The Investigator and the Fury of the Fog

By Alberto Catellani

The eagerly awaited sequel to the The Investigator and the Case of the Missing Brain, The Investigator and the Fury of the Fog, has finally arrived.

A Breach, an event whispered fearfully by the reckless few. An act by which the Investigator may break free of Cloatos, to rampage upon the world. The prisoner of Cloatos and at the same time its Investigator, having finally broken free from the confines of the Gates. Such an event is impossible, unacceptable, and any hint of it must be silenced, or drowned in the fiery flames of the Burning Council's agents.

The steaming city of Osyr where the industry forges its weapons against the enemy in the war of kings has a problem. It is not the tentacles that drag countless people into the hungry maws of the Kraken by their docks. It is not the shrieking of the Mangulls, or the Lost souls that cry out in its darkest corners.

The rumors that spread through the city are the problem, and those that point to a potential Breach are worrisome to the extreme.

Yet the haunting memories of the Investigator are far more real than others might think, at least for Lyara de la Malinne, Investigator for the Burning Council who has to contend with a shadow of the monster of Cloatos itself. Her worst nightmare given form, and yet also her best bet in reaching the end of a seemingly meaningless hunt through the districts of Osyr, all to safeguard the city from the fires of the Burning Council.

There is only one problem in playing the game by the Investigator's rules.

The Investigator always lies, yet, perhaps, there is an even greater threat at hand...

...the risk of believing in his innocence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alberto Catellani
• Release date: Jan 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463961704

Alberto Catellani

Alberto Catellani was born on the 9 of March from the country that brought forth the greatest of inventions: the Road. We are talking of Italy, and he was born on a dark and stormy night at 3 in the morning. From a bright and early age, he wanted to write and once he found his grandfather's old typing machine, write he did. What he wrote back then is best left forgotten to the annals of time. Still, he keeps writing on. Known on the Internet as Shadenight123, and outside of it as someone with fifteen years plus of experience as a Dungeon Master capable of actually finishing the campaigns he starts, he has enjoyed a Classical Schooling, moved on to the beer-filled lands of Germany, and is currently attempting a Master level degree with, hopefully, a Ph.D afterwards. And in the meantime, he keeps on writing. Writing brings happiness, to himself and to those who enjoy his books and that, more than anything, is what truly makes him willing to write more and more. If you work at something you enjoy doing, after all, it will be as if you haven't been working at all.

Book preview

Prologue: The Mystery Of Life

The bubbling vapors rose through pneumatic tubes, twisted past complex and delicate machinery alike. They hissed into contraptions made of sinewy flesh and leathery parchment. The stitches held, glimmers of water dribbling down in puddles on the ground.

The whispering madness of the vapors resonated through the hall, filled with twitching, deformed human frames made of coppery tubes and thin, frayed wires. Empty glass eyes looked ahead, necks bent at unnatural angles.

Some lifeless puppets hung from strings, a few finished, others left as nests for hidden spiders, with tiny webs made of steel. The droplets of haze condensed and fell across the wires like shimmering pearls.

A whirring noise echoed together with sharp, shrieking moans. A cry for aid went unheard by the marionettes, who stared without judgment at the depravity of the act.

Skulls mantled with steel and whirring ticks of clocks nailed to the walls of a cavern of blood clacked and marked the passing of time, eternal champion of death. They stopped.

The figure stayed still. His breath short, his shoulders hunched, frail-looking skin and bones willing to snap by themselves framed a curved man. Blood soaked his fingers. Nails encrusted with pieces of arrogant flesh, the wrinkly lips marred by drops of blood and tears, he cried out for salvation.

The vapors hissed at him. They whispered words. They showed paths left unmentioned and unspoken. The blood boiled in his veins, the heat filled his chest. He ignored the jives and the sneers from the unknown shadows. He worked, forgetting all thoughts but those of the next step in his creation.

