Sell you a Bridge chapter 277

June 12th 2016 The Nightside 11:00 PM EDT

It  took us another hour or so to get through the rest of the hallway. Jim  was fine after the trip as expected, and after a minute to recover so  was I. We slipped through the wards and protections on the second level  with the eye, having to stop every few feet to deconstruct some horrible  death array or reverse summoning curse that would have dropped us into  an eternal abyss, and they got even thicker as we approached the room. I  had to jump us over two more spells even Jim couldn't crack, but  finally we made it to a thick dark wooden door that appeared to be the  Griffin's personal bedchambers.

After spending another ten  minutes cracking that bastard, we stepped inside. Once we were in, we  did a sweep of the room with the eye of odin, and when nothing came up,  we exhaled with relief and stopped to talk through our next step. To  make sure we were safe, Jim pulled out a hand of glory and lit up,  activating both the stealth based portion of the enchantment and the  part that kept thieving victims asleep and we were able to speak freely.  I turned to him with a questioning look. "Ok, there's no fucking  possibility that this paranoid maniac doesn't have wards in his bedroom  right? Because I'm positive if we step any further in here we're going  to die, but I can't tell how."

Jim snickered at that.  "It's unlikely he left this place bare given all the powerful  protections leading here. It's possible he ignored the room so he could  sleep without tripping his own wards, but I doubt it. Unfortunately, if  we can't use the eye we only have one other option here. I'm hesitant to  even ask." His voice sounded a bit distressed, like even saying the  words was hurting him. I could even here a ting of shame under his crisp  british accent.

Which was nonsense. I knew what he was  asking, and even if he hadn't I'd have suggested it. "Alright Atlas,  give us a shrug. You don't carry the weight of the world. I was already  planning to use my aura sight. No need to act like you failed some  important mission or something. It's not your job to protect me anymore  boss." He gave a polite cough that made me smile from how embarrassed it  sounded.

"I suppose." He said. "There may be some truth  to that. But it was still my duty to watch over you when you were  learning, and I failed to do so. I scarcely think I could live with  myself if something such as that occurred a second time. Are you sure  you can handle this? We can figure out another way if you can't. I'm not  sure how they hid the wards here, but there has to be a way to pierce  the obscuring effect without endangering you. This is hardly a place  where such risks should be taken."

I shot him a grateful  smile. "I'll be fine. I'm going to try to use my ability to modify my  aura sight temporarily so I don't get overwhelmed. I doubt it'll work  for long, but it should be enough to get a solid glance of what we're  dealing with. Even if it doesn't pick up anything, at the very least it  should help me learn more about my powers." Without waiting for him to  respond to that, I closed my eyes and reached for my power, for the lie I  was preparing to tell myself and the world around me.

It  wasn't a big one in the grand scheme of things, just a tiny bending of  the truth, but it would be important nonetheless. I pushed on my power,  modifying the shift in myself that I made so easily to turn on my aura  sight, and managed to flip it just a fraction of the way open. Just  enough that I could get a vague glimpse of what was before me without  fully immersing myself in the power. I levered open the part of my soul  that could see those things that weren't there just a crack, and  glimpsed the Nightside through my true eyes for the first time.

It  hit me like a brick. Even the vague, translucent outline of the forces I  was seeing, out of focus and distorted, were staggering in their  vastness. I forced myself to ignore all of that though. I didn't look at  the weave of power that sprawled throughout the manor and out into the  night, the truth of the Nightside so many had questioned and sought over  the years. I wouldn't be able to take that, even in this state. I  tugged on my power, focusing and shifting my inner eye like I was  adjusting a microscope.

Finally the room itself snapped  into focus, still vague, but more solid for the specificity that I had  imposed. I heard myself speak aloud, my voice as distance and remote as  it was strained. "The rug in the center of the room is cursed. It's not  visible because it isn't a free floating enchantment. The threads are  dyed in blood and woven into a specific pattern but it's inert. It works  like an unfinished circuit. If a living being steps onto it the circuit  closes and curse completes, but until that spark is provided it's just a  dead rug. There are a few secondary and tertiary defensive layers lying  dormant around it that would be triggered by the activation, but  they're mostly in the walls and ceiling, hidden behind shielding  layers."

I let the aura sight drop with a gasp, staggering  until Jim caught me. I used my ectoplasm to create a model of the  spellwork and let Jim take his time deciphering it while I let myself  recover from the absurd cost of the actions I had just undertaken. My  head was splitting, not as bad as when I glimpsed Taylor's gift by  accident, but pretty damn badly. It was agonizing. Still, I did recover,  and quickly thanks to my unique physiology. Once that was done I headed  towards the bed once Jim had finished taking down the wards.

