There’s a company that’s been there since the first spirits rose from the dead. There, when the first monsters rose to terrorize the weak. There, when first alchemists developed the art of enchanting.
They called themselves the Company, and the band of brothers traveled the world, hunting down those who terrorized the weak and storing cursed artifacts away. Their network of warehouses, agents, and outposts expanded as the centuries past. Kings, queens, emperors and presidents all found themselves working with the company. In the old days, nobles sponsored them. Now, senators and congressmen. They’ve kept the world safe for thousands of years. Their methods of recovering artifacts and punishing the wrong hands have been carefully developed. They fight the black market, swearing an oath to lock all the bizarre away.
Unfortunately, I don’t work for the Company. I’m the polar opposite- I’m the black market the Company so wishes to crush.
My name is Quentin Lorreno. I’m somewhat of a middleman in the criminal underworld. I mediate the crime families, I arrange diplomatic marriages, I keep things civil.
But above all I host auctions. Art is a tastefully wonderful medium of laundering money, and hosting both underworld- and legal auctions is kind of my speciality.And I also recover and sell cursed artifacts.Long before the business was mine it was my father’s. And before him, it was his grandfather’s. This lineage continued on and on, and I traced to somewhere either in the heart of Italy, or some backwards village in Britain.I couldn’t be sure.
“I’ve come with a warning,” Corelli announced, opening the halls of the place, shouting. “And a gift.”
I stopped out of my office, suspicious. Sure, Corelli was taking back her power and protecting the world. “I thought we were done, Corelli.” I pointed out. “You’ve retrieved the last of your cursed paintings.”
She raised her hands, telling us she was no threat. My team rushed in. We didn’t believe her. “What can we do for you?” Steven asked.
I noted a suitcase near her feet. I also noted she’d come alone, no guards this time, not like the previous times. “What’s in there?” I demanded. “Where are your guards?”
She laughed, and slid the case over to me. “My guards were Painted Men.” This came as a shock. I thought all the Painted Men were dangerous, vicious things- but then again, we’d only encountered one.
Aster reached into the ether, eyes growing wide, skin, pale. “Don’t open it!” she warned, shrill. The force of whatever was inside the case weakened her, and Matt caught her as she fell. “It’s more powerful than anything- I-”
Aster collapsed. Steven set himself to work on a healing spell.
“What’s in the case?” I questioned, inspecting it. Great symbols of an unknown language covered it, carefully painted by an expert’s hand. “Another painting of yours.”
She laughed at that too. Clearly there was something we weren’t understanding. “It’s all the paintings- I crushed their power and turned them into one.” She gestured for me to open. “It’s safe, not to worry.”
I looked at my team, then at the briefcase.
I opened the case, witnessing the marvel that was inside. It was a single painting, rolled trapped beyond a glass frame, symbols carved into the shield glowing, fighting back the sheer power of the art.
It was incomprehensible- no, it was alive. The paint swirled and formed distant lands and dreams. It painted demons and angels. It lurched out and fell back in, needing to be free- kept back by only the finest of enchantments.
“Great Keon!” I swore. “Why have you brought this here?”
Matt came over, observed and shook his head. “Get that thing away from us!”
I closed the case and slid it back to the immortal artist. “No,” I told, “I don’t want this ‘gift’. We’re not selling this to anyone.”
Corelli slid it back over. “You misunderstand,” she argued, “I don’t want tis to be sold. You’re the only people who have faced my work and survived- I am entrusting you with my masterpiece.”
Steven finished the spell, and a rejuvenated Aster sprung to life. “Then take it to the Company,” he pointed out. “I’m sure they can keep it safer than us.”
She only shook her head and faced away, ready to leave. “I don’t trust the Company. Too much bureaucracy. No freedom.” Steven weaved a spell and the door slammed shut.
“No,” Aster snarled, “take this monster back with you!”
“We’re not letting you go without it!” I concluded, closing the case and locking it shut.
“You’ll even need it against the Company,” she foretold, shaking her head.
“Why?” I demanded. “I don’t want this thing here!”
She faced us once more and stared with a solemn, wisened look on her face. “Oh, my sweet, summer children,” she quoted, sitting down on the floor, crossed legged. “Remember that the Painter only goes after those who dream.”
And with that she melted.
Her clothes and skin became oily- paint. Her skin turned to wax, melting away. Her face contorted into nothingness and she collapsed, slowly, one limb melting away at a time.
Before any of us could react, Isabella Corelli, artist of the world’s most dangerous artifacts, was a puddle on the floor of our lobby.
