"To the untrained eye, wizardry is dead. Parascholars debate and argue endlessly over the exact tipping point; the rise of Christianity, the Inquisitions of Western Europe, the invention of penicillin; the list goes on. They are only half right. True, these events made sure the days of pointy-hat-wearing bearded men hunched over a cauldron are long gone, but wizards never went away. They simply diversified their portfolio."

— Foundation Senior Researcher Henry Maris, American Druids: Thaumaturgists in the New World.

18/03/1998, 5:42 PM
Abilene, Texas

Even the most charitable person would be at a loss when asked to compliment Big John's Salvage And Scrap. While most scrapyards had a certain rustic charm with towers of aging cars and neat little aisles cleared of refuse, Big John's dealt in the junk that the other scrapyards wouldn't touch with a ten-foot-pole.
To the right of the pile of paint chippings and just past the corpse of a worryingly large rat was the rather curious sight of a pristine, blue 18-wheeler, with a pair of pants sticking out from under the hood. Moving closer, one would realize that those pants were attached to a person, who was currently rummaging around in the engine, using more expletives than was really necessary while punctuating each one with the clang of a wrench.
“Ethan Park?”
A brief pause. Then the clanging resumed, a quick “We're closed, check back tomorrow.”
was uttered with the tone of someone who's said it a thousand times to a thousand different customers.
“Oh, I'm, uh, not here to drop off anything.”
“Then you're trespassing. Come back tomorrow when I'm on the clock.”
“Cooper High, Class of ‘92.”
A longer pause. Then Ethan climbed out of the engine, dabbing his oil-stained brow with an equally stained napkin. He squinted, she'd swapped a buzz cut for a ponytail, and her ripped jeans for a blazer, but it was still undoubtedly—
“Christ, Emily, is that you?”
She spread her arms out with a grin. “The one and only.”
“How long has it been, four years?”
“Six I think, didn't realize you were still working here.”
“I own this place actually. John, he passed a year ago, some heart thing. No family, so he left the whole thing to me.”
“Sorry to hear that, he was a great guy.”
“He was, yeah.”
An awkward silence as they both inspected their shoes. Ethan was the first to break it.
“I assume you didn't come here to reminisce with your high school sweetheart though.”
“Right, yeah, yeah,” she started digging her hands in her pockets. “Just one more thing, you remember senior prom?”
He groaned. “God, don't remind me, I showed up to your house in suspenders and a-”
“Yeah it was horrible, but do you remember after the dance, we drove down to the lake and you gave me those flowers?”
“Of course, a bunch of roses if I remember correctly?.”
“That's what I remember too.” she finally pulled her hands out, holding a small business card. “Of course, I also remember you opening a portal out of thin air and pulling them out of Mrs. Worth's garden three miles away. Class Seven Dimensional Rift, one of the most advanced thaumaturgic acts we know, and you used it to try and score your first kiss.”
Ethan was about to retort that actually he had kissed plenty of people before then but stopped dead in his tracks. Thaumaturgy. The word echoed in his mind. Fancy term for wizardry; so fancy in fact, that the only people who used it were those who weren't big fans of wizards as a whole. He squinted at the card she held, and a certain three arrow logo greeted him.
Great, the Foundation. If half the things he heard about them were true, the only thing he'd be seeing for the rest of his life was the inside of a cell.
His eyes darted around, searching desperately for an out. No backup goons, but Emily had what looked to be a holster on her hip, and he wasn't keen to test out if he could dodge bullets. Unfortunately, she was also blocking the only route out, so he'd have to get creative. He was halfway through tracing Nälkä runes on his palms and reciting The Forested Meadow's Words of Power when-
“I'm not here to arrest you.”
He looked up. Emily was standing with her hands in the air and holster on the ground a few feet away. “I've got a job offer for you, now you can turn my head into a goldfish or whatever, or you can hear me out, and get a gig.”
"A job? Thought you people preferred to lock up my type."
Emily sighed, and for the first time Ethan noticed the bags under her eyes. "Look, normally we would, but we've got an extenuating circumstance, and people like you are our best bet. You'll get paid too. Very well."
Ethan leaned against the truck's hood, runes still sparkling up and down his forearm, ready to turn Emily into ribbons at a moment's notice. “Look, I've got a decent reputation going with the," he snapped his fingers, "folks like me around here. if I start helping a Jailor, that won't exactly do wonders for-”
“A hundred thousand dollars.”
He swallowed hard. “What's the job?”

