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Nick drifted through a featureless haze, there were faint signs of the landscape below him, but it was hard to make out through the grey fog that seemed to pervade the place. He was dimly aware of someone shouting his name, off in the distance, he knew that probably meant something, but his attention was tied up in the view immediately before him now. It seemed like the fox was surrounded by threads of connection, everything having a link to everything else in reality. He understood now how the laws of synecdoche worked, and how he might find links other than the physical, if only he had the time.

A flurry of motion in the strings off to the side drew Nick's attention briefly. A mass of threads was unraveling, the multi-dimensional strands uncoiling from one another and snapping off into the distance, to the other ends of the connections he presumed. In the center of the disturbance lay a sprawled form in the vague shape of a beaver. As Nick watched, he felt himself drawn towards the mass by the arm, it was almost too late before he realized that something was wrong and tried to pull back, but a second tangle began to manifest itself from the threads breaking off and yanked on a thin thread linking him to it.

We both die together. The thought seemed to resonate along the connecting strand, not merely words but images of Nick and Loghorn collapsing simultaneously. Feelings of cold and death. The new tangle formed a vaguely mammalian shape, starting to ensnare the unbroken threads in its grasp, but also losing threads, it seemed to be struggling to maintain its shape. Nick, beginning to realize what was happening, stared down at his right paw.

Slender strands streamed out from the bloodstains on his paw to tie together into a cable that extended towards the tangle. Nick tried again to drag along the ground to keep from being pulled in but the earth offered no resistance. It was apparent now that Loghorn's ghost intended to take his own disembodied spirit into the great beyond with him, and he was helpless to stop it.

"Nick, come on!" At the sound of someone calling his name again the fox felt a tug at his chest, pulling him in the opposite direction as the coalescing ghost. Looking back, he saw another tangle of threads, most of them connecting with him, with a companion that stood over its' prone shape, beating on its chest frantically. One frayed but thick cord linked Nick's chest to the companion knot, and it was pulling him almost as strongly as Loghorn's.

Nick looked at the slowly disintegrating spirit hovering over its dying body, then back to his own form. He didn't hesitate for more than a second before pulling on the strands leading back to his body.

No, the ghost leapt towards him from the corpse it had vacated. Threads breaking as it went. You die with me!

The fox looked back at his paw and saw that the thin strands linking him to the vengeful spirit were snapping as well, the cord gradually losing its grip on him. Sorry, he thought back. It would seem I have another date scheduled. With one last pull he wrenched himself free of the sinister connection and leapt back into his own mortal form.

The world of threads and connections faded away as Nick sputtered and coughed, kneeling over him, his lapine partner breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh thank God." Judy said before letting herself fall over his chest. As the sirens drew closer, Nick thought that maybe now would be an opportune time for a rest and let the EMTs lift him up onto the stretcher and into the back of the ambulance.

---

After an indeterminate period of dreamless sleep Nick was awakened by a sliver of sunlight poking him in the eye. Shrugging groggily he found that he couldn't rotate his head fully, annoyed, he looked around.

He seemed to be lying in a hospital bed, his arms wrapped in bandages and held in traction, while a chest compression restricted his breathing. A heart monitor beeped steadily next to him, speeding up and getting louder as he woke. On the couch by the window a bundle of blankets raised one long grey ear, and then to Nick's grateful surprise his partner rose up off the sofa, looking concerned.

Nick managed to gasp out, "not getting rid of me that easily little bunny," before Judy leapt over to his side and wrapped her arms around his neck.

She breathed one word into his neck, "Nick...", before she realized what she was doing and straightened up. "So, how are you feeling?"

"Well," the fox started. "I'm partially in traction, I have to pee like a fish out of water, and a grey fuzzball seems to be trying to strangle me." At that comment Judy paused, seemed to consider the situation for a minute, then socked him in the muzzle. "Ow," Nick exclaimed in surprise, "what was that for?"

"A few things," Judy replied. "First, for that dumb comment. Second, for making me wait here in this crummy hospital room for four days waiting to see if you'd wake up..."

"Wait," the immobile fox interrupted, "I've been out for four days?"