Only a spiral of color was left. “Is she… gone?” I wondered. “Did she leave- or is she dead?”
Aster touched the spiral of color. The paint didn’t stick- no, it was embedded within. “I… I don’t know.” She pressed her hands against it. “Nothing here. Just a sense of… nothing and yet- a feeling of hope.”
“I-” there was a certain quality to the air now, something rustled our spirits and enlightened our self, “I feel it too.”
Matt touched the spiral. He nodded.
Steven, however, had his suspicious. He ran up a flight of stairs leading to the alchemy room, and observed from above. “It’s not a spiral,” he noted, shouting. “It’s a symbol.”
We followed him up the small group of stars and watched. Yes, it seemed like a spiral; the paints were everywhere and thin, distant. But on further- farther inspection it was a face.
The face of a woman, neither old nor young, screaming in agony. “Corelli!” Matt gasped. “She’s-”
“Dead?” I finished.
Aster had a more complete view through the ether with the complete picture. “No.” I held her as she dissociated into the beyond. “There’s a yellow door- and something beyond it.” Her skin grew colder as she witnessed. “It has her- she’s both a slave and free.”
“What it?” Steven asked. “Can you see?”
Aster’s temperature dropped drastically. I was about to tell her to cut the connection before she cut me off. “It’s marvelous! It’s painting the world- so many arms, so many-”
Aster choked. “Get out!” I ordered. “Cut the connection- Steven!” my assistant spoke the dead tongue and chanted.
The psychic rose up into the air, levitating off the ground. Her skin and clothes rippled like waves, and- “You would Witness me?” a voice, bright and unnerving, cried. “Who has summoned me?”
I stepped back as tendrils of paint erupted from Aster’s mouth- but it was too late, and the tendrils wrapped around my head.
Suddenly, I wasn’t in the auction house. I was in a field of green, high up in the mountains. The sun shone, the clouds drifted. In the center of the field, Corelli painted, a picture I could not see.
I felt a weight upon me, “Get off- Aster?” She embraced me, terrified. “It’s going to be okay.”
In front of us, paint rose from the ground, and the swarm of color merged into an ever-changing flow that seemed nearly human.
“Do you dream?” it asked, tilting its head. “Do you wish to change the world?”
I remembered Corelli’s words about the Painter. “No! I want to go back- with my friend.”
One of the being’s four arms reached out, and a finger touched my head. “You lie.” It thought more. “You wish for peace between humans and Stetski. Survival for the fair-folk. Dreams to uncover the sins of your father.” It receded the hand. “You would deny the gift of art? To change the world?”
“The ability to paint monsters to life isn’t what I’d call art,” I snarled. “That’s what you gave Corelli, isn’t it?”
The Painter merely laughed at that. “I merely gave herself the tools she needed.” It gestured at the woman, smiling and painting in the distance. “She chose to bring those horrors into the world. And now-” visions of the past sprung around us, “she has finally changed what she wanted to, so long ago.”
I saw her as a little girl, in the ages so long past. I saw her older, a gift given to by the Painter. Things I could not quite fathom. Reasons I understood, all too well. “Is this the end for her?” I asked. “Is she dead?”
The visions faded. “This is paradise. Nothing is ever truly dead.” The Painter stepped back, and sat down, folding its four arms together. “I offer you the gift to change the world yet again.”
“No,” I replied. Sure, the gifts it had given Corelli had worked. A cruel suitor, killed by the face of god. The Painted Man, created to defend her against a witch-hunt. But her paintings were also used for evil by those who found it. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
It sighed, breathfully. “Khysteus of the White Door has fallen,” he murmured, a hand scratching its chin. “I need an avatar on the solid plane.” It pointed at Aster.
“No,” she rebutted. “Send us back.”
It sighed, weaved a circle with its paint and we were back in the House, terrified, but relieved. Aster was by me, safe, and a floating painted form remained in the air.
“I am the Painter of the Blue Door,” it introduced. “Reach into the Blue Door should you seek to change your mind.”
And then the entity fell into the floor, and disappeared. No paint stain, no great artwork. The painting of Corelli shifted to that of happiness, oddly.
“That was,” Steven murmured, “an experience.”
“You were there?” I asked, confused. Only Aster and I had been there. Matt looked at us in confusion. “What did you see?”
“All your father’s secrets,” he said. I told him about the Painter’s offer to change the world. “It told- showed me everything.”
“I need to know,” I pleaded. “I need to-”
The lights flickered, dimming into darkness. We all stood silent, afraid, and then the Conduit kicked in, and the emergency lights emerged.