The steel bent, the bones shattered in powdery substances. The ribs broke, and the screams resumed. The agony did not end. Death was weak in his realm, but pain was a different matter. It was the only way for it to work. The only path that kept them safe.

Pain was proof that they lived.

He would give life to them. His children, all lost to the travesty of war, he would give them life anew.

Yet the vapors hissed furiously, they whispered of power, of greater things, of a glorious King. If he followed the King, he would obtain it all. It would take time, years and decades alike would swim past him furiously, but he would manage. The whispers assured, consoled, held him tightly in a morose embrace he wished not part with.

Sweat poured down into his eyes, it stung and hurt, the salt within burning harshly and biting into the skull, sinking teeth of agony throughout his body.

The thing he clutched in his hands twitched. Oil poured out from an open cage of wrought iron. The pumps wheezed, the twirling mechanisms shifted and stopped.

He had failed once more.

The lifeless, broken remains of the puppet did not twitch nor move. He screamed in anger as he pushed the object away from him. It clattered on the ground noisily, a sickening squelch of the broken organs that he so tenderly had settled into the frame, and that he now uncaringly wished to squash under his own boots.

He despised failure, and he despised his own failures above all others.

The metallic fingers of his right hand, drenched in the red coating of rust, twitched with the grating noise of metal on metal as sparks left it. He stumbled away from the altar of his failures, from the remains of his shame, and pulled a tube from the nearby wall.

The oily substance within sated his thirst, oiled his innards, bathed, and cooled his frame. The last obstacle was death.

Weak as it could be, despised and forced down into the depths of that unholy place, it was still an obstacle that brute force alone could not defeat.

The vapors aided him. They brought him further than he had ever been, but they were not enough. He needed more.

The vapors twirled and laughed.

In their mockery of his life’s work, they suggested a path.

Even if it meant the most dangerous of gambits, against the most terrifying of foes, he would have no choice but to take it.

He felt the pull of his own nature twist and rattle against the desires of his fleshy remnants, and he accepted without words, with nothing but a simple, straightforward thought.

The vapors showed him the way.

He accepted.

Chapter One: The City of Osyr

The guards by the gates were few, and none expected trouble to come to the city. The gates weren’t that big, but the stone walls, which circled around the city they protected, were a comforting sight.

They were a token defense, better than none, and with the war fought oversea, not that important to keep. In some parts, the stones had chipped, in others the blocks had fallen outright.

The guards weren’t the brightest, or the best, but they could wear an armor and not make a poor impression, and that was enough to give the citizens a feeling of safety.

One of such guards was playing cards by a table with mismatched legs, sighing ever so slightly as a Jack of Spades ended up eaten by a Queen of Hearts. His luck had run out a couple of games before, but he did believe in second, third, and even fourth chances.

Dreiglich, the man who was winning most of the pot spoke his name.

The Sergeant wasn’t a bad boss. He’d win at cards, but only enough to get that extra pocket money. He wouldn’t get an entire guardsman’s salary, not unless you were the kind of guardsman that made his life harder.

He nodded numbly and stood up. The rest of the conversation hadn’t happened. It didn’t need to happen.

Dreiglich had heard the noise too. It was easy to hear the crescendo of thumps. The creeping vapors of the Industry didn’t reach that far near the gates, and the screeching Mangulls didn’t fly too far from the sea.

He had grown near a farm, and he’d recognized the sound of hooves, multiple hooves at that, hitting the beaten path. They were in a hurry and coming from outside.

The wind carried the noise easily inside the armory, the lack of windows to cover the tower’s slits making the sea breeze a mandatory experience but allowing the guards to hear the noises from quite a distance.

It can’t be the enemy, he muttered. He’d expect an enemy force to forewarn in case of an invasion. He’d expect someone to realize a fleet stood in the bay. He’d expect a lot of things, like winning the pot at least once, but he realized his expectations were seldom right.

