The Upside Down
The Marina glistens under the weak morning sun. Tourists gather around the latest marvel from the Maestro of Chalk: a sprawling 3D anamorphic art piece of a fetid swamp, drawn across the pier’s boards. The smell of salt mixes with something wrong, damp, earthy, and ancient. At its center looms a massive blue crab, half-buried in painted muck. Sergeant Grace Douglas narrows her eyes. Among the murmuring crowd, a young boy, fifteen, wiry, serious beyond his years, is the only other one who notices a disturbing detail: in the murky depths of the painting, a family of five appears to be drowning.
The drowning figures in the drawing are the Magills, one of the missing families from the Acacia Boutique Hotel.
Grace steps closer, raincoat dripping. She reaches out… and the drawing moves! A colossal crab claw bursts from the chalk, snaring her wrist and dragging her down through color and light. The world inverts, air becomes water, surface becomes sky.
When she opens her eyes, Grace is in the swamp itself: sinking mud, fog curling between dead trees, the Magills screaming for help nearby.
Above, through the water’s shimmering ceiling, she can still see the real world, the Marina, distorted and people (obviously) panicking. On the pier, Dominik Stancic reacts before thinking. He loops his jacket around a lamppost, ties the other end to his ankle, and leaps in, diving headfirst into the anamorphic art piece. Suspended by his makeshift tether, he grabs for the three Magill children one by one, dragging them free from the chalky quicksand. The last pull tears his jacket, sending him crashing face-first into the swamp beside Grace.
That’s when the boy moves. A sudden gust, the sound of sails unfurling from nowhere. With a flick of his wrist, the boy summons a ghostly galleon out of thin air, its hull glowing with spectral light. The ship crests the Marina’s fog and dives, half-embedded in the swamp below, half still anchored in reality.
The boy (who answers to the name David) jumps in after them, landing on the slanted deck of his phantom ship. Together, the three face the crab, its carapace hard as concrete and twice as cruel. Dominik rushes forward, using the wrecked deck as a ramp to leap and strike, the both the strentgh of Dyonysus and of his past years as a combattant burning through his veins. The blow tears a hole in the creature’s chalky shell, weakening it, but it’s not enough to destroy something that’s only half real.
That’s when the swamp quakes.
Crab Down, Hydra Up
From the Marina above, David sees shadows twist: something else is coming. The wooden pier seems to ripple, and a four-headed hydra erupts from the pier itself, clawing into the world like a nightmare breaking free of the canvas.
After the Nemean Lion, the Maestro of Chalk painted the Lernaean Hydra, bringing it to life.
The hydra’s necks coil, eyes burning with mindless hunger. The crowd screams as one of its heads plunges into the swamp art piece, lunging for Dominik. Grace struggles through the muck, keeping the Magills parents from panicking as the creature’s jaws crash inches away. David shouts an order, voice echoing with a sailor’s authority.
The ghost ship obeys. Cannons roar. Explosions of powder and metal light the swamp as canonballs strike the hydra’s necks, pushing it back and forcing the heads to regroup, but the beast is relentless. Dominik dodges, battered and bloodied, catching sight through the chaos of Adriano Julianis on the pier above, just before a woman with long black hair pulls him away out of the scene.
During the chaos, Adriano Julianis is kidnapped by a mysterious woman with black straight hair.
No time to chase. The hydra lunges again, one head wrapping around Dominik and hurling him across the ship’s deck, splintering timber and bone alike. Grace climbs aboard and quickly finds two big barrels in the lower deck, one of powder, one of whisky. David catches her intent instantly. As Grace tries, unluckily and unsuccessfully, to help Dominik out of his dire situation, David loads the cannons and coats the balls with the alcohol. He shouts, commanding the ship to fire and a barrage of powder, metal and fire tears through the hydra, severing one of its four heads in a blaze of flame and smoke.
Dominik, half-conscious, grips the smoldering neck and lets his mythos surge, the madness of Dionysus spilling into the creature like poison. The hydra turns on itself, shrieking, thrashing, tearing its own flesh. Grace’s sword ignites with divine light, the fire of Galahad’s destiny, as she throws it at her friend. Dominik catches it mid-fall, staggers forward, and in one sweeping, defiant arc, cleaves the remaining heads clean.
Silence. The swamp stills. The hydra collapses, melting back into chalk and murky swamp water.
A Moment of Respite
Grace and Dominik emerge, wounded but alive, dragging the dazed Magills to safety. The Marina is chaos, police sirens, panicked tourists, the smell of ozone and blood. Adriano is gone.
Nearby, three elegant women in their forties stand apart from the crowd. Each radiates presence, confidence, charisma, an air of practiced harmony. They approach the battered crew with gentle smiles.
One of the women: We’re investigators too, dear. Call us the Muses. Of dance, of love poetry, and of tragedy. We’ve been following the Maestro of Chalk’s work. He doesn’t understand what he’s unleashed.
They explain their belief: the Maestro is no villain, but a lost artist awakened to dangerous power, one who might yet be saved and brought back to the right path.
The Muses, three women investigating the Maestro of Chalk, believe he is acting in good faith but unaware of the harm he causes. They want to help him control his newfound powers to use them for the common good.
Dominik, suspicious, crosses his arms; their charm rolls off him like honey over steel. Still, reason wins, for now. They agree to continue the investigation together, after a visit to the hospital. They’ll meet at Mayfare Lane the next morning, 11 AM sharp, at the parking lot of the Artist Collective of Mayfare Lane.
The crew and the Muses plan to investigate the Artist Collective of Mayfare Lane together.
David, watching quietly, nods once.
David: My assignment here’s done. I’ll take my leave.
He fades into the crowd, vanishing like sea foam at dusk.
The camera pans out: the Marina, the shattered ghost ship, the swamp still shimmering with dying light, and the chalk corpse of a four-(be)headed hydra.
Cut to black. Roll credits.