Snapdragon133
rating: 0+x

[include :wanderers-library:component:once-upon-a-time]]

The Natural Atria


THE SCENE OPENS on a door set within the raveled mass of a massive hugging tree, its multiple trunks expertly directed around the frame. The door itself is an engraved black metal, the carvings of a multitude of botanical wonders glinting off the natural glow of the Atria.

The door opens to reveal a Librarian - likely an Archivist due to its more unique look. It wears a light blue button-up with a high collar, a dark purple vest that turns tan on the shoulders (the tan area decorated with slightly lighter purple flowers dispersing from the dark), and a head composed entirely of red and purple snapdragons. Two golden sprigs of wheat float to the left and right of its head, creating a pseudo-frame. Its voice sounds like an uncertain breeze.


ARCHIVIST ANTIR RHINUM: Sometimes, the patrons who visit my desk don't know what they're looking for — in fact, almost every single one doesn't know unless they're looking for me specifically. As an extension of the Library, I do not have a specific "job." I am an Archivist, no little no less, but I have often taken the role of a guide to something new, while my fellow Archivists are more concerned with pinpointing the location of something known.

The shot moves forward as the Archivist turns and leads the viewer to the aforementioned desk. It's spacious inside the tree but still quite cramped, likely due to the impressive pneumatic tub systems filling most of the space. A. ANTIR RHINUM sits down behind the desk, which upon further inspection appears to be a mess of pneumatic tubs pretending to be a desk with a carpet of moss growing across the top. The tubes not making up the desk halo the Archivist. A potted plant that is simultaneously growing nectarines and black dahlias sits to the Librarian's left.


ARCHIVIST ANTIR RHINUM: I wonder if anything might come in today?

A golden filigreed tube with a fresh notepad inside introduces itself to the space with a shhhhhh ka-thunk! A. ANTIR RHINUM unscrews the top and reads the first page of the notepad.




Main Hall

ARCHIVIST ANTIR RHINUM: He looks at them too long, and feels his pursuer’s presence. One of the hands reaches for a dial by the nightstand and turns it. Four hundred and sixty four different lights in the room increase their luminosity very slightly. He feels better. More visible

[He looks at them too long, and feels his pursuer’s presence. One of the hands reaches for a dial by the nightstand]

MS. DOLORES: He looks at them too long, and feels his pursuer’s presence. One of the hands reaches for a dial by the nightstand and turns it. Four hundred and sixty four different lights in the room increase their luminosity very slightly. He feels better. More visible.








Skates and Skidmarks

SCOFF! Journal #5409

By Duke Gathers

Footnotes by Gottsam R’lek

Someone was in my house. I was sitting there, enjoying some me time away from the grindstone I call my “passion” and my “job” when I caught him. Lucky me and unlucky him, I always keep a weapon in the couch cushions, so I had ‘em dead to rights down the barrel of a lever-action shotgun. Our breathing was slow, my ceiling fan creaking and even slower cause I had never gotten it fixed.

He was one ugly motherfucker too. A chameleon like me, with scales that looked like they had been rinsed in a healthy dose of motor oil, bugged out eyes, and three horns (one of which had a glazed donut jammed onto it — not a bad idea, honestly). He must’ve known something I didn’t, cause he looked smug as all hell with his nasty feet propped up on my coffee table/sarcophagus.1 My breathing caught up a little faster, he looked a bit more scared too. Something was going to have to cha- ho- holy shit. He had a gun too. Same as mine. How did—

“You ok there, Duke? You’ve been staring at that mirror of yours for, like, half an hour.” I blink, senses crawling back to me like a guilty dog. I glance to my left, noticing the only actually real person





Title

“Right, so we’re thinking that Asset 17 needs to be more marketable.”

A chorus of corpo craniums nodded around the table. Head Engineer Elgah Escobar rolled his eyes in response. That is, the eyes he had gotten implanted in the back of his head three years ago rolled. The eye he was born with (number two was lost in a freak Long Story) stared dead ahead with impudent interest.

