Eight o'clock was a cruel time. The only one of the three who looked remotely rested, or that at least didn't look different from usual, was Vopros.

They knocked at the door and waited. As the permission to enter was given from the inside, from quite a grumpy voice indeed, they entered. The door shut behind them.

And disappeared.

That was not Garaham's office.

They were in a strange place. It was a very large room, quite larger than one would have expected from what it looked like: a garage. They didn't even need to use their magical sight to feel that the place had been enlarged with magic, and that, surely, from the outside it would have been much smaller than what it was.

All around them there were grey walls ten feet tall. It wouldn't have been less than a hundred square yards, it was incredibly vast. On one side of the room there were three mops, two buckets, some bottles of floor wash, rubber gloves and a scrub. Over them, a sticky note.

Clean everything by noon.

G.

«What the fuck?» exclaimed Banshee, watching all around her.

«Mira, there's something written on the other side of the sticky note.» pointed out Chico.

Break anything and heads will roll.

Literally.

They picked up the cleaning material and looked around, with a sigh.

«A garage. He's making us clean his garage.» Banshee grumbled.

«Oh, well, it's better than the Order's parking lot no?» Chico tried to find the silver lining.

«Have you seen floor? There are three inches of grease and who knows what.» Vopros pointed out.

«I can bet there are alien civilizations that had melt with the spiders here and would be more than happy to attack us. Man, he must haven't touched this place in ages.» Banshee looked under a shelf and immediately straightened her back, her curiosity suddenly dulled.

Tue quite large room was literally filled with office shelves, every shelf covered in dusty brown file boxes, transparent boxes with sheets and objects, . It truly seemed no-one had come to clean in a while.

Boxes of things, rather than just files, were orderly stacked against the walls. In the center of the room lay a series of what seemed covered furniture, and from two shelves peeked anonymous volumes and books.

«It will take us ages, forget noon. The scrubbing of the floor alone would take days with just this!» Chico scoffed at the cleaning material.

«We use magic, we botch something, Chief kills us.» Vopros summarized, as heavy as stone. The three exchanged a defied glance and then, sighing, each one of them took a side of the room, and started working.

Chico decided that the floor was his enemy. He half-emptied a bottle of floor cleaning liquid directly on the dirt material made of dead insects, dust and dampness, and started moving his mop with energy. Vopros, absent-mindedly, had taken up a duster and was dusting with energy, dust that fell inevitably on Chico's attempt at purifying the unholy mess on the floor, and sparking up a violent discussion between the two men.

Banshee walked, barely daring to touch anything. Many boxes were transparent plastic, there, and she could peek at their insides. Some of them looked like clothing, others were miscellaneous objects. She was quite sure one, piled up under many, had some kind of trophy in it. The furniture in the center revealed themselves to be an old bike and cheap furnishings that could come from a college bedroom. She browsed the shelves, through kid books and old law college tomes, to find something that made her eyes shine.

A photo album.

She held it in her arms breathing heavily. The place where embarrassment is kept.

It was, quite obviously, magically locked. And not locked just for game. Who enchanted the album really didn't want it to be opened.

But she really really wanted to open it.

She held the album in her hands and closed her eyes, the noise of her colleagues bickering in the background getting farther and farther from her perception. She tried to look at the rabid fluxes closing the album's lock. They were quite clearly green, angry and not at all particularly easy to handle. But stubbornness was one of her best qualities. She took her time, studied them, even played with them, having them sort of "sniff her hand" as she tried to move them. And then, after a good quarter of an hour of focus and feints: she tugged at them with all of her violence.

The fluxes resisted. One, two, three times.

Then dissolved into thin air.

She started flipping through the pages with a hungry, triumphant smile.

There was this little scrawny kid, with an impressive mop of warm brown hair, immortalized in the most various situations. There he was at Summer Camp, with a bright white baseball cap, a yellow t-shirt and shorts showing embarrassing thin legs, in front of a lake, with the expression of someone just sentenced to death. Then, a series of other kid situations, even a carnival photograph of him enclosed in the cutest penguin costume, while another kid, a full head taller than him and with the most perfect bear costume she'd ever seen, was giving him what looked like quite a hurtful noogie.

Then the photos passed to prom, where Garaham had been photographed with a dashing suit he finally started filling up nicely. He was lonely while, in the same photo, the blonde boy had someone that looked incredibly a lot like Francesca on his arm, making young Garaham a very awkward third wheel.

Then there was a proud Garaham, in Valedictorian robes, giving a speech for his class's graduation, his face graced by the apparition of a thick veil of beard that granted him a bit more authority, and the first time he was actually smiling. He already looked so... chiefish. She could well imagine him, addressing the masses with his thunderous deep voice, speaking about responsibilities and the importance of gravitas in everyday life.

The album got some thanksgiving photos here and there. Garaham's family must have lived in a farm, because there were always different animals every time. Once he had a giant dog who looked quite busy trying to hump his arm just when the photo was made. In another photo, a sheep was eating his trousers. In a third, a black horse was trying to munch his hair. That made the photos hilarious, as the animals looked perfectly tranquil and Garaham always looked pissed as hell or downright screaming at them. The only thing that stopped her giggling was the fact that, after some photos, the woman who was surely Garaham's mother stopped appearing in the photographs.

