Scarlatti Web.

I took a bit out of my snickers and chuckled at ... at what- what was I-

I felt the sweetness in my mouth and the stickiness in my hands.

I squeezed and felt the crinkle of the wrapper.

Looking down I saw a snickers bar in my right hand, a grocery bag in my left. The clothes I was wearing .....

Wasn't I wearing swimming shorts?

And ....

Where's Yue?

What...wait.

No. Was that all a dream?

All eight of those years....wives ... children... powers...

Was it all a lie? Some long ass, hyoer detailed daydream?

I made a hand gesture, trying to summon my eldritch whip.

Nothing. Not even a spark.

I made another hand gesture, trying to freeze the melting snickers bar.

Alonso's reverse thermogenesis.

A simple spell to reverse the temperature of something.

But the snickers bar didn't freeze. It didn't even cool down, just melted a bit more under the heat of summer evening sun.

I sighed and tried to recall the blueprints of my inventions. Their physics. The properties of materials. The process of creating them.

And I could easily accomplish that. The knowledge flooded my mind.

It all checked out.

It wasn't a dream.

The details, the formulae, the math...

They were too detailed, too well founded to be fake.

In cases like these it's best to backtrack your steps.

So let's see....

Where was I?

Where was I-

I remembered where I was last I recalled.

At the swimming pool, exercising the Traveler clone alongside Yue. In the world of Magicians.

Suddenly it all clicked into place.

I was under a spell.

A spell I knew fromt he show. One that was supposed to target Quentin.

The Scarlatti Web.

A two person cooperative spell that traps the victim in a dark prison of their own mind and making.

In the show, Julia and Marina cast it on Quentin, from Julia as revenge for abandoning her to the hedge life and from Marina as means to infiltrate the campus at Brakebills so she could get back her memories of learning here that were taken from her upon expulsion.

Why?

Because there's only one way to break the spell. Summoning a Matarese from the underworld.

And for that, the impenetrable wards around Brakebills need to go down.

When that happens, Marina can just stroll into the campus and take what she wants.

A truly devious strategem.

Shame she chose to victimize me.

She chose the right moment too. When I was swimming and had no protections on. I had even taken off Narya, given the ring if powers' tendencies towards betraying their users, being those of Sauron's make. Especially in water.

And I didn't want to lose the ring to it's own stupidity and then waste my time trying to find it underwater.

That was my mistake. Even warded as it was with my personal scheme, the pool wasn't safe from the Scarlatti Web spell.

And now my life was in danger.

Why?

Because this spell has likely spread to the other bodies via our psychic link.

And that means my Monster Clone which exploring Reisen Grand Canyon in Tortus, a place where magic is suppressed by over 90 percent and deadly monsters roam the area, for the Reisen Great Labyrinth, the next dungeon that contains thr Ancient Magic : Gravity, is in grave danger. The battery on it's forcefield is strong but it won't last long.

And since I'm currently not thinking in a conscious state, and my psychic reserves aren't large enough to revive from complete digestion over and over again, if it's eaten, it won't revive at all.

That'd mean weeks of work wasted and one body down.

And once it dies and revives and dies and revives, likely in the stomach of some monster, it will exhaust my psychic reserves meaning my other bodies won't revive from death either.

Sure, it's probably not going to happen, anythime soon, since my forcefield is hella strong and was on a complete charge this morning when I left, t doesn't mean there's no risk. The longer I'm in here, the higher the chance of death.

No doubt Marina was behind this. She probably wanted revenge for messing up her day that one time.

For humiliating her in front of her subordinates.

She wasn't the top bitch in New York for nothing after all.

She had to re-establish her dominance after that display of weakness earlier.

"Man, I make up some wild day dreams." I said out loud to myself and chuckled, trying to assuage the rising tide of existential dread I was feeling and simultaneously checking to see if someone had intentionally done this and was secretly spying on me.

This was the closest I have come to dying since I became immortal and I am not letting some uppity hedge bitch do me in!

And whatever people say, paranoia is sometimes a blessing.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a caucasian lady sitting in a car parked some ways from me.

A lady I knew. From a tv show.

Julia Wicker.

This bitch. I could feel the anger rising within me.

I wanted to walk over and choke her to death right now. But I didn't. I needed to make sure she went and told the staff about the spell so Henry could help save me.

She was looking around, confused when I walked over.

She probably didn't recognise me. I looked different in the real world after all.

But she soon would.

Biblically.

I did some quick calculations as I knocked on her window and smiled evilly.

"Hello there, Julia Wicker." I said, reaching out to her as the world of my mindscape shifted around us, twisting into the weapon of my desire, a hellish landscape and my skin peeled off, eldritch horrors pouring out from within like a gushing wave of a tsunami.

Time to pull a page out of Rick's book.

.

"So he just fell asleep? While swimming?" Dean Fogg asked.