Typical boring busy-body business types, always gotta maximize the monsters’ outside of the arena. Can’t it be enough that they fight ferociously?

"I get your grievances, but aside from them cantillating corporate tunes, how do you propose I perfect the primrose propaganda?"

The executives collectively cringed. Where did they even find this guy?

One executive, decked out in the most stunning of beiges, piped up, "Well, uh, we don't necessarily agree with the idea that we're creating propaganda. It's more like — it's more of a — it's creating culture." He smiled at that, as if he had just thought of it himself. "We're looking for brand recognition. Right now, 17 is a run-of-the-mill bio-reptile. We want something personable; when 17 feels sorrow the audience should sob and when 17 feels joy the audience should glow!"

Another eye roll, typical tyrants have no idea what they're talking about.

"There's the issue — if you desire such a dazzling demon, that's a problem; titan taxonomy is no isocracy." Hmm, the suits looked spaced, he thought. "I'll elaborate. Our craniums' computers are complicated, so complicated in fact that replicating rarely works. Kaiju can’t cope with all the needed neurons, so they’re separated in order for the scales to be set, aka level. Arm adjustments are one system, breathing another, and another is another, all adding eventually to an approximation of a pretense of a personality. The movements make a mirage of intelligence."

“So… you can’t do it?”

“Well contractually, it’s complica-“

With a poorly disguised panicked look, the man who asked the question waved his hand in haste.

“Let me stop you right there,” he rolled his eyes this time, “I think we’re done here, feel free to leave your ID card with the secretary on your way out. We won’t be needing you here again.”

Well, shit.


Tonight is the main event. Spotlights search the night sky for demons that are already chained in the stadium’s underground while five out of the world’s remaining fourteen blimps flock above the Chrome Dome, filled with elites and the lucky chumps who paid a premium to rub elbows with the top class.

Bright red tentacles extend out from the Dome, grasping and choking the city around it as thousands of people wait in two mile per hour traffic to get into the stadium — who gave a damn if they managed to get the cooled seats, they’d be lucky to even get in at this rate.

Those not brave enough to conquer the roads but still wanting to revel in the night’s atmosphere make the pilgrimage to a bar or a rooftop party. If they’re lucky, they can get into a place with a holo-dome in the center of the room, where suddenly they stood eye-to-eye with the titans that could so easily squash them otherwise.

Superfans visit the skull of Ignatius sitting in a place of honor just outside of the stadium, one of the only kaiju made in Phoenix itself before the rise of manufacturing capitals. Following superstition, they leave offerings of memorabilia, snacks, and art in a bid to bring good luck to their favorite combatants for this night.

All eyes turn to Phoenix, Arizona, USA for the one and only, once a few years, sponsored by C-BRIG and McDonald’s, scourge of the silent night: The IDDL City Skirmish. Architects were flown in from across the world and worked tirelessly for months on the miniature city that would be erected within the stadium, ensuring that everything was maximized for top entertainment value. Unique foundations for optimal crumbling, artfully placed water towers and telephone wires, thousands of hidden cameras for the best shots of the fight, remotely controlled life-size vehicles; every small detail given a loving eye. When they were done they were paid decently and kicked to the curb — had to avoid them getting any ideas about working more than part-time, right?

To the unfamiliar eye, the stands look like they should be collapsing as all manner of folk clamber into the seats. The companies aren't stupid, they know the audience needs to not die in droves (the government still has some semblance of a line not to cross) but everything is just on the edge, teetering over the pit of catastrophic failure. The energy alone is enough to level the mimic city in the arena below, but the ones who'll be starting the real wreckage have begun to enter right this moment.

