nevegallus | (no subject)

The Second City of Darrow spits her back out as unceremoniously as it had accepted her, and Neve doesn't even take the time to wipe the ash off her clothes before she goes to Darrow's Precinct 2. She steps in and the same officer is behind the counter as the last time she'd been, and this time she throws him a bone.

“Neve Gallus for Daniel Sousa,” she says, and remembers not to sit in the uncomfortable chairs lining the wall. The officer looks at her wide-eyed before hesitantly asking, “Are you okay, Miss Gallus?”

“Never better, why?” she asks, canting a wry smile his way. He doesn't seem like he wants to point out the soiling of her clothes and hair.

“A-are you here to report a crime?” he presses. He looks her over again slowly, almost pointedly. Even her metal leg is diminished in shine by the ash settled into its carving.

“I've told you why I'm here,” she points out. He hesitates again, so she sighs softly. “Look, just call him, won't you? He's expecting me.”

Finally, the officer turns to his phone and lifts the receiver to his ear.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Daniel was elbows deep in beginning of the month paperwork at least in a figurative sense since most of it was on the computer these days when Sergeant Woodward called back to tell him that his 1100 appointment was here. Daniel didn't actually have an 1100 appointment in his calendar, but the situation became clearer once Daniel found out it was Neve.

He agreed to come up and get her, then moved most of the remaining actual paperwork off his desk. That meant it went into a file drawer and he'd have to deal with it later, but he liked a fairly clean desk when he had guests, especially guests who were as observant as Neve. She could almost certainly read upside-down while not appearing to do it.

He pushed open the door to the lobby and glanced at her. She was nearly always perfectly put together, so to see her covered in ash, well, it explained why she was here. She must really have something to tell him.

"Good morning, Miss Gallus. Did you get a new job cleaning chimneys?"

"Neve," she reminds, and reaches up to brush a smudge of ash off her nose. "And would you guess? The hook's great for gripping the brickwork." She twists her thigh to show off the severe hook at the toe of her prosthetic. "I told you you'd be seeing me again. We should talk in your office."

"Wouldn't have guessed that, but good to know."

Daniel signed her in quickly and then held the door open so she could step into the non-public areas of the precinct. She got a few interesting glances as they walked to his office, but he ignored them and he was sure she did too.

Once they were safely inside his office with the door closed, he motioned to the chair in front of his desk.

"Are you alright, Neve?"

She doesn't sit, though, remaining standing behind the chair so she doesn't get ash all over it. She doesn't pace, either, even though she wants to.

"Sure," she says easily. "I've just got back from a jaunt to a second Darrow. Wouldn't recommend it — not much to look at. Also, the population are monsters."

"You can sit - that's Naugahyde, which means it wipes clean," he told her as he went around his desk to his own chair, which was also made of Naugahyde. He had no idea why it was called Naugahyde, but it was. There certainly wasn't any creature called a Nauga.

"Monsters? You're gonna have to be more specific."

He believed her immediately, but he needed more details.

Neve doesn't hesitate to sit this time — she's not going to presume to know Daniel's furniture better than he does. She settles into the seat and shifts her right leg, taking the weight off it. She's been walking for hours, and it feels good to just sit, even if she doesn't totally relax.

"Monsters," she repeats. "Creatures that aren't human, elf of dwarf, some without arms, most without faces. All of them ready to kill you at the first sound you make."

It wasn't exactly an expression, but there was a shift in her face that Daniel thought he recognized. Getting off a prosthetic after being on it for too long just felt like a relief.

"Oh, that does sound pleasant," he replied wryly. "I see they didn't succeed in killing you."

He was glad for that. If no one had known she'd been in that second Darrow, no one would have known to go looking for her when she didn't come back.

"I'm a mage," she says. "It takes more than a couple of monsters to bring me down." Certainly Daniel knows nothing about Aelia or Minrathous or the Venatori, but Neve's been through a lot more than a second Darrow that wants to kill her, and while she knows better than to get cocky, she's also confident in herself. "But in this case, I mostly avoided them where I could. A friend noticed they avoided places of worship. Not sure why. I couldn't sense any magic that might cause it. But it's clear that the ash we saw on Valentine's Day is from this place. Somehow, it was coming through. Probably the same way the monsters have been, and the same way I did."

"And that way is what?" he asked. "Or where, which is probably more useful."

If they needed to arrange for a patrol to be lurking somewhere watching for monsters, they needed to know where to do that and how. He was glad she'd survived and that she knew sometimes it was best to avoid the monster instead of directly confronting it.

"It was gone by the time I crossed through," she says. "Which isn't to say it won't be back, but it seems unlikely. Still, I've already marked it on my map, if you're of a mind to keep an eye out."

She reaches into her jacket and pulls out her journal. Inside she has loose pages, and one of them is a map of her own. It's not the one that came with her packet, but one she'd purchased after the fact. It's been scrawled on, her cramped handwriting stretching down streets and over buildings. She opens and re-folds the thing up until she shows him the stretch of city she'd been walking when the rift had appeared.

"Here," she says, handing it to him so he can take note.

He took the map from her carefully, since she'd clearly spent a lot of time making her own notes on it. Her handwriting was small, but he could mostly read it. It was interesting to see what she considered important enough to note on her map. Some things were obvious but others he wasn't sure about. He wouldn't ask, though. If it wasn't related to their discussion today, he didn't need to know about it.

He jotted some details about the location of the entrance or portal or whatever it was in his own notebook, then looked at his own map of Darrow, which was under a glass desk mat. The desk mat kept things he wanted available at all times clean, and he almost always wanted a map of Darrow available. There was also a very small piece of paper that simply read Safe Harbor. Most people assumed it was from a fortune cookie, since it was the same size and shape. It wasn't, and not just because most fortune cookies weren't printed on an actual typewriter.

"I don't think anyone has reported anything there before. That's Precinct 1, though, which means I'll need to talk to someone else to be sure."

Edited 2025-06-16 16:16 (UTC)

"The boy on Valentine's Day," she says. "I'm confident now that it's related to this other Darrow. Have you gotten any reports about attacks like that?" She hasn't been assigned to this case, not exactly, but she wants to know all of the details she can. The more she knows, the better prepared she can be.