Black Book

A fragment of the Garden of Remembering

Revision as of 23:58, 10 April 2017 by Apheori (talk | contribs) (...?!)

Backstory. Sidestory. Supposition, the antithesis of practice. Nevermind practice. This isn't practice. This is a treatise by the narrator, an examination of could-have-beens, an aside from the GM. We can talk about anything. Let's talk about anything.

You, for instance. Who are you? What do you dream? How far would you go? Do even you know yourself, or will you be just as surprised as all the others when, after all of this, it turns out it was all for jackfruit? For my own part, I can really only speak for me... and maybe, just maybe, for you.

Shall we go, then, you and I?

Part 1: Induction

It's almost noon. Springtime is coming on in force, and most of that force, naturally, is the wind. But you're out of it now. You can stop, for a moment.

You Dream.

0

Your name is Jennifer Mar. You're you. You've always been you, lived your life, dreamed your Dreams. And yet... when you turned the page, you did not expect it to happen. You did not expect to suddenly be... here.

You're standing in a street in a shadowed region of the city, the overhang of the higher levels glistening wetly in the reflected sunlight. Abearanoth. You'd always imagined it a bit like a layer cake, but here it's more like a deep, echoey cave full of chatter and magelights, the roar of the waterfalls a hollow sound behind it all, with a wide shelf of even more city sticking out into the sun. And if you walked out into the sunlight, you might see the other layers, all stacked on top of each other, lined with trees, the waterfalls crashing down through the middle of it all with misty abandon.

You make your way out of the shade, and the sun hits you in a wall of dripping heat, blinding. Your sunglasses aren't helping, but then you realise you're wearing safety glasses, not sunglasses; your sunglasses are still up on the top of your head. You swap them, and look around. This is it, all right. The next level up hangs out in a tangle of elaborate architecture, buildings sticking out hanging extensions and connecting to the taller buildings from the layer below. Trees poke out seemingly at random. It looks decidedly unsafe, a pinnacle of drunken elven architecture.

You know this place implicitly. It's your city, your world. You've been writing it for years, always drifting in the shadows of the higher levels as you followed your characters from story to story, loitering about the temples, laughing at the breweries. The whole joke had been that the place really didn't make sense - and it was because of the beer. The ancient elves had built so many breweries that they'd subsequently just gone ahead and made the rest of it like this anyway, sense be damned.

People pass you by, many more humans than elves, some giving you curious looks. You stand out, you realise, in your linux t-shirt and sunglasses and safety glasses and long, layered skirts. And your belt, with sword and purse, done out in a quality unfitting this world. Everything about you is pristine and modern, unnaturally even; everything they're wearing is simple and to the point, loosely-hanging and providing shelter. Even the nobles are wearing fairly simple clothes, making up details in finer fabric and jewellery. They don't double up their seams. They don't use lace as a filler material. They're not wearing relatively warm clothes meant for a brisk spring day in central Wyoming.

The page had been simple enough. A repeat of the index line: You find yourself in the world of your favourite character. Below it, the catch: This character is gone, disappeared. But as long as you are there, the world will know you to be them. How do you proceed? Vardaman had come to mind. Always an interesting one, you never did quite know what was going through his head. So how indeed, you wondered. And then you turned the page...

You regret this already.

You, frankly, have no idea how to proceed. You take stock. You're here, in the world. You're... who are you? Still you, as far as you can tell, still wearing exactly what you were before. Your hands are the same, your hair is the same tangled blob wadded up on top of your head with a pair of collapsible chopsticks...

And Vardaman? Can you believe the Black Book, that he is really gone? Can you risk it if he is? Without him, the whole world might fall... and what else can you do?

So what are you doing here? Or would Vardaman be doing here? You really don't know. Vardaman's early life never factored in that much. He was always the grizzled old man, never someone your age. He never was in your shoes. He wore boots.

You look down. You're not even wearing shoes. You're barefoot. Your toenails glitter in the sun, sparkling in shades of blue.

This isn't working.

But this is your story. Vardaman is your character. What do you know? He was a Deathdealer, a warrior priest of Kyrule, the local god of death. But before all that, perhaps that's why he would have been here: to join the temple in the first place. And the Great Temple of Kyrule is here, in Abearanoth. You could do this.

You're a woman. If you're really going to be a Vardaman, you're going to be a genderbent Vardaman. A very lazy genderbent Vardaman with weird health problems, no hand-eye coordination, and a general inability to... wear shoes. But on the other hand, you don't really have any other leads as to what you can even do here, do you? None of your own skills are likely to be the least bit valuable. Your skills are weird.[1]

Or you could just go to the temple and see what happens. You turn in the direction you feel like it should be in, to the north; there was always a sense of going in this way, though you never wrote it down. The whole city is north-south, built into the mountainside, jungle all around. It's big, noisy, full of people, with streets winding around under towering buttresses and suspended tarps casting welcome shade from the tropical sun. You never really grasped how big it really was, or how dense, or warm.

You don't know where you're going. The Temple is probably not even on this level.

You stop at the side of the road, trying to get your bearings. None of this makes sense. How is it even possible? How are you here? Your world has no magic, no gods, nothing but the harsh, cold reality of being alone in a vast and uncaring universe. Or so you believed. If this is real, if you're actually here now - and it sure feels real; the humidity alone makes it feel like you're swimming in the air, and the smells are a wonderful combination of leaves and humanity and garbage quite unlike anything you've experienced before - then you were wrong. About everything. Magic was real there, too.

Either you've finally gone totally barking mad and fallen into your own story, or everything you understood about the nature of your own world was wrong... and you've fallen into your own story.

"Excuse me," you say to a passerby, except it doesn't come out right, and you realise you're trying to speak a language you only half know. But half is... something, at least. You'd forgotten the language barriers, and yet somehow you do seem to know at least a little bit of Desh. A quirk in the magic, teach you the languages Vardaman would have known?

The woman pauses and looks at you curiously.

"Directions?" you ask.

After a bit of finaggling, you manage to communicate what you're after, and she points you in a direction, and up a level. You try to thank her, and go on to get a little lost, and a little confused at the teleporters, before someone else just activates it for you.

And then you see it. The Great Temple of Kyrule - it turns out to be a partially walled-off complex of similar, but not quite congruous, architecture to the rest of Abearanoth. A grand archway frames the road as it continues into the complex itself. Embedded into either side, in some grey metal, is the insignia of Kyrule: the mask and skull that you had managed, once, to put onto a disappointingly low-resolution raster image of a coin. Writing in a script you don't recognise at all is engraved down the stone. A couple of guards, wearing the same insignia, are loitering beneath it. They regard you, and a few others also headed in, disinterestedly as you approach.

You stop beneath the arch, looking up, and then around. One of your other characters had been unable to pass this after being turned into a vampire, and now you're curious - where would that point have been? How did that work, exactly? You poke at the ground with your foot. One of the guards asks what you're doing, and you almost freeze up trying to come up with the words before managing to just force yourself to try, and ask him where the edge of all this is. He comes over and shows you, indicating the outward side of the walls and archway. You step out and nudge at the space in the air with your hand.

"Interesting," you say.

"What is?" he asks, almost laughing.

You shake your head, and resist the urge to squee. "Really big story," you say. This is real. You're here. So many of your stories converged at this temple. Began here, ended, waypointed. You could take a lifetime exploring it, retracing all your characters' steps, and for the first time, you think you understand how the pilgrims in Jerusalem felt, remembering as you'd walked among them in the shadowed temples, the open sun. Touching the wall, the rock, the altar. This is it. This whole world is your Jerusalem....

But you can't afford to just go pure fangirl here. You have a role to fulfil, a part to play. You're Vardman. You're... a kid in a strange and unfamiliar place, with nothing, having left home for the first time in your life in order to begin anew. This is all new to you. You're not at home at all, and you've certainly never seen anything like it.

...you're a bloody writer who's travelled the world over. You've spent your whole life exploring new places and cultures, first in books and film, and later on, even in person, with friends from even stranger places along as your companions. And now you're in an ancient elven city on the mountainous coast of the equivalent of the godsdamn Amazon. You're at a temple to a god you made up. It has featured in your dreams, in your stories, showing up time and again in all the different fragments, becoming a fixture in your imagination. And it's right here.

You squee, just a little, and run off, grinning, almost giggling, into the courtyard beyond.

"Right, then," the guard says.

