Wilde Magic
Nick first delved into the supernatural when he was just a young hustler getting started on the streets. He thought of it as simply another way of fleecing mammals of their hard-earned cash at first, but as he delved deeper into the mysteries he began to suspect that some of those symbols and chants actually did something.
Nicholas P. Wilde woke to the chiming of his alarm clock and slowly began his morning rituals. He started with a shower, spray of "Musk-Away", and brewed some coffee, then he drew a rug off of a mat inscribed with a five-pointed star, made sure the top point was aligned with magnetic north and sat down in the middle. "I am Nicholas Piberius Wilde," he started to chant, "I am a fragment of the universe made sentient, and here I exert my right to my will." He unstoppered three bottles of fine powder as he continued to speak, "I acknowledge that I am a part of the greater whole as I draw upon its' power for my own benefit." He poured out a dash of powder from each of the phials into his left palm in turn, vanilla for clarity of thought, cedar for health, and a mix he'd devised of catnip soaked in anise oil. Then Nick stood up and swung his fist around, the powder streaming out in an arc roughly tracing the lines of the pentagram around him. He then sat back down and let the scented dust fall around him, the energy he'd channeled through it suffusing his body as thoroughly as the smell.
He was roused from his reverie by the ringing of his phone. Annoyed, he stepped out of the circle and checked the caller ID, seeing who it was he decided to let it go almost to voicemail before answering. Nick hit "accept" and faked a tired yawn as he answered with "Carrots, what is it?". As he listened to his partner's annoyed explanation his show of exhaustion faded away into genuine shock. "Are you serious? I'll be right there, just let me get dressed." Nick threw his uniform on with little care, wishing once again that he could know whether his "magic" actually worked or not.
Twenty minutes later Officers Hopps and Wilde were in a modestly adorned apartment sized for mammals of small-medium height. It was quickly apparent why the two of them had been called down to this scene, most of ZPD Precinct 1's officers would find themselves bent halfway over in there but Nick's ears still had a couple inches of clearance from the ceiling. "Huh, nice place," he commented. "Wonder how this might affect the rent?"
"Nick!" Judy looked crossly at her vulpine partner, "can't you show a little respect here? Somebody died." She pointed towards a forensics sloth ambling slowly towards the cordoned off center of the room.
There lay a male grey squirrel in his mid-twenties, sprawled out on the floor, still as stone. Aside from his stillness the only sign that anything was wrong were a few blood splatters soaked into the carpet next to his mouth. Otherwise he might have looked like a guy doing some morning stretches.
"I know," Nick replied, forcing himself to look at the corpse, "I was just trying to lighten the mood." In truth, he was screaming inside. He had seen dead bodies before, twenty years on the "grey" side of the law in the big city and you were going to see something eventually. Back then, he'd been able to submerge his feelings in a sort of mechanical practicality, he couldn't afford to be found around a dead body when the police arrived, but now he was finding it nigh-impossible to keep his feelings bottled up for some reason. Whether it was because he was the police now and there was no immediate crisis to focus on, or something else he couldn't say. "Any idea who he was?" He tried to change the subject.
Judy sighed audibly, "I thought you said you knew everybody?" At her partner's shrug she picked up the file the building manager had given her. "It says here his name is Bill Scrambler? Works at the river and sky docks in Rainforest District."
Nick thought about that, turning away from the body so he didn't have to look at it. "A dockworker? Surprised he could afford a place like this then." It wasn't working, even without the body right in front of him the feeling of unease continued to rise in him, only long-held habit kept him from showing his disgust now.
"The manager mentioned that he had been promoted to shift supervisor a month ago, which would be when he rented this place." Judy paused and considered. "Hmm, maybe a coworker got jealous of his promotion and poisoned him or something. What do you think, Nick?"
"I think," Nick trailed off, looking around the room. Another forensics sloth arrived through the open door, joining the two just starting to bag evidence, a few too many witnesses for what he felt coming up. "I think we should get out of these gentlemammals' way." He squeezed past into the hallway outside.
Judy followed him outside to find the fox leaning against the wall, propping himself up with one arm and breathing heavily. "You okay?"
Nick reassured himself that she was the only other one out there with him before he managed to bring himself back under control. "Yeah, yeah, I just needed to get out of that room. Something about it just felt, wrong."
