Marcus’s hands begin to shake more violently, the camera swaying in his grip. “I… I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he says, his voice cracking. “But it’s so hungry. It shows me things – beautiful moments I’ve captured over the years – and then it takes them away.” Tears mix with rainwater on his cheeks. “I can’t remember my first photograph. I can’t remember why I became a photographer.”

The lens flares brighter, and suddenly Marcus jerks upright as if pulled by invisible strings. When he speaks again, his voice carries that unnatural echo more strongly. “Marcus is weak. Marcus clings to fading scraps while I offer eternity. These memories will live forever in my garden, perfect and untouched by time’s decay.”

The possessed photographer raises the camera toward Helen as she circles closer. “You carry the weight of so many losses, don’t you? Let me take that burden from you. Let me preserve only the joy.”

Behind them, the mother stumbles backward, her own expression growing vacant. “I… why did I bring Emma here? I can’t… there was something special about this place, wasn’t there?” She looks around the park with the same confused recognition that had crossed Marcus’s face earlier.

The fountain’s impossible flow begins to pulse in rhythm with the lens’s glow, and the rain itself seems to bend away from Marcus in an expanding circle, as if reality is warping around the artifact.

Cadalie*POP*

The camera eats the bullet, a scattering of film as a fourty-four caliber bullet punches sideways through the lens and straight through Marcus’ cheek.

Cadalie says “Yes? I’m busy./span“

Viviana draws up her bat, swinging the spiked club into her hands. Although she flinches away from the man when the bullet strikes the camera, her grip tightening around the bat’s handle. “… fuck!” she says eloquently, momentarily stunned, but she swings the bat, once, blindly in front of herself, as if warding off… she didn’t know. She was hoping that Marcus wouldn’t approach her.

With Marcus pointing the camera towards herself, Helen tries to move quickly to avoid being a target for that lens, but with Cadalie shooting the camera, and Marcus as well, that might be solved or it might not, but she raises her hammer now and begins to take strides towards him just in case there are other strikes that need to happen, the gunshot itself doesn’t seem to startled her in that moment, the clouds around and the rain seeming to focus down onto this area of the park.

The bullet punches through the antique lens with a sound like breaking glass mixed with a distant scream. Marcus staggers backward, blood streaming from his cheek, but the wound seems secondary to what’s happening to the camera itself.

Dark, viscous fluid begins pouring from the shattered lens – not blood, but something that moves with its own purpose, writhing like liquid shadow. The broken glass fragments hover in the air for a moment before dissolving into wisps of black smoke.

“NO!” The voice that erupts from Marcus is no longer human – it’s a chorus of stolen voices, children’s laughter twisted into anguish, wedding vows corrupted into screams. “My garden! My beautiful collection!”

Marcus doubles over, clutching his head with both hands as the camera falls to the muddy ground. The dark fluid spreads outward from the broken device, and where it touches the grass, the unnaturally perfect blades wither and turn gray.

But something else is happening – around the park, the affected people begin to blink in confusion. The mother suddenly gasps, “Emma! Oh god, Emma, are you okay?” The little girl looks up at her mother with recognition returning to her eyes.

Marcus himself straightens, but his movements are jerky, puppet-like. When he looks at the three women, his eyes are completely black. “You have no idea what you’ve done. I am Vex’thara, and I will not be banished so easily. This vessel still serves.”

Cadalie cocks the hammer in response, as well as her head, the shadow of one eye on her crooked brim staring forward with viscous intensity. “Does it serve.” No concern.

“I am Pontfiex Cadalie d’Entremont, seen service in District eighty-five. I am the builder of bridges to this city. I am minder of the Gate of Redstone. Kneel or I will scatter your soul, son.” The hammer pulls back, and she calls out, “Ladies? Do bind this man, if you would be so kind?”

Cadalie meant, the hammer pulls forward*, ahem.

Viviana pauses, her features turning a bit distressed – lips pressed into a thin line, her bat held up in the warding fashion still. Viviana steps forward, swinging down at Marcus’ lower legs, hoping to take his legs out from under him to topple him forward into the ground.

At least, that was Viviana’s intention. “I have some zipties in my belt, too,” she tells Helen, distractedly as she makes the swing.

As Cadalie begins to dictate the situation to Marcus, Helen has been closing the distance to one of his sides, making it so the man possessed can’t look in the direction of that revolver and the hammer-wielding woman at the same time easily. She watches Viviana try to topple the man over, lightning crashing in the distance as well, flashes of light over the dark sky as she rushes as well, hammer coming forward in an attempt to use it, non-spiked end, to try and bash into the man with a shoulder charge of her own to help Viviana’s plan of having him topple over, trying to reach for Viviana’s belt afterwards to get those zipties.

