Tarsa moved to the city of Almia when she was five years old, at her great-uncle's request. He could never explain what he saw in her, but he wanted her as his heir, not his daughter or nephew, and she's slowly taken over his businesses.

Almia is a city of superstitions and ghost stories, a place where every fifth person has a personal story of an encounter with Bigfoot or a roving pack of silent dogs that acted like a hydra or a will of the wisp that brought them smack into a gang fight. People who aren't local - she's been here two decades and counts - don't understand it, and mostly find the place off-putting, staying in business hotels downtown and maybe the Lantern district. Even locals stay out of the catacombs and the abandoned subways - the cryptozoological stories that come out of those are the most terrifying, and they get blamed for a lot of outright disappearances.

But Tarsa loves her city. The stories are usually of danger, because that's exciting, but the quieter stories exist too. Looking at the line of lanterns in the district and seeing a forgotten friend ten cities away - sitting, laughing, on the couch in his apartment - at the end of the line. Wishing out loud your mother could see you now, and feeling the ghost of a hug and her quiet laughter. Meeting exactly the kind of stranger you were thinking about on the footbridges.

Her life is ordinary. But in Almia, ordinary isn't.

She's on the sidewalk, mundane and bruised. The sun is long down and she's leaning against a streetlamp, looking as weak as she feels.

"Hello, young lady. Can you spare some time to help me?"

"There's always time to be a good neighbor," the black-clad woman says pleasantly. "Do you need my help walking?"

She nods. "Somewhere warm to sit would be welcome, too. I... just got kicked out of my home."

That's not entirely true. She can tell. But it's... close enough.

"My townhouse is just around the corner. We can sit downstairs a while. Here, lean on my shoulder."

And when she's sat down, in the light and near a radiator:

"I should apologize..."

"...I left some important details out of that description."

The woman's presence is massive, and yet Tarsa can feel a sense of sickness and injury. It's stronger than every superstition and unexplained ghost she's ever felt put together, and, for a moment, overwhelming.

But she recovers.

"I'll forgive you, if you start explaining. Who are you? How were you really hurt? Why are you revealing yourself to me?"

"I am Eleanora, the spirit of Almia. The city trusts you. And it's going to need that, because my watch is ending. Three hundred years of vigil on the last stronghold of magic in the world, as the Inquirium steadily pushed it back everywhere else. For fifty years I've had an agreement with them - I keep magic in check in Almia, especially the beast sealed beneath, and they leave their war against magic aside at the edge of the city limits."

"They didn't break it. The last Godiria did. He wants to rebind the beast - not sealed, but controlled, leashed to him as he fights back the Inquirium across the world. But he will surely fail to keep it leashed, and even if he does not, it would destroy my city. I attacked him. But I misjudged, and lost. I need a successor, urgently."

"How long do you have?"

"Midnight. Perhaps dawn, if I'm lucky. It doesn't have to be you, but there's not much time to find another if you turn me down."

"Then I will skip the thanks for making my city wonderful, as much as you deserve them. I have no training, no potential I know of unless that was what Uncle meant. What do I have to do?"

"There are a variety of methods to grant you power quickly, and the basic knowledge of how to use it. I can ignite your soul to give you enough energy for the basics of two or three disciplines or incomplete mastery of one. You will need much more than that, but everything else comes at the cost of losing portions of your humanity. In decades, you could repair the damage, but you will have to stop Godiria in - a fortnight at most. Every loss will bring a cost, and if you lose too much, your life force will fade - lose decades, or if we push it to the limits, die within the month. That would get you more than six times as much power as the 'safe' amount - each larger loss brings more power."

"I love this city. But I love life, too... And I would hate to see your killers beaten just for the magic-hunters to kill what I love about it. Is there a way I could... share the damage?"

"Elaborate."

"You said it doesn't have to be me. But if it is, does it have to be only me? Could the city have two defenders? Three? Twelve?"

"Perhaps three, but you'd all be weakened, and bound to each other - difficulty working magic while far apart. No more than that, not without the same catastrophic damage you want to avoid."

"There aren't two other people I'd be willing to be bound to. But there is one."

She reaches for her phone.

And Eleanora reaches into the city, peering along its streets and phone lines to find the person on the other end...

Tseonur Corby was born in Almia, rich enough not to have to learn its back streets and foolhardy enough to do so anyway. He knows almost no one individually, but he knows them all collectively. The gangs which all call themselves things like Werewolves of Westhaven and Vampires of Vallen Place. The artists who leave out cigarettes for the faeries they thank for inspiration. The native businessmen, who rarely spare a dollar for the street's bums but never pass a shrine without leaving a twenty. The homeless, who never dare take from a shrine unless they first clean it or do one of the unofficial rites they know better than anyone.

He argues with Tarsa, constantly. But on this point they agree. He loves his city.

"Ah. Yes, he'll do nicely."

The phone wakes him up just as he was falling asleep, and he's almost annoyed enough to silence it and go back to sleep, but he thinks better of it.

"What the hell do you want?", he says groggily.

"Tseo, I need you over at my place as soon as you can possibly manage. Like both our lives depended on being here by eleven."

"Tar? This better not be... anything I would list if I was more awake."