Judy shrugged, "closer to a week actually. The doctors wouldn't let me in until they were sure I wouldn't cough up blood again. But you didn't let me finish." She pushed down harder on Nick's chest, causing him to sputter. "Third, you didn't tell me what the hell was going on there?!"

Nick was reminded of the time Judy had caught him on tax evasion, he'd been trapped then, just as he was now. Even discounting the physical bindings currently present. He had no idea how Judy would react if he claimed to be a wizard or something, most mammals in the city either reacted with skepticism or asked if he could do a paw reading, but his partner was a good country bunny, he hadn't even heard her swear until just recently. He thought maybe he could try changing the subject, distract her until he could think of something more permanent to do. "Hey, shouldn't there be a doctor in here now or something?"

His lapine partner sighed and walked over to an intercom set in the wall. "Hello," she said into it, "room 373, Dr. Lighthoof told me to call when anything changed in here. Well, he's awake." Ten minutes later a deer in a lab coat came in to take Nick's temperature and examine his injuries for signs of infection.

While the doctor was doing that, Nick started mentally chanting a silent mantra. Judith Laverne Hopps, you need to forget what happened, it's for the best. You don't want to follow this trail. Judith Laverne Hopps, you need to forget... He could feel his awareness flowing down the threads that linked him to the younger bunny, but something held him back, kept him just short of entering her mind. Then the doctor lifted the bandages over Nick's chest and he completely lost his train of thought at the sight.

A line of jagged pink scar tissue came down from his left arm, arced down towards his stomach and formed a circle-shape, then continued up towards his right arm. "Pretty nasty things, lightning strikes." The deer doctor, Lighthoof he thought, commented. "You're lucky it didn't fry your heart, that wire thing you had drew it away somehow, what was it anyways?"

Nick grimaced, staring at the patchwork mess of his body. "Good luck charm," he answered, improvising. He noticed that Judy was trying to look away, but had started to peep through her fingers at the discussion of his "wire-thing".

The doctor snorted, "I suppose 'good luck' is relative. You get struck by lightning and it keeps you from getting killed but paralyzes your diaphragm for several hours requiring us to put you on the ventilator for most of a day just to keep you alive." With that, he replaced the bandages and left. "Nurse will be by to replace your saline and help you use the toilet in 30 minutes, there's a call button on the nightstand."

Once they were alone again Judy hopped back up onto the side of the bed and resumed her interrogation of the helpless fox. "Okay, now are you going to tell me what was going on back there?"

"Back where?" Nick said innocently, while frantically thinking to himself forget, forget, forget, damnit!

"Back at the complex when I suddenly started coughing blood and you and Loghorn were shouting at each other about links and blood and names and stuff." Judy replied. "And then you threw a lightning bolt at his apartment."

"Welll," Nick trailed off as he thought of how to break it to her. "It was more like I re-routed a lightning bolt at him, that bolt was there already." At Judy's scowl he sighed and just said it as simply and plainly as he could manage. "Okay, fine, I know magic. Happy now?"

Judy cocked an eyebrow at him skeptically. "Magic, really? Like those Harry Porker novels?"

The vulpine scoffed at the suggestion. "Harry Porker, no, most of the time it's more like the fortune teller at the carnival whose vague and slightly cryptic predictions later appear to be somewhat accurate later on when you think about it."

"I've never heard of a fortune teller causing someone to drown on dry land or redirect a lightning bolt towards anyone." Judy retorted.

"Have you heard of the Evil Eye, Voodoo dolls, jinxes?" Nick replied. "Though actually voodoo dolls aren't really part of Vodoun, they're really a Europan thing called poppets..."

"Nick!" Judy interrupted his seque and brought him back on track. "You were saying?"

"Oh, right, lightning. Well, magic with that kind of obvious effect is very rare and difficult to pull off. You need a synecdoche, a material link to the target, and the target's true name. Loghorn was probably dunking a pair of poppets with your whisker and some of my blood into a tank of water, possibly acid, while performing an elaborate ritual he'd set up days before. While his blood stained my claws and I put it directly in contact with a live lightning rod. Which nearly killed me I might add!"