His eyes adjusted to the blinding light of the sun, one of the few benefits of being a guard by the gate’s walls, and then his eyes widened enough that the lucky winner of the pot said another word, one obvious in hindsight.

Trouble?

It’s not the enemy, sir, Dreiglich said by the armory’s window. The Sergeant shrugged. It wasn’t the enemy, it wasn’t a problem.

It’s the Burning Council, Dreiglich added, his voice slightly cracked. The Sergeant reconsidered his last thoughts. No, it wasn’t a problem.

It was a catastrophe.

He jumped up from his chair, threw the cards in his hand on the table, and then rushed out of the door without another word. A couple of Aces landed on the wooden surface; more than one had the same color.

Dreiglich followed his sergeant, and as he did, so did the other guards.

They reached for the gates’ base within seconds, and all stood ramrod straight as if expecting an inspection.

The Sergeant could see the stagecoach too now; it was coming at quite the speed from the edge of the forest, and the flames which burned atop the carriage were proof enough that Dreiglich hadn’t been drinking absinthe.

The Sergeant wished he had.

There was no one driving it, yet it moved. The two horses pulled it without fuss, following the natural bends on the road and without a sound from their mouths. The clopping of their hooves was the only noise the animals emitted, neither neighing nor screaming from fatigue.

The horses’ eyes were dead, and their manes made of teal flames. They weren’t real, just a product of magic.

It was ghastly, but the guards on the walls didn’t shudder because of the carriage, or its bizarre horses. It was because they saw what peaked past the edge of the forest, gleaming from the morning light, and standing tall upon a long banner of burnished brass and thick, red cloth.

It was a symbol which announced only a single purpose. It was a broken circle, painted in sickly yellow, and within it rested a dark, black mass of mouths.

The Burning Council had come to their city.

There was the risk of a Breach.

The guards didn’t dare move. The carriage passed by the gates without a word, not a single soul daring to stop it, or the occupants, from doing their business. Ever so silently, they went ahead and locked the gates.

Not a single guard dared to run.

They knew better than to try the impossible.

A loud noise reverberated across the air, and a ship led by a foolish captain willing to try his fate sank away from the bay, silently breaking in half. The Kraken’s near-infinite tentacles grabbed hold of the sailors and dragged them down into the depths of its hungry maws.

Pillars of salt linked with golden chains rose from the depths of the bubbling, frothing sea. Some of the Kraken’s tentacles oozed blood, pinned to the top of the pillars, but many more squirmed and squiggled, looking to escape.

Uncaring of the events, the Industry bellowed with the loud noise of its bells the start of the working day.

The large chimneys emitted vapors which fell towards the ground, rather than climb up in the air. They hid the sky and the sun from the people and made the darkest corners of the city a haven for things best left forgotten, and unfortunately lost to time.

Within the confines of the stagecoach, which moved through the vapors as if they weren’t even there, a figure quietly looked at another, smaller and covered in a thick cloak.

The plush sofas within the coach were velvety to the touch, the softness of the material and the warmth within making it the perfect spot to catch a quick nap. The smaller figure was doing just that, her face against the side of the couch. There was a peaceful, near-angelic smugness on the girl’s face.

The other’s burning, charcoal-like eyes kept staring at the first, her lips curled in disapproval, betraying her emotions.

We have arrived, she said. Her voice crackled like coals breaking and splitting, the rumbling of a fully-fledged inferno within her throat. A tiny tongue of flame left her fingers, blackened from soot and ashes.

It lashed like a minuscule whip against the girl’s face. A thick hissing noise spread through the carriage, a thin rivulet of fog forming to choke fiery lash with angry snarls, emitted by angry mouths stretched across the misty limb.

The second member of the Burning Council woke up with a startled cry at the noise, the tendrils of fog clinging to her skin like an overprotective mother.

