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Previously On "The Otherworlders": At the Chancellor's Ball, Ava, Inez, and Fiona are in the middle of strategizing how they're going to locate the tablet artifact they've been tasked with finding when Gabriel Reneau, the Chancellor's son, invites Fiona to dance. Despite her inexperience and nervousness about being a Vampyr among a judgmental crowd of Enchanteds, Fiona is charmed by Gabriel's kindness and skill as a dance partner.
He reveals he's an Animatronic Mage, able to animate inanimate objects, and demonstrates his ability playfully during the dance.
Later, the trio kicks into mission mode and discreetly heads off to search for the tablet artifact. Inez senses ancient magic near a chapel door guarded by a snoozing gaurd. While Fiona approaches him to suss out where the chapel might be, another guard approaches Inez and Ava who are hiding around the corner.
Inez attempts a very difficult spell to deter him, which at first is successful, but the spell breaks when she celebrates her victory, prompting Ava to knock him out with a punch, showcasing the occasional need for a Shifter's brute force over and Enchanted's powerful but tricky spell.
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Inez bends down to check the guard's pulse. It's slow, but it's not like he's dead or anything like that. She straightens. "Help me get him into one of these rooms," she says to Ava.
She grabs his arms while Ava grabs his legs, and they drag the unconscious guard into the nearest open room and out of sight. Inez closes the door behind her, then locks it with a charm before they return to their spot, waiting for Fiona to return.
They peek around the corner just in time to see Fiona thrust her arm out, reach up, and pinch Guard #1 in the neck. After whispering a few words to him, the guard drops to the floor with a thud.
Hands on her hips, Fiona leans back and nudges the guard with her strappy heeled shoe, just to make sure he's still alive. He stirs groggily but doesn't wake up. So, with a frown, Fiona straightens and mutters, "Jerk!"
Ava and Inez rush over to her. "What happened?!" Inez asks.
Fiona looks up at them. "The dude definitely confirmed that this is, indeed, the chapel. But when I asked if my friends and I could take a quick peek at it, he said, Sure. I'll show you the chapel if you show me yourâ"
"Nooooo!" Inez gasps, her eyes opened wide like saucers. "He didn't do that. He didn't actually say that to you!"
"He did!" Fiona confirms with a firm nod. "So," she says, "I showed him what I thought of his proposition." Satisfied, she nods again.
"Awesome!" Inez exclaims.
Ava's relieved too, but she's also a little concerned. "He's not dead is he?" she whispers.
"Nah," Fiona assures her. "He's just in a really, really deep sleep."
"What was that thing you did, you know to get him to pass out like that?" Inez asks.
"It's a Vampyr thing," Fiona responds evenly. "Look, I promise, I'll explain how it works to you guys later. But he's only gonna be out for about another twenty minutes, so help me stash him somewhere, yeah?"
They carefully drag the unconscious guard into the same room as the other one, and after locking both guards in, they quietly slip into the chapel.
Inside, it's dark since there are no windows. There are also no electric lights as Inez quickly discovers. She spots a set of tall candles standing next to a plain altar and with a snap of her fingers, she lights them up.
The girls look around the space and take in the sparseness of the austere chapel. It looks like the kind of all-purpose, generic church room you'd find in a hospital or an airport.
The chapel only has an altar covered with a plain white cloth, a small prayer book, the standing candles on either side of it, six unadorned wooden pews, and a stained glass installation with a random patchwork of colored tiles set inside a white, wooden frame, hanging from the ceiling by a thin set of wires, and situated behind the altar, as if meant to suggest a window to the outside world.
"Wow, there's not much in here, is there?" Ava observes as she turns in a slow circle.
"No, there isn't," Inez confirms, knocking softly on the walls in the hopes of discovering a secret panel or something.
"No offense, Inez," Fiona says as she trails her finger along the altar and stares at the glass mosaic, "but I don't think I've ever seen a chapel so bland and plainly decorated before."
"Yeah. I know," Inez replies, still inspecting the space. "That's actually intentional. The person who had this chapel built must have been a Traditionalist."
"A Traditionalist?" Ava asks.
"Yeah," Inez says. "Traditionalists believe any sort of adornment in a holy space is a sinful distraction; therefore, sacred spaces should be kept as plain and simple as possible. It helps keep everyone's attention on the sermon."
Ava hikes her dress up to her knees, gets down onto the ground, and looks underneath the pews. "Inez, are you picking up on anything, you know, with your Sight and all?"
Inez moves to the middle of the room and closes her eyes. She lifts her arms up and focuses all of her attention on the energy flowing around her. After a moment, her eyes pop open. "There's something here, for sure. And it's close. I can feel it." She looks around the room again just to be certain she's not missing anything. "But I don't think the tablet artifact is physically in here."
Ava sighs. "So what do we do now?"
Inez shrugs. "I guess we check behind all the doors back in the hallway. Maybe it's in a different room, somewhere close by?"