"So, what, if you had some kind of ritual prepared you might have been able to pull off that lightning thing without hurting yourself? Could just any mammal learn to kill from miles away or is there some sort of 'magic gene' or do you need to make a deal with the Devil or something first?"

Nick snorted, "deal with the Devil, no we don't have congress with the Prince of Lies or anything." Then he sobered up and started to explain more. "I suppose that anyone could learn how to perform the ritual of a killing curse, but unless they're properly attuned to the element they're employing they can't muster up the energy to actually make it work without killing themselves. Loghorn could only do it because he'd almost drowned and survived."

Judy actually looked relieved at that. "So, Loghorn had a near-death experience involving drowning so he could make other mammals drown on dry land. Am I correct?" Nick gave a slight nod. She had a thought then, terrible as it was. "Does that mean that now that you've been struck by lightning you could kill other mammals with lightning?"

Nick's face fell at that accusation. "I would much rather not, but yes, I could."

His partner's mind raced, her friend had suddenly gained a weapon, a lethal weapon. Some ZPD officers carried tasers, she knew, and those could kill if set too high for the mammal they were fired at, and claws or horns could easily be lethal at close range, but Nick could kill a mammal without even looking them in the eye now. Could she trust him with that power? And there was another disturbing thought gnawing at her, was every mammal who made it out of a near-death experience a ticking time bomb? Were there other ways to become "attuned" as Nick had said it? She had to ask. "What do you mean by 'attuned', what ways are there to become that way?"

"Well," the fox thought. "Every mammal has an affinity for magic that employs one specific element, I've got a talent for air magic for instance. The more one uses magic they have an affinity for, the more in touch with it they become, but it's normally very slow and gradual. One can become attuned to their element almost instantaneously by going through a near-death experience involving their elemental affinity, but only if it's the element they already favor. Loghorn must have had a water affinity, seeing how he was a beaver it's not that surprising," he stopped, thinking he might be sounding a bit racist. "Not that species always determines elemental affinity or anything, it's more a function of personality really. But, for some reason certain species are more likely to produce magic-users of a particular element. Anyways, the second fastest way to achieve attunement is to get in touch with your element, usually through months if not years of meditation involving exposure to and contemplation of the element." He chortled as if he'd thought of something funny. "For me, that would have involved something like sitting naked on a windy mountaintop every day, for hours at a time."

"Am I interrupting something?" A nurse was at the door, wheeling a cart in front of her. Judy motioned for her to come on in, might as well use the interruption to try and process what she'd just heard.

---

While Nick was having his needs attended to, Judy left the room to afford him some privacy and see to her own needs. As she was coming back from the vending machines with a carrot and alfalfa bar she wondered if she could trust her partner. When they first met he'd convinced her that a fully-grown fennec in an elephant costume was his son, yes, but in the months since the Bellwether case they'd grown close and to her knowledge he hadn't even lied to her. Heck, he'd only made a token effort to deny the events of the previous week. But now, she knew that Nick had been hiding strange and powerful abilities she didn't understand the whole time she'd known him, and when he revealed them he'd used them to kill a mammal. And worse, the only other mammal with such powers had tried to use them to murder her.

Judy stopped in the middle of the hallway, bar halfway to her mouth. Loghorn had been trying to kill her when Nick killed him. It had taken the threat of death to his partner for Nick to kill another mammal, he'd been defending her. Perhaps she could give him the benefit of the doubt for now, but she needed to know more about what he was capable of before she could fully trust him again, after all he must have neglected to tell her for some reason...

Judy remembered asking Nick if he got his powers through a deal with the devil. Of course, he wouldn't have felt comfortable telling his country bunny partner that he practiced the pagan arts, and knowing how touchy mammals could get about religion she'd never brought up the subject of faith. Whatever she believed though, Judy knew that her knowledge of the real world was somewhat lacking, she finished up her snack and headed straight for Nick's room.

