The Fountain Maker

Fire on R-786 were strange. And disarming! Blue flames fanned by the methane fumes from the cracked diamonds in the atmosphere lapped up in its demonic tongue everything in their way. Wood, metal, stone. Everything. Kane felt his eyes water with the heat as he saw the singed building in the bright light of the TRAPPIST white dwarf. Death had never bothered Kane. He enjoyed it. But fire was like a grotesque reptile that couldn’t be stopped. A flame big enough would send his head swimming, legs twirling and nerves shaky. He had twice fallen victim to this bane of his existence. Once at her mother’s funeral pyre and once when his brother had set himself on flames and fallen off the roof of their dome, thirty feet into solid rock.

Anyways, it was a bright new day. The storm had passed and the star was flashing hot again. They reached the scene after the area had been cordoned off. Peacekeepers were rolling up their shirt sleeves, grabbing bottles with water for the humans and liquid methane for demiliens. The squalid dumpster at the corner had five or six hovercrafts parked. There were lab technicians moving in and out of the lab vans picking up samples and jotting down on the writing pads. Some peacekeepers stood there juggling between the sugary ganna cubes and steaming grubbly root cups.

Effie dashed towards a haggard looking woman with curly blonde hairs, sitting next to a man, clearly a human, with black hairs and a fat face. The woman hugged Effie and said something in her ears. Kane turned his head to look around. He spotted a streak of red walking briskly towards a lab-van and moved towards him. It was his friend and a detective, Robert, the erratic half-blood with thick eye glasses and constant mumbling that reminded him of his grandfather at his unfriendly best

“Hey! Robert!”  Kane yelled.

Robert Debransky turned around. “Kane! My man!” he said and the two shook hands.

Kane quickly briefed her about Effie and his supplied Slave Kranky. Robert listened with interest and said, “Well this is eighth such incident and Mr. Harry himself is handling the case.”

“Tell me about it”

“You know! The new city major! Lot of stress! Political pressure! The last unsolved streak of homicides changed the seat of power. Wonder what this would do?”

“Civil War!” Kane laughed, “What’s it all about?”

“These fucking rebels set fire to their old master’s houses. Selected though! It’s weird. The one who abuse them are not targeted, well maybe sometimes, but none of their homes have been set on fire.”

“No pattern you say! Why attack at random?”

Robert looked at his feet and frowned for a second before speaking.

“It’s not all that random. The Parsons traced ancestry to a certain Warwick Ambrosius, great-great grandson of the famous Wendelin Ambrosius.”  

Kane’s ears prickled up in excitement, “Well I’m sure you must have found out a clue, a guy like you hardly misses anything”

Robert was more than enthusiastic to help. “It’s mostly a human settlement. Only one registered demilien for 2 miles around”

He pulled out his comm and opened the building floor plans, the fire alarm schematics and the electrical network of the building and started to explain Kane the impossible details of how the fire could never have originated the normal way.

“My father would adopt you” Kane said as he gazed over schematics. Robert pulled himself to his full height and explained with a boyish enthusiasm, the peacekeeper’s extinguisher truck was a couple of blocks away yet the driver kept flying the wrong way for thirty minutes. The alarm did not sound immediately, which the humans claim to be a…” he paused and flicked through the pages of his small pocked diary, “a servant error”

“A server error”, Kane corrected, “Any casualties?”

“None! But a teen boy witnessed ‘a thin, lean boy with pointy ears wearing boots, a blue jacket over a full sleeve tee waiting on the apartment where the fire originated. This third dome is home to Mr. Jim Parson, an Aritmacer with the bank, and his wife, a singer for the 2MASS Wireless Network. They had a servant Kranky and a kid, Tim, 7 years old, who was saved by the mysterious creature but remembers nothing. Mr. Parson is confused how the demonic fire started. He and his wife were not at home when it happened. It was controlled only after we rushed-in and attacked with three simultaneous counter extinguishers”

 “Curious! I thought demiliens didn’t like humans.”

“That caught my attention too. It turns out Mr. Parson owns the entire colony. He converted his manor house into a modern complex for humans with a shopping complex, two old fashioned apartment blocks and individual domes. I reckon he was trying to blend in.”

“But why? He is a respectable demilien with a pure-blood ancestry.”

"I dont know. He is clearly hiding something"

“Well you have done a great deal of work in a few hours. That’s the mark of a genius.”

“You flatter me, It was not that difficult. Just field work” Robert said with a wide grin.

“Keep that up and I’ll recommend you to Harry” Kane turned around walked away briskly. Effie was still with her mother. Her father sat there sulking away.  Kane sprang into action. This was serious. They were trying too hard to find out what treasures the Ambrosius possessed. Kane called in his assistant and asked for detailed files on the Fountain of Ministry. The searing question of who had constructed the fountain with the chest as an addition over the original was intriguing enough for Kane.

Penolope, Kane’s assistant sent her a series of emails with the files on the construction of the fountain of ministry. This girl was quick, he thought.

He noted that it was first commissioned in 3247 when the longest serving minister of APN, Evan Rosier left office after a peaceful reign of 147 years. It was constructed by a certain Aranea Infrastructures. The fountain was broken in 3288 when, Kane remembered, APN and congress had a bloddy battle in one of the most awful political skirmishes Kane had been a part of. The Earthling is Might monument was built in its place a year later in 3289 when Congress came to power constructed by Lucious Infrastructures. After the defeat of congress at the battle of 3300, the fountain was rebuilt commemorating the new millennia. The design was the same as the old one but with the addition of a golden parchment in the hands of the demiliens that read the names of all the fallen warriors, standing next to a human that looked like worshipping the demilien. The contract for reconstruction was given to a firm called Astoria Magical Infrastructures. The owner of the firm and architect of the new design was the last person on the planet Kane had hoped he would ever meet again in his life. The tiny name printed on the records read,

Proprietor: Astoria Magical Infrastructures

‘Mr. Mordant Hobgoblin’