You just had to wake me up like that, the second figure muttered, rubbing her eyes. She yawned ever so slightly before glancing outside the glass panel of the coach. Is that fog? she asked, her senses at once alert. Did the breach occur already? Are we—

No, the crackling one said curtly. It is the natural thing here in Osyr.

The first figure nodded, her eyes glittering with the color of the sky for a moment, before returning to their original verdant hue. I can’t control it. There’s nothing natural about it.

The city’s Governor likes to keep things under control with his own magic, the second one mused. He must be waiting for us with trepidation.

Flames spread from the top of the first figure’s head, coalescing into crimson, long hair. Remember you’re here on a trial run. Just investigate as quietly as you can.

Who do you take me for? the other figure spoke with a veneer of sarcasm in her voice. I’m not going to be a bother to your investigation.

Behave, Lyara, the crackling figure said. Her hands carefully grew rosy flesh, the form transforming into that of a beautiful woman, with soft curves to lose one’s eyes into and an emerald dress to contrast the fiery redness of her lipstick and the blood-like color of her eyes. Act in a manner befitting an Investigator of the Burning Council.

As you wish, Porfyris, Lyara replied with a roll of her eyes. I’ll just go build sandcastles by the beach, and then glass them with fire and flames.

The woman smiled. She plopped her chin on her hand, and as her eyes lit with flames, she pursed her lips. Do you remember what we are looking for?

Lyara clicked her tongue. Mysterious disappearances in the night, strange sightings of things in the vapors.

Porfyris nodded slowly, a condescending smile on her face which ticked Lyara off to no end. And why do we believe this to be a potential Breach?

We don’t, Lyara replied. It could be nothing; rather, it is nothing.

Porfyris nodded. There is no Breach. Thus, why is an army around the city?

Lyara sighed. To ensure the cooperation of the Unnatural in the city. Should they refuse cooperation, they will cleanse the city with fire.

The stagecoach stopped abruptly. Outside was a side-street filled with vapors as the rest of city. Lyara’s hand went for the handle of the door, but a softer hand intercepted her wrist.

Lyara, Porfyris hissed. Remember the only Law that matters. Nothing is real, until enough people believe it real. Her eyes hardened. And whatever the circumstances may be, do not take on an assistant.

Lyara’s wrist emitted haze, the contact between the two women’s flesh sizzling them both. Neither acted as if in pain. Neither bothered to break the hold.

Lyara’s eyes narrowed, and Porfyris’ own burned.

I have survived him, and his city, Lyara said coldly. I know the rules better than anyone else. I had them lashed on my skin.

The fog-like tentacles which sprouted from her back morphed into a cloak of shimmering, cerulean weaves, which soon began to pattern itself in a plethora of golden eyes.

Now, Lyara continued. Are you going to let me go?

Porfyris slowly opened her hand, and she pulled her arm away. The passage of the fiery woman’s fingers branded her skin with angry red welts, but the fog slithered across them, leaving behind the unhealthy pallor of unmarred flesh.

Don’t let his power corrupt you, Porfyris said as a final word of warning, the door of the coach carriage opening without a sound. You will not like the consequences.

Lyara scoffed and threw herself out, landing without a sound in the dark, vaporous alley. The vapors seemed to retreat like a living being as the carriage instead moved onwards, the flaming horses neighing in an unnatural stillness as their light shone like a ghastly presence through the mist-like whiteness of the street.

Lyara stood alone to face the darkness of the alleyway.

In the dark, spindly limbs twitched as foaming mouths dribbled caustic saliva on the pebbles.

Burning, reddish eyes deformed under her gaze as the vapors parted, a horrifying creature showing its face to the light of the sun for the first time since its birth in the depths of the dark.

The creature shrieked, the pale skin burned to cinders, and it quickly scampered off into the safety of its cloak of vapors.

Feels like home, Lyara muttered as she moved forward, All I’m missing is a life-threatening curse on my head.

