The kids called while I was working on an answer for them. Some way to fix this mess. I may not have been at my most helpful. I doubt that they would be either if they had to reach a phone from 750 million miles away. I had taken a journey to try and learn what I could about this thing. The Smiling Traveler. Where did the name come from? Why did it want to come here? What is bringing it here? Not much of it made sense. Something about sharing smiles and happiness. Tell that to the people in Japan.
They found Wrath in the basement of the older lacrosse gym. The Traveler must have captured Wrath and been working on it the whole time. Weakening it, torturing it… playing with it? That’s why I couldn’t track a worthwhile aura. This thing had managed to dampen Wrath’s aura. The other two beings must have been pulled in it’s wake, victims of circumstance I guess. Here, I thought I was making some students catch me a meal but in reality this was all just a prelude to something so much worse.
When the kids arrived, they found the ashes of the angel inside of a triggered portal. A kind of reverse-summoning circle. I had never seen anything like that before. This thing managed to weave a combination vortex and tunneling spell wrapped into a kind of anti-ward and all of it gave off no magical signal because it’s not really magic at all. At least, not our magic. Two of the kids went into the portal. I couldn’t see much from where they were. It was dark and the magic couldn’t shed much light there. The other two got help from those creepy “He-Who-Walks” kids. The darker skinned kid, Ace has a thing for the girl, Janet. It seems even with all this crazy stuff happening, hormones will always win.
They made a kind of thaumaturgical bomb. Essentially, a sheer mass of paradox wrapped in a feedback loop. If I could, I’d give them some extra credit. It was an impressive weave. The bomb must have shoved everything away from it in both physical and higher dimensions because I picked up the other two kids in Japan. They were in a Dezyland parking lot but had done some temporal fuckery. The others knocked themselves out and woke up in the infirmary. Ace, Callaway, Janet and the Jinn, Saif went to speak to Bucket of Water. I’m not sure what was said (that bastard is always heavily warded) but, they got ported to Japan, too.
In the meantime, shit went to hell back at the island. The administrators had to do their part and inform the UN and the UN quickly swooped in to put this place on lockdown. They’re treating this like a high level thaumaturgical infection site. I wish that I could explain to them that this is just a vector, the real infection is much bigger. But, when they put up the wards, the fuckers locked me out of my own body. At least Mourdun is dead so, I don’t have to worry about him taking my body back. The administrators were shunted back as per the contracts. They were furious. Bucket of Water shut their doors, my body is in observation, and now it seems the infection has spread to Japan.
The Smiling Traveler must have been working this angle since Dezy started putting up the wards. Each themepark, a huge ward and each tourist a strand in a spell. It’s been under our noses this whole time. Roy Dezy had weaved a spell over the course of 40-something years that covered the entire planet to protect us from this Smiling Traveler. It’s almost enough to excuse his fascist and racist tendencies. But, something has changed. I can only assume that the Smiling Traveler has their own servants out there. How extensive is it’s network? Who follows the Smiling Traveler? How do these damn wards even work?
I feel bad for the kids. They were a little obnoxious but, they don’t deserve this kind of pressure. I hope they rise to this challenge.