You force yourself to slow to a walk, to pretend you're normal, calm, just like all the other people here. Most of them seem to be headed for the main temple building just ahead, so you go that way too, passing other courtyards mostly walled off, and myriad buildings of sundry function. You find yourself wanting to comment, wishing you had people with you to talk to, a group of friends, with all the in-jokes. The ones who would understand the comparison you really want to make about all this being like walking into a big damn furry convention. When you're the biggest furry of them all.

The threshold is a wall of coolness, the thick stone blocking out the tropical heat, and inside, in the entryway, is a statue of a shrouded, kneeling figure, holding before it a tattered cloth. Some of the folks ahead of you touch the cloth, a couple whispering prayers, and you brush your fingers across it as you pass as well. Your fingertips tingle with a strange warmth as they come away, but you hardly notice. You've stopped. You're staring at the mural on the far wall, a vast painted relief depicting what looks like the entire abbreviated history of Kyrule - including quite a few things that definitely haven't happened yet.

At least... not if the year is what you think it is.

You go over, getting close enough that there's no one in the way, and read it like a story, piecing together the ideas and events - the old gods, the ascension, the fall, the slaying of Eapherod, the breaking of magic, the Exodus. You're guessing, but it's a fun game. Winged cats following a masked figure - Kyrule when he tried to shoo them out of Eapherod's garden, most likely. The Guardians kneeling around one, who's sacrificed - you're not sure who it is, but you have a worrying feeling it might be you, or perhaps the other character, Coraline. A dragon, spreading its shadow across the world. A Dead soul in chains held up as judgement is passed - definitely Coraline. The return of Eapherod. The Keepers, speaking, telling the stories. Something you are absolutely convinced is a hovercraft full of eels and badgers, though it looks more like a sailboat and the figures aboard appear more elven than badger. Worlds breaking. Tendrils seeping. The final battle where all the gods gather and face the dragon with their armies before them, and above it, almost hidden in the clouds, two robed figures before an enormous throne, guiding them. At the end of the battle, and the mural, more winged cats are practically falling off the edge.

You realise you're gaping at it and quickly shut your mouth. How did this thing go from 'dragon!' to 'entire damn story written in stone from the start'?! The only way it could be more accurate is if the sphinxes - the cats - at the ending had formed a giant ball. Suddenly this whole thing isn't fun at all, and you don't know what to make of it.

It was just supposed to be a mural. Ambience. Plot contrivance.

You sidle off into the main chamber, now almost afraid to see what you'll notice there.

It's a vast hall, with more reliefs on the walls, and elaborate decor on the pillars. At the far end is an immense shrine with statues and altars and candles and all the things, with much smaller shrines around the hall as well. The place is packed, in particular around the main shrine, and people pushing toward it even as others squeeze their way out, but you stop closer to the middle of the room, looking up. The ceiling is oddly plain, but with shapes of circles forming an unusual architecture of their own. It almost matches the rest of the hall. Almost, but not quite. The real ceiling is higher up.

In your mind, you picture it - a couple of the circles just crashing down out of the ceiling in a shower of masonry, two elves falling down with it and scrambling away. Neither of them are terribly concerned about the damage. Both are total nerds. All the other non-nerds they crash down into the midst of, however, are understandably far more concerned, because they don't know what's going on or why the ceiling would even have been breakable...

"This isn't the usual attraction," someone comments. You glance over and find a priest standing next to you, and he gives you a curious look. "Whatcha looking at?" he asks.

"The..." you say, pointing up. You motion circles with your finger. "The thing." On the plus side, you probably don't need to worry about blurting out spoilers when you can't even explain a circle.

"What... thing?" he asks, peering up at the ceiling.

"Is a piece of history," you reply. "I... think."

He gives you a somewhat more confused look, and you just shrug. Your stomach growls, and you drop a hand to your purse - it's a small one, just an extra pocket on your belt, really, but you find half a protein bar amidst some random tools and a thing of glue.

You take a bite and immediately recall why you didn't just eat it all in the first place.[2]

"So, er," you say to the priest, "If I want to join me with the temple, how I do?"

"Oh, is that why you're here?" he asks.

"Yes." You try to look convincing, but you're dressed like a weirdo and holding a protein bar.

He seems to buy it anyway. "Follow me," he says.

He takes you to a room with a mish-mash of other random folk in it. A woman is in front giving some sort of speech, prattling along about the temple and great things and purpose or whatever, with some other priests also around. "Just pretend you were here all along," he tells you, winks, and slips back out.

You nod, and turn to the front, vaguely listening as you unhappily finish the protein bar, trying not to crinkle the wrapper too much, though you can only really understand some of it.[3] So you look to the people, instead - there's 20-some of you here, mostly random younger folk, kids, really, mostly peasant-looking, with a couple who might have been tradesfolk, or failed tradesfolk, and in the back, next to you, three much better-dressed guys of rather varying heights who look more like nobles of some kind, and have swords. Some of the folk seem enthusiastic, others fearful, though it's hard to tell exactly from behind. There's a bit of shuffling about. The sword guys seem downright disinterested, and talk quietly amongst each other in covered whispers.

The woman finishes and one of the other priests starts talking instead, saying something about glory and service and something about a tree, but his thick accent makes him almost impossible for you to follow. The sword guys, however, actually start listening to this. One of them notices you looking at them and gives you a slight salute. You return the gesture with a somewhat unintentional flourish.

Later, when the priests are done orientating, or whatever it was they were even doing, they ask if anyone has any questions. You have many, of course, not the least of which is if anyone here speaks a language you actually know. But asking that doesn't strike you as likely to be particularly useful in practice. The sword guys, meanwhile, start nudging each other, telling each other, 'you ask', 'no, you', 'go on, ask', even as most of the room turns to eye them.

"We can hear you, you know," one of the priests says. "If you have something to ask, ask it."

They stop. They exchange glances. "When can we pledge our swords to Kyrule?" the tallest one asks.

The priest sighs. "In time. Does anyone have any more... immediate questions?" he asks.

"Is there food?" you ask. A sword guy sniggers.

The priest turns away, throwing his hands in the air, but the woman who had been speaking earlier puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder and steps forward. "All who serve Kyrule will be fed and clothed. We look after our own."

Some other folks have more normal questions, and these are quickly addressed as well. Then you're all escorted to a dormitory of sorts, given bundles of clothes and such, and told to report to the initiation chambers in half an hour.

The others start divvying up beds and arguing about who gets what. A few stand around timidly, unsure what to do. You ignore them for the moment, and instead eyeball the folded grey bundle in your hands uncertainly. You shake it out and a pair of trousers and some other random things flop out onto the ground. You scoop them up, realising maybe randomly in the middle of the room wasn't the best place for that.

"You. You're with us." One of the sword guys, who is very short,[4] is looking up at you expectantly.

"What?" you say.

"We've got the corner," he says. "We saved a bed for you."

"Why?" you say.

"Because you're cool," he says.

You glance down at your linux shirt and only barely manage to avoid giving him a very dubious look. Linux, it says. Under-priced and overqualified (as am I). Not exactly the shirt you would have chosen to wear to another planet, and in light of your current predicament, you're sort of glad nobody is likely to be able to read it, let alone understand it.

"Oh," you say. "How many years are you?"

"Sixteen," he says proudly.

You try to remember when you were sixteen. First you draw a blank, but then a bit of math tells you that would have been mid-high-school, and you vaguely recall being a total nerd, sleeping through calculus, wearing a cloak, and painting in every class but art, at which point you put away the entire set of paints you'd been hauling around... and pulled out a history book. You weren't exactly a rebel, but you certainly didn't do what anyone said, or what made sense, or that fit in, in any way whatsoever, with what everyone else was doing, either.

"Oh," you say. The sad thing is, you haven't really come that far since, either. Also you're almost twice that age now.

"What?" he asks.

"What year it is?" you ask.

"Screaming leopard, wasn't it?"

You stare at him blankly, not even recognising the words as words, before you remember that all the years had weird animal names for some reason. "Ah, the number?" you ask.

"1864," he replies. "And that I am actually certain of."

You have him repeat it just to be sure you're understanding the number correctly, and try to remember. The story began around the year 2000-ish, after the Exodus. And Vardaman was pretty old, which means... this could actually be around when Vardaman's journey would have begun. Maybe? You're not sure.

"I know, I know, the names are so weird," the guy is saying. "And random. And they give no context at all! How is anyone supposed to work with a dilapidated badger or seventeen muskoxen or the grey blight? It's nonsense."

You nod blankly. "They are... really not good when you do not know the language," you point out.

