A small fragment this week because I’m feeling a little stuck writing it. It’s part of an idea that came into my head a while back, but fits in pretty late in the story. This started out in my head as normal prose, but it had some very obviously ludic elements so I leaned into that and found the idea sort of gently trending toward a place that’s somewhere between Psychonauts, Persona, Silent Hill and Disco Elysium, only slightly hornier. Anyway, we’ll see where it ends up.

Glass in hand, Ian took a step back from the bar. Some ways off, near the Dance Floor, he caught a glimpse of her. She hadn’t seen him yet. He wondered if she’d actually expected him to show up when she’d mentioned it. He steeled himself to make his way over and say hi. On his third step, he passed through the shadow of a wiry man in a leather shirt.

Ian swayed, almost knocked over by it. A wave of malice unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He stumbled away, looking for a place to sit. There was an open corner booth, secluded enough. He slipped into it. He tried not to stare, but took a quick glance at the wiry man. There was a sort of dark smudge around him now, almost like a thick black outline were traced around him. Ian gave a quick look around himself. The noise and crowd was its own kind of privacy. Not ideal, perhaps, but he felt a strong urgency that wouldn’t let this wait. He touched the mark on his wrist and traced out the Sigil of communication with his finger on the tabletop.

“What are you doing? We’re not expecting a check-in until tomorrow.” Ugh. He was hoping he’d get Keith back. Were they keeping them apart for some reason? Donna always sounded so judgmental.

“I saw something,” he told her. “By accident. And it’s weird.”

“I’m bringing your location up now. We’re not tracking anything in your area. Are you some kind of magnet for this? We’re supposed to be the ones sending you out. I’ve never seen anyone have two random encounters in a week, let alone three. Use the tracking sigil on it and we’ll follow up tomorrow. No point in causing trouble now.”

“It’s weird, though,” Ian told her as he drew the lines and swirls of a tracking sigil. “It felt a lot stronger than anything I’ve felt before. And now I’m seeing things.”

“Seeing things?” Donna asked. That her tone had switched from annoyance to alarm was not lost on Ian. “Seeing what?”

“Not sure. A kind of black halo?” He glanced back at the man. Something about his body language rubbed Ian wrong.

“Stop. Don’t finish the sigil,” Donna said forcefully. “You should get out of there.”

“What?” Ian asked. She’d been just a hair too slow; he’d finished forming the sigil as she’d spoken. Everything went sideways for a second as he was overcome by a flood of nausea and anger. The man looked up suddenly and… Was he sniffing the air? He didn’t seem to notice Ian specifically, but something had alerted him.

“He’s about to do something. I need to-”

“You need to stop and leave, right now,” Donna said, forcefully. “This isn’t for you.”

Before Ian could respond, he was hit by another wave of malice. Without quite processing how, knowledge forced its way into his mind. The wiry man, or the thing inside him, was hunting. Looking for prey. It was going to do- Ian physically recoiled at the feelings leaking from the black halo. The dark thing was looking toward the dance floor. Looking toward-

“No time. He’s going to hurt someone. I have to…”

“You can’t,” Donna demanded, but Ian was already tracing the sigil. “Bullocks,” she grumbled. Her voice was fading. “Hold on-“