She passed the Lost by, not bothering to glance for even the slightest of seconds at its eyes, crying out in agony. What was Forgotten down in the depths of a city without the sun, was to the surface merely a Lost soul.

Up in the sky, deformed humanoid birds flew and cawed madly, delivering the daily mail and the newspapers to those who inhabited the upper levels of the brick houses.

The noise made her lift her face up to glance at them. They might have seen something, being half-birds capable of flight. Her thought was interrupted when she heard the tell-tale sign of a walking stick hitting the ground right by her side.

So, the male voice spoke. You up for some good old Investigation, my little Lie?

She turned her gaze towards the shadow stretched against the wall, a shadowy walking stick twirling in its fingers.

I’m going to the beach, Lyara replied flatly. I want to see the sea.

My little girl, all obnoxious and pampered up, the shadow replied with a smirk on its face, an absence of darkness on the otherwise humanoid shape stuck to the wall. I’ll follow to make sure you don’t drown. You don’t have a lifesaver, but I can be one if you so wish.

Lyara rolled her eyes and kept walking.

Even as a shadow of his former self, the Investigator stayed the most annoying Unnatural she had ever met.

Hopefully, one day, she’d find the way to shut him up for good.

Until that day came, though, she’d make do.

It was what she was good at.

Lying to herself.

Chapter Two: The Investigator’s Shadow

The whistling woke him up.

He groaned, half-expecting the whistling to go away, or to be a product of his imagination. The second, sharper sound arrived punctually not a minute later, fully throwing him out of the comfort of his dreams.

He grimly pushed the covers away from him, lifting a cloud of dark particles. He pulled a leg, then the other, out of bed and sat on the edge.

The coal and dust clung briefly to his skin, soon shimmering back to the form of the woman sleeping by the side of his bed, wreathed in barely lit coals, and lying in a copper bathtub.

When she rested like that, she was less of a fiery lighthouse fire and more of a tranquil, simmering candle light. He liked her either way.

Frederick, the Unnatural muttered, half-asleep within her cot of heat-resistant metal. She half-heartedly raised a hand in his direction, beckoning him closer. Don’t go today.

Got to make the rounds, Frederick replied with a sigh. He stood up with a grunt of effort and walked slowly around his bed towards the tub.

He bent down to quickly partake in the only good part of his morning, which didn’t last long.

Her lips were warm and tasted of the apple pie she had baked the night before.

See you for lunch, he whispered in one breath. Her eyes opened with a snap, the sparks turning into flames.

I’ll keep an eye on you once every ten seconds, the Unnatural replied coyly.

Her body soon heated up to that of a fire, and she slithered out of her bed with unnatural grace. In the small, circular room, a nearby bronze pipe was open, and she flew inside, disappearing. The pipe led directly on the top floor of the lighthouse, where she’d stay for most of the day.

He grimly wondered if the city would ever give her a day off. The light she cast upon the sea and over the city at night aided those in need of a path home, but it also meant that she herself couldn’t partake of the home they had together.

With a shake of the head to clear the dust of the sadness away, Frederick stretched with a set of satisfying cracks and dressed up for the chilly morning trek.

He was the guardian of the lighthouse, and while the lighthouse had Merryweather to keep it functional, he took care of everything else. He kept the pipes clean, washed the floors, and made the rounds outside in case of shipwrecks and potential survivors.

The latter stopped happening when the Kraken arrived by Osyr’s shores, decades before.

The waves of the sea were treacherous, for they hid the countless smaller tentacles of the Kraken. If he left the sand of the beach for the safety of the city’s coastal walls, he’d lose his way in the vapors for most of the day or end up as a meal for the Lost if Merryweather took a break.

People rarely trailed the cobblestone streets, preferring the safety of the rooftops.

Thus, he had to walk the fine line between the stormy ocean and the hazy city. He liked to think of himself as a circus acrobat, if with quite the large, sandy rope.

He didn’t lock the door as he stepped outside.

The waves