"Ah! Yes, I can see why that might be a problem, too," he says. "So... will you join us? We'll teach you the language."

You shrug and follow him over.

The other two sword guys are getting into their robes, but they nod at you as come over.

"You're not much like these other folks, either, are you?" the tall one says, putting his sword back on over the whole ensemble. "I'm Juane of Atkis, that's Kerka, and he's Leifos da Nereimen." He indicates the 16-year-old who had been sent to fetch you last.

"Leifos," you say to him.

"Yeah," Leifos says, and then starts stripping off his town clothes right there. He's the shortest of the lot, and very lanky. Juane is the tallest, and rather well-built as well, whereas Kerka is more just wide, and about the same height as you. Their brown hair and similar features, however, suggest they might all be related.

"Vardaman," you say. You dump the bundle onto a bed, shaking it out for real this time, and find a tunic and an outer robe among a bunch of other various sundries. You put them on over the clothes you're already wearing.

"You know, aside from the colours, that almost works," Juane says.

You switch which skirt is on top, tucking the bright green-blue-purple one into the black one underneath, and then put your belt on again over the tunic. It's a wide circle chain belt, and it stands out, terribly bright and shiny, against the very plain robes, but the belt that had come with the bundle was too simple to clip anything to. You give it an annoyed look.

Juane gives it an amused look. "That does work," he says.

You really want to loudly exclaim 'Fashion!' in response, but have no idea how to actually say it. The guys, meanwhile, move to regard the rest of the room. Everyone else is also changing, and even the more timid stragglers seem to have found spaces to call their own at this point.

"So what do you make of them?" Kerka asks.

"They lack purpose," Juane says.

"They'll get it," Leifos says, trying to get his tunic to stop bunching up. You give him a hand, straightening it out so it at least hangs better, but it's at least three sizes too big for him.

"You are really small," you tell him.

Leifos bats you away and pulls on his robe. "Well, we're doing this," he says.

"Yes," Juane says.

"They are also," you say.

"As well," Leifos corrects.

"Right."

1

Initiation happens. Half the initiates are late, apparently because they couldn't find the room, and arrive in a big gaggle while the rest of you stand around waiting,[5] with the head priestess woman standing by an altar of sorts, looking very disappointed.

Then they show up. Things get on with. She makes another speech. Everyone sort of queues up in front of the altar, and somehow your group winds up in front, possibly because all of the others shrank away, and you lot didn't.

You glance at the sword guys enquiringly, and Juane gestures for you to go first with an elaborate flourish. You give him a dubious look, but step up to the altar.

"Name?" the priestess asks.

"Vardaman," you reply.

"Place your hands on the altar," she says. When you do, she continues, "Do you now leave behind all you possessed, to begin anew in the Light of the God Kyrule, taking him as your only patron?"

"Er... what?" you say uncertainly, trying to buy time to parse her words.

"Is there a problem?" she asks.

"Not my shoes. These are good shoes," you say, and then immediately regret not just admitting what the real problem is.

She gives you a quick look, and says, "You're not wearing any shoes."

"Yes."

"Why are you here?" she asks flatly.

For a moment, you panic, trying to come up with the right words, and then even doubting the ones you think should be right. The priestess frowns. So you just start talking anyway, hoping it's right, hoping it even makes sense. "To give my life and soul at the Kyrule," you reply. You don't want to say it. You don't like what it means, how it feels, the finality, the certainty of it. But it's something.

"And should Kyrule not want it?" she asks.

"I will serve him no... so much as I can," you say, surprised. You think you got it right, at least, but that feeling. That strange flutter in your heart, that feeling is Vardaman, to you. But why? What is it? You don't even know. It feels a bit like dying.

There's a long pause. The priestess eyes you consideringly, before finally giving a slight nod. "You are witnessed, Vardaman," she says, and places a small metal disc with a cord on the altar in front of you. "Welcome."

You pick it up and back away. It seems to be some sort of necklace, and you realise she's wearing the same, though with several more discs under the top one, each one a different colour and larger than the previous. The other priests also have them, but where they all have two or three, she has five.

Juane claps you reassuringly on the shoulder as he goes up.

"Name?" the priestess says.

"Juane of Atkis," he replies, and places his hands on the altar.

"Do you now leave behind all that you possessed, to begin anew in the Light of the God Kyrule, taking him as your only patron?"

"Yes," Juane says.

"You are witnessed, Juane of Atkis," she says, and passes him his disc. "Welcome."

"Easy," he tells you as Kerka goes up, and puts on his disc.

You just shake your head, and tie the cord of your own around your neck, putting it on over the ankh you're already wearing.

Once Leifos is also done, the four of you squeeze your way back and spill out into the corridor. As soon as the door shuts behind you, Leifos turns on you with his face shaped half in incredulity and half wonder[6]. "What was that?!" he asks.

"I..." You try to find the words to even express your exasperation. "I wish they do not talk so... proper!" you say. "It's difficult to understand. You are... easier."

"Ah!" Leifos says. "Right, maaaaybe you shouldn't have gone first."

"Well, not everyone here is from Deshland," Kerka says. "Just... mostly, from the look of it."

"Right," you say.

"You'll get there," Leifos says. "And she seemed happy once you explained yourself."

You look away, embarrassed.

"So apparently our indoctrination starts tomorrow," Juane says. "We've got all evening to... I dunno, eat food? Explore? Get hopelessly lost and have to be inevitably rescued by the local constabulary?"

"Except for that last bit," Kerka says, "sounds like a fine night out."

Nobody disagrees, so you all head off in a direction. The light coming in the various windows is rosy and angled, and supplemented now by soft blue magelights glowing slightly out from the wall. You wave a hand through one as you pass, and your fingers go right through it.

"And you, Vardaman," Juane says, "where are you from, anyway?"

"Iliesk," you reply. That's where Vardaman was from, at least, but it's an easier sell than central Wyoming.

"That's a long way to come," Juane says, "but you're doing well enough. You just need to talk more. And hear more. So we'll talk. And hear things. Go on, say something."

"Something," you say.

Leifos snorts.

"I walked right into that one," Juane says.

"Yes, you did," Kerka says.

You amble along, talking, clarifying phrases, peering into random rooms. They explain their situation a bit, saying they're nobles from up north, a region of Deshland called Seldarch. They're all cousins, part of the same noble group, which had a bit of a complication in which the group was ousted in some manner that doesn't really make sense to you, and they were supposed to be exiled and leave Deshland outright, but they decided, naw, let's make trouble with the temples instead. And they like Kyrule well enough, so here they are.

You find this all pretty funny, frankly. Religion out of spite. A good cause if you ever heard one.

Eventually you find food. It is, in fact, a disturbingly ordinary-looking cafeteria. There's tables and chairs and people eating, and even a great big window in the wall with a counter with trays of food laid out, complete with a very irate-looking fat woman on the other side now glaring very pointedly at your group.

You all go over to her.

"Hello!" Kerka says brightly.

The woman makes a disgusted noise and withdraws back into the room on the other side of the counter.

Kerka give her backside a wounded look, and you all grab some trays and sit down. The others proceed to dig in, but after struggling a bit with your fork, which seems to be solely useful for poking things, you suddenly remember you actually do have a pair of chopsticks and pull them out of your hair. It falls down in a total mess.

You shake your hair out a bit and then start properly shovelling food into your mouth.

Kerka is watching you dubiously.

"Is that proper?" Leifos asks.

You pause, holding up a giant wad of meat and potatoes. "Yes," you say, and shove it into your face. After a bit, you manage to swallow it all, and add, "It's fast. Can... eat without seeing."

"But you're... picking your food up like with tweezers," Leifos says.

"That's fairly typical in some areas," Juane says. "They're chopsticks. Even some groups around here use them."

"Yes, chopsticks," you say. "Good."

Kerka bursts out laughing.

You finish eating far more quickly than any of the others as the conversation shifts to swords. You follow along, noting the different words. Many are totally new, but you piece quite a few of them together from context. Deathdealers come up, and you particularly follow this discussion, but it turns out to be mostly just speculation on how they're actually formed. You tell them it's water. They make Deathdealers with water.

"Vardaman?" a woman says next to you. You look up - it's the priestess from before, looking down at you with piercing blue eyes, her discs dangling over what, from this angle, you realise is a very large bosom. You don't even know what to call that cup-size. Videogame? Fanart?

You realise you're staring and attempt to stop. It only sort of works. "Er... yes?" you reply.