His lapine partner touched his arm with a show of comforting and sympathy. "Was that the first time you've seen a dead body? I know I was horrified the first time I saw someone die."
"No," Nick replied quickly, "it wasn't the first corpse I've seen, but I didn't feel like this way that time, I haven't felt like this since..." He paused, a scene from his younger days coming to mind all of a sudden. "Never mind, we've got a job to do here and now, what's next?"
Judy rolled her eyes, getting used to her partner's habit of changing the subject whenever he got uncomfortable. "Well, the sloths over in forensics will take their time figuring out what killed Bill over there. Why don't we start looking for any friends or family of his and ask if they have any ideas?"
"Can't waste that taxpayer money just waiting now can we?" Nick replied, even as his brain started to latch onto a dark possibility that would utterly change the world he knew. Let's hope those sloths find it was natural causes, he thought, or even poison for that matter, it would be better than knowing for certain that black magic can kill.
Nick had first come into contact with the occult community of Zootopia back when he was a teenager. At first, he'd thought it was just a convenient means of scamming gullible mammals out of their money, but as he spent more time in the community he saw more and more hints that some of the silly songs and dances they performed might have real effects. A seemingly hopeless drunk becoming a teetotaler overnight might be attributed to the power of belief, but nobody had ever figured out who was informing that "psychic" who seemed to know which racing lizards would win almost half the time. And then there'd been the thing that had almost turned him away from magic altogether.
A while back, when Nick was barely into his twenties, this one moose had started shaking down the city's small-time dealers and hustlers, those without the protection of a patron like Mr. Big. After a certain fox had impulsively burned his bridges with the shrew mobster the moose was quick to find him and inform him, in no uncertain terms, that he was going to be giving over half of his earnings to him from now on or his tiny skull would be crushed underfoot. Shortly after, Nick discovered that a few of the other occultists he knew were also being victimized by this thug and he started to get an idea.
He hadn't been planning to kill the guy, neither had most of the other six practitioners he'd convinced to take part in the whole thing, all he'd planned to do when they tied a tuft of the moose's fur (obtained at great personal risk) to a crude effigy and stuck pins in both the feet was to lame him, at least temporarily. However, as the chant had reached its climax and Nick plunged the needles into the doll's feet he had felt this strange and unsettling feeling circulate around the room and into the doll, leaving an immaterial taint lingering in the air.
The next morning it was found that the moose had stumbled and fallen, his antlers catching on an overhang and wrenching his neck into an unnatural position that severed his spine. Terrified at what he had possibly done, Nick had dropped his psychic act and dumped out his supply of love potions and stuck to conventional scams for nearly six months. However, after running on his "natural" charm nearly ran him into bankruptcy Nick started performing daily rites of charisma on himself and slowly built himself back up. But up until now he half believed that it was simply a boost in confidence that helped him, he wasn't too sure anymore.
As Judy was compiling a list of people who knew William Scrambler on the car's computer, Nick was busy digging around in the trash that had accumulated in the door's side compartment over the time the two of them had used the vehicle. Eventually, his partner glanced over to see what he was doing.
"Oh?" Nick said quickly as he heard the bunny about to ask him what was going on. "I just thought this car could use a bit of cleaning out is all. We haven't done anything to get rid of all the old bug-burger wrappers and stuff from the last couple of stake-outs you know."
Judy looked at him suspiciously. "Nick, every time we need to clean the slightest bit of grime off of a piece of evidence you make me do it. What makes you willing to get your paws dirty now?"
The fox shrugged, "well, I guess maybe I feel like I should just be doing something. I mean, a mammal actually died, not even Bellwether sunk so low as to murder somebody." As he was talking he continued to sort through the assorted detritus until he found what he was looking for, a pair of wire twist-ties from this one sandwich place they'd eaten at a couple of months ago. "I'm going to go take this stuff out now, okay?" Before Judy could say anything more Nick swept up a pawful of trash with the two twist-ties and started walking out towards a dumpster on the far side of the parking lot. As he was walking, he tied the ends of the two twists together so that they formed a rough circle, after dumping his admittedly small pawful of garbage he started to smooth out the plastic-coated wire circle as discreetly as he could manage.
