numerous corridors.

"What do you think they are doing here, Julian? Julian?" Carmilla faced her companion and looked straight into his cold blue eyes. She snapped her fingers several times, to no avail. Julian looked straight ahead at the point where the copper-coloured man disappeared into the hallway. Carmilla clicked her tongue and rammed her right heel directly between Julian's biggest toes. That seemed to snap him out of his stupor.

"Are you crazy?!" Julian bounced around on one leg as he clutched his right foot. Carmilla's right heel had smashed a tiny piece of skin straight against the hard floor and tore it in half. While it wasn't bleeding, it took everything Julian had not to scream.

"Comin' through, comin' through!" A figure rammed straight against Julian's back, who was still inspecting his toes for any sign of blood and bowled him over. A storm of papers spouted through the air as Julian came to a standstill against a potted plant.

As he reached for the plant's roots to pull himself back up, a couple of fingers coiled around his wrist. And Julian didn't recognize it as Carmilla's fingers.

Following a dash of adrenaline, Julian twirled to his feet and rammed his elbow straight forwards. He didn't wait for the result; in a fluid motion, he grabbed his gun and rammed the muzzle straight into the nearest hole. Which happened to be the mystery man's right nostril.

"Hang on, hang on!" The man's deep voice that shook Julian out of his adrenaline-induced stupor belonged to a young man. The man rubbed his budding beard as he looked at Julian's with deep brown eyes. His outfit didn't suit him as the delicate material strained to keep his impressive torso in check. However, the most unique feature was his ears. They were slightly pointed backwards with several silver-coloured earrings hanging from the underside.

An elf, Julian realized.

"Sorry. Slip of the finger." The young man clicked his tongue and put his gun away. The deep-voiced man let out a relaxed sigh.

"Oh, I thought ya were goin' to put a hole through my skull right then and there, I did!" The man's lips curled into a soft smirk which glid off his face when he noticed the sheets of papers all scattered about.

"Ah! No, I need to get these to the administration!" He panicked and immediately huddled to the ground. He scuttered about like some kind of overgrown dog and picked up almost all of the papers. Carmilla took one good look at the sheets of paper.

"We'll help too. After all, it's kind of Julian's fault that you dropped them." The purple-haired artifactor adjusted her glasses and walked to the furthest piece of paper. Before she grabbed it, she intently studied the contents.

Smart move, Julian thought.

He turned around and grasped the first sheet of paper underneath his shoes. On it, there were some numbers. Big numbers. Julian never followed lessons in accounting when he was still in school, but he knew it was some kind of receipt between two stores. Or rather, two persons.

One was an Elvish name Julian didn't bother to comprehend; most Elvish words were too long. He never understood why they made them so dreary and long-winded. However, the other na me was human.

Boreas Fletcher, the paper said. The human name also had a strange imprint in the background which looked eerily similar to Gromwell's flag: a mountain of coins with a quill and a contract resting on top.

"Hey, y'arent supposed to read that!" The burly man snatched the piece of paper and crumpled it into a small cardboard binder. Julian noticed something with the man's fingers.

Such rough fingers, he thought. Not at all fitting for a butler. And then those muscles… Julian frowned, as various thoughts spooked through his head. Suddenly, the copper-haired butler from before emerged from a nearby shadow.

"Edward? What are you doing here?" The same copper-coloured man appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Julian squinted and inspected the man. Wrinkles crusted his face and moved along with his lips. He wore the same uniform as Edward, but it looked far better on him than on the Elvish man.

"Oh, the Master had asked me to return these files to the city's administration," Edward clutched the papers tightly against his broad chest.

Julian frowned. Did Edward just stutter? Julian inspected the Elvish man. Despite his seemingly relaxed posture, the blood drained from Edward's face. His smirk slowly fell from his face as the copper-haired man glared straight into his eyes. It was a cold gaze, but not unkind.

"…I don't think I need to remind you what happens when you fail to live up to the Master's expectations?" The copper-haired man looked down on the shivered, taller Elvish man.

"N-No! Please, I will do my absolute best!" Edwards booming voice echoed throughout the town hall as he clutched the papers close to his chest and ran off to the nearby finance administration.

"I swear, that man…" The copper-coloured ruffled his hair before his gaze fell on Carmilla and Julian. He flashed a kind smile and took a quick step towards the two Artifactors.

"Are you the two people Edward ran up against? I am terribly sorry for his behaviour. My name is Remy, by the way. A pleasure to meet you." He extended a velvet-gloved hand. Carmilla gently returned the handshake and Julian did the same. Even if his forced smile was blatantly obvious.

