Risu found herself on solid ground, much to her relief. She appeared to be in a hallway with firm stone walls. The air was damp. There was enough dim light to avoid straining her vision but no obvious light source nearby. She guessed it may be the basement level of a palace or fortress. Maybe some kind of dungeon.

That's when she heard the hurried footsteps echoing in the distance. The sound was coming her way at rapid pace. Whoever or whatever it was, they were probably charging at her.

A horned, 8-foot brute with crimson skin rushed at Risu, slashing its claws in her direction. On instinct, she jumped towards the wall, launching herself into the air. It gave her the extra momentum needed to land a 540 kick against the fiend's torso. As it regrouped, it taunted her in verse:

THY SWIFT DEFEAT WOULD BE MY PRIZE;
YET MARTIAL SKILLS DEFY THY SIZE

The beast lunged at Risu, attempting to over-power her with its raw force. A well-timed palm strike put it down on its knees, for a moment. Now it was really pissed.

THOU PLAGUE ME STILL LIKE SCROTAL WARTS?
THEN SMITING THEE, I SHALL MAKE SPORT!

It got right back up, raging at her. Risu kept her calm. The monster gnashed its teeth as she dodged its wild strikes. She turned its bulk against it, felling it with a reverse heel trip from a low shiko-dachi stance.

BROUGHT TO HEEL BY PINT-SIZED RUNT;
INVOKE MY WRATH, O PUTRID C—

"That's quite enough, Noznoroch!" called out an unseen female voice. "Stand down. Now!"

The creature started panting. It recited one final verse:

BEGONE, INFERNAL FIEND WITHIN!
REPLACED BY MORTAL BONES AND SKIN.

Its demonic form shrank to human scale, until only a naked, wiry-limbed Caucasian man remained where Noznoroch once stood.

A woman stepped out from the shadows behind Risu. "I'm terribly sorry about that. He gets quite defensive around newcomers," she said with an accent like a BBC newscaster. "I do believe you're Jairuzu's pupil, yes?"

Risu nodded. She introduced herself the Western way, family name last.

"But she came in through one of the enemy gates!" said the former demon host.

"I know," said the enigmatic lady. "I redirected her here."

Risu's mystery benefactor wore a weathered brown trench-coat over a ratty dress shirt and skinny red tie. She took out a pack of Virginia Slims and put a stick in her mouth. She snapped her fingers and a flame lit up on her thumb like it was a match. She lit the cigarette and snuffed the fire with another snap.

Just as she did that, the environment began to change. Now they appeared to be in a slightly run-down British-style fish and chips shop. Risu noticed there were two other people sitting at the tables: a younger black man dressed in street wear and a gorgeous Latina woman in designer-looking office clothes.

"Where am I?" asked Risu, speaking in English. "Who are you... and how do you know my sensei?"

"All in good time, my dear," said the British woman. "I am Harriet Justinian, occult detective, at your service." She gave her a mock ladylike curtsy. "Though I do believe Jairuzu would have referred to me as Ano Baka Abazure."

Risu gasped, then blushed. That told her everything she needed to know about their connection.

"You've already met Jonas Sangreal," said Harriet. "When he isn't sharing his consciousness with a Thelemic vengeance spirit, you may know him as a quantum physicist, of some renown."

"Particle physicist, actually," said Jonas, the booming growl now replaced by a distinct South African accent.

"Same difference, darling!" said Harriet, winking at him. "Jonas here describes this space as a 10D stable M-brane contained within a Poincaré superstring; what a layperson might term a 'pocket dimension'. The rest of us well-adjusted folk just call it The Somewhere Else."

"If you brought me here, and you know Jairuzu, then you must realize he is almost certainly dead by now."

"I wouldn't worry too much about it, love," said Harriet, all casual. "I'm not sure how long you've been training with him, but he's been killed at least twice before. That crafty little bugger always finds some way to come back. If you ever see him again, do ask him about what happened at Mount Akuma."

Risu seethed with rage at Harriet's lack of concern.

"Oh, come off it, dear!" said Harriet. "All of us here have lost someone close to them. It's just an unfortunate side effect of being who we are." She motioned to one of the other 'customers'. "Sam, come over here."

The young man appeared to be just a bit older than Risu —19 or twenty, maybe— but he towered over her.

"Risu, meet Yung Samedi," said Harriet, "The current houngan of the Pethro Loa in the Gulf Coast of the US."

He offered his hand politely but there was a faraway look in his eyes, like the thousand-yard stare of a former child soldier. When Risu shook his hand, sympathetic voudoun magick filled her mind with images from Yung Samedi's past.

She saw his family lose their home to Hurricane Catherine when he was in fourth grade.

She witnessed Sam's troubled relationship with his late mother, an undercover cop.

She saw how Sam joined rap battles in the New Marseille hip-hop scene as an outlet for his anger, only to find even more conflict with both police and magickal authorities.

Then she experienced Sam's rigorous training under the former voodoo queen, Marie LaVeau, up to her gruesome death, just a few days before, at the hands of Quebecois necromancer Antoine L'Effrayé.

As she let go of his hand, he smiled and nodded in empathy.

"Very well," said Harriet. "Finally, this is Patrizia Herreira. I'll leave it up to her to explain what she's about."

"Tudo bem!" said Patrizia. "My siblings and I were heirs to a rubber fortune in Sao João, so we grew up with everything we needed: nice cars, fancy clothes, the whole deal. It was a charmed life. But even more, Priscilla, Primo, and I made up a Trinity Bond. Together, our magickal abilities were the most potent in all of Brazil. But we grew apart for different reasons."