Once he'd reached the car, walking as slowly as he could manage without suspicion, Judy printed out a list of names and addresses. "C'mon, I've got his previous address and last three employers already, let's go already!" Nick sighed and slipped the twist-tie circle under his shirt, pressing it against the fur of his chest in a place where he hoped it wouldn't shift too much.
The two officers drove around the city for the next couple of hours, the prior landlord wasn't much help, very few of his tenants stayed longer than they needed to and only three of his current tenants had been neighbors to Scurrier. Questioning them had taken an hour and been completely fruitless, they barely even remembered him as it so happened. They moved on to his employers at the skydocks in Rainforest district. After questioning a dozen different dockworkers under his supervision Nick decided they were getting nowhere. "Carrots, we need to narrow the list down somehow," he said after three hours of talking to clueless dockworkers who clearly had no idea that their supervisor had kicked the bucket, even while some of them weren't too unhappy at his demise.
"You have any suggestions on how?" Judy retorted.
"Yes, actually." He found the manager again and asked him "any of your employees come in late or something lately?"
"Hmm," the manager considered. "That would normally be up to a supervisor to keep track of. Maybe I can get someone with admin access to open his account for us."
"And how long is that going to take?" Judy asked.
The manager shrugged, "depends on how long it takes for IT to get around to it." He then pulled his phone out and began shouting into it, presumably at someone in their technology department.
Judy raised an eyebrow at her vulpine partner. He looked back and retorted "still looks like a better use of our time." As the manager attempted to negotiate with the IT geeks for their requested information, both Nick and Judy's phones chimed with messages received. The coroner had completed a preliminary autopsy on Bill's corpse and then emailed his findings to them.
"Pulmonary edema?" Nick read, "you ever hear about anything like that toots?"
The bunny selected the words in the email and searched for them online. "It says here it's fluid in the lungs, usually leaking in through the aortic membranes." She scrolled down the page a little further, "it can be caused by a bunch of different things apparently. High blood pressure, near-drowning, smoke inhalation, some chemicals..."
Nick listened as she continued to rattle off things that could have caused their vic to die on the physical side, and thought about the possible metaphysical cause. To his knowledge, most magic was elemental in nature and most practitioners specialized in a single element, it sounded like a water spell could have done it in this case. Often, practitioners specialized in an element that was related to their species, so if it was a water spell the odds were that it was performed by an aquatic species of some sort. But on the other hand he was an air specialist and it would be difficult to tie foxes to air in any meaningful way, and the group curse he'd possibly performed had been a void spell in any case.
The fox was roused from his contemplations of black magic by the manager pulling up the employee files and pointing to one in particular. "Dan Loghorn, beaver, called in sick yesterday and today, how's that look to you?"
Nick hovered the cursor over the time-off request and a note popped up reading "flare-up from that thing last year." Nick looked over at the manager again, "mind if I take a look at what happened last year?" Without waiting for an answer the fox scrolled down the record until he found a set of sick days taken close to a year prior and opened the notes from those entries.
"Drowning?" Judy pointed at the note. "He almost drowned in a accident and he went back to work in three days?"
"Yeah," the manager replied. "You earn personal time hour by hour as you work, company policy. He just didn't have enough accrued."
"Hey, carrots," Nick pointed at a rejected request for additional personal time, "take a look at this." The note attached to the request gave a list of medical conditions that Loghorn had apparently tried to use to justify asking for more time off than he had earned up to that point. At the top of the list read "acute pulmonary edema."
"That's an odd coincidence, isn't it?" Judy considered. "I'm thinking we should go give Mr. Loghorn a visit, don't you?"
Her vulpine partner grinned, but outside her field of view he nervously adjusted the improvised circle he'd placed under his shirt.
As the two of them drove over to Dan Loghorn's place of residence Nick remembered something he'd read in one of the books he'd "borrowed" for more ideas on how to seem more authentic to mammals who believed in magic and had a fair amount of cash on them. The book had included a chapter on how to better attune oneself with an element, it recommended spending several months, years even, gradually exposing one's body and mind to the element. But it had also hinted at a possible "fast-track" to attunement, some mammals, the book had claimed, had developed a greater affinity for magic of a particular element after near-death experiences involving the element in some way. Pyromancers with third-degree burns, victims of landslides buried alive came out with an instinctive knowledge of feng shui, and drowning survivors became adept at water magic.