"I feel we should speak about your initiation," she says. "Your response was... unusual."

"Sorry," you reply. She's still standing over you. You wonder if you should maybe get up, or she should sit down, or something should actually happen, but she's given no indication one way or the other what she seems to expect of the situation either, at least as far as you can tell.

"Why didn't you simply answer directly?" she asks.

"I... I don't understand," you begin, but then Juane answers for you.

"She's not from Deshland," Juane says. "She's still a bit new to the language, and had a hard time figuring it out right away."

"Yes," you say, "that."

"And where do you come from?" she asks, staring at you, piercingly.

"Iliesk," you reply. "I arrived to today."

"Then perhaps this will be easier?" she says, except now she's speaking a language you understand perfectly. Lesk, all neatly tucked into your brain like you've known it your whole life.

"Aye," you say, surprised, slipping into the same. "Much, thank you."

She nods. "Why come here?" she asks. "All this way, when there are temples closer to home, surely."

...and that's the problem. You don't actually know. You're here because of a magic book you found in a thrift shop.[7] But Vardaman? Why would he be here? He would have needed to be here at some point because this was where they trained the Deathdealers, but why did he actually come here in the first place? Because his mother told him to? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time? Because talking pigeons tricked him into it?

On the other hand, you're a writer. And you don't just write fiction - you also write grants, which are a whole other level of combined bullshit promises and qualified prognostication.[8] You always had this saying about writers, that they didn't need to be the smartest one in the room, just the biggest bullshitter, and you are very good at bullshit.

You open your mouth, and lies come out.

"I came via Ord," you tell her. "I was lost, and some folks helped me, but I... I didn't really fit in there. Everything was so big and... I don't know." You stumble a bit, putting on a sort of confused face for emphasis, but in this language you have no worry at all that the words, at least, are exactly what you mean them to be. "Anyway, they got me to a Gateway and I... came here."

"Why not go home?" she asks.

"I... don't really have a home to go back to," you reply, looking a bit embarrassed. "Not anymore. But here, maybe I can be of use. Do something good. For once."

She gives you an appraising look. The sword guys are watching intently, leaning over, waiting to see what she'll do as well. You eye her uncertainly.

"You meant what you said," she says. It's almost a question, but not quite.

"Aye."

She stares down at you for a long moment, and you stare up at her and her enormous bosom. Then she simply turns away without another word and leaves.

You give the sword guys a confused look.

"Well?" Leifos asks. "What'd she say? What'd you say? That sounded really interesting."

You tell them, only leaving out the bit where you made it all up. You make up a couple of other bits - Vardaman's mother might have been a hag of some sort, so you just go with that as your general background - but it's all a bit mangled because you don't really know the words. You figure that's how you'll get away with this, however: if you contradict yourself later, you can just blame a miscommunication.

All in all, they're not really sure what to make of her response either, but they think it's really cool that you've been to Ord. You haven't really, of course; Ord is a part of this universe that just happens to be more sci-fi, which makes it a good excuse to explain your clothes and whatnot, whereas Abearanoth is on the fantasy planet.

Later, when you all get back to the dormitory, a tired-looking old man is arguing with one of the other initiates. He turns to you as you approach.

"You four," he says, "you missed the chores assignment, so you get what's left after everyone else picked. You're on roof duty." He almost sounds gleeful as he says it, like some secret victory has taken place here.

"Interesting," Juane says.

"Roof duty?" you ask.

"Yup," the man says.

You turn to the others. "What?" you say.

They briefly explain the words, in particular 'roof' and what 'duty' actually probably means in this context, with the old man confirming/clarifying. Apparently you need to report to some guy tomorrow afternoon and... repair the roof. Or something. Even the clarification doesn't seem particularly clear.

"Oh," you say. You're still a bit confused, frankly. "Should... not somebody with experience do this?" you ask.

"Of course you've got experience," the old man says. "Only a team with experience would choose this task."

"But..." Leifos starts, but the old man just ambles off, humming to himself.

"Yup," Kerka says. "We've pissed them off already and now they're trying to kill us."

"I'm sure we'll manage," Juane says.

"Maybe," you say. "Roofing is... simple, mostly. Need to... not fall?"

"Yeah, see?" Juane says, clapping you on the back. "We'll be fine."

Only as you're getting to sleep, using your blankets as extra pillows, does the enormity of your situation occur to you. Even if all of this works - and that is a mighty big if - what then? How far do you really intend to play this out? How can you really play it out, when you're... you, and not Vardaman?

You finger your disc uncertainly. It's an emblem, very simple, a single large symbol pressed into it, and beneath it, a single word in a script you don't know.

The symbol, though, you know. A circle with a line through it, like a ϕ. A symbol for Kyrule.

2

The next day starts fiendishly early. You get out of bed, comb your hair at some point, put on the rest of your clothes, and refuse to really wake up until you walk into a bed, two tables, a wall, five random other people, and the same door twice in a row.

Somehow you got all the way to a cafeteria and are in fact holding a bowl of some kind of porridge in the middle of eating it. The door isn't even closed, but instead propped open sticking out from the wall and doorway, such that you apparently got stuck behind it somehow.

Kerka is watching you, head cocked.

"Oi. Are you okay?" he asks, looking rather amused.

"Yes," you reply. "I... need sleep. More?"

"Uhuh," he says, taking your arm and steering you out. "Sure. We're sitting over there."

You sit down with Juane and Leifos, also eating their porridge, and glare at them, daring them to comment.

"No comment," Juane says.

"So what were you saying when we were reciting the tenants earlier?" Leifos asks you.

You give him a blank look and then add, for emphasis, "Huh?" You don't even understand half the words he just said.

"After we got up, we washed, we went to one of the shrines and they had us go through the tenants?" Leifos says.

"I... what?" you say. You don't remember any of that. You don't remember what any of that might have even been.

"You don't remember any of that?" Leifos asks.

You shake your head.

"Wow," Kerka says.

"Well, you were mumbling something along with the rest of us," Leifos says. "Sounded pretty strange, too. Very... I don't know."

"I don't as well," you say.

"Either," Juane corrects. "You don't either."

"I don't either," you say after him. You're starting to think you don't much care for this language, nor having to learn it on the fly like this. And this is with an apparent friend group willing to help you through all of it. Did Vardaman have this? What was he thinking, coming here? Why did he do this? Why couldn't he have been lazy like you and just seek out the path of least resistance?

The day is taken up by lectures. You, and quite a few other initiates besides the group you joined up with, pile up into a room, and various priests and the like go on at length about things you can't quite make out. The large space and diverse accents make them even harder to follow than the previous.

You're toward the back, at the tables. Further down, in front, it's all chairs, but quite a few others are also back here with paper and pens. Kerka is taking notes, Juane peering over his shoulder with a sort of disapproving curiosity painted across his face, and you've borrowed some paper as well, though you aren't really sure what to put on it. A doodle of Coraline. Some notes of things you need to find out. A rare item you actually understood from the speakers, all written down in your tiny, scrawling English, all over the page.

Leifos gets up from the other side of Kerka and Juane and scoots in next to you. "Are you getting any of this?" he asks.

You shrug. "Some," you tell him. "A little." The problem is, you're not even that good at understanding people in English a lot of the time. You were always better at following words on a page, or screen, than a verbal conversation or presentation, and you'd always look for that first. Skip past the videos, find the write-up, and scan it with uncanny speed... you peer over at Kerka's notes, but the written language here is totally foreign to you, all squiggles and angles. It looks like Nuskhuri, or a bit like Hebrew,[9] if Hebrew had more squiggles and some random serifs attached.

"What?" Leifos asks when you give him a somewhat desperate look.

You try to figure out how to explain it. You want the alphabet. You want to know how the written form of the language works. Finally you wind up just borrowing a sheet of Kerka's notes and pointing to what look like the individual characters and asking about the sounds, hoping it even is a phonetic language at all.

Leifos writes down the alphabet and runs you through each character as you both cease to pay any attention whatsoever to the lecture, and you write down the equivalent letters and sounds in English. He explains that words are usually divided up by spaces (showing you some examples when you don't initially follow) in common contexts, but in more official documents, not so much. They just jam all the words together, apparently. He tells you some of the weird letter combinations, and you write those down as well.

The two of you spend most of the lectures going through a couple of pages of Kerka's notes, you sounding out words, Leifos explaining their meaning. You write them down, starting to build a dictionary, familiarising yourself with writing the characters as well as reading.