“Please… it’s showing me everything I’ve lost. My grandmother’s smile, my first camera, the day I knew I wanted to capture happiness…” His face contorts in anguish. “I can’t remember her face anymore.”

Then the black returns, and Vex’thara snarls, “He begs for scraps while I offer eternity! You cannot bind what feeds on the very essence of–“

Around them, the withered grass where the dark fluid touched begins to smoke, and the impossible fountain stutters again. The rain intensifies, as if the park itself is trying to wash away the corruption. In the distance, the mother holds her daughter close, both of them looking around in confusion as fragmented memories slowly return.

has a difficult expression across her face, torn into a smile and one thirsting from a sudden drought of concern as Marcus begs and a demon snarls while the vessel of both of their souls gets absolutely decked and ally-ooped by twin blunt instruments. “He.. Can be bound quite easily!” Cadalie argues, letting the nose tilts crooked from her wrist. “To be bound in hand and foot is to be bound cognitively as well. The psyche responds to the vessel and unless we’s dealing with an arch-demon, I reckon there’s too much distance between us and Hell for him to emancipate his body.”

Viviana finishes the bat swing, tossing it briefly aside to lay hands on the guy. She wasn’t good at grappling, but she could lay her weight on him, pressing against his shoulder and arm as Helen pulls the zip ties from her belt. “Get him, quick!” Viviana enthuses Helen, and would work with her to try to help bind the guy up.

Through the struggle and the protest of Marcus, Helen and Viviana continue to double-team him with an assault in trying to get him bound up, and Cadalie’s words do make sense as she takes those zip ties and begins to wrench his legs together, trying to quickly work and bind the guy’s limbs up, moving on towards his wrists afterwards in those attempts as well, “Getting him, getting him!” She has placed her hammer nearby, spike in the wet ground, watching it sink from the weight of it as that storm continues to escalate around them during that conflict.

“You need to… there’s a way to make it give back what it stole. An exorcism, but not the usual kind. It has to be forced to disgorge the memories it’s hoarded.”

The fountain behind them gives one final stutter, then resumes its impossible upward flow. Around the park, more people are beginning to remember – the jogger stops and looks around with sudden recognition, the elderly woman by the ducks smiles as if recalling why she comes here every day.

“Yeah?” Viviana says, grunting as she tries to leverage what height and strength she has to hold the man down. She was just as strong as the average person though, a small hiss coming from her as she struggles with just one arm.

“Why don’t you tell us what we need to do to help with that, uh… Marcus, right?” she says, still working with Helen to awkwardly bind the man hand and foot with zipties.

“Oh, don’t worry- I got that.” As the presence finds itself unable to act upon the physical world, psyche locked in psyche, trapped but not gone, Cadalie approaches the bound man, as she taps the ejector rod to the cylinder and plucks out her bullets. Gun-safety applied, unloaded due to a lack of hostiles, she plucks a long, living briar of thorns and allows it to wrap around her arm. The wounds of which begin to settle on Marcus’.

“Yes-yes. I am aware of the banishment ritual. But I won’t be payin’ that ghastly cost.”

As it turns out, he will. A punch to the essence of his life as presence like a black sun in the night, seeing but not seen- the patrons of the Conclave, cast the ritual that has not any cast time. Only the clairvoyant see the demon sundered back to where it came. Only the clairaudient hear it hiss.

“He’ll need about a week to recover.” Cadalie adds drolly as the man’s pallor drops to critical- but without a wound for it to bleed further.

Helen has enough potential strength for Viviana to help out with the binding, and once the man is trussed up, she lifts upwards and places a knee upon his chest to try and keep him weighed down. She watches Cadalie approach and begin that ritual itself, trying to seek to banish that demonic presence from this place, all while the weirdness continues and more and more people start to regain their memories. She has hair in her face which she flips backwards, the wet slap of that hair smacking against her jacket, “Long as everyone here, the three of us, remember at least… he didn’t manage to snag anything before that camera was gone I don’t think.”

“The photos… in my apartment. All those families. I need to… need to make sure they’re okay.” Even unconscious, his photographer’s instincts remain intact.

The immediate crisis has passed, but the work of helping Marcus and the affected families fully recover their stolen memories will take time. For now, though, Coastal Play Commons is safe once more, its impossible fountain flowing upward through the gentle rain.