"Nice to meet you too…" Julian murmured past his lips. His frowned eyes drilled straight into the man's scarlet ones. However, the butler didn't flinch. In fact, his smile only grew more prominent. With a polite nod, he took a step back.

"If you would excuse me, I have still matters I need to attend to. I hope your stay in Gromwell will be a fruitful one!" With those words, the butler turned around and disappeared into the same hall Edward had gone in.

"Let's go, Julian. We won't get anything useful out of this place anymore." Carmila turned on her heels and walked to the exit. However, Julian's gaze remained fixated on the place where the copper-haired butler last disappeared.

He said that Edward ran up to them, right? How could he know that?

Julian shook his head to clear his thoughts and followed Carmilla into the streets. Since the sun had already passed underneath the horizon, the streets were bustling with casino-goers and pickpockets alike. It was like a night-and-day difference with the lifeless city they arrived in. Julian forced himself between a couple that clearly had too much to drink and couldn't keep their hands to themselves to catch up with his emerald-eyed companion.

"So what's next? Going to sleep. Or grabbing something to eat, I'm starving…" Julian patted his groaning tummy as various smells drifted in his directions from multiple food stalls. But Carmilla had other plans.

"Let's go back to the place where that body was. I want to check on something." The purple-haired Artifactor took off. Julian had to jog after her to match her pace.

They reached the place of the crime after a while of pushing through the gathered crowd. The body had long since disappeared, and the people walking past looked like they didn't even know what happened. Now that Julian thought about it, he didn't hear any news of a corpse found in the street. Not a single peep. Which was strange, to say the least.

"In here." Carmilla grabbed Julian's hand and pulled him into a nearby alleyway. She didn't give him the time to ask anything. The purple-haired Artifactor glanced over her shoulder. With no people nearby, she reached for her phone. A second later, a deep red hue pulled her into the other world. Julian rolled his eyes. He understood what his boss tried to accomplish, but he wasn't sure if they'd get more information out of their little trip to the other world.

He followed nonetheless—anything to get away from this cacophony of sound.

When he arrived, Julian welcomed the deafening silence under the scarlet sky. As his ears cooled down, he walked out of the alleyway and looked down the street. Or what was supposed to be a street.

Several buildings had been destroyed with their contents thrown all across the cobblestone pavement. Street lanterns lied broken on the ground with their cables ripped out as several fire hydrants had caused a flood in parts of the long street. Carmilla clicked her tongue and inspected some rubble.

"Julian, take a look at this." She threw a piece of concrete Julian's way. The young man didn't need to take a closer look at it. The entire thing was steeped in some kind crystallized multi-coloured liquid. If rainbows could be turning into a drink,. This was how it would look. However, some parts that had completely dried out had already turned into the same powder found on the body.

Julian grasped the rock tightly as an old feeling washed over him. It was a whirlpool of hatred, anger and a dash of fear as he felt the powder in his hands. This was the stuff that made him chose his path in the first place…

"Those damn bastards…" He whispered through his teeth before he grounded himself with a simple deep breath.

"So murdered here and then brought back to reality?" Julian tapped his chin. That would've been the most logical conclusion, but he wasn't too sure with the destruction in the street. If the man had been murdered here, he had to be an Artifactor. Which meant he commanded an Artifact and acted as his gateway back and forth this world and reality. So why didn't he escape? As far as Julian knew, there were two ways to enter the scarlet-coloured world. One was through an Artifact which took you here. The other was being taken here.

The first option made no sense since the man could get to safety with a simple one-way trip back. The second option didn't make sense either since no one would use this much excessive force to kill a simple human. And then there was the matter of the absurd amount of that multi-coloured drug strewn around…

"This isn't making sense," Julian mumbled to himself as he walked around aimlessly, inspecting the rubble that happened to be lying in front of his feet. Something hard and metallic suddenly replaced the faint crunching of debris underneath his soles. He took a step back and reached for the wrangled material right in front of him.

BANG!

Instinctively, Julian jumped back. A second later, a bullet smashed into the pavement and flew past in a dash of sparks. The brown-haired Artifactor reached for his game controller and grabbed a small piece of concrete simultaneously. His Artifact glowed in an eerie deep purple and sent the concrete flying straight in the shot's direction.

"Julian, with me!" Carmilla ran past her male companion and jumped over a couple of fallen lamppost and shot some rounds. All of them missed.

Julian followed her and grabbed a large piece of rubble on the way. With a simple flick on his Artifact's joystick, he made the rock hover right next to him. Julian reached into his pockets and sucked on his inhalator. As the white powder settled in his lungs, he felt the result of his two-week training already. It was so much easier to control his powers.