The  Griffin, as one would expect from the paranoid nutcase, had also  strapped himself with some person wards, but they were physical shields  to protect from damage rather than anything to defend the spirit. A last  ditch defense he probably wore everywhere. Based on the aura I'd  spotted the shield would probably stop a nuke, but it wouldn't stop a  ghost, so I phased right through it and finally got my hands on him,  activating my clairvoyance so I could finally learn exactly where Neron  was hiding.

Unlike with Goltina, I did NOT deep dive into  the Griffin's subconscious and see the deepest representation of his  inner self. This guy was the crime baron of one of the most horrifying  places on earth, I didn't want to see the hidden depths of his soul.  Instead, I focused on memories. There were a lot of them. I saw the  Griffin, a young man, hungry for power but weak of ability. I saw his  years of work, striving to be the best, to get somewhere in life only to  fail. I saw his dive into the occult, searching for a patron, for  something to help him get to the top.

I saw his deal with  the being he thought of as the devil, trading his soul for the wealth  and power he now possessed, and I saw him luxuriate in the results for  decades. Then I saw the years begin to wane. The Griffin's fear of the  price of power, and his decision to avoid it. I saw him dive even deeper  into forbidden magics, hire people who did things that would probably  make me vomit later, all to buy him just one more day, then a second,  stacking them all until he'd bought years of life, stealing time from  the devil.

But contrary to his hopes, the years didn't  make him feel safer. They made him feel afraid. He knew who he was  cheating. He became paranoid, reclusive, hiding away in manor, terrified  that his former patron would come for him, would call due the debt he  never wanted to pay. He built this place to keep out the devil, it was  hard not to see the irony in me being the one to get this far. He  finally got so scared he tracked down his erstwhile benefactor to keep  tabs on him. I saw the files he flipped through, and the location they  listed. The street of gods. An old abandoned temple to a dark deity no  one remembered the name of.

I also saw something he  didn't, through my watching, something he missed because of how obvious  it was. There was no way any of this had done jack shit. Neron wasn't  being held off by these defenses, not really. He was leaving the Griffin  alone because he thought it was funny. Seeing this pathetic, poisonous  old man curl up and die inside with the life he bought at the cost of  his own soul, watching the fear eat away at his sanity day by day. The  Griffin wasn't heading for hell. He was already there. Neron just  decided to start things off early. If I hadn't seen the things he was  willing to do to keep his life and power I might have pitied the poor  bastard. As it was I just wished Neron the best. The Griffin deserved  every terrible fate the old demon could throw at him.

With  all of this handled I slipped out of his mind and withdrew my  incorporeal arm from the shielding, wishing I could take a shower in my  brain somehow. I walked back over to where Jim was. "Alright, I got it.  I'll fill you in when we get to Julian's though, I don't want to leave  the others downstairs alone for longer than needed. You prepared to jump  back down? Or do we need to retrace our steps to reset the traps we  took apart as we were getting through the hallways?"

Jim  gave a sigh of relief. "No, those spells are all powerful enough that I  was only able to make temporary gaps anyway. We would have to open them  back up. Just get us back down to the base of the steps. We need to  meet up with the others and leave. At that point we actually will have  some cleanup to do. Luckily we were able to avoid killing any of the  mimics. Those things are too stupid to be proper sentries, so as long as  they aren't dead we won't need to worry about them tipping the owners  to our presence."

He  flicked his wrist and the hand of glory went out before vanishing into  his cloak and holding out an arm. I grinned at him before closing my  eyes, focusing up again and then pushing us through the corridor of  darkness, straining to make sure Jim would be safe. I still wasn't sure  if a ghost would normally be affected, especially not one as terrifying  as Jim, but I figured it was better not to risk it, so I made the effort  to shield him despite it possibly being a waste of power to protect  someone who could easily be immune.

We  vanished into the dark before emerging at the bottom of the steps, back  at the side of the rest of our party, who were waiting tensely, eyes  scanning the house as they stood in a blind spot in the defenses held  open by Tommy and the traps we'd already disarmed. When they saw me my  girls hurled themselves into my arms, and I pulled them both close,  taking a moment to hold them next to me as I tried to repress all the  unintentional terrible shit I'd picked up rifling through the Griffin's  mind with clairvoyance. Then I pulled back, shooting them both a tired  smile. "Alright, that's all we needed. Let's get the fuck out of this  place." I wanted to go curl up in bed with my girls and sleep.