The notes, it turns out, are a rather terse combination of summaries of the lectures, and various totally arbitrary comments and criticisms about the speakers and anything else Kerka happened to notice in the room. You translate several lines of strangely-directed complaining before you realise it's probably intended for Juane, who's still not really doing much besides pestering Kerka, and continuing to read over his shoulder.

You glance over at him, and Juane gives you a very innocent look.

Kerka is still taking notes. A lot of notes.

"Why," you ask at one point, "is he write this much?"

"So much?" Leifos says. "That's just Kerka."

In the afternoon, you report for roof duty. A cranky-looking muscular middle-aged guy in worker's clothes<re>Grey ones.</ref> eyes the four of you as you enter the indicated room. "So," he says. "I'm told you lot might actually know what you're doing."

Kerka gives him a dubious look.

"Certainly," Juane says, "If it's something we know how to do."

"And do you?" the guy asks.

"Maybe?" Juane says.

The guy gives him a flat, unamused look, and then sighs. "Okay, what did you do?" he asks tiredly.

"What?" Leifos says.

"Harrik keeps sending me incompetent people who pissed him off," the guy says. "Because he's still bitter about that... well. What did you do?"

The sword guys exchange uncertain glances. You, meanwhile, are totally lost at this point.

"We were late to the assigning," Kerka says.

"Missed it entirely, I think," Leifos adds.

"No, no. Late," Kerka insists.

"I... see," the guy says. "Have any of you been on a roof before?"

You all affirm and nod. This question you understood, too.

"That... wasn't two feet up and thatch?" he amends.

"Certainly," Juane says. "The castle's roofs were much higher. And tile."

"Thatch?" you ask Leifos.

"Grass," he says. "Hay. Filler. Shrub plant peasant roofs." You give him a blank look, and he gives up. "Nevermind. I'll tell you later."

"Okay, fine, whatever," the guy says. "We'll work with it. I'm Jim. Grab some tiles."

3

"I have never seen a man so happy," Leifos says, "to see people put tiles down in the correct direction. Which makes me wonder... what sort of total morons was this guy getting?"

It's later, evening. You're all at dinner, now, in another cafeteria, eating your plates of food, somewhat exhausted after the long afternoon. It had been a very simple task, it turned out, just going up on some of the lower buildings and replacing all the broken tiles. The hardest part had been getting the boxes up the ladder in the first place, and once up there, not breaking any more tiles, but you'd all gotten the hang of it pretty quickly, with Jim trodding around below directing where to go next. And, as the afternoon wore on, looking more and more absolutely overjoyed.

"Total morons, apparently," Kerka says. "The kind who don't know how to put tiles down in the correct direction."

"I must say," Juane begins, "had someone told me, two weeks ago, that Seldarch would be lost and we would be exiled and wind up here and take up roofing as a hobby for fun and profit... I would have thought it pretty damn hilarious. And likely challenged their honour."

"It is," Kerka says.

"Well, true," Juane agrees. "He was really happy."

Leifos shakes his head, sniggering. "Seriously, what kind of morons...?"

"Tomorrow we'll have to ask," Juane says, stacking up everyone's used dishes. He's doing a terrible job of it, just building a heap, so you confiscate the entire pile and sort it so it fits together.

"Well, fine," he says, confiscating the now better stacked pile back.

As you head out, he dumps it all in the bin and it slides back into an unordered heap.

You go exploring. None of you really agree on what you're looking for - Kerka seems to be after books, Juane training rooms, and you and Leifos keep getting distracted by any odd thing - but you wander about, finding out what there even is to find, passing the odd passerby, or groups of passersby. Most of them are dressed much as you are, but a few are wearing somewhat different attire - darker robes with shrouded cowls, armour, activewear. One group you pass is dressed all in white, their heads shaved.

The main temple building is immense, built up of many different colours of stones, cool and echoey, the ventilation always well above. Even some of the closer buildings are attached by covered walkways, which you discover by winding up in one, finding it to be a bit of a dead end, going outside, going back inside, and resuming the exploration of the main building.

You find a library.

You find bathhouses, far better than the one you'd all been ushered to in the morning.

You find a room, twenty meters across, containing only a single, large crystal on a pedestal at one end.

Juane dares Leifos to touch it. Leifos dares Kerka to touch it. Kerka tells you you probably shouldn't touch it. You give him an entirely unamused look, and then suggest Juane touch it, instead.

Juane gives you a look, shrugs, and goes over and pokes it. He immediately tenses up, yelping, and then tries to withdraw his finger, but it's stuck. He yells, and the rest of you hurry over.

"Hey, what happened, man?" Kerka asks, grabbing his arm.

"Help!" Juane yells. "It's trying, it's..."

You and Kerka pull him away, and for a moment, Juane just looks utterly stricken.

"Juane?" Leifos asks.

Kerka flicks Juane in the ear.

"Agh!" Juane yelps, recoiling a bit, except now he's laughing, too. "Oh, I can't believe you fell for that!"

"What?" Kerka asks, irate. "You were faking that?"

"Yeah, man," Juane says. "It's just a crystal! Even if it did do something, it's not doing it now."

Kerka smacks him.

"Oh, that's just..." Leifos says, but then he's laughing, too.

You go to the crystal. It's a soft translucent purple, about half a meter tall, the pedestal placing it at an easy height, almost as if it's meant to be touched. You place your hand on it, feeling its sharp, smooth edges, and it feels to you as if it has a slight charge moving through it, a faint fuzz, an almost intangible vibration just beneath the surface, moving up your arm. You follow the feeling, focusing on it, letting your thoughts slide into the crystal's amethystine depths.

Two days. You haven't even been here two days. You think it could work, though. You sort of... do want it to. But you also really want to go home. You miss your cats. You miss your fifty potted plants. You miss your crazy hectic job doing software development for a herd of cats. In fact you'd only just gotten your life in order, moved out of your parents' house, paid off your debts, become totally self-sufficient. Your whole life was just beginning to open up before you - perhaps a bit later than usual - but finally, properly, in full.

But what if you did go back? What of this world? Was the damage already done, the true Vardaman already gone? Didn't you owe it to at least try?

There's a deeper question, though, niggling this entire time. Why. Why are you here? What was the Black Book, and who, or what, even put it there in the first place? Supposing this is all even real, what could possibly have that kind of power, to simply delete a character at the turn of a page, and replace him?

What, well, besides you, yourself? You, the writer. You, who had been dreaming up this story for the better part of two decades, but who could never quite make it real.

Somehow, somewhere, even deeper, something else niggles: you know the answer already. What, but the same thing behind all of this? The very threat that required Vardaman in order to fight off. The threat around which all of this story revolved, across so many different universes.

You gave it a name, once.

SteveGeorge.

The concept fills your mind, as though a deep darkness pouring into a room, as you stand, alone, in the gloomy depths. It is enormous, formless, shapeless. It has no substance, no mass, and yet here it is, filling in like goop, gleaming black as it stretches out, nigh infinite, before you. It reaches out in tendrils. It fills corners. It grows.

There is no light, here, only black and more black. It rises up before you in a creeping flow and makes, almost, the shape of a person. It starts to speak, but it is not speech so much as the barest concept of speech, and immediately your mind recoils, shutting down amidst the sheer horror of it all, as it starts to fill you.

You're screaming. You're not even sure where you are, or what, or who. You're screaming and your mind is a cacophony of confusion and pain, unrelenting, but the screaming. The screaming helps. It's real. It's you. Isn't it?

Juane is yelling at you. Mostly your name. Well, Vardaman's name. But you're Vardaman, aren't you? As much as you're anyone. They've pulled you away from the crystal. You're on the ground now. It's sort of coming back. You stop screaming.

Juane and Leifos stop yelling, and loom. The silence is deafening. Kerka also looms.

Finally, Juane asks, "Vardaman?"

"Juane," you reply.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Just a crystal?" Kerka says accusingly.

"Unless she was faking that too..." Leifos says.

"No," you whisper. "No faking." Your throat hurts. Your mind just feels... wrong.

"What was that?" Kerka asks. "What happened?"

You touch your head. It's just a head. You shake it about, but everything seems to be working, at least as much as usual.

"I... begin thinking," you tell them. "I don't know. Was a feeling. I'm there. I'm not there."

"Where?" Kerka asks.

You tap your head, and point uncertainly toward the crystal. "Shadows," you whisper.

"Hey, is everything all right in here?" a guy asks from the doorway.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Kerka tells him, getting up quickly. "Just had bit of an accident, but it's all fine now, everything's fine."