On one end, two massive doors begin to open slowly, although they’d still decapitate anyone standing in front of the massive, swinging steel easily. Multicolored clouds of sulphuric gas pour out of the opening, the saccharine scent assaulting the noses of every viewer sitting above the door, as the crowd hushes in anticipation. On four hooves, the giant within slowly lumbers out of the steam. Charcoal-skinned, magma eyes, with an amorphous single lava lamp bubble mane full of hot spring blues and greens and oranges, its back pockmarked with rocky geysers and burnt stick trees, horns sharpened to a point, an almost entirely biological kaiju: a ginormous bison lumbers out into the arena.

The commentator announces him as Lamarden, rattling off stats, but they might as well be an echo as heads turn in a wave to see the gate on the other end begin to rise. Nitrogen mist seeps across the floor, creeps along the walls, as the second kaiju enters the arena. Also on four hooves, its eyes a wide crystal ice blue, the entire front half fully mechanical, the back biological, all tinted a baby blue, its horns just a short length but even deadlier than Lamarden’s: a humongous ox steps through the gate.

The commentator declares her to be Babe, but the two kaiju lock eyes instantly. The city is diverse and varied, but the designers engineered a perfect line straight through the city right at the point where the gates line up. Lamarden bellows, exposing a magma-bright interior, and steam vents sing out of Babe’s shoulders. The announcer’s voice cuts through the tension:

“… TWO TITANS OF THE WEST, READY TO RUMBLE FOR THE TITLE OF TOP GRAZER. YOU’VE WAITED LONG ENOUGH, I THINK OUR TITANS HAVE TOO,” he takes an inhumanely large breath, and screams, “FIIIIIIGGGGGHHHHT”

Like a spring, Babe's front legs instantly shunt down, a small crater forming from the sudden downwards pressure. Just as soon as they compress, they extend, hurtling Babe into a wild dash through the center of the city. Lamarden seemed unphased by the force of a mountain barreling towards him, somehow chewing cud as he watches Babe get closer, and closer, and closer, and closer, so close frost just barely begins to form on his back before — FWOOSSSHHH — the geysers on his left activate, pushing Lamarden out of the way like a mad bull fighter, causing Babe to collide with the large door behind him at mach speed.

But Babe has a trick of her own. With a chunk chuhnk tunk tink her horns extend, double the length of her whole body. With a flick of the head, and Lamarden caught by surprise, the horn slashes right across his nose. First Blood. The audience roars, a beast of their own.

Internally coded directives fire off, seconds behind each other, legs ensuring balance is kept, balance checked for by the chest, chest communicating stability to eyes, eyes discerning where to place legs; but one quickly rises to the top: MOVE INTO CITY. Circling each other now, waiting for the other to make a move, they cross into the city limits. As soon as a skyscraper moves into view, Lamarden makes his move: a sudden head-long standing charge into the building. The tower keels toward Babe — she's fast, but her left horn lags behind, and is slammed by the full force of the building and skews her off-balance.

Through the rubble's smoke a bright red light emanates, and a split-second later a directive flings itself to the top of Babe's circuits, coded in preparation for her opponent: MAGMA. Still off-kilter, one horn underneath rubble, Babe's mouth splits open and a blast of nitrogen flies forward to meet a hot jet of magma that cuts through the smoke like high pressure water through skin.

The blasts meet, the molten rock instantly cools, forming a misshapen, black, bubbly mess of an architecture statement piece for the surrounding city. Both views temporarily blocked, Babe rips her horn up from the debris, concrete fireworks flying high in the air, and stands level — minimal damage so far.

On the other side of the igneous sphere, the crowd’s volume raises, ticking a sensor in Babe’s ear. She crouches down and is prepared when Lamarden rockets from around the left side, pneumatics launching herself squarely into his charge. Bubbles break off from Lamarden’s mane as the two titans knock horns.

Lamarden opens his mouth as if to expel more magma, but is quickly shut down by a hoof to the face. More bubbles, larger this time, are knocked into the air as his head slams into the opposite building. Babe tries to clothesline him as Lamarden returns, her horn audibly whooshing through the air, but a well-timed geyser fires him past and under the horn — it instead being the finishing blow to the building Lamarden had just crashed into.

