This morning, I found a railway in the middle of the woods. The spikes that once fastened it to the ground were all uprooted and gone, and the wooden slats beneath the rails were blackened, stretched and bent like molten glass that had long since hardened — but the metal had held, and the rails still held their shape against the ground. I decided to follow it, see if it would lead me anywhere, for better or for worse. Any semblance of order is precious in this world.
Stopped to gather my wits, eat, and search again for the town I’ve been tracking. The railway splits the forest cleanly in two, and the air above is clear and clean. The snarling undergrowth and thick, unnatural vegetation of the wilderness seems to stop just short of a meter from it. It’s as if it exudes an aura of normalcy that the new world can’t tolerate. I can see a thin strip of the sky far above for the first time in weeks. I took a moment as I wrote this to pause to take in its colorless grandeur, as dark grey clouds roiled and swirled in spirals and storms above me.
The forest I just hacked free of is dark, cast in eternal shadow. The trees are smooth and black, and have no leaves; instead, their branches end in mottled translucent bluish-black tendrils, that weave themselves into thick overlapping mats that dim any light from the sky and cast a wretched dark blue glow on the forest floor. Thornbushes and carnivorous ivies whose leaves drip with noxious digestive fluids snake out of the ground to cling to whatever they can, and reach out with their vines to ensnare anything and everything they could possibly eat. I have still have burns on my arms and legs where some managed to wrap around and liquefy and boil my skin to get at my innards. It still hurts — but it could be worse. When the blood wards I painted on my injuries wear off and the pain sets in, I remember all the skeletons I saw bound to the trees and scattered across the floor, who had become homes for the rats and fungi.
Made progress towards the town over the last few days. As luck would have it, the railway should lead me straight to it. I think I can see where this forest ends, too. Thank God for that.
I haven’t seen any other signs of life — no other human life, at least. And the matted trees and hungry vines make sure that any animals that try taking refuge here meet the same fate as the poor skeletons that littered the forest floor. The only creatures I saw were the fungi, growing and shifting so quickly they seemed to scurry across the ground. And
A bird just landed on the rail, right in front of me. It’s just sitting there right now, looking at me. I didn’t see it coming. It still hasn’t made any noise. It doesn’t seem afraid of me in the slightest.
…
I’ve sat down in front of it. Couldn’t hurt to take a rest.
The bird is mesmerizing. It’s a kind I haven’t seen before, made of brilliant, refracting purple crystal. The sun shines through it differently every time it moves to preen itself or peck at invisible insects at its feet. It has no eyes, but I can tell it’s looking at me.
Its lit
The bird flew off, but not before deciding to fly directly at my face and peck at my eyes. Its crystalline beak felt like a needle against my skin, and its pecks left little angry welts that I can already feel growing into putrescent infected boils. Nothing a simple blood rune can’t alleviate, for a time.
I deserved it. I shouldn’t have let my guard down.
I can see a brightness where the forest ends. Can’t say I’ll miss it much — but an end to one ordeal may very well spell the beginning of another.
The railway has provided solace for the past few days, though. Shelter from the darkness of the forest, direction in a world of terror and chaos, and, perhaps, a glimpse of hope. And a
They’re rattling.
Why are the rails rattling?
It should be noted that this is the last entry in this journal — the journal itself is heavily mutilated, having had a corner of it sheared off and scorched while the rest has been encrusted with growths of purple crystal.
This entry, the first in a separate journal, appears to continue where the last left off.
In hindsight, I should’ve expected that there was more to the railway. The bird was, in more ways than one, a harbinger of what was to come.
When the rails first rattled, I thought at first that I had somehow happened upon a railway that had survived the Collapse and somehow still traversed its route, unmanned and empty of any passengers. My first instinct was to step away from the rails and allow it passage.
It wasn’t until the Vessel came almost near enough to quite literally breathe down my back that I realized the naiveté of my thoughts, and I turned just in time to see what really pursued me before I was swallowed in its maws.
