511: The Ritual Room

Synopsis

The group pries up the manhole cover at Devereux and Adams and climbs into the storm drain. Billy and Simeon remembered to bring flashlights, and Timeon wears his goggles of night. They follow the low tunnel east under Devereux Street, where one wall is made of old stacked stone, much older than the street above. Looking through the mirror, Dom spots a faint red glimmer drifting through a crack in the stones. Simeon tries to dig the stones out but tears a fingernail and drops his flashlight into the sewer water. Timeon dons the Gauntlets of Ogre Power and, with Billy's help, punches through the wall.

Beyond the wall is an old stone basement room that survived the great fire twelve years ago, though parts of the house above have collapsed into it. The walls are scorched black, and the floor bears burned ritual markings around a central symbol of the Order of the Scorpius. There is a work table fused with ash and candle wax and a half-burned bookshelf. Inside the room, the mirror begins to show a scene playing out: four or five shadowy figures struggle, a woman screams, and Dom's own voice shouts "Fiona, look out!" before a bright red beam flashes. A familiar woman's voice says, "I'm so sorry, Dom." Billy finds a starburst soot pattern at shoulder height by the bookshelf and concludes that this was the origin of the beam that tore through the statue and the tree and set the factory on Boston Street ablaze. Simeon and Billy recover a charred spell page and a small, mostly burned black leather book.

Billy and Timeon feel their skin crawl and see a shimmer of shadow ripple through the crack in the wall. A woman in her late thirties steps out of it, and for a moment Dom thinks she is Fiona. She introduces herself as Constance Venus and is soon flanked by two big, mustachioed Englishmen like Garibald John Daly. She admits the Order has been having the group followed. She has come for Dom, whom the Order has been paid for, and for Fiona, "our lost sheep." She says Fiona was the most talented spellcaster the Order had seen in generations. According to Constance, Fiona killed Constance's sister, the Order's first seer in a hundred years, by opening a gate above her and dropping her ten stories onto the streets of Clapham. Constance claims that Fiona gave up the Order for love and then gave up her love for power, sacrificing hundreds to open the way into the hollow. She vows to follow Fiona the same way, through blood and death: "The sky will rain fire, and Salem will burn. This time, all of it." Dom answers with defiance, wiping the smile off her face. Ezra, Billy and Simeon hear a strange clicking outside the crack. Simeon casts Command of the Wizard, ordering her to "freeze in place." She shrugs it off and replies, "Why don't you sleep?" Simeon collapses unconscious.

Funny Moments

Billy and Simeon, the "former Boy Scouts," are the only ones who remembered flashlights. Timeon insists his goggles are "goggles of night," not night-vision goggles.
The table spends a long time arguing over whether shining a light on something counts as looking at it. "It's implied."
Simeon tries to dig through the wall, tears his fingernail, drops his flashlight into the sewer water, and then whimpers about his finger. "Let me show you what I learned in that other world."
After hearing about the sister, the table wonders whether Fiona shouted "Can you fly, sucker?"
"As incredible as you think you are, you're not even in our top 10 scariest villains we've ever faced."
"Are you a Lannister by chance?"

Notable Quotes

"Fiona, look out!" —Dom, heard through the mirror
"I'm so sorry, Dom." —a familiar woman's voice, heard through the mirror
"Those who are part of the Order are never not part of the Order." —Constance Venus
"The sky will rain fire, and Salem will burn. This time, all of it." —Constance Venus
"I don't think I will, doctor. But why don't you sleep?" —Constance Venus