Lamarden, now to the side of Babe, opens his mouth again, but not to beam magma directly onto her exposed flank. Instead, he releases a deep bellow, shaking the eardrums of the onlookers and the surrounding structures. Fire hydrants go flying and a nearby water tower splits open as the technicolor bubbles, which had actually stayed above Babe, also burst. Scalding hot water rains down on both the giants. For Lamarden it’s a pleasant drizzle, but Babe cries out in simulated pain as the acrid smell of melting metal mixes with the sweet smell of burning beef. At least three members of the audience get up to buy an overpriced burger from concessions.

Bits of structural bone peek through the peeled exterior shell of Babe, black smoke billows from shattered eyes, toxic fumes waft from burning blue paint, but she still stands.

Suddenly, Babe begins shaking, a hidden mechanism that survived the hot spring deluge against all odds activating. The great bison across from her takes a nervous step back, analyzing the new situation. Whirring and stirring, the sections of Babe’s horns extend from each other (the end of the left horn too crushed to do so) and begin spinning rapidly, equal to the sound of a chorus of angry bees.

Lamarden tries to step back again but his hoof crashes down through the roof of a bank. Skyscrapers rise behind him like bars to a cell. He stumbles, directives competing for space in his limited processing center, the computer systems across his body unprepared for this. The fans know this is it, the stomping and the screaming and the betting and the depravity of it all reach a crescendo, with Babe’s horns as the conducting baton.

The broken left tip of the horn breaks off, flying into another skyscraper, but Babe is unbothered, slowly advancing on the cornered buffalo. Lamarden lunges forward, eager to find an escape, but the sheer wingspan of Babe blocks him in. For a brief moment, she pauses, as if she was giving him time to yield; mercy is not a coded ability. Then she lunges, to the left of him not into him, and rams the spinning horn directly into his side. With a sickening squelch the tip of the horn slides smoothly into the side of Lamarden, punctured by the distressed groans of the bison, eyes so wide milky white calcite sclera are visible as it screams — the audience had never heard a buffalo scream. Violently spasming, the horn shunked another length farther into the flesh, a slurry of ripped apart bioengineering churned out of the wound, launched drenching the surrounding city block with no weather forecast to warn it. Almost like it's being sucked in now, the rest of the horn slips right through, bursting out the other side, a waterfall of viscera following.

The horn begins to slow down, but just before it does something unforseen happens. Deep within the flesh of Lamarden's now mostly still body, instead of being obliterated by the encroaching spear of steel, a stringy substance finds itself wrapped around the spinning sections. Spinning and spinning and spinning the biology is deftly plucked from the body, out into the open air until it unwraps and violently trebuchets itself up, up towards the audience, up towards the viewing boxes, up towards the sky. And towards the sky the trajectory stays, sailing cleanly away from the Chrome Dome.

Somewhere, orders are quickly given to track that asset down.

































Planasthai Investigative - Marsh and Greene, Pt. 2

“We’ll set down here for a bit. Take a break.”

Erika Greene sighs, unclips her heavy leather pack from her shoulder plates, and lets it fall to the wooden ground. It hits the planks so hard I can feel it under my feet. She takes a seat on one of the lower, bench-sized formations of shelving nearby, huffing another breath and wiping her forehead with the back of an armored gauntlet.

I don’t set anything down, because I’m not carrying anything. I draw my electronic cigarette and take a few miserable puffs. It tastes like a wet computer chip. I hate it more than I could possibly express without tripling the length of this document, but I have now received so many citations from the Dousers for smoking out in the Library shelves that I could make an angry papier-mache Venus de Milo out of them. With arms this time. Pissing them off much more would mean a war, because I’m definitely not going to tolerate the indignity of being arrested by a bossy water elemental and his band of firefighter cronies. And no, I can’t just quit. I’ve been smoking for more than a century. My skeleton is forty percent nicotine crystals.