Nick hadn't thought it would be worthwhile to sit naked on a windy mountaintop for a few months, meditating for days at a time, or let himself get struck by lightning just to scam some gullible college kids or superstitious grannies. But if almost drowning gave you the ability to make some mammal drown on his own body fluids on dry land he could almost see the appeal.
"There it is." Judy pointed to a complex of hemispherical lodges floating in the artificial lake in Meadow district. Modern updates of the traditional log and mud dwellings beavers had been making ever since prehistoric days.
Nick looked around the complex, there were a distinct shortage of gangplanks or piers leading out to the lodges. "You know, just because I can swim doesn't necessarily mean I'll enjoy it." And he especially had no intention of swimming in the home of a murderous water sorcerer.
"Yeah, it would probably be a bad idea to hang out in that water once that storm gets here anyways." At Judy's comment Nick glanced upwards at the sky, he'd been too preoccupied with potential occult doom to notice the thunderstorm creeping over from the Rainforest district. Judging from the giant lightning rod planted in the ground just a few yards off such storms weren't an uncommon occurrence. "We'll call him on that intercom." Judy started off towards a panel on an adjustable raised dais near the water's edge.
She depressed the button for Loghorn's unit and after a minute a gruff and irritated sounding voice answered. "Go away. I'm sick."
"This is Officers Hopps and Wilde of the Zootopia Police Department." The bunny cop intoned clearly. "We were wondering if you would be willing to answer a few questions."
There was a brief pause before the occupant answered. "Judith Laverne Hopps and Nicholas Piberius Wilde?"
A shudder ran down Nick's spine as he heard his full name spoken. Many rituals required the use of a name that the target responded to. Thinking quickly he pressed the intercom and replied "no, we're the other Officer Hopps and Wilde." Enough ambiguity not to satisfy the naming rules he'd read about, while also giving his partner no reason to suspect anything unusual.
Judy, thinking it just another of her partner's attempts at being witty, responded instead with, "yes, that's us. Will you come out?"
"All right, just a second." There was a shuffling sound and the sound cut off. Over by one of the lodges a dark shape entered the water and began swimming for shore.
A drop of rain fell on the fox's shoulder, glancing towards it he commented, "not a moment too soon. I was wondering if I'd need to stand out here in the rain or any-" he broke off as sixty pounds of semi-aquatic rodent lunged out of the water and tackled his partner to the ground.
Nick was frozen in place for a second as Judy struggled to get the considerably heavier mammal off of her. For some reason he hadn't expected some mammal who had used black magic to kill to resort to simple claw and tooth. As he was trying to process the situation he noticed that the beaver had grabbed onto his partner's whiskers and was attempting to pull them out.
Finally realizing what was happening, Nick reared back and pounced on Dan Loghorn. His slight build didn't carry enough force to completely dislodge the burly beaver, but it gave Judy an opening to wedge her strong legs beneath him. Both the beaver and the fox, claws digging into the rodent's thick hide, went tumbling towards the water. Spotting a translucent hair grasped in Loghorn's far paw, Nick reached for it but his reach brought his arm close to the beaver's head and he sunk his long incisors into it. The shock and pain caused Nick to lose his grip and Loghorn took advantage of the opportunity to slip back into the water, his home turf.
"Nick!" Judy rushed over to her partner's side and examined his wounded arm. "How bad is it?"
Nick winced as he held his injured limb. "Never mind me, it's just a flesh wound. Worry about yourself, he took your whisker with him."
"Why would that be more serious?" Judy retorted. "We need to get you to a hospital and some backup fast." The rabbit whipped out her radio and called up the station. "This is Hopps, we need backup and an ambulance, Officer Wilde is -ack!" Judy suddenly started coughing madly.
Nick wrenched the radio from her paw and spoke into it rapidly. "Both of us are injured, get some of those hippos over to the beaver lodges in the Meadow district along with an ambulance prepared to treat pulmonary edema." As he spoke Nick felt the improvised ward under his shirt begin to burn. "Possibly two cases of it." He amended before dropping the radio and lurching back to the intercom. Nick pressed the intercom button again. "Daniel G. Loghorn, do you have any idea what you're doing?"