Delivery. The-powers-that-be commanded that some exotic material be sent to a place called “Site-95”, some Area-51-type bullshit1 a couple miles south of St. Louis. Unfortunately, the cargo wasn't safe enough to use normal air or road, so a discreet dimension-hopping (Ethan asked if she could add dashing to the list of alliterative adjectives, she vetoed the suggestion.) thaumaturge was just the ticket. As soon as she finished rattling off the details, she flicked her business card towards him and left, telling him to be ready by eight in the morning tomorrow.
As it turned out, shadow organizations were annoyingly punctual. By the time Ethan stopped ignoring his alarm, got dressed and finished shoveling a quick spoonful of cereal in his mouth, Emily was standing at his door with a near-identical suit to the day before, and a group of shadow government spooks behind her surveying every inch of his truck. Before he could so much as protest, a forklift came trundling down with his payload, completely covered in a black tarp.
It was spare parts for an excavator, one of the agents had explained to Ethan in the slow, steady tone that a parent would use when talking to their kid about Santa Claus. He caught a glimpse of the “spare parts” as it was loaded into his cargo space; he was pretty sure excavators weren't covered in a mixture of what looked like blood and motor oil.
Now, the truck charged down a country road at seventy miles an hour. Behind the wheel, Ethan had spread out a dozen maps, haphazardly scribbling and measuring out points on the dashboard.
To the right of him, completely still, was his bodyguard, who with his sunglasses and earpiece, looked like he just got out of Air Force One. Resting on his lap was some sort of modified shotgun, faintly glowing red. Ethan wasn't a firearms expert, but it was very clear that being on the business end of that thing would shorten your lifespan dramatically.
He scanned the horizon, which he was approaching at a breakneck pace. There, at that fence that looked like a breeze could knock it over.
SCREEEEEEEEEEE-
The cabin lurched slightly as the truck made a hard turn left, quickly tipping back with a thunk. As Ethan batted the 1976 Geographic Survey of North Texas away from his face, he glanced over at the bodyguard, who maintained a passive expression and a white-knuckled grip on the shotgun.
“There's a lot more where that came from,” Ethan shouted. If the man responded, the near-deafening engine rattle drowned it out. Grinning, he pushed the pedal to the metal and then some.
They continued for another half hour, making sharp turns at dizzying speeds at seemingly random moments; a collapsed farmhouse, a rusted gate, the rotting stump of an oak tree. However, if one were to trace the truck's path from a birds-eye view, they would have noticed a near perfect depiction of the Daevite rune Sarbálige Hios: “To Open The Way”.
As the truck sped past a “No Trespassing” sign, it began to glow a dull orange, then a fluorescent red, then a brilliant pink, then a blinding purple, and then-
It was gone. The sign wobbled, then fell from its post, the words barely legible underneath scorch marks.

19/03/1998, 9:51 AM
???, ???

In between worlds stretch the Ways, rips in space connecting their Ins and Outs to every destination imaginable. This near-instantaneous travel is a double-edged sword, these holes in reality itself crackle with pure thaumic energy, threatening to rip apart any foolhardy enough to enter.
In a flash, an electric blue 18-wheeler was suddenly barreling down the blinding tunnels at a hundred miles an hour, wheels hovering slightly above the ground thanks to hidden hoverboosters boosted from Prometheus Labs. Though Ethan had travelled through countless Ways countless times, he couldn't resist the urge but gape at the octarine lightning that flashed past the truck, a dull, persistent crackle thrumming through the rune-sealed windows.
With one hand on the steering wheel, he reached below his seat, pulling out a clear Tupperware bin with a large cow liver inside. He squinted. Nice and smooth, looks like they'll make good time, gods willing. No more than half an hour tops.
Setting it back down, he glanced in his rearview mirror out of habit, and satisfied, turned on cruise control, leaning back in his seat. He looked over at the bodyguard, gonna be a few, might as well get to know the guy, not every day you speak with one of the Men In Black.
“Horrible weather lately, right?”
No response.
“So, uh, you've been in Texas long?”
Once again, no response. He cleared his throat.
“How long have you worked for the- do you mind if I put on music?”
You can probably guess the guard's response (or lack thereof). Ethan sucked air through his teeth as he fiddled with the radio dial, desperate to fill the silence with… something.
Static. Static. Static. Country. Static. Sta-
“-he clock up on that shining hill strikes, we'll all be piled higher than fish in a tin! Drip! Drip! Goes the Portuguese oil.”
Huh. He'd heard a lot of things on the pararadio2, but nothing like this. He turned the volume dial up, the tinny voice echoing slightly around the cabin.
“And when the smokes are all burnt up, your face like painted people on the polyethylene clamshells, march on up with Georgia's finest, fifth star on the left and right straight forward on till Tuesday. As the highway glows on, rem-” Ga-thunk.
He glanced over. “You hear that?”
“The clockwork bones of ol' Geneva are creaking and slappin' against the capillaries. You feel it? it could-” Ga-thunk. “-happen to you and you!”
The bodyguard nodded.
Ga-thunk. "And by the river sticks we lep-" The voice on the radio died with a screech.
Ga-thunk. The guard cocked the shotgun, a dark mist smelling of sulfur wafting from the barrel.
…
…
…
…
Ethan looked over. “Do you think it's saf-”
A number of things then happened in very quick succession.

First, there was two terrible ripping noises, the first like crumpling tinfoil and the second like tearing a piece of uncooked bacon.
Second, a glowing orb of light and fire engulfed his entire field of vision, his body filled with the uncanny feeling that something was staring at him.
Next, a faint ticking noise and perplexingly enough, the acrid smell of cigarette smoke.

And then there was nothing.

Next: TBA

Footnotes
1. Her words, not his.
2. Like normal radio, but anomalous. Thaumaturgists weren't particularly known for their creative naming schemes.