Quinn scrambled towards the basement workroom with its hellish (and mostly destroyed) forbidden magic circle. Or rather, he tried to scramble forward and instead pulled out of Xavier’s support. Unsurprisingly, Quinn pitched forward to get acquainted with the floor.

Faithful steady Zeren caught Quinn before he smashed his nose on the ugly carpeting. Stupid industrial carpet. The beige looked dirty even when it was clean and it was too short to cushion anything. Zeren tugged at Quinn’s shoulder, which made his injuries hurt. The pain slammed him back into focus.

Adam hadn’t slowed while Quinn made a fool of himself, though his pace was more of a pained power walk. Xavier waited to assist Quinn who proceeded at more of an urgent shamble than a scramble. He pressed the urge to laugh down. He was in no shape to do complex casting. What was he even going to do when he got there?

Stare in horrified wonder, apparently.

When Ingrid said that the roots were moving, Quinn pictured the magical strand of magic reaching out from the tree spirit to this location. Which this was. It was also actual roots.

The roots cracked concrete and broke glass as they pushed through the walls, floors, and tiny basement window to devour the room. The scene reminded Quinn of apocalypse horror movies where plants and animals took over man-made structures, returning everything to nature. The horror factor ramped up when nature was taking over fast enough to watch.

“Quinn,” Adam’s sharp voice drew Quinn away from the spectacle, though his eyes kept drifting back. “It feels like magic is moving. What can you and Ingrid tell me about what is happening?”

Adam’s spatial magic meant he was good at sensing distance and motion in relation to magic, but he wasn’t the best at flavors or effects without a proper spell to analyze it. Quinn was much better at freeform magic sensing, especially when it came to death magic, largely because he hadn’t come from as rigid a tradition of magic. Granted, Adam’s spells got better results than Quinn’s versions, but being able to do quick and dirty sensing helped in situations like this.

Also, Ingrid helped even more.

“Oh neat,” the little ghost said, “It’s drawing in the ambient death magic with spirit stickiness. Like water into a tree. The roots are eating the magic circle.”

Quinn looked down. Sure enough, the roots traced along the gouged up magic circle, erasing the remaining bits. Which was great from both a secrecy and clean-up perspective. And terrible from a safety perspective because what the heck did a tree spirit want with a forbidden magic circle?

When he looked back up, Ingrid was leaning back as if bracing against a strong wind. Her edges flickering towards the increasing funnel of magic in front of them.

“Back in the gem, Ingrid,” Quinn muttered, tapping his ghost gem to draw her in to safety before the funnel could get a proper grip on her. “Too much moving magic. Zeren?”

Zeren shook their head, standing solid against the pressure. The draw seemed to have leveled off, strong but not increasing. Zeren wrapped their hands--all three of them, because they had grown an extra one just to help--around Quinn to hold him steady.

“I’m fine,” they intoned. “My empowerment is sufficient to resist that draw.”

“Quinn?” Adam prompted, reminding Quinn that no one else could hear the ghosts.

“Right, uh. The tree spirit is eating the ambient death magic. And the magic circle. Drawing it up its roots like nutrient-rich water.”

Xavier blinked. “Is this nutrient-rich to a spirit?”

“Ah,” Quinn paused, thinking over what he knew about spirits, which was increasingly not as much as he wished he knew. “Yeah, probably. This matches one of the energies it’s tuned to.”

“Is that why it’s doing this?” Xavier asked when Quinn didn’t continue.

“I have no earthly idea,” Quinn answered honestly. ‘It’s a spirit. A tree spirit. They don’t think like people do. I don’t know what they do think like, only that Riordan called it ‘alien’ after he talked about it.”

“Should we stop it?”

Quinn shot Xavier an are you crazy look. “If you have a method, then by all means, go ahead.”

Nothing Quinn could pull out of his ass was going to stop this without making a whole lot worse. Stopping it would result in a thick concentration of death magic right there and likely some sort of reaction from the process of yanking the power away from the roots. Assuming he even could compete with a greater spirit like that, which Quinn was in no condition to test.

Xavier opened his mouth and then closed it again, staring. The impeccable young man looked rumpled after their disrupted day--still better than Quinn and Adam’s tattered state--and Quinn spared him a moment of sympathy. Clean-up could have moments like these, but this situation felt less like clean-up and more like an active case. Quinn doubted Xavier saw many of those; his specialties were too valuable to risk on truly dangerous work.