Greene knocks back a few glugs from her canteen and catches her breath. “Goddamn. That’s gotta be three miles uphill. ‘A bit of a hike’ was a bit of an undersell, boss.”

“It’d probably be easier if you weren’t wearing a full suit of plate armor. And carrying a sword as tall as I am. And dragging around… what is that, a backpack full of pipe wrenches?”

Her brown eyes sharpen to a heavy edge. “Smithing kit. Some of us have equipment to maintain. One of those ‘better to have it and not need it’ kind of things.”

I frown. “How does one go about blacksmithing on the road? Don’t you need a… bellows, furnace? A truckload of coal?”

“Magic. Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of wizard or something? Speaking of which, I hate that shit, by the way.”

She points a metal hand over my shoulder at the reason I’m not carrying anything, which is a team of four hooded old mummies that I keep around for when I don’t want to break a sweat lugging things around. Which is always. They stand there in the traditional veiled robes most necromancers dress their drones in for the comfort of the squeamish. The average dark sorcerer puts their automata in some dreary dark uniform, but I prefer patterned cloth in more fetching colors - dusty purples and blues. They’re completely silent and still. Because they’re dead, and waiting for us to get moving again. One’s carrying my personal bag, another a trunk of spell reagents and medical supplies, the other a rack of weapons. Normal stuff one needs on a mystical interdimensional adventure. Which I do not feel like picking up and putting down seventy-three times over the span of an afternoon.

I look back at Greene with vast innocence upon my features. “What?”

She makes a face. “I don’t need to explain why those things make me uncomfortable, right?”

“No. I think it’s silly that you react to what is essentially just recycling with such spiritual revulsion, but we can’t all be as pragmatically-minded as me, I guess.”

“Those are dead people, man.”

“Nope! Not people at all. Just some containers that used to have people in them.”

She narrows her eyes. “Did you cram… I dunno, ghosts or spirits in there to make them get up and carry your shit for you?”

“No. Souls are expensive. And just result in a sentient undead anyway, which is absolutely not useful for this purpose. You can’t imagine the whining. It’s just a bit of spare life force infused in the old material. Power. Same as the electricity in a robot.”

Greene reaches up to unbind her big poofy hair from the professional bun she usually keeps it in. “Robot made out of some dead dude.”

I look at it again. “I think that one was actually a woman. It’s honestly hard to tell once you’ve got them dried out and wrapped up.”

She shudders.

“Look, I didn’t kill them, if it makes you feel better. I’m a scavenger, not a murderer. I realize you have some hangups and I’m obligated to be respectful of that to some extent, but I’m not about to lay aside nearly a century of necromantic training because it gives you the willies. You’re gonna see some way more messed-up stuff working for me than a reanimated body or two, trust me. Consider this your creepshow booster shot.”

She makes a new, more resigned face, and sits there, looking sweaty and tired.

“Why not take all that off? I can just have one of them carry it for you until we get there.”

Green shakes her head. “I don’t think that would work.”

“Why not?”

Instead of replying with words, she fiddles with the clasps and straps on her left gauntlet until they’re undone. Slides the metal glove off, revealing the padding underneath. She holds the gauntlet out in front of her, and drops it.

It hits the floorboards with a CRUNCH. Splinters whizz past my ear and I flick an arm in front of my face so I’m not blinded by shrapnel. I approach a few steps and look down at the thing. It’s resting in a broken crater of destroyed wood paneling like it just fell from lower orbit.

“Wow.”

She nods. “Mhm.” Then picks the thing up like its weight matches its appearance, fitting it back on her arm. “A very old technique. Hyperfold steel. You start with a huge amount of metal, heat it, work it out. Engrave it with the right prayers, writing down the iron’s destiny on its surface. Then you heat, and fold. And you keep folding. Over and over. Thousands of times. With each turn, it gets slightly smaller, twisting into itself. And you keep going. By the end you have to use either a hydraulic press or an incredible amount of patience. But the result is…”

She points down at the sad, splintery hole in the floor.