Juane and Leifos help you up as well, while the guy in the doorway asks, somewhat dubiously, "Is it?"

You nearly fall over. Kerka pokes you, and then you do start to fall over before Juane grabs your arm.

"Totally," Juane says, looking utterly unconvincing.

"Yeah, fine," you say, batting them off. You're stable. This is... you don't know.

Leifos goes over to the crystal. "You know what this is?" he asks the guy.

The guy comes over. He's an older priest, and he looks over you all with some amusement now that things seems to be settled. "It's a vision crystal," he says. "Used in some of our higher rituals."

"Yeah?" Leifos says. "What's it do?"

"With preparation, it allows its user to see," the old priest guy says. "Visions of possible futures or events. What is happening in the world, or what must be done. The very shape of one's problems..." he places his hands on the crystal, closing his eyes, and sighs. "To do so requires immense focus and concentration, however," he says.

"Hey, do you have immense focus and concentration?" Kerka asks you.

"I have no idea what mean these words," you tell him flatly.

"Did you see something?" the guy asks you curiously.

"Something," you reply.

"What?" Leifos asks.

"It... nothing," you say. "It's not important." They're all still staring at you, though, so you add, "What?"

"You were screaming something awful," Leifos says.

"I'm better now," you reply.

"Are you?" Leifos asks.

"Yes?" you say. At least, you hope you are. You're not really sure they'd be able to help you much even if you weren't, though, even with magic. SteveGeorge does not play well with magic.[10]

"So what was it?" Kerka asks. "Or do you just not have the words to actually tell us?"

"That," you say.

"Can you draw it?" Kerka asks.

"No."

"What is it in Lesk?" Kerka asks.

You pause, trying to come up with something that even describes it, and then say, in Lesk, "The backside of every universe."

Kerka nods slowly, says, "Okay," and then turns to the guy. "That. That's what she saw."

4

The days pass, and normality ensues, at least as far as you can tell. You get better at the language, collecting words, practising letters. The lectures happen, going over matters of history and philosophy and faith. They separate out the literate and the illiterate a few days in, and you manage to get yourself lumped among the literate, barely, by sneaking in your notes and using them to help translate, and writing a very crappy paragraph of 'essay' explaining that you don't actually know Desh and you're working on it, and then repeating it in English after just in case that might help make your point. Maybe it does. Your paper comes back with a check on it, which is apparently good, and also with a somewhat alarming number of the Desh equivalent of a question mark all over, which apparently isn't.

"Niiiice," Juane says, taking it, and then, reading what you wrote, bursts out laughing.

"I know, I know," you say, grabbing it back.

"Hey, it works," he says.

"You just started learning this language a week ago," Kerka says, taking it and reading it as well. "Which," he adds, "I note you neglected to mention. 'Generally new to the language' suggests you've maybe had a few months, and probably weren't new to both spoken and written forms..."

"I used the words from your notes," you say. "I had a... paper." You demonstrate, folding a sheet in half and hiding it up your sleeve, turning your wrist up to show it, and turning your arm down to hide it in the extra fabric.

"Hah!" Juane says. "Now there's a useful skill."

You nod. It's not something you ever had to do in school, since on most of your tests bringing notes had not just been allowed, but generally recommended,[11] but you'd had to at least try it here. You aren't actually illiterate, after all, just not from this planet.

You learn the rituals. You say the words. You play your parts as proper cultists.

The roofing happens. You all finish tiling several buildings, and move onto more complex things, even some repairs involving rafters, to Jim's intense delight.

You begin to pick up the written language more than the spoken, reading it more and more easily, getting by in lectures on Kerka's notes.

At one point you catch Leifos pestering one of the other initiates, and give him a very disappointed look. Juane, seeing this, flicks Leifos in the ear, the initiate runs away, and you all move on.

Your group's exploration of the temple complex continues, not just the main building, but the surrounding ones as well. You wind up in some awkward conversations, apparently having wound up in places you ought not be, and point out that maybe someone should post a sign. You find some more odd rooms, touch some more odd things. You find a room full of what appear to be discarded dowels and other random bits of old wood, and Juane collects some for possible later use as training implements. You also grab a six-foot pole while you're there, for use. As a pole.[12]

Throughout the main temple you find a series of staircases going down from what is ostensibly the base floor, as well as quite a few hatches, and in a few cases, just plain holes, all of which are marked off, boarded up, hidden, or flat-out locked. These have signs. Then you find some more, outside, and in some of the other buildings.

"We're going down there," Juane says. You and Leifos are on a roof, detiling a section so you can assess the state of the materials underneath, with Juane on the ladder, and Kerka holding it in place at the bottom. There's another one of those hatches in plain view from up here, tucked away into a corner between buildings, and Juane keeps staring at it. You've been staring a bit too. You have an idea what's down there, but it's a vague one, and you would very much like to find out specifically.

"Yeah?" Leifos says, passing him some more tiles, which Juane piles up off to the side.

"Tomorrow, let's see what's down there," Juane says.

"Is that a good idea?" Leifos asks. "Place seems pretty clear about it not being intended for general entry."

"Agh, you sound like Kerka," Juane says.

"I'd want to go," you tell them.

"Vardaman says yes!" Juane announces. "It's a go. We'll do it tomorrow."

Leifos sighs. "Fine," he says. "But if we get in trouble, it's your fault."

"What stupid thing did we decide this time?" Kerka yells up at the rest of you.

"Nothing, mom!" Leifos yells back.

5

Tomorrow comes around, your weekly day off. You get up early, which is to say the same time as usual. You do the usual morning things, and also get food and pack up some supplies. Juane brings a sack of dowels. Kerka prepares a whole bag of stuff. You take your pole, put on your safety glasses, and even wear some shoes.[13]

You go to one of the locked staircase doors, neatly tucked away underneath a perfectly ordinary, not doored, not locked staircase up. Kerka picks the lock. You get out your lightsticks, let the door shut again behind you, and head down into the dark.

Mostly it's just dark. As you head down the corridor, you shine your lights around like torches, a directed beam coming out like the modern version, but diffuse glow also sent out around like the old-fashioned, burning kind. The architecture down here is much the same as above, but with no windows, no hovering magelights. The sockets hang empty.

Some of the doors you pass are boarded over. Some of the walls are crumbled into piles of rubble, the ceiling propped up with haphazard supports. You eye them suspiciously.

It's quiet, down here. Your footfalls echo even as they're muffled by the thick dust.

"Step one," Juane says, his voice entirely too loud in this strange, empty place. "Get utterly, unarguably lost."

Kerka stops and shines his lightstick in Juane's eyes, Juane shines his right back in Kerka's eyes, and Kerka blocks it with his notebook. The rest of you all sort of stop as well.

"Where are we going, anyway?" Leifos asks.

"I dunno," Juane says, turning and shining his light around some doorways. "It just looks like more temple, really."

You head over to a random door and try to open it. The latch sticks, so you fiddle with it. Just an old door that doesn't quite fit its socket anymore. You know those well.

It creaks, scrapingly, as you push it open. Somewhere in the dark behind you, another noise echoes the creak, a skittering, almost. You shine your light back, and then Juane and Leifos add their beams as well, but there's no sign of anything in the corridors behind you.

The room, on the other hand, is half-filled with stacked furniture, pushed up against one wall, old chairs and tables and desks forming a precarious pile, some collapsed under the weight of the rest, tumbling down around it. Bits litter the floor.

You go in and poke the pile with your pole. Bits of furniture break with a dry, brittle crunch, almost papery, as the pile settles further.

"You think maybe this has been here awhile?" Kerka asks from the doorway.

"Maybe," you say.

You move on. You check more rooms. You get hopelessly lost, though Kerka at least seems to be taking notes. Some are locked. Many are empty, or full of rubble. Some are collapsed entirely. Kerka tries to pick a couple of the locks, but they're different than he's used to. It doesn't quite work.

You play with echoes, and chatter and talk.

You find graffiti, some with colours, some painted, some chalk, in many different styles. You find a room smelling heavily of piss, but stale and wrong. You find words, and copy them down.

You find an almost functional bathroom. The toilets flush. The taps run, but don't seem to drain. There are no lights but the ones you brought with you.

You find more broken furniture.

Sometimes, you hear sounds. A soft scuttle, a breath of air. Wisps and whispers. Memories of chatter. The others don't seem to notice.

"What do you think of beans?" Leifos asks at one point.

"Beans?" Juane says.