The fox was just then being helped back into his bed, he was cautiously moving his bandaged arms, trying to determine his range of movement. He couldn't move them very far, the bandages restrained his movement too much, but at least they weren't in traction. "Oh, hey there bunny," he said, spotting her, "nurse says they might change these things out for something more flexible tomorrow, get some of my fingers free." Nick looked at Judy, trying to gauge her expression. "Did you want to keep talking then?"

His partner sighed, "I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for now, I know it was extenuating circumstances when you killed Loghorn, but I don't know what else you can do. What you might have fewer qualms... err what spells you prefer to perform."

Nick hesitated, he could see that he'd need to sell her on the idea of working with a practitioner, and he didn't have the time to prepare any supernatural assistance. He'd need to rely on the mundane tricks of the trade. "Well," he started, thinking of ways he could use his air magic to aid in their police work. "I could perform divinations to read what's coming in the wind, or trace a fugitive or missing mammal through supernatural scent trails."

"That would have been useful back in the Otterton case!" Judy interrupted, "how come you didn't offer to help that way then?"

The fox froze, he'd stumbled into a sticking point there, he had to play damage control now. "Well, for one thing, my use of the spell wasn't too reliable back then, past experience suggested that the mundane methods were more effective. Though if I'm attuned now I might be able to pull it off more successfully if I tried again." Maybe now he could insert some levity, "for another, I wasn't too interested in helping you succeed at the time and if I did attempt a tracking spell you would have thought I was stalling again."

"I suppose that's true," Judy conceded. "But what did you do with magic if you couldn't make tracking work very often?"

"Well," Nick struggled to work it in a way that sounded reasonable. "Air magic like I specialize in mostly works with the mind, if you take time to perform a rite you can influence what someone believes or remembers to a significant degree, but that's not very useful to a hustler." He emphasized the last part. "The types of cons I specialized in were spur of the moment things, too quick to leave the mark much time to think, much less cast a charm on them. No, more often I put charms on myself, to improve my clarity of thought and lend myself a sort of "aura of credibility"."

"Aura of credibility?" The bunny looked rather incredulous at him.

"Yeah," Nick replied, "I cast that on myself and for the next day or two I can sell you used pawpsicle sticks. So long as it's at least somewhat plausible I mean."

Or convince a rookie cop that your fennec partner-in-crime is your child who wants to be an elephant when he grows up, Judy thought to herself. "Didn't seem to work on the ice cream guy though."

The fox snorted, "well, some minds are more rigid than others. Just how it is."

"Right," Judy thought out loud. "So, if air magic is associated with the mind, what about the other elements?"

"Oh, well, earth is air's opposite, associated with the body, if you wanted to be stronger or to weaken an enemy you'd use earth magic. While water and fire represent the methodical and passionate, respectively. Water can help you accomplish something slow and steadily, while fire magic tends to be fast but hard to control." He considered for a second. "You saw that in how long it took for Loghorn to kill us, right? While lightning comes from the air but it has traits of fire as well. In a more benign sense you could use water to help change bad habits, while fire is used in love spells."

"Okay then," Judy replied. "Then, is all magic based on those elements, or is there some sort of non-elemental magic as well?"

Nick sighed. "Actually, there's a fifth element, some call it "aether" or "heaven", I prefer to call it "void". Void covers most forms of magic that would be hard to pigeonhole into any of the others." He thought, "there's some other interpretations of the elemental system, one Eastern tradition uses earth, fire, water, wood, and metal for instance, but I'm not too familiar with that one."

"And you mostly use air magic, is that right?" Nick nodded, Judy continued. "One last question for now, what was that circle thing under your shirt and what did it do?"

The fox grimaced, holding a bandaged paw above the circle-shaped scar above his diaphragm. "It was an improvised ward I made from a pair of twist-ties after I realized that the killer was using magic. Circles are containers for magic, they redirect the energy in an endless circuit or something. Most of the time you need to be standing or sitting in the middle of a circle to perform a spell and a circular amulet or totem can protect you from curses. It got a little hot when Loghorn tried to curse me but I wasn't harmed by it, and the circle kept that lightning from killing me, you heard."

Judy processed that last bit of information and came to a conclusion. "Once you get out of here, we're going jewelry shopping."