Once a cloaked figure came into view, Julian flicked the joystick forwards once. The boulder immediately charged forth with the speed of a bullet. However, the figure jumped over the boulder and disappeared into an alleyway. Carmilla grabbed her smartphone and rapidly typed in a number.

"Calling concrete, raise the temperature without limit!" Carmilla's voice wasn't cold yet, or plumes of smoke appeared from the concrete. Bit by bit, pools of magma started flooding the perpetrator's on

"Shit!" Carmilla cursed her own weakness. Being out of it for two weeks really had taken her edge. She clicked her tongue and immediately dashed after the figure. Julian decided to test something new he thought of back at headquarters. He uprooted the nearest lamppost and smashed it into the concrete. He wiggled it back and forth so that the ground cracked even more.

"Transfer!" Julian retracted his powers from the lamppost and immediately repurposed them inside the concrete debris with those words. One by one, they flew past Carmilla who hadn't stopped running. The concrete landed in the broiling pool of magma, creating enough of a path for the purple-haired Artifactor to jump across.

"Thanks!" A few graceful jumps later, Carmilla landed on the other side of her magma pool. While she continued the chase, Julian took a different route. Transferring his powers from one object to another still took a hit out of him. He dashed into the road after the one Carmilla disappeared into and raced to the other side. When he arrived there, he found Carmilla frantically looking back and forth. Right next to her, concrete sizzled.

"What happened?" Julian ran towards his companion. Before he could take more than three steps, something splashed on his clothes. The blue-eyed Artifactor swiped his coat with his fingers as a piercing stench invaded his nose. It smelled familiar, like the smell permeating around gasoline stations…

"Shit!" In the distance, Julian saw the figure standing at a crossroads. In his hands, he had an oil lamp. The figure waved at the two Artifactors before a flame erupted from the light and set a whole trail of flammable oil ablaze. Its target: Julian. The brown-haired man jumped to the nearest house and slammed a nearby bench into the front wall. As the brick wall crumbled, Julian slapped the most extensive piece with his left hand.

With a flick of his Artifact's joystick, he slammed it straight into the ground. Once he made sure the concrete was stuck, he jumped away. The wild flames, who looked like they had a life on its own, burst in every direction as they smashed against the concrete. Julian luckily managed to evade the heat.

"Calling steel, raise the temperature in a line." Carmilla dashed through the flames, her gaze fixated on a set of steel lights hanging from a rubber-covered wire, right above the perpetrator. While the figure poured something in his oil lamp, one lamp melted into a lethal rain. Drops of hot metal dripped down before the entire lamp muddled into a scorching hot drop.

The man was prepared, however. He reached for something behind his back. In his hands, there was a nozzle with a small plastic tube leading to his back. He pressed a button which summoned a torrent of the foul-smelling fuel. The figure didn't wait for the fluids to hit the ground, however. He waved back and forth against the stream of fuel with the hand holding the oil lamp until it ignited. It quickly reached over thirty feet—more than enough to hit a running Carmilla.

"Calling concrete. Raise the temperature in a line." The purple-haired Artifactor immediately ducked down and let a piece of the concrete street sink. She melted the edges of a circle around her body and sunk two feet into the concrete while the fire raged above her head. After a few seconds, the torrent stopped. Carmilla looked over the edge just as a wall of flames erupted from the ground. The man had doused the entire street with his foul-smelling fuel.

Julian stormed towards him with a piece of concrete floating after him. He sent the rubble ahead of him, smashing a way through the flaming wall and dashed through the opening. The heat scorched parts of his eyebrows, but he bit through the stinging pain.

"All right, now between you and—Huh?" Julian rubbed his hair. There was no one on the other side anymore. The blue-eyed man glanced in every direction but didn't see any fleeing shadows.

"Right, he must be—" Julian focused his thoughts. A deep scarlet hue engulfed him and brought him back to reality. However, he was immediately flooded by countless people. He tried looking for anyone who might match the description of pyromantic lunatic, but he didn't see anyone. Once he managed to disentangle himself, he returned to the scarlet world where Carmilla waited for him.

"No good, huh?" The purple-haired Artifactor could read the result from Julian's face. As the flame wall died down, Julian turned his attention at Carmilla.

"I didn't know there was another squad active here?" Julian leaned against a cooling

"There isn't, we are the only squad here." Carmilla grabbed her molten glasses and threw them behind her, crushing them underfoot.

Great, Julian thought. A smirk flashed past his lips as a rush of excitement raced through his veins.

Now we are getting somewhere, his thoughts continued. Julian knew signing up with the Artifactors would bring him closer to his goal.