"Beans," Leifos says.

"They're fine. Make some decent dishes."

You stop for lunch in a room full of dummies, some more refined, better shaped like dress forms and mannequins, others far cruder.

"Creepy," Leifos says.

Juane knocks a couple over with a dowel.

Kerka passes around the food, and you use the toppled mannequins as chairs. Leifos falls right through one before he finds another that actually works.

"This place is probably haunted, you know," Kerka points out while you eat.

"Oh, shut up," Leifos says.

"I'm serious," Kerka says. "They locked it up for a reason. There's noises in the dark. If ours were a smaller group, we might not be expected to come back."

"What noises?" Leifos asks.

"Well, maybe they're just critters," Kerka replies. "But maybe they aren't. After all, have we seen any signs of life down here, any at all?"

Leifos stares at him.

You slowly lower your spare hand behind your dummy chair and scrape your nails along its side, tapping a bit, catching on its texture.

Leifos jumps up in a panic, shining his light about, and even Juane stands up, before Leifos stops, pointing his light at you.

You give him a big grin.

"Agh, you guys!" Leifos yells.

Juane laughs.

"Sorry," you say.

"Okay, so is this haunted or isn't it?" Leifos asks.

Kerka shrugs.

"Probably," Juane tells him. "But Kerka's not wrong about the group size. All the noise we're making, we're more likely scaring anything off than attracting it."

"I... guess," Leifos says. He doesn't really look convinced.

Juane goes and plants the light sticks around, and then puts one of his dowels in Leifos' hand and goes to haul Kerka up. "Come on," he says. "This is a good place for a spar." He hands you one as you get up as well, and you grab a second just for good measure.

Juane drops the rest of the training dowels on the floor, pairs off with Leifos, and they quickly adopt stances and start dancing about, smacking at each other.

You and Kerka, meanwhile, just sort of stand there for a moment, staring at each other.

Kerka waves his dowel at you vaguely. "Do you fight?" he asks.

"Fight?" you ask, uncertain exactly what he means, and then indicate Leifos and Juane and give Kerka an enquiring look.

"Yeah," Kerka says.

"No," you tell him.

"Oh, good," he says. "Neither do I. They're the ones always practising," Kerka goes on. "So I just... don't."

"You have a sword," you point out.

"So do you," he says.

"We... should try?" you suggest.

Kerka nods and raises his dowel. You take a swing at him, and he evades and does much the same. You're both terrible, it turns out. Mostly you just miss. When you do manage to hit each other, it's usually totally by accident, or the other's fault in the first place. Kerka overcommits at one point and careens into an array of dummies. You trip over someone's bag and wind up on the floor.

It all ends when Leifos runs into the both of you, knocking you over, Juane stops chasing him just in time to not run into you too, and instead runs into several mannequins, and you all call that a lunch and get back to exploring.

6

You notice prints in the dust, tracks of boots and feet and... other things. Critters. You check more rooms, and then find a particularly narrow passage behind a door you fully expected to be a closet. It's just wide enough for a single person,[14] long and empty and straight, full of gloom, leading seemingly into nothing, but the stones are worn down in the middle as though by many, many feet.

"Hey, check this out," Leifos says, gesturing the others over.

"What's it?" Juane says, coming and shining his light down the passage.

You shrug.

"There's some writing over the doorway," Kerka says, further back. "Anyone know ancient elven?"

"Is that what that is?" Juane asks, pointing his light up at it.

"Write it down," you suggest. Kerka gives you a dubious look, so you get out a pad of sticky notes and do your best to transcribe the shapes of the characters yourself.

Kerka shrugs and does the same in his notebook.

"You two done?" Juane asks when you both seem to be done.

"Onward!" Leifos says, and heads into the passage.

"Yup," Juane says, and goes after him.

You gesture for Kerka to go after, and take up the rear, closing the door behind you.

The air is dry and earthen. Your footsteps are a loud patter in the silence, and the only thing you hear. You walk for... awhile, and encounter absolutely nothing. The passage is just straight. There are no meaningful features, no doorways. The most notable thing about it is just how utterly unnotable it is.

"Oh look is that a door?" Juane says suddenly, very loudly.

"It is a door!" Leifos replies, also loudly, but not as.

You actually reach the door a bit later, at which point Leifos finds it apparently locked. Kerka squeezes past him and Juane.

"Oi, you're fat," Juane tells him.

"Shut up," Kerka says, and tries to find a lock to pick. Finally, he says, "Yup, there's no lock."

"What?" Leifos says, confused, craning over Kerka's shoulder. "Then why won't it open?"

Kerka tries to unlatch the door and push it open, to no avail.

"Agh, let me," you tell them, and push past the lot of them, and then push them back a bit when they get in the way. You stand back and assess the frame. It's all stone, even the trim, with the door on the inside of the doorway. Opens inward, hinges on that side. You can't tell how well it fits because all the fitting would be on that side as well. The door itself looks like some sort of... you tap it experimentally. It knocks like plastic, and it's reinforced with metal, like it's meant to withstand a siege if it came to it.

You glance around at the walls. There are holes between the stones, and gaps in the grout in the floor.

You try the handle. A simple squeeze mechanism to unlatch it, from the type. It doesn't squeeze. You try to turn it, but it isn't that kind of handle. You pull on the entire thing, putting your weight on the door, not trying to push it open, but pull it more shut, and try unlatching the squeeze again.

It unlatches with a click, and then the door swings open, taking you with it.

You're in another corridor, like the ones you'd been traversing all day.

The others spill out behind you.

"What, is that it?" Leifos asks.

You shake your head, confused. This had not been what you were expecting.

"Well, that was different," Juane says.

"Did we... miss something?" Leifos asks.

"This whole place is built like a labyrinth," Kerka says. "Twists and turns, and dead ends. The passages back up seem far fewer from down here, than we've encountered down from above."

"So what you're saying," Juane says, pointing to a nearby stairwell, "Is we should go down even more."

"No," Kerka tells him. "I'm not."

"Oh," Juane says, looking disappointed.

"But we totally can," Kerka goes on, strolling over to the opening, a big, dark pit of gloom. "Can't be any more stupid than the rest of this, after all." He shines his light into the stairwell, but he's looking at the writing over the opening - more ancient elven script. "Vardaman?"

"Yes," you say, and transcribe this as well.

"Nerds," Juane says.

You all head down, pointing your lights around the staircase willy-nilly. It's a staircase. It's made of stone. It has a huge nest of giant spider-things, about the size of gerbils, stuck to the ceiling over the next landing down. Mostly the spiders just scatter when you shine your lights on them, scuttling away into various cracks and shadows, several others dropping to the ground and down the stairs. You all stop and wait for them to get out of the way.

"Creepy," Leifos says.

"I want one," you say.

"You do?" Leifos asks.

"Yes," you tell him.

"Okaaaay," Juane says, "we're not here to collect pets." He stops. "Are we?"

"Preferably not... these," Kerka says.

You give them your best disappointed look, but they don't actually look at you again, so it's totally wasted.

The stairs continue on, looping down again past the landing, but the passage down further is blocked by rubble and even more spider nest. And spiders. A lot of spiders.

Fortunately there is also a doorway on the landing, so you all rather quickly scoot out that, instead.

You wind up in another hallway, not unlike all the others.

"So that's full of spiders," Juane points out, gesturing back toward the stairway with his light.

"Yeah..." Leifos says.

"I've noted it," Kerka says.

You shine your light down the various options - of three passageways, two just look dark, and a bit damp. The third, on the other hand, has a tumble of what looks suspiciously like ice blocking it a ways down. You head toward it, and lacking any other initiative, the others follow.

"What is that?" Juane asks when you get closer.

"Rocks, isn't it?" Kerka says. "Wait..."

You poke at it with your six-foot pole. It's almost soft, and underneath a layer of grime, it very much does appear to be ice. And it is also definitely colder down here. You can sometimes see your breath.

"Ice?" Kerka asks.

You shrug. You don't recognise the word.

"Is it just me," Leifos asks, "or does this keep getting weirder the deeper we go?"

"So what you're saying is we should go even deeper?" Juane asks.

Kerka snorts.

"...maybe?" Leifos says.

You continue on down a different passageway, and check some rooms, finding some more bits of text, and recording that as well. They seem to have been some sort of living quarters, for the most part, full of furniture, destroyed furniture, and in one case, a pile of bones. You go to investigate the bones. The bones start to come together and start to get up. You hit them with your pole a few times, knocking them apart.

