Magic World: Story **WARNING: SPOILERS**

Hey, how's it going?

So fair warning up front, if you've been following the Magic World posts up to this point, and you're interested to read the story, you may want to skip this post. I'm going to put a line of stars a little lower on the page, and beyond that point I'm going to be working out the main plot of the story, the thing that brings all these characters together, the mystery they will have to solve. If you want to be surprised and not know all the answers ahead of time, STOP NOW and wait till tomorrow. You won't get another chance.

If on the other hand you are the kind of person who reads the last page of a book first, or reads the internet for spoilers, or likes watching a story unfold, even though every wrinkle is already known to you, then this post is fair game.

But the time to decide that is now, I can't keep writing filler forever... well I probably could, there are people who write self help books that are almost nothing BUT filler. But that would be atrocious. So yeah. Here comes the line in the sand. Ready?

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Okay, if you've crossed the line, you're committed. Anything you read from this point forward may end up in the story, and spoil any surprises. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Okay, so first things first, character background on the old guy, briefly. I was going to have to do this anyway, so this is as good a place as any.

Okay, Raul Muyres grew up in Madrid Spain, an overachieving son of a wealthy landowner. He was educated at Oxford, where he studied Physics, Metaphysics, Chemistry, Alchemy, and Mathematics, achieving a PhD in each after 20 years of study.

It was during this time that he started to hear stories about some items of great power. Things that should not exist, but somehow did. These items, it was rumored, struck a fine balance between each of the scientific disciplines, and between magic and miracle. Each one was created by some of the most gifted geniuses in history, such as Merlin, Isaac Newton, Galileo, Pascal, Da Vinci, and a few others. (I need to do more research, this will probably change a bit as the story evolves.)

Raul became somewhat obsessed with these items, collectively termed the MetaCapacitors (borrowed from Dresden Files, might change too; Meta-Apparatus?) because of their ability to do things that were previously thought to be impossible. He even went so far as to try to re-create these items using modern techniques, but without the originals met with only limited success.

And in its own way, it started to become almost a "grail quest" trying to find the items and obtain them in order to re-create their effects. In many cases not only their locations, but often their descriptions and appearances were lost to antiquity.

But when you have 50 years, and a lot of resources, a lot of practical knowledge, and you're a wizard, you tend to be able to get things done. And so, one by one, in secret, the items were located. That was the relatively easy part. The thing that took the most time was attempting to re-create the effects. He had a few people he held in confidence, and in turn they were able to offer him help.

For this story the item that Raul is looking for is called Newton's Battery. The exact details of it aren't really important, except that it converts light, heat, and other radient forms of energy into chemical energy which turns solid when the energy is stored. And when it's full, as a rather odd side effect it hovers about 3 feet above the ground, and becomes cold enough to freeze water vapor in the air. The other details are really just trivial, and will only be used for narrative reasons.

But then there's the whole murder mystery part. That part is hard to get right. You end up having to weave a narrative into a wholly  different storyline.

 So okay then, lets just start with the basics. Raul was going to buy the Battery from Stanislav Mihaylov, a Bulgarian art collector, who believes that the Battery's value is only artistic. However since he's also a drug and gun runner he's not the type to give something like that up. Not without something fairly substantial in exchange. So Raul, who has worked as an a magical engineer on several ships offers several magical wards to use in security, and protect from prying eyes and ears, as well as potentiality frying, or at least severely injuring anyone who tried to get through. 

Raul had been put into contact with Mihaylov through a mutual acquaintance, an art-house dealer named Celia Fry. She was showing several of Mihaylov's pieces, and knew he'd had the Battery, and told Raul he would ask him to bring it next time he was in town for a show. She doesn't know about the Battery, except as an artistic piece, and doesn't know about Mihaylov's other activities, for which the art-house show is merely a front. 

 Mihaylov completeted the trade with Raul in the parking lot of the Kitty Palace, a gentlemen's club where Mihaylov had was trying to entice one of the dancers, named Pearl, aka (Kaley Daniell.) He let the trade go down, but had Raul followed. Meanwhile things with Pearl didn't go well as she escorted to her car by a bouncer, who ended up in the hospital, but put 2 of Mihaylov's men there as well. 

So Raul went to a storage park where he had rented a space in the center of the park reasoning that if anything happened to the Battery, or his attempt to re-create it, that there would be several layers of uninhabited insulation between him and anyone who might be hurt. 

Mihaylov's men trailed him there, but waited for orders from the boss before moving in. But Mihaylov was curious, and told them to wait, so they staked out the location... for several days. Finally when Raul emerged, haggard, but apparently elated, Mihaylov was so impatient that he ordered his men to rush in and take back the Battery. Raul in the meantime had come out to go to a local Sub sandwich shop, and when he returned to find Mihaylov's men puzzling over what seemed to be two Batteries, with one of the men attempting to prize apart one of them he tried to stop them, but was shot, though not fatally. The explosion however when the goon manhandling the duplicate Battery reacted violently was enough to kill him, and the two men in there with him. 

And there we go. There are bound to be other details, but this is sufficient for now, and gives several of my main characters a lead to follow up on. And it includes a Strip Club, which means boobs, and that makes me happy. :)

Okay, if you've read through this, just remember that when you're not surprised you have nobody to blame but yourself. But all the same, thanks. 

Comments and suggestions as always are welcome. 

And thanks for reading!