“This is sort of the… bonsai, of sacred smithing. The density of a smith’s hyperfolds, the sheer amount of material she can force into one space, with nothing but her own arms and the patience of the mountains the metal came from… are a mark of her dedication. Defeating the steel, they call it. You beat the steel at its own game, to earn its respect. And take some of its endurance into yourself.”

I catch her throwing a split-second glance at her anime-sized sword, resting up against a shelf, still in its strappings.

“And how much metal wound up in this armor?”

A pensive expression covers her face for a moment while she thinks. “About a ton? I think? Right around there. I didn’t measure specifically, I just stopped when I felt the work was done. A lot of scrap. Tore apart a lot of old cars and things.”

“… How do you even move?”

“You know Thor? The comic book version? Kind of like how Mjolnir works for him. Anyone else tries to wear it, or move me while I’m wearing it, gets the full weight. I only get a little bit. Part of the magic.”

I nod appreciatively. “Huh! Yeah, I never really looked into any of this stuff. I’ve always been more of the, uh. Y’know. Skulls and candles kind of guy. The only skill I ever really had to develop is delegation.”

“… Is it still delegation if they have no choice but to obey you?”

“What I do isn’t that much worse than what any given khaki-wrapped middle manager at a software company does. At least my drones get to go outside and have an experience once in a while. And I don’t make them fill out TPS reports.”

“I bet you damn well would, if you had any.”

“… Yeah, I probably would.”

I can tell from her face and general attitude that Greene doesn’t wholly trust me. I’m not offended by that - I wouldn’t trust me either. Under any circumstances, not just hers. I haven’t had Shiriok read her mind because it would be disrespectful, but also because I don’t need to. The muscles in the sergeant’s face form a pattern of distaste, even when she’s trying to be personable.

Greene and I haven’t known one another long at all. A few days. I ran her through Goraxorus’s training course back at the office. She got through it with flying colors. And flying debris. The old man’s stone puppets didn’t stand a leaf’s chance in a woodchipper against her. She fights like a bulldozer being operated by an actual bull.

Got her settled into the office, too. Showed her around, set her up with her own digs. Getting a job at Planasthai isn’t something you can just apply for - your name either appears in blinding cosmic runes on the tablet or it doesn’t. If you do get picked, it comes with a pretty great benefits package. The main one being free lodgings. And that’s pretty great, because the floating citadel that comprises the Planasthai offices is one of the safest places in the multiverse to lay your head. It’s watched over by a literal guardian angel.

She doesn’t entirely understand what her new job entails. Recently it became my job to show her. That’s why we’re out here. Training wheels - starting her off with something relatively low-key.

I take a sip from my flask and offer it to her. She looks at it like it’s a spider.

“It’s noon.”

“Time is relative, baby. It’s six in Tokyo. And the world we’re going to right now experiences a day and night cycle predicated entirely on the dreamstate of a gigantic sentient mushroom. Live a little.”

She makes a face of equal parts disbelief and resignation, then draws once from the flask. “You were that kid in high school, huh.”

“I would have stolen cars too, but when I was in high school cars were only just starting to get popular. There was only one of them and it cost about as much as an entire year working in the factory that made it.”

I take another sip before putting it away. Greene is looking at me like I’m a spider that just barked at her.

“… I’m sorry, when you were in high school cars were new?”

“Yeah. I didn’t own one of my own until the Depression, though. It’s easier to steal from rich people when they’re throwing themselves out of highrise windows.”

“You’re telling me you’re a hundred years old.”

“One hundred and twenty-eight years old. Specifically. Lookin’ pretty good for my age though, huh?” I pose like Arnie when he was Mr. Universe. The effect is somewhat ruined by my long coat and… modest musculature.