Basked in red, we waited intently. A piercing siren rang through the building, like needles through skin. I paced down the stairs, and into the office.
My computer flashed a warning, from a program that I hadn’t ever seen.“Warning,” Matt read, nervous. “Company Seven Detected. Initiate System Lockdown?”
I clicked onto the security camera app, and just as the warning had told, there they were. Three black vans, and more arriving by the second.
Agents with uniforms, a VII stitched onto them, got out, priming their rifles, spellbooks.
They had come with battle in mind, a battle we would surely lose. Steven swore.
The day had finally come. We’d crossed the line, broken the code. And like hyenas to prey, they came to kill.
A middle aged woman stepped out of a van, more patches on her uniform than the other. She raised a megaphone up and shouted, “House of Lorreno!” She waited, directing her people. “We have you surrounded! Come out peacefully and into our custody. We give you sixty seconds.
”I tapped the PA system and spoke into the microphone. “We don’t want trouble!” that elicited a reaction, one of cruel laughter from the woman. “We’ll give you whatever artifact you want- all of them.
”She waved over a soldier, one I recognized was my smuggler and information- Canopy. “I thought he was on our side?” Steven hissed, angry. “He told us he’d rather work for the market than them!”Canopy took the microphone then.
“Quentin, Aster, Steven,” he paused, thinking, “Other Guy.”
“Really?” Matt sighed.
Canopy began, “Listen, you guys aren’t bad people, and you know the artifact trade is host to deadly people. And you know we have the power to cut you down, right here and now.” Canopy waved an agent over, who emerged with a rocket launcher. “You’ve broken the Doorway Act of 1738: no person, Human, Stetski, or otherwise may make contact with an avatar or servant willingly.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, confused. We had done no such thing.The woman snatched the megaphone out from Canopy’s hands. “Listen here, Lorreno.” She said my name with vile disgust. I recoiled. “You’ve made contact and worked for Isabella Corelli, avatar of the Painter not once, but two times. The artifacts of Corelli must be stored safely or destroyed- and we know you have them.
”“No we don’t,” I lied.
Canopy took the megaphone. The woman whispered something into his ear. “Listen here, friend.” He sighed. “Breaking this law is punishable by death, but Chairwoman Manson here has offered you a deal: life in a maximum security prison under our control.”
Manson took back the device. “Now, come out- or we blow your little auction house to bits.”They threw the megaphone on the ground and started to ready the agents. I looked to my team for help. I, for the first time in many days, was truly, and utterly terrified.
Steven shook his head and patted my shoulder. “It’s a bluff- they wouldn’t risk unleashing anything we have in here.” I switched over to the warning popup. “Your father never trusted me with his secrets. But if we live through this- I’ll tell you everything the Painter showed me.”
I clicked on the popup. System lockdown was initiated. The lights began to fade in and out, signaling a lockdown.
A click fell into place, and the entrance to the auction house erupted in a wall of flame, and I audibly gasped in awe. Symbols on the wall, long enchanted burst to life, bolts of energy finding us and blessing our bodies, making us stronger, healthier, more powerful.
Walls of flame burst through other entrances, even the office door. But as we neared it, it vanished, allowing us access.
“I suppose this was one of my father’s secrets?” I asked, touching a symbol.“I suppose so,” Steven answered. He picked up the briefcase from where I’d left it, and we passed through flame, heading into the armory.
I found my weapons. Steven found and uploaded spellbooks to his phone. Aster reached deep into the ether and called upon the spirits of her ancestors. Matt simply loaded his rifle and selected some additions.
“Ali’s backpack,” I reminded, taking the infinite backpack off a shelf. “Grab anything useful- it’s time.”
“Time?” Aster puzzled
I sighed. “Time to abandon home,” I explained. “We can’t out fight the Company. We’re going to have to do the best we can- even if it means we choose violence, and run.”
We stood there, silent.
The auction house, for us, had been a place of rest. A home, to some of us, me included. This was the only stable place I’d truly known, despite the weirdness and chaos that came with it.
For Aster, her decision to join the House was one made for freedom. She’s been locked in captivity as a traditional Canary, subjected to dangerous artifacts and offerings to forgotten gods.Steven had served her long before me. And though my father never quite trusted him due his closeness to the fae, he’d seen the full potential of a well run House, and the secrets of the past.
I didn’t know much about Matt. He’d been part of the Guild of Arken, an ageless group dedicated to killing monsters. I suspected the cruel, unforgiving punishments they meted on even peaceful ‘monsters’ were the reason he left. I suppose the House was his odd way of a better life.The doors in front burst open.