Instead, Xavier was the guy that everyone else came to when they needed a custom solution to their weird specific problem. Quinn had no doubt that, given enough time, the man really could come up with something to block a greater spirit from a task.

“Let it work,” Adam declared before Xavier got beyond looking intensely thoughtful.

“Really?” Xavier asked. Adam might lack prestige and rank, but he had earned respect as a seasoned field agent. Xavier was at least smart enough to listen.

“This spirit acts out of concepts of wishing to exist peacefully in nature and to protect the dead. Something spurred it to act. We’re not in a position to stop it. The immediate results appear in line with our goals. So, we let it work and observe.”

Adam followed up that declaration by sitting down near the doorway to the workroom. He sat fast, on the edge between sitting and collapsing. Quinn thought that idea was lovely and joined him on the floor. Xavier looked between the two of them and the chaos in the workroom before choosing to remain standing. That was likely wise. 

The roots stayed inside the room, making an intricate knotwork of wood that slowly obscured the doorway and everything beyond. Quinn had an urge for a drink or a smoke watching the spirit work, even though he partook of neither vice. It was just that sort of mood, seeing something so powerful doing whatever the heck it wanted. 

He wondered if it would pull the roots back when it was finished or if that room was lost forever to the spirit and its domain. How would that impact whomever took over this compound eventually? Quinn wasn’t sure who legally owned it--that sort of paperwork was all Vergil--but someone had to. And the place was too nice to let go to waste unless they failed to keep the magic from cursing it.

Quinn tried to lose himself in the image of this compound full of life. Adults hung out chatting in the community lounge. Children played in the courtyard. A group cooked in anticipation of an evening gathering. Laughter and light replaced the fear that had laid over these buildings like a sickness.

Then the roots rubbed against each other in a grating groan, jolting Quinn out of his fatigue and hope driven daydream.

“We need to figure out what effect this has on the tree spirit,” Quinn said. Xavier startled slightly at the noise. Adam remained focused.

“We’ll have to visit the tree’s physical body again,” Xavier replied. “Can you convince Riordan to assist us?”

Quinn snorted at that. “Of course he’ll help. Riordan may come across as a grumpy long-suffering asshole, but he’d give you the skin off his back if he thought you really needed it.”

“Don’t you mean ‘shirt off his back’? You’re mixing metaphors.” Xavier’s small smile softened the critique.

Adam huffed a barely breathed laugh, though his eyes never left the roots. “He means skin. Riordan is a bit of a masochist when it comes to helping others. He seems to think he’s only allowed to be a hero if it hurts him.”

The movement of the roots had slowed, leaving a knot of roots baring access into the workroom. Or the space where the room was. Quinn felt his eyes sliding off of the roots when he tried to trace the pattern of them.

“I can’t wait until this job is over,” Quinn whispered. “It keeps coming up with new crap.”

Adam shook his head. His eyes slid sideways as well and he finally looked towards Quinn. “The Department chose wisely in sending you here. This job needed you.”

Quinn revised that in his head to “still needs him.” He felt out of his depth, but at least he knew how to swim in these uncharted waters. He’d been doing that his whole career. The practice exhausted and energized him equally.

“When can we get to the tree?” Xavier prompted since his injured companions had gone introspective again.

Quinn’s initial impulse was to say “tonight,” but that frankly wasn’t going to be possible for anything less than a dire emergency. If there really was an issue arising at the tree because of this, they would need to be at their best to handle it. Tonight would be for resting, preparing, and also trying to track Gloria down.

Drika had attempted to do just that, hunt their escaped death mage, but reported that her trail was difficult to follow. She’d had to backtrack multiple times to find it because it cut repeatedly. She was having to follow Gloria’s essence as it was, which didn’t work well over long distances but held traces for good while. To have breaks in that trail boded poorly.

Quinn would have gone to assist her if not for the combination of being needed to reduce the ambient death magic and being too drained for physical exertion. He felt a bit frustrated, watching the tree clean up in minutes what they had been struggling with for hours, but his physical debilitation would have remained the same regardless.

“In the morning,” Quinn finally answered. “Barring new developments with either Gloria or the tree and assuming Riordan is able to come with.”

The roots had stopped moving and the death magic in the area had largely faded back into the regular neutral of ambient magic. The veiling of the spirit tree covered the room in increasing strength

“Great,” Adam said, rising to his feet. “It’ll be a field trip. I’ll be sure to pack juice boxes for everyone.”

Quinn laughed at his partner’s dry humor. “Be sure you do.”