Greene narrows her eyes at me. “Are you a time traveler?”

“Nope. Just the benefits of a balanced diet and regular exercise. And whiskey. Disinfects the internals.”

“Come on. You can’t drop something like that and then be coy.”

“Yeah I can. I do it all the time.”

She just looks at me.

“You’re not gonna win, missy. The most I’ll tell you is that it’s a trade secret, and a grisly one. You don’t wanna know.”

She surrenders with her hands and starts picking up her stuff. “Fair enough, I guess. We’d better hit it. Burning daylight. Or, uh. Whatever light this is.”

We get back on the trail. This is a winding path through the stacks that takes us up over a ridge and back down into a secluded valley, shaded by colossal trees. Not the kind of trees you’re thinking of. The trunks are made of bookshelf. The leaves are pages of paper - written things too incomplete to be formed into a book. Spare thoughts, little memos, lost notes. Every one unique. They’re hundreds of feet tall, like redwoods, but with the branch structure of a maple or an oak. A forest of them. If anyone knows who built them, or if they were built at all, they’re not talking. Maybe it’s better that way.

We go down into the valley and it’s like being wrapped in an unfamiliar robe. The Library doesn’t have much weather, but it has wind, to an extent. And it’s very evident here. The sound of the paper leaves rustling in the canopy overhead is oceanic, and so is the light - not much of it survives the branches. This is mesopelagic Library. You have gone below the polite and shining surface, and you need more than just a deep breath to remain. The trees that make up the Forest of Notions are not silent. They whisper just like any other tree does, but unlike their earthbound cousins, these whispers are not wordless.

When Greene’s clanking footsteps stop, mine also stop.

She looks around suspiciously, like she’s trying to find something in all the shadow and wood. “Did you say something?”

“No. Did you hear something?”

“Yeah. It didn’t really sound like your voice. I couldn’t make out the words, exactly, but it was definitely someone saying something.”

“Shit. Hold still.”

I approach the big woman with determined stride. My right hand secretes a greasy, griseous miasma of green and purple and black, like a galaxy of bruises.

Greene puts one hand out in front of her and the other up on the hilt of her giant sword. “Woah there, cowboy. You better use your words first.”

I stop right in front of her with exasperation. “This place is called the Forest of Notions. It’s a little cursed. The trees are full of ideas and they leak into the air. They’re… passively telepathic, in a way. A lot of sentient beings, like humans, aren’t psychically tough enough to withstand it. It doesn’t affect everyone, but the words can get into your mind and start rearranging the furniture without your say-so. It’s bad news.”

“And you didn’t want to tell me this earlier?”

“I was hoping you’d be immune. In order to apply a mental crystallizer without destroying your brain, I need at least surface-level familiarity with the architecture of your mind. I can’t harden the structure against outside influence without knowing what that structure is.”

“The way you’re saying this really sucks.”

“Yeah. I’m going to have to read your mind a little bit. That is an incredibly suspicious thing to say to someone, which is why I was hoping I wouldn’t have to say it.”

She moves her hands to her hips with a clank and looks down her nose at me.

“Fine.”

“… That wasn’t as much of a struggle as I thought it was going to be.”

“I have nothing to hide. Not from you or anybody else. And if this is some kind of trick, I’ll cut you in half and stomp your little skeleton into a pile of wet splinters for good measure.”

She’s not bluffing. I don’t need telepathy to make sure. I’ve faced down the most terrible eidolons of the infinite hells that comprise the borderless tapestry of Creation, so you should believe me when I say this lady should take up a career in demonslaying. She’s an edifice of iron, looming and unbreakable. Confidence counts for a lot when you get into a staring contest with a malevolence as old as time.

In my head, I have a split-second conversation with Shiriok.

Alright, you give me the floor plan and I’ll break out the insulation.

I cannot assist you in this matter, my master.

What? Why not?