Then, the album skipped to his graduation, only his father and him. He looked very dignified, and with the well-built body he sported even now. Then came the Order photos: his years as an Apprentice, there were photos with this tall, black bald man who looked quite fond of him. Then, his Enforcer promotion celebration, with a man with dark hair, green eyes hidden behind half-moon glasses and the kindest smile. Those photos, she skipped with a jerking movement. Then his wedding photos, with a gleaming Francesca in the most gorgeous of dresses, and he as serious as ever. And that was the last section of the album.

«Earth to Banshee!» called a very indelicate voice in her ear, calling her back from that unexpected voyage in Chiefland. She closed the album with a loud "thud" and then turned towards her colleague, frowning.

«What!»

«Are you aware that you've been slacking here for at least half an hour while Vopros and I...»

«... furiously bickered about the right order in which to clean this mess? Yes, I am aware.» she retorted. Chico opened his mouth. Then closed it. She showed a triumphant expression. The Mexican growled.

«We're muy behind schedule. That's why I proposed something, but Vopros's against it, so we need your vote.» explained Chico. Banshee started looking interested.

«Speak.»

«Well, let's say we don't do it by ourselves... let's say we get some help...» Chico started going around it, and Banshee knew that whenever Chico started going around things that meant a certain amount of crap was starting to hit the fan.

«Cut to the point, mate.» she urged him.

«I want to summon something to help us clean.» he blurted, finally, since his subtle approach didn't work.

Banshee's eyes suddenly widened.

«Listen, yer a great summoner and I owe you as much, but every time ye summon something there's a risk. And here the risk is tenfold! Ye summon the wrong thing and the Chief summons our head off our shoulders. Can't we just enchant the brooms or something like that? Make the grease disappear?»

«Tried.» Vopros replied. «This stuff is magic resistant. I suspect Chief makes experiments with Dispel magic here. This why he sent us to clean it.»

«And I aim to summon a fairy well, nothing too dangerous. A Fairy Well is a magic spring that I would link to here from the Undertide, and could give us water magic enough to contrast the Dispel influence of the grease.» smiled Chico.

«Fairies? I don't even need to be a Mage to know that's a shitty idea! Ye leave the Good People alone, ye live long and prosper. Piss'em, yer dying with yer heart eaten by a rat from yer inside!» Banshee started to seriously panic. «Fuck it, I'll lick this place clean if needed, but don't mess with fairies!»

«Banshee, I'm not summoning a Fairy, I'm just tapping one of their wells.» Chico explained, patiently, well knowing how useless it was.

«We have till noon.» Vopros said abruptly.

«Yes.»

«Summon fairy thing.» sentenced Vopros, after some seconds of deep thoughts. Banshee opened her mouth to say something. Then closed it and pouted, resignedly.

Chico shot Vopros a beaming smile, and then closed his eyes.

He had worked on his Summon magic for some time, now. So, he was quite sure of his results in trying to gather the magic energy required for the spell, while Vopros watched, unamused, and Banshee stared terrified, ready for the worst things to happen.

Chico's eyes shone of a sudden white light, for just a second, and then in front of him, against the wall, a swirling pool of white luminescence started widening. The light twisted and turned, and with painstakingly slowness started to take up a form. A hole started opening, and crystal-clear water started flowing from it, like a little, singing mountain spring. The water was unmistakably more water, and when it met the unnamed material on the floor, they could see it started to slowly but evidently eat at it.

The three looked at the hole.

«It worked.» Banshee put her hands on her hips.

«Of course it worked! It hurts me a little that you'd be so surprised.» said Chico, putting a hand on his heart as if he had just been stabbed hard there. «I mean, look at that. And you were all so scared about this. When you're a master summoner, there's nothing the Undertide won't do for you!»

«I admit, this good.» nodded Vopros, reaching for mops and buckets and starting filling the buckets up from the spring. It had a happy gurgling sound, and its water really looked clean and clear.

«I'm sorry Chico, that's... pretty brilliant.» Banshee smiled to the Mexican, patting him on the shoulder with a friendly touch, before taking up a mop and a bucket and starting to walk towards one end of the room. Triumphant, Chico took up the task of dusting the remaining shelves, while Vopros and Banshee started soaping the floors in front of the rising tide.

The sound of the spring was somewhat inspiring. It had a joyful rhythm and spread a fresh sensation of peace.

Vopros took the north side of the room and Banshee the south, and they soaped with good effort for quite some time. Splashing happily, they left the water to do the rest, and started dusting on their own to help Chico finish the work.

After half an hour, Banshee noticed that the water level had gradually but consistently risen to ankle height. She went back to the hole. She stood there, watching the water flowing down from it at a regular rhythm.

«Oi! Chico!» she called. After a couple of minutes, splashing sounds let her know that the man was coming.

«Què?» he asked.

« I think it's time to close this up.» she said, pointing at the hole.

«Uh, maybe you're right.» nodded Chico, noticing only now how tall water had reached. He started cracking his knuckles, noisily. In the meantime, Vopros splashed slowly towards them, mop in one hand, bucket in the other.

«Water is high.» observed, as if it wasn't something that mattered to him

Chico painted a "I have everything under control" expression on his face, faced the hole, closed his eyes, searched his concentration and moved his hands.

The hole didn't even flinch.