Fiona grimaces. "There were, like, twelve doors in that hallway. We can't do that. It'll take us forever!"
"You're right. You're right." Inez agrees.
"And what about the guards?" Ava asks. "They've gotta be waking up sometime soon."
"Okay, okay." Fiona clasps her hands on top of her head and takes a last look around the room. "Let's think about this for a minute. I'm not seeing anything here worth stealing or protecting, so unless I'm missing something, why would you station a guard out front to protect a room like this?" She spreads her arms out. "I mean what's so special about this chapel?"
After a long, silent beat, the puzzle pieces suddenly click together and Inez says, "Because it's not about protecting this room as a chapel." She walks up to the glass mosaic and inspects it closer. "It's about protecting the chapel as a portal."
Fiona and Ava join her. "A portal to what?" Ava asks.
"A portal to the private family chapel," Inez responds. "You see, despite their public devotion to all things plain and unadorned, Traditionalists â especially rich Traditionalists â are notorious for having public chapels to keep up appearances, and private family chapels where they stash all their riches â rare paintings, expensive statues." She slides both Ava and Fiona a knowing glance and raises her brow. "Valuable religious artifacts."
Fiona tilts her head. "Okay, now, that's just sneaky. And kinda hypocritical too, to be honest," she says, not in an attempt to be insulting, just calling it as she sees it.
"Yeah, well, why let your religious beliefs get in the way of your love of expensive stuff?" Inez replies, rolling her eyes with a snort, well aware of how materialistic Enchanteds can be, especially since they don't have the lands, noble titles, or generational wealth Vampyrs do, and they certainly don't have the fundamental disdain for gaudy displays of wealth so central the Shifters' sensibilities.
Passing her hand over the mosaic window, Inez tries to get a sense whether there's any hidden meaning to the pattern embedded within it.
After a moment, her lips quirk up into a smile. She reaches out and lightly taps the colored tiles in a very specific sequence: red square tile, little white triangle, medium blue rectangle, big green hexagon, the medium blue rectangle again, and then the enormous yellow circle in the middle.
And suddenly the entire mosaic splits apart!
Each edge of the rectangular frame spreads out wide, while each glass tile hovers tenuously in the air, no longer touching each other, but still maintaining the same pattern as before. All except for the giant yellow circle in the middle, which has disappeared entirely, leaving an open pass-through into a long darkened corridor.
"Whoa!" Fiona exclaims in awe.
The girls look at each other, all coming to the same conclusion.
Fiona and Ava follow Inez into the darkened passageway.
They trail their hands along the cold stones to try and guide them into what looks and feels like a vast, empty void when Fiona nervously pipes up, "Um, hey, 'Nezzie. I thought you said this would lead to a family chapel or something like that. I can't even see my hands before my face, and this is feeling downright creepy!"
"I know, I know," Inez reassures her. She snaps her fingers and the two candles she lit up in the plain chapel pop out of their tall candlesticks and float above their heads inside of the tunnel.
Now that the space is better illuminated, Inez says, "There should be a door... right about... here!" She stops in front of a heavy wooden door with an iron barricade and three sets of locks on it.
"Oh, dang! Now we're in a pickle!" She takes a step back. "Not only does the door have all of this." She points at the bulky locks on the doors. "But it's also got a super-heavy locking spell on it." She purses her lips in frustration. "We'd need a really powerful Mage to crack this puppy."
Squinting as she looks around the passageway, Ava asks, "So, that's the only way in?"
"I think so." Inez replies before looking further down the corridor and spotting a faint light emanating from the end of the hall. "I think there might be another door." She points. "And it looks like it might lead outside. Maybe there is another way in."
Following Inez, the girls make their way down the hall and find this new door unlocked. They slip through it and out onto what looks like a large garden with lush flower beds, tall hedgerows, and a large stone fountain with three frolicking cherubs and a giant winged lion spewing water from his mouth.
When Inez looks up, she sees that they're standing at the base of a three-story stone tower at the back of the Grand Hall. She closes her eyes for a moment, and when she opens them, she says, "Yep. I'm still feeling it. Stronger than ever, in fact. The artifact is here, somewhere."
Ava looks around, more confused than ever. "Where? In the garden?"
"Nope!" Inez says as she takes a few steps back and looks up at the tower. There's a golden light emanating, like a beacon, from the room sitting at the very top. Religious insignias adorn the base of every window.
"Oh, you guys are just gonna love this one." Inez says as she points to the top of the tower. Ava and Fiona follow her line of sight. "The artifact we're looking for?" Inez says. "Well, I'm pretty sure it's right up there!"
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A/N: Hey All! If you're celebrating Thanksgiving, I hope it went well and that you're enjoying your holiday!
So, I'm just checking in. Folks have gone so quiet, I just want to make sure you all are still enjoying the story. ð
I know there are folks who are a full episode or so behind, but I thought I'd reach out for feedback anyways.
Until next week!
~ Paula â¤ï¸