This is unusual. Shiriok’s prison, which is made out of some serious Fort-Knox-on-Alcatraz-Island magic combined with my own skull, makes it impossible for her to disobey me. So…

The woman is blessed. By a power equal to or greater than my own. A power which despises and refuses me.

So what? You melt the brains of people that hate you all the time.

People are beneath me, in all things. This magic is of gods, and it exceeds my own. I can feel it from here. The burning. Her soul is a branding iron. I cannot touch it.

Hm. Maybe I can convince her to take it off.

I lower my hand. “So. I’d love to get this over with, but there’s a bit of an issue.”

She just raises an eyebrow.

“With a delicate operation like this, it helps to have… a metaphorical targeting computer. To calculate things and guide my hand. Just a layer of logistical help. Stops me from accidentally scrambling your egg there. My targeting computer is a demon. And she can’t help me do this spell because you’ve got, uh. Some high-wattage blessings going on right now, I guess? It’d be helpful if you could drop the shields real quick. He said, fully cognizant of how increasingly suspicious this scenario is becoming.”

She snorts. Not out of humor, but like a bull being told he’s going to have to wait fifteen minutes until he can destroy another cowboy.

“I’m not consciously maintaining any spells. I don’t really do the thaumaturgy thing. So whatever it is, it’s not something I can turn off.”

Shiriok laughs quietly. A demon’s laughter is one of the absolute worst omens one can encounter. It usually comes right before a civilization eats itself, or an innocent child takes an axe to his entire family without realizing, or some moron reporter accidentally stirs his new partner’s brains into a few cups of meaningless blood porridge.

It felt like the tree-shelves around us began leaning in, taking in the show. The whispers had found a willing ear, and the mind loves secrets almost as much as myself really wanting a real cigarette right about now.

I continue handling the situation well. "Alright. Shit. Okay. Fuck." I reach into an inner pocket and pull out my phone, a Nokia 3310, and start dialing the number for my office. After a moment, the screen pixelates into a lower-poly approximation of my secretary and spellbook, Miss J.

Her voice crackles out of the speaker, exclaiming, "It's another wonderful day for learning! How are you Mr. Marsh? Not getting into to much trouble, I hope." She winks.

"You know me too well. Look– we're in the Forest of Notions right now and Sgt. Gre-"

A cartoon exclamation point appears above Miss J's head. "Oh my! The Forest of Notions is a fascinating area of study. Did you know it came to be amidst a battle during the Great Searing between the Fifth Chief Archivist and th-"

I clear my throat and Miss J giggles.

"There I go rambling again! What can I help you with Mr. Marsh?"

"Sgt. Greene isn't immune to the Forest. I was going to Faraday cage her up with some casual downloading all of her thoughts ever, but some divine asshole got there first."

Greene threw her head back and groaned. "I'm standing right here y'know. They're just whispers, can't we just keep going?" She knocks on her metal chest, a deep gong emanating from it, and smirks. "I've dealt with worse."

I wave off Greene as Miss J tuts at me. "What have I always said about a balanced education between the occult and the divine?"

"Something about breakfast?"

"Spellcraft is like a balanced breakfast, if you focus on just one part of the meal you'll get a tummy ache. I hope you had a good breakfast today too Mr. Marsh?"

"Does an e-cig count?"

"[[span class="missj"]]I'm afraid not."

"Rats."









Bookbinding

Hidden eyes, hidden watchers, see a trespasser. In the redwood shelves' domain, they (the trespasser) patter, unaware of the attention garnered. Creaking, like an ever-sinking legendary boat, snakes through the otherwise silent soundscape from the tall, tall shelves imperceptivity shifting, mixed with the near-silent footsteps of the wayward patron.

Not a single book, scroll, poem, or script carved into the back of a severed hand; or really any Libraryesque item had been seen by the trespasser for quite some time. On one hand (not the severed kind) that was good, for my mental and physical health, they thought. But on the other hand, that only meant something was bound to happen soon. It always does in the Archives.


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