A shout, and the fires were gone. “This is Canopy!” We stepped from the auction room and headed down the stairs, making a beeline to the Conduit Room. “Surrender now- or face the wrath of the Company!”
We passed through the halls, stopping to check within each room and stuffing the most prized of artifacts into the ever expanding backpack. A trinket here, a gauntlet there.
“You!” an agent yelled, gun pointed at us as we turned from a storage hall. “Hands in the air!”
I raised my hands but kicked the shelf, causing it to tumble. “No, I don’t think so.” We fled the scene as the spells broke, unleashing terrible curses we didn’t wait to see.
We reached the Conduit Room. Steven turned levers and switches, locking us inside, a blast door closing, enchanted symbols glowing.
Matt panted, tired, gun pointed at the door. “Is there a way outta this place?”
Steven waved at the conduit, and a symbol cast a map of the underground layer into the air. “I can make us a path!” And he started to rearrange the rooms- and the walls, floors shifted as the entire facility moved.
“Woah!” I gasped. “This is a thing?!”
Steven frowned. He waved again, and dots erupted- red for the Company, green for the House, and purple for any unleashed spirits. “They’ve got the entire building surrounded.”
“So we can’t go outside,” Matt snarled. Outside, the agents began to knock on the blast door, and then we heard chantes as they began to dispel it. “Plan B, Steven?”
Steven paused, searching through the map. “It’s on here,” he told, “but one of the things your father never told me- that the Painter did,” he used his magic, and an extra room appeared on the far side of the underground. “Is that room. There’s an artifact-”
Aster reached into the ether- and the new, once-hidden room. “A Stetski archgate!” How, exactly, my father had one of the most elusive pieces of Stetski technology, I was looking forward to hearing.
Steven nodded, confirming. “I can prime the archgate-” the spells on the blast door receded, “but we’ll need to fight our way there!”
The door lifted, slightly, and a sphere was tossed in. “Lightsphere!”
Steven raised his hands, and webs of light appeared in the air as the sphere exploded, the blinding light catching into the net.
Canopy, flanked by six agents appeared, guns pointed. “This is your last chance, Lorreno-” Steven collapsed the net, and the light burst forth, blinding the green-haired man and our enemies.
I deactivated the blast doors, and the one behind us opened. We ran through it, Matt firing at the mechanism, bringing it down.
It wouldn’t hold them for long.
I stopped in my tracks. “Wait!” holding the bag, I suddenly realized something. “We forgot Ali!”
“Damn it!” Matt swore. We’d locked the owner… somewhere. “Let’s worry about him later.”
“Agreed,” me and Aster concurred.
Gunfire erupted behind us. I drew into a bag, found a strange looking idol, ripped off the protective label and threw it.
A golem, rocky, angry, and powerful emerged. A Company squad appeared, firing at the golem. No matter: this was not our business.
Steven cast the map- we were just a few more halls away.
I tripped, falling, and found myself staring at the room where we’d found both skeleton and mimic. Steven had moved it there, apparently. “The bones!” I shouted. This could be important. “Get the bones!”
Aster reached out, and the bones came flying into the bag, as well as the broken telephone and the box we’d trapped the mimic. I looked at her, amazed. “That book really came in handy!”Two Company agents appeared in front of us, spellbooks in hand.
They casted fire at us, but Steven found a rib, one the Stetski Jim had paid us with and shouted unspeakable words. A bolt of red struck them both down, and they writhed in pain.Four came behind us. Steven turned, one hand with the rib shooting bolts, the other casting bright magic reminiscent of that of the fae.Everything, now, was coming in handy.
The battle continued on. More agents seemed to emerge from the woodwork the closer we got. And through sheer luck (and Steven’s raw power) we managed survive, finally coming across our main storage room.“Across this room- that wall-” Steven pointed. “Just run through it!”The room looked large, and the path to safety seemed like an eternity away. But we could make it, all of us. I was sure.
So we ran, running faster than I had ever run before.
“We’re-” we arrived at the wall, about to cross the it- “what the-” time seemed to shift around us, and we were back on the far end.
Canopy was in the center of the room, reading from a book, holding pistol aimed in the other. “Little trick I picked up from Maisie Krylov and the God of Time,” he informed. “I’m serious now- it’s your last, final chance.”
I practically hissed at my once friend, turned enemy. I guess he’d been reporting on us all along, waiting, watching until we finally crossed the line. “Come on, Canopy. For old times sake?”
He shook his head and spoke into the radio. “Kyran, Rainie, send your teams to my position.” He smiled at us, content. Was Kyran, the one we’d encountered at Newhall in on it too? “I’ve got them.”