"Yes! He...I don't know what happened...but it can't be natural. So I checked and ..." She handed the ward disperser to him.

"See for yourself." She said.

He looked it over and Yue showed him how to put it on.

He followed her instructions and his eyes narrowed under the goggles.

He continued to fiddle with it while the rest of the crew just sat around tensely watching on.

"I know I shouldn't be saying this but....he was packing heat." Margo broke the silence with a whistle, eyeing the unconscious man's groin.

And she got a dirty, murderous glare from Yue in return.

"What? Don't be so possessive. It's not like I'm trying to steal him. Just having a look. And it's not my fault it's practically on display under those thin swim trunks." Margo argued.

Not that it helped ease Yue's worries.

"I don't understand how this happened. Doesn't Jay keep up that paranoid warding scheme of his 24/7?" Eliot asked.

"That's why I'm worried. It's something powerful if it managed to get past the wards." Yue paced around the room nervously, the tears in her eyes only overshadowed by the barely contained rage within them.

"Or it's voodoo." Alice interjected.

"...voodoo?"

"Sympathetic magic. Requires something close to the user. Usually genetic material but something they touched is okay too in some cases.

With sympathetic magic you can overcome most warding schemes not meant for defending against this specifically." Alice explained.

Yue bit her fingernails, nervously, trying to remember if Jay had mentioned something like this, but she drew blanks. And she had a photographic memory when it came to Jay. She hung on every word, every inflection, like a woman possessed. And she committed it all to memory.

It was her cherished time with the one she loved after all. She wouldn't forget a single detail.

And now....now someone had hurt him.

She feel the rage boil within her.

Her beloved.

Her Jay.

The only one that mattered to her in the whole wide world.

Worlds now.

How dare someone try to take him away?!

She would punish them for it. She would burn them alive....no. Flay them and boil them....no.....the burning bull, yes...and then just before they die she'd pull them out and stake them through, feeding them slowly to crows and pigs. Even that was too little, too merciful.

She resolved to find better methods of torture once he was back with her.

Just then door to the office burst open and Penny stormed in, Kady following right behind him, looking around the room, rubbing his temples until his eyes landed on Yue.

She looked up at him, and his eyes went wide in fear.

"You're one twisted little girl you know that?! Burn them? Flay them alive? What's wrong with you? I could hear you from the fucking garden. Two psychic students fainted because of this. And who's this they? Did they kill your puppy or som-"

It was only then that he noticed the body laid out on the couch.

"Oh." He muttered in realisation, "Shit. Sorry."

"It's good that you're here Penny."

Removing the headset, Dean Fogg addressed the rest.

"His mind is trapped in a spell. I need you to go in and find out what's happening to him and see if you can find any clues."

"Hold on why do I have to do this? I don't even know the guy."

"Do it, now." Yue ordered, charging a spell to threaten him when Dean Fogg held her back.

"He saved your life from the Beast Penny. It's the least you can do to return the favor." Dean Fogg reminded him, "It might be our only chance at saving him." He added.

Penny fell into thought for a moment, considering it when Kady stepped forward.

"Please Penny. He helped me out too. Just once..."

Penny sighed.

"Okay. But I'm not responsible for anything after."

"Of course." Dean Fogg assured him.

"Alright." Penny agreed, and sat down on the floor in a meditative stance, focusing on Jay.

Then, no sooner had he entered, did he exit, confused.

"He's not in there."

"What?" Yue exclaimed.

"Yeah. It's just some woman. Julia Wicker."

"Julia?" Quentin muttered in surprise.

"And she's just.....crazy? Broken? She's... she's something alright. But no sign of him. Just the crazy woman."

"Did she say anything? Does she know anything about what happened?" Yue asked, desperate.

"No. She just kept repeating, something about a monster. Begging him to spare her. And she's sorry. Just over and over again. Looked very, very scared. Shat her pants too, it looked like." He explained.

"What is happening here?" Eliot asked, thoroughly confused.

"You tell me pal." Penny just raised his hands in the air.

Just then a phone rang with a generic ringtone.

But no one picked up.

"Who's is it?" Margo asked, "Quentin?"

"Oh right!" He fumbled, pulling out his phone.

"It's from.... Julia?" He read out uncertain, as he picked it up.

"Took your sweet time, dipshit." A voice came from the other end that was certainly Julia's, but the tone....not so much.

"Hand it over to Yue before you fuck it up for me. Chop chop."

"I think it's for you, Yue?" He handed her the phone.

"Hello?" Yue answered.

"Hey, partner. Listen up. I have something very important to tell you and I don't have a lot of time...."

__________________

The extra chapter for keeping the fic in the top ten as promised.

And the plot thickens!

MC falls prey to the Scarlatti Web and makes a truly Rick escape.

And next time, Marina finds out the cost of doing business.

Til then, thanks for reading and bye~