It was a train — or had been one, at one point before — but to call it a “train” now would be a gross understatement, and denying what it had become. Its headlights shone through a face of perfectly hewn crystal, at once the jaws of the crocodile, the head of the hammerhead shark, the beak and claw of the falcon, every sharp and deadly implement in the natural world, melting and shifting and folding in on itself. Centipede legs of the same horrid rock stretched and contracted to reanimate the chassis of the machine and compel its wheels to turn. The sides of the Vessel (as I have come to call it) were covered in crystal of the same nature, into and from which a flock of thousands of birds identical to the one I’d seen just minutes before were pinched from and melted into like molten glass. The thing heaved and rolled and screeched like it was alive, a starving, scraping predator — and as if to complete this illusion, its many faces roared and its insectoid legs accelerated as its singular purpose became the pursuit of me.
I was lucky to have been at such a distance from the Vessel that I was able to quicken my stride to attempt to escape it as soon as I realized what it truly was — but as quickly as I ran, the Vessel was ever faster. As I approached the forest’s edge, I was set upon by several dozens of birds, and nearly burnt by its many faces’ toxic breath. My only thought became escape; my only objective became survival; I forgot all that had kept me alive to that point and redirected all the energy in my body to my legs. In all my travels and trials, my encounter with the Vessel has been the closest I have ever been to death.
The rest of the chase is a blur. I escaped the Vessel entirely by accident, as unlikely as that may seem: the edge of the forest was a sheer drop into a river, over which the railway extended into a bridge. Rather than stay in the warpath of the Vessel, I gambled on a mad dive into the water below — its anguished scream and its crystal contorting into a visage of pain as I fell is the last I remember of it.
But it was when I awoke on a riverbank an inordinate time later when my situation truly became interesting — and everything I had been through since paled and fell by the wayside in comparison to what I saw next.
I suppose I don’t benefit from beating around the bush.
The town I spent the last few months in search of, the town I had sought and missed and kept on following for what seemed like my entire life to that point, the town that I had lost sight of countless times and whose existence I had lost all hope in? That town was closer than it had ever been, just over a ledge past the beach where my body had been washed by the river. I sensed it as soon as I awoke, and my elation overwhelmed all else in a way no magic ever could. Broken limbs be damned, burns and welts be damned, all else be damned — I had to reach the town, lest it slip from my grasp and disappear one last time. I felt no pain as I scaled this final obstacle, and joy — tinged with a slight confusion — was all I felt.
It was not a town, as I had thought. It was not even a settlement, or even, at the very least, inhabited. What I had believed to be a town was instead a beautiful array of shelves, towering to the same heights as the mightiest cities I’d ever seen. Not even the ravages of the Collapse had come close to toppling the Library’s beauty, though it had left it in no small state of disarray — the jagged, burnt and splintered tips of the shelves made the place seem helpless, and yet more beautiful in its delicacy.
And as I descended the hills and made my way towards the Library, I could feel its consciousness, nestled in a place below mine, speak to me.
You have traveled far, it said, in the tone of impassive observation, and I did nothing but silently indicate assent.
In search of this place, no less. You must be proud of yourself. To this, I shook my head.
If not pride, what do you feel? What else could you feel, in the face of the achievement of your only goal? Allow yourself pride, just this once. Allow yourself happiness, Wanderer.
I did not expect such a response. To this, I remained impassive.
I sense stories within you, the Library — or its patron — or whatever spirit spoke for it — observed, many multitudes of stories. Perhaps this is why the Library chose to reveal itself to you, in particular.
I pondered this — then understood its implication. The shelves, grand as they were, were largely empty.
Indeed, the voice continued. The Library may never die — but the stories of the Old World have disappeared from its shelves. And though you may mourn from them, attempt to re-create them — the only thing that can sustain this place in the New World are the New World’s stories.
I loosened my pack from my back. As if by instinct, I knew what the Library wanted, what it needed — and I was happy to oblige.
I write this now knowing it to be my final entry in this journal. I give the stories I have lived to the Library, so they may live to see it rise to its former glory even if I do not. May future generations learn from me as I learned from the greats of my own Old World, and as they learned from theirs — and may knowledge reign eternal even when logic does not.