22 - Desperate Measures//Foley

"You used the entire power grid on a child!" Navy shouted angrily, pulling on the bandages he was wrapping around Deanney's arm. She had three thin cuts along her upper left arm

"I told you it had to be the full force of lightning," Deanney explained as she winced in pain. "Whatever these kids are using, it's tougher than you could ever imagine."

"Vital services went dark for a whole ten seconds," he admonished, tensing up at the sight of blood through the heavy bandages. "And you've brought the suspect here instead of handing him over to the police."

"This isn't a matter that we can leave to law enforcement," Deanney said. "This isn't an issue of law and order; it's tied into the deeper mystery of Paradox City."

"And we're meant to figure it out by ourselves?" Navy asked sarcastically.

They both looked to Mr. Foley, who had barely said a word since Deanney had arrived a few minutes ago. Without a modicum of guilt, she'd tossed the boy into the spare bedroom where they'd set up a video camera.

Whatever the electricity had done to him was still in effect, though Navy had assured Mr. Foley that he didn't seem to have any life-threatening injuries despite being zapped with what was probably a million megawatts.

Mr. Foley had been musing with turning this spare bedroom into a second artifact room. He'd always loved to collect the strange and wonderful artifacts of humanity's past. It reminded him of what he fought for and the creative times the great leaders before him presided over.

That was why he had such a great relationship with the Local Artist's Market, who had agreed to a small pop-up at his behest. Despite his misgivings, Ms. Lacombe's plan had gone off without a hitch.

Now they sat in the aftermath. The city was a few more thousands in debt over the black-ops team she'd requested pretend to be security and police officers, and an unassuming young boy was now their prisoner.

When two masked strangers had broken into his home and stolen The First Clagh, the single most precious piece in his collection, he would never have assumed they were teenagers. Those two same strangers proceeded to break into every art exhibit or private collection in Paradox City, barely taking anything.

They had only ever stolen something once from an obscure exhibit at the edge of town, but when Deanney told him what was stolen, he felt like a whole new world had opened up to him.

After The First Clagh was stolen from him, Mr. Foley had scrambled to find his art, even going as far as promising top dollar on the black market. Eventually, he settled on acquiring the second piece that completed the collection.

He'd been in negotiations to purchase it for a while, but work had distracted him. At least then he could claim he had each piece at some point in his life.

But then Deanney had shown him what was stolen from that exhibit, an Irish wishing stone.

A piece that looked exactly like the two Clagh.

Whilst Deanney was out capturing the young man, Mr. Foley had Navy look through his collection of documents.

In one hand he held the original, in the other a direct translation.

"The Stones of Transformation"

"When the Witch Maiden Cree threatened the balance of the Goidelic Kingdoms, the greatest sorcerers and sorceresses came together to create eight magical stones (translators note; the name given to the stones is either illegible or from an ancient language that is no longer translatable). These stones were given to the greatest leader of the joint army's eight battalions.

A swordsman, a lancer, a flag bearer, and five more were given an immense power (literal translation; Very Great Thing) and used it to seal her away. Fearing that the stones would be used for malicious purposes, they were given to a settlers to the new land to the West who were told to separate them and bury them far from any settlements.

(translator's note: funnily enough, many maps made to reference this legend put the burial site in Paradox City, just west of Toronto)."

"There's no need to figure anything out," Mr. Foley said excitedly. His entire body felt like it was resting on pins and needles. "We've dug up magic."