SINGULARITAS ARGENTI

written by Ræl H. Bishop.

There are many horrors held within the Cabaret, things that would make most folk shudder. Cleansed skulls, fangs, amputated limbs, animate corpses... and these are just the clientele.

Most of them are decent people; some... you wouldn't give them silverware if they were in prison.

In an otherwise busy and active section of the corridor, sandwiched between the Aztec death whistles and the uranium glass, is a black, magical dome with the faintest imprint of a box inside. It's fenced off multiple times over. No one seems to go near it, and any creatures of the night who stand beside it seem to involuntarily jerk away. Even the crumbling sprites in the stonework seem scared of it.

Brennos doesn't want to acknowledge it. He merely tells the curious to pay it no heed. Most tend to.

Key word: most.

"No, I refuse! I'm not giving in to peer pressure."

Orwell stands an inch away from the red ropes fencing the box off, periodically eying the uranium glass with suspicion.

Already crawling under the velvet barrier, Maeve asks, "But will you give in to curiosity?"

He opens his mouth, then closes it. He furrows his brow, then his mouth, then he groans. "Oh, damn it!"

She grabs him by the hand and lunges him downwards. Crawling under the first set of ropes isn't a hard task, but the remaining five or six are tied together in endless knots that swerve in-and-out, yet seem to stay static between the stanchions.

Feeling pressured, Orwell tries fidgeting with these knots, only finding more and more rope emerging as he does so. As he grows tenser, so does the knot. Eventually, a loop gives way, and a dozen feet of rope flies out, knocking him prone.

Maeve pulls out a dagger and slices through the ropes. He soon follows behind.

"Sh-shouldn't we get gloves or something? We have no idea what's insi-"

Maeve responds by throwing a set in his direction. He's about 80% sure they're made of asbestos.

This is it, he thinks to himself. I'm gonna die, and it's gonna be at the hands of my cru- my friend dragging me to this black box in a place that's never even *heard* of OSHA.

-a hand emerges from the void and grabs him. He screams for a second, before getting dragged through the black curtain. A wave of colors rushes over his vision as he sees every inch of his body projected onto his eye sockets.

To the outsider, Orwell has been ripped to shreds. But inside stands the teen witch, ready as ever, and the teen prodigy, widened eyes pivoting like a comet that knows it's a bad omen.

Inside the dome is a sort of alchemitarium; various spells and wards scribbled in Theban, the language of the witches, alongside diagrams that include the very rock Maeve holds in her hand. She explains it's a geodesic magical barrier, the kind they had around gates to Atlantis, the inner sanctum of the temple of King Solomon, places where grimoires are disposed of, and, for some reason, a dungeon near Bengal.

He turns to see a single, rather plain black box in the center. It, too, has Theban inscribed on it. Maeve tries reading it aloud, only to discover it's written in Latin. Orwell can make out a word here-and-there of what she says from his own studies in biology and chemistry... he wonders why 'ar-ghen-tum' sounds so familiar...

Standing before this coffer, they take a deep breath. Orwell looks Maeve in the eyes. He's still processing their apparent de-spaghettification.

Back there, standing before the threshold, watching her vanish, his heart and mind froze as one. Nothing else in the world mattered. The exams, the classes, the labwork, the big city, his home life, the Appalachians he grew up in, the seeming omnipresence of his own death... they didn't matter.

All that mattered was Maeve.

She nudges him on the arm; he comes to.

"Huh?"

"I said, are you ready?" One already in-place, she puts on her other mesothelioma-causing glove.

He thinks for a moment. "Guess it's too late to back out now."

"That's the spirit!"

Her hand lifts the lid, and finds no resistance; it seems to be made of... wood...

The contents of the box are so strange, so bizarre, she can't help but laugh. Orwell tilts his head and scoffs.

"This is what they're afraid of? A bunch of forks and knives?"

He derisively picks up a spoon, genuine silver, complete with tarnish here-and-there. It seems very old. The others in the box seem equally mundane, albeit varying in age. There's all manner of silverwares here; plates, dishes, goblets, jewelry -- Maeve pockets a ring for later -- vials of the metal, daggers, even statuettes from cultures neither of them have seen.

"...was it something I said?"

As Maeve exits the dome, Orwell feels a chill down his spine.

He knows exactly what this chill is. He doesn't need to turn around to see the enormous macabre patchwork of fur and flesh behind him.

"Acquiring contraband, I see?"

Orwell would learn a very important lesson that day, as Brennos lifts the two of them off the ground and as Maeve tries explaining their situation to her increasingly tense guardian...

Never show the undead silver.

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