There was a brief sound of muffled chanting in the background before the beaver replied, his voice now sounding almost maniacal. "I'm taking out the ZPD's two finest officers so they can't stop me from destroying the company, that's what I'm doing. Soon you'll be drowning in your own blood."
Nick snorted in feigned amusement. "You think you're the only wannabe sorcerer in Zootopia? I've got a ward protecting me from your silly curse." Though, even as he said it he felt the circle of twist-ties growing hotter and hotter under his shirt.
On the ground nearby Judy turned over towards Nick, trying to say something but only a sharp cough coming out. The intercom spoke again, "oh, sounds like your bunny friend isn't so protected. As soon as the curse is done with her I'm sure its' full power will be enough to overwhelm your ward. I've got your blood, Nicholas P. Wilde!"
The improvised ward grew hotter under Nick's shirt, he knew that the beaver was right, blood was probably the most powerful of synecdoches available. If Loghorn was skilled enough to set up a ritual this quickly he might even follow Judy before the ZPD's hippos could arrive and bust their way in. He pulled his finger away from the button and a glimmer of hope sprang up as he noticed the red staining his brownish-orange fur. "I've got your blood too, Daniel G. Loghorn."
Frantically, he looked around for things he might use to form a counterspelling ritual, water, lodge-domes, the police SUV, Judy sputtering on the ground, there didn't seem to be anything to use. As the rain began to fall around them Nick felt despair creeping in on him again, there was no way he could improvise an effective rite quickly enough. But then, inspiration struck as a lightning bolt hit the pole raised not 20 feet away. Lightning was a product of air ionization, his element, the fence around the lightning rod was square-shaped, but that could be close enough to a circle for his purposes. Quickly he scampered for the fence and propelled himself over, thanking the academy's drill instructor for making him work on that so hard.
He stepped up to the lightning rod and touched it gingerly. A static charge jumped out and made him pull back in pain, before he remembered what he had to do. He slapped his beaver-blood stained paw on the pole and began to chant, ignoring the residual heat searing his palm. "Forces of nature I command you to follow the blood of Daniel G. Loghorn and smite him." The rain poured down around him, soaking the fox even as the wire circle under his shirt burned, he repeated his chant with no further effect.
Nick glanced over at Judy, and saw her cough one last time before lying still. The ward burned even hotter and he felt his rage and fury rising towards the beaver who had hurt her. He channeled that rage into his chant as he yelled out "Forces of nature, unleash your fury on the royal asshole Daniel G. Loghorn!"
Lightning struck the pole again and it jumped into the four-foot tall fox clinging to it. As untold thousands of watts flowed into Nick's body he caught a momentary glimpse of the threads binding reality together. Minute strands flowed outward from the blood on his right paw and the wound on his left arm, coalescing into cables that went off towards the lodge of the beaver black magician. They weren't just visible, he could smell them as scent trails, hear their frequencies, almost touch them as tangible items, and their magnetism drew his head away. All five primary senses perceived them at once. Summoning up the last of his will, Nicholas Piberius Wilde threw his other arm towards the one who wronged him and his partner and the lightning leapt off his finger at the lodge. The dome exploded as he collapsed to the ground.
Judy lurched and sprang up to her feet, a sudden bout of energy overcoming the lingering choke in her chest cavity. She saw electricity arc over her partner before he fell. "No!" Instinctively, she ran to aid her partner, gasping and coughing as she went.
She vaulted the fence easily and landed next to him, the fur of his forepaws was blackened and his chest wasn't moving. "Nick, come on," she grabbed the scorched remnants of his uniform and tried to haul him away from the lightning rod. She couldn't hear a heartbeat. "Oh, please, no." She pleaded as she tried to remember CPR. Judy pumped her comparatively small fists on the fox's chest, forced air into his nostrils, tried everything she could remember. She was rewarded on the third try when Nick coughed once and his heart restarted.
"Thank God." Judy sighed in relief as she let herself collapse onto her partner's chest, sirens approaching. As she lay there she began to wonder, how had Loghorn made her cough like that? What were Nick and the murderer talking about when they spoke about "wards" and blood and stuff? How did that lightning bolt jump from the pole and Nick to Loghorn's lodge? She resolved to ask him what was going on as soon as they were both out of the hospital.