Steven raised the rib, read from his phone, and fired a bolt of energy. Canopy did the same, orbs of power swirling from his spellbook and meeting the bolts midway.
Matt and I fired, only for his magic to reduce our bullets to ash. Aster reached into his mind. No effect; he was too well trained.
But Steven seemed to win, building up more bolts that neared Canopy, and one- BANG!
Canopy fired his pistol as a bolt struck him across the chest, sending him flying. Steven yelped and I saw blood leak from his stomach. “Steven- heal yourself!”
He grimaced and picked himself up, heading to the wall. “Damn it- it’s-” I heard the march of the other agents approaching, “enchanted steel. It’ll take- not here.”
We passed through the wall, and the entire thing disintegrated, revealing to all- even the Company a small room, computers lining the sides, three skeletons with phones in their hands, dead.
“What the hell?” Aster snipped. “More of these?!” The phones started to ring, already beginning to whisper.
In the center was the archgate, a large, ring-shaped portal inscribed with ancient Stetski words. Before it was also a coffin, filled with the glimmering skeleton of a long dead holy Stetski.
“Steven- the gate!” Matt reminded, eyes trained on Canopy, the man starting to recover.
The magician, wincing, began to chant, and the words of the gate began to light up.
“You may escape,” Canopy snarled, gathering his things, taking a step back. “But she’ll always find you. Chairwoman Manson always gets what she wants.” he looked around as he backed into Company men fast approaching. “We’ll follow you through the gate- chase you across the world- all to keep everything we hold dear safe!”
I couldn’t really blame him. From his point of view, we did do some really shady activities.
The archgate exploded to life, the empty center opening into a field I’d seen before, one near the city we passed every time we left. I sighed in true relief, fear leaving my body.
“I never wanted this, Canopy,” I pointed out, backing away.
The agents burst into the storage room. “Never should’ve gotten into the business,” he chided. Aster passed through the gate, then Matt, and me. “One last chance- or the next time.” He mimed a gun at our heads.
Steven backed away, and collapsed. I went back in from the field, ready to drag the old man away.
“No!” he shouted. “Back in the portal!”
I puzzled over it, confused. “But you-”
He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “I have to close the portal. Your father-” the agents began to fire, and he cast a quick protection spell, “left a book with all his secrets in the House of Stet’Ren. Find the Stetski, Ren- and you will have your answers.”
“Steven, can’t you-” he shook his head and with a wave of magic, pushed me back through the portal. “You’ll die!”
He stood, now, facing the wrath of the company. “Only works from here, kiddo.” I suddenly realized he’d snatched the briefcase out of my hands. “And I’m about old enough anyway.”
“What are you-” Canopy burst, as Steven unlatched the briefcase.
Steven faced death at the hands of the Company. But he’d take as many as he could with him- the lines had already passed into war.
The shield failed, and twin bullets pierced him. “You want the Corelli?!” he snapped, opening the briefcase.
“No!” Canopy growled, running into the crowd, out of the room. “Look and you’ll die!”
He raised the glass up into the air- and the dozen or so agents, thinking he’d cast a spell, fired at it, shattering the glass and freeing the masterpiece. “Come get it yourself!”
And the thing from the painting burst in heavenly light, and the agents of the Company stared, entranced, taken by the view of the unheavenly art. And they melted away, turning to oil and wax, fading into puddles of paint.
And though Steven did not witness, coils of paint encircled his wrists, and soon, he too, began to melt away.
He whispered a final blessing to us, closing the archgate and leaving us alone, only with each other for company.
The fact that Steven had stayed behind to save us hit Matt first. “He’s dead,” he murmured, falling onto the grass. “He’s really gone.”
Aster reached out into time and space, hopeful. But nothing. “He’s- at peace. One with the Painter.”
Steven had raised me, cared for me, served me. And now, he was gone. Everything I’d known was gone.
The House of Lorreno had been taken by the Company, seized by an agent watching us all along. Nothing left in our possession, our debt to the Stetski Crime Families unpaid.
Kimber Manson, Fifth Chairwoman of the Company was after us now.
She’d fight us to the death, tooth and nail. There would be no escaping here. Only battles, one after the other. And we had to survive too, out of a job, only with the artifacts we’d grabbed as coin.
But though we were in dire straits and lost but for the tiniest sense of hope, we could survive.
I had my father’s book to find. A reason behind the mimics and the bones. An explanation for the things he left hidden away. A generational debt to certain Stetski to pay.
No, this was not the end of the House of Lorreno. There would always be more.