"You see, Primo has always been Primo," said Patrizia. "But not everyone would call him that. Not his tutors. Not the shaman who trained us. And most of all, especially not Papá."

She sighed a little before she continued. "Anyway, Priscilla and I knew this was not fair. But we responded to it in different ways. I tried to convince her to send our intentions into the ether; to shape reality with the compassion we shared. That was not enough for Priscy. She believed there was no hope for the world. When she learned about Yg-Turazoth, she began researching ways to bring on the Longest Gloom."

Risu felt her heart sink just a little.

"I would not stand for that. We had a vow and responsibility to protect the mortal realm. So I did what had to be done. One night, as Priscy was attuned to the outer planes where Yg-Turazoth lies in wait, I bound a fragment of her spirit there. When Primo found out what I had done, he disowned me as his sister. I have not spoken with him in over two years."

Patrizia tried to keep a blank expression, but tears were already streaming down her cheeks.

"Priscilla remains well cared for at Nossa Senhora das Misericórias Sanitarium," she added.

"Right," said Harriet. "Now that that's done, we can get back to the important task of preventing the Longest Gloom. Unless, of course, you've changed your mind, Risu."

"I am with you," said Risu. "At least until I can avenge Jairuzu."

"Wonderful!" said Harriet with faux cheer. She snapped her fingers once more and the surroundings morphed into a mock corporate boardroom. Enchanted office chairs emerged from the darkness around them, ushering each of them to their place at the long conference table. "Now seems like a good time as any to review who we're up against."

A slideshow presentation began to play at the far end of the room, seemingly projected from nowhere. The smug faces of Smith and Wesson Laird filled the screen. The photos appeared to be mug shots from an arrest the previous year by the Roswell County Sheriff's Office. Both were smiling but heavily bruised. The younger one had a black eye. Risu tried her best to avoid lashing out.

"I believe all of us are quite familiar with these two wankers," said Harriet. "So let's skip over the next few slides."

The presentation advanced to reveal a distinguished-looking man wearing a cape and an eldritch amulet. Risu recognized him as the person who killed Yung Samedi's mentor. She glanced at Sam. He wasn't even pretending to disguise his contempt.

"So once again, this is Antoine L'Effrayé. Reanimates the dead. Shags them on occasion too, if his reputation is true. All quite nasty stuff," said Harriet. "But for our purposes, he is most dangerous because he possesses the Liber Bellua, a grimoire that contains a more detailed version of the seal-breaking rite from the Pursglove Scrolls. As far as we're concerned, that book must be recovered in tact."

The screen flashed an image of a voluptuous woman of mixed ethnicity, dressed in a gaudy outfit: part cheongsam, part wizard's robe, matched with fishnet stockings in knee-high boots. "Oh! Look, Jonas! It's both our ex," said Harriet. She laughed, then sighed. "This woman calls herself Belle Zebub." She almost rolled her eyes as she said it. "Disregard the cheesy name and the harlot costume. It's all part of her act. As far as the mundane world knows, she is a stage illusionist at the Belissima Casino in Macao. In fact, she is the world's foremost practitioner of chaos magick, and her power is dangerously unstable. If we are on a mission and you hear '!EMITWOHS', run away, post haste."

The next photo was a stocky, orange-haired man in a form-hugging tracksuit. "This picture shows Markus Nygård, a doom metal guitarist and Olympic power lifter from Adelgården, Norway. However, field reports suggest his body is the latest host for Egbert Elvesham, a mad philosopher who has spent the last century and a half jumping from one identity to the next. Over the decades, he has gone by the aliases Mr. Nemo, Meiyou Ren, and Professor K. Newman Faust, among others. To his credit, we are not quite sure how he jumps from one body to another. If you don't wish to be the next of his involuntary body donors, approach him with extreme caution."

Harriet's tone became more severe now. "And of course, we have the likely mastermind behind it all: Hekate Grevioux. This vampire matriarch united the squabbling New World clans by sheer force, presiding over a dominion unseen since the Roanoke Agreement. She orchestrated the successful lycanthrope 'cleansing' of the late 1990s, and managed to keep hemophage activity a well-guarded secret even in the age of Wikileaks. With so much power and influence at her command, we can only speculate that she wants to unleash Yg-Turazoth out of sheer boredom."

"Hekate has studied the greatest managers and organizational thinkers of history. The proponents of the Longest Gloom are treating their operations like a global business, working almost 24/7," she continued. "After all, it's always the witching hour somewhere in the world, so they're constantly gathering vital energies to sap for the unsealing rite. That's why it's crucial to recognize as many hostiles as possible. At least the ones who are definitely working together as self-identified Releasers."

"Of course, there could be plenty of other agents in play between now and Walpurgis Eve," said Jonas. "We'll also need to learn the site of the ritual, if we fail to stop it before then. Luckily, that should be much easier, now that we're aware of the 'hitlist' in the Pursglove Scrolls."

"So where to next, Miss J?" asked Yung Samedi.

"I hope you've all brought warm clothes," said Harriet. "It appears we're headed for Siberia."

"But wait, Harriet-sama!" said Risu. "Does our group not have a name?"

"I would really prefer to keep things casual, especially if it may all go tits up by month's end. But I suppose we could formalize it," said Harriet. "Oh, I know... Welcome, Inoue Risu, to the Eldritch Cataclysm Prevention Society. How about that?"