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As soon as the door came into view, my eyes were on it, taking in every ounce of detail I could. The double doors themselves were made of what I could only imagine was bullet-proof glass. Heavy, thick, durable, and entirely out of place amongst the inviting revolving doors of the nearby restaurants and hotels.

Beyond it I saw two men, almost identical to the two guys tailing us. These two were just as big, just as stocky, and just as well dressed in their black suits. I was sure they had guns tucked away under their suit jackets.

It was the sunglasses they were wearing that pushed them above the guys behind us on the ’are you even trying to blend in?’ scale.

Sunglasses?

Indoors?

At night?

I would’ve found it funny if they hadn’t been so damn intimidating.

They weren’t the only peculiar thing about this entryway, though. The first thing I noticed was, the space behind them was entirely dark. A single, yellow light lit up the entryway, but beyond that, I couldn’t see a thing. No reception desk, no lobby, no people.

The other weird thing was the symbol on the door. I almost hadn’t seen it—it was barely visible, but it was there: a crown sitting on a beam of light. The symbol of the Recondite family, the symbol of their holy order.

Neither of the men behind the door moved a muscle as Lucien and I rolled past. We put the door behind us, walked to the end of the block, then stopped, making it look like we were going to cross again, only we didn’t.

“Did you feel it?” he asked.

“I did,” I said, “That’s their temple, alright.”

“It feels like some kind of forcefield. That would explain why we can’t see into the windows... do you think you can break through it?”

“Break through it? Are you serious?”

“This is why you’re here. If there’s a forcefield around the entire building and you can’t phase through it, our operation is dead in the water.”

I looked around the street, finally settling my gaze on the giant building looming above us. “I… guess I could.”

“You hesitated.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, looking back at him. “I know I can phase through physical things; I don’t know if I can move through a magical, definitely lethal forcefield. I’ve never tried.”

“I don’t think it’s a lethal forcefield, otherwise any drunk idiot off the street who wanders too close would get zapped.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Look,” I took Lucien’s face in my hand and turned it around, “They’re all walking on the right side of the sidewalk. No one’s getting near that building, like they’re being repelled.”

“You’re right. I’m sure if we had broken away from the stream of people, they would have noticed us instantly—whatever is keeping them away doesn’t seem to work on us.”

“So, they’d know exactly when a mage is getting too close for comfort…”

As a fellow magic user, I could only be impressed with the thought that had gone into their defenses. As an Ethera who was about to try phasing through these defenses though, I was shitting bricks.

“We shouldn’t underestimate them,” I continued, “Who knows what traps could be hiding behind that forcefield.”

Lucien nodded, turned around, and together we made another pass of the front of the building. I didn’t notice anything new this time, everything was exactly the same, only, when we reached the other corner of the building, he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the alley directly adjacent to the Recondite Temple. “Quiet,” he hissed.

“What’s going on?” I asked, as he tucked me into a nook behind a dumpster.

“Look…” he whispered.

The alley was long, and dark, ending in a wall topped with broken shards of glass. This looked like some kind of freight entrance, wide enough for a truck to slide in to deliver supplies, materials, sacrificial animals—whatever these people needed.

A single side door stood out from the rest of the otherwise entirely featureless wall. In front of it was a person… wearing a blood red robe. The robe looked ornate, it was covered in silver embroidery. Strange sigils and runes ran up and down the length of the robe, which was topped with a hood, of course.

Whoever that person in the robe was had just come out of the side door. For a moment I thought we were about to be spotted, but he threw his head back, and let out an exasperated sigh. A moment later, he pulled a packet of cigarettes out from inside his robe, lit one, and walked across the alley to a small collection of boxes sitting opposite the door.