Another room has a big pile of blackness in it. When you shine your lights on it, it's just dark.

When Leifos approaches it hesitantly, it starts to get up as well, opening a set of glowing purple eyes, in sequence.

"Oh, no, no, no, don't get up, that's fine, you don't need to get up," Leifos tells it, hastily backing away.

It gets up anyway.

The floor groans, and then, with a crash, gives way entirely under much of the room, the creature tumbling down with it, scrabbling. Leifos falls on his butt and almost slides down as well as the floor beneath him cracks and tilts horribly, but manages to catch himself at the edge of the rather gaping hole.

Juane hurries over to help him, and Kerka starts as well, but you grab Kerka, holding him back. You try to yell at Juane to stay back, but all you can come up with is, "No, this!"

There's a crack, more groaning, and then the floor gives way under both of them, and Leifos and Juane tumble down as well, along with even more floor.

"What," Kerka says, trying to move toward the missing floor again, but you pull him back.

"No," you tell him. "Here. Don't follow."

You drop your pole and extra stuff, put up your hair, get down on your stomach, and shuffle yourself over to the edge. The floor creaks, settling a bit, but holds your weight as you crane your head over the edge and shine down your light.

There's some yelling below. Leifos is on his feet, maybe ten meters down, waving a light stick, but you can't see Juane anywhere. There's a lot of rubble, and no sign of the darkness creature, either.

"Are you okay?" you call down.

"Uh, yes. Maybe?" Leifos yells back. "Where's Juane? Kerka?"

"Kerka is up here," you tell him. "Juane... down with you. The... animal?"

"Hardly an animal!" Leifos says. "But it went. Fled out through a wall, somehow."

"Gone?" you ask.

"Yeah!"

You finally pick yourself up a bit and yell, more loudly now, "Juane! Are you there? ...Sound!"

There's some muffled noises from the rubble, and Leifos immediately hurries over.

"I'll see if I can get him out!" Leifos calls up to you. "What about you and Kerka?"

"I... yeah!" you tell him, and then shuffle back to the doorway, where Kerka's waiting. Only once you're under the frame do you get up again.

"So they're alive?" Kerka asks.

"Yeah, but Juane..."

"Hurt?"

You nod.

"And I suppose you want me to decide what to do, because you won't be able to communicate why any of your ideas anyway..." he says. "You know this would be a lot easier if you knew more Desh. You're clearly way smarter than most people here."

You give him an appropriately blank look. "Sorry," you say.

"No, I'm sorry," he tells you. "Um. Yeah. We should probably get down there too, unless... you said it's safer to crawl to the edge?"

"Down," you tell him, gesturing what you mean. "Spread... heavy, less in single spot. It won't break, probably."

"Right, I see what you're getting at," Kerka says, and then, like you had, drops his pack in the doorway, gets down on his stomach, and pulls himself over to the edge. "Leifos?" he yells down.

You, meanwhile, take the opportunity to go through his bag and see what supplies you even have up here. He brought some rope, though it doesn't appear to be enough. Some snacks, a spare water bottle. Books, a first aid kit...

"Okay," Kerka tells you after a bit, "so it looks like there are ways out, Juane is pinned down, but probably not seriously hurt, and we should get down there as well, use your weird engineering skills to get him out, and try to find an exit from that level."

You stare at him blankly, only understanding pieces of all of that. Finally, you say, "Eh?"

"We need to get down there," Kerka tells you, gesturing down.

"Yes, okay," you say, and get out the rope.

Kerka scuttles back and gathers all your bags and such while you look around for somewhere to fasten the rope. There's some wall... fixtures. And the door. Some broken furniture. The fixtures don't look terribly sturdy. The door is annoyingly distant from the hole itself, but it looks reliable, at least.

You grab some metal lengths from some of the furniture, lay them across the other side of the doorway, tie the end of the rope around them, and then crawl back out the the edge, taking the other end of the rope with you. It turns out to only go down about halfway.

"Do we have more?" you ask.

"Rope? No..." Kerka replies. "And here I thought I was being paranoid bringing that much. Could look around here, see if we can find some?"

"No," you tell him. "We'll use this. Come after me."

With Leifos staring up at you, you try to manoeuvre yourself around so you can get over the edge feet-first, wincing as the floor groans some more and stones tumble down. You've just gotten your legs over the edge when the whole section gives way entirely underneath you. You cling to the rope, trying to grab it with your legs as well, but you totally miss, and swing wildly as it jerks taut with your weight. But you manage to hold onto it anyway, hanging now rather lower, your hands burning.

"Vardaman?!" Kerka yells above you.

"I'm okay!" You yell back.

"I'm okay, too!" Leifos yells, now somewhat further away off to the side.

"What just happened?" Juane asks. His voice is a bit muffled, but other than that he sounds fine.

This bought you almost two more meters of rope. Easy. You grab onto it with your legs as well, now, and lower yourself down stiffly, your muscles not even appreciating this. You get to the end, and then continue, lowering yourself with arms only, and for the briefest moment, find it absolutely hilarious that you actually have the upper body strength to do that at all. Unless that's normal. You don't know.

Now you really are at the end, just sort of hanging off. The floor is still worryingly far away, and rather uneven with rubble. If you just drop, you'll probably break an ankle or something. If you try to do something fancy, and do a roll or something, you might even break your neck.

"Feck," you say, and proceed to just hang there.

"Um, are you... going to come down?" Leifos asks.

"Yes," you say, "when my hands..."

"What?" Leifos says.

You take a deep breath and let go, letting your legs buckle a bit as you land, and then tumbling into a rolling sprawl onto a bunch of rubble, banging up your back, and finally hitting your head as you stop.

"Ow," you say, getting up.

"Smooth," Leifos says.

"Kerka," you yell up. "Come now! Bring our stuff."

"Yeah, le'me just throw it down," Kerka yells from above. A bit later, the bags come down.

For a bit after that, nothing proceeds to happen. Meanwhile you go to check on Juane, and find him mostly dug out, now, but pinned down by the leg behind a particularly large heap of rubble, and a very precarious section of half-suspended floor. There is, in fact, quite a lot of stuff on top of his leg, and even more on top of bits of that, some of which seems to be holding up the section of floor.

Any view of the hole itself, or whatever Leifos and Kerka are doing now, is completely blocked from here.

"Oh," you say.

"I'm going to die, aren't I?" Juane says. He's very pale. "After all of this, you're just going to have to leave me here to die."

"We can remove your leg if we need to," you tell him.

"Er, well, I'd rather you didn't?" Juane says.

Most of the rubble on his leg seems to be supported by a single metal strut. You just need some way to raise it enough to pull Juane out... some of those car hoist things for doing stuff with wheels would be great here. Or some levers.

"How much are you hurt?" you ask him.

"What, you mean besides my leg?" he asks.

"Yes."

"I'm fine. Peachy!" Juane says.

"I need to know if it can be moved," you say. "If you can. In safety."

You hear Kerka yell on the other side of the half-suspended floor, shortly followed by a loud crash.

"Show off," Leifos says.

"It worked, didn't it?" Kerka says.

"Oi, come here!" you yell.

They come.

"Oh dear," Kerka says.

"Leifos, go to his..." you stop, and then just point to Juane's shoulders. "Pull him when I say. If it works, keep going."

Leifos gives you a confused look, but goes and picks up Juane's shoulders, gripping him under the arms.

"Kerka," you say, and gesture for Kerka to get on the other side of Juane's leg. "When I say, lift... this." You wrap your fingers under the beam, trying to get a good grip. When Kerka appears to have done the same, you say, "Now!"

You lift. Kerka lifts. Leifos pulls. The rubble pile shifts a bit. Juane wails... and remains stuck.

"Shit," Leifos says, and jumps away.

"Was that...?" Kerka asks you. "Should that have done something?"

"Something," you say. "We need more. Length."

"No, that almost worked," Juane croaks.

"No it didn't," Leifos says.

"You look horrible," Kerka says.

"I'm great!" Juane says.

"Um..." you say, and then decide to not even try commenting. You grab some metal rods, and start shoving them under the beam, passing the rest to Kerka to do the same.

Then you try again, using the rods as levers while Leifos pulls - this works, Juane slides out and starts blubbering incoherently, the entire heap of rubble starts to settle in a loud rumble, and the section of floor makes some really unsettling noises and starts to come down even more.

You all run for it, grabbing Juane and dragging him out into the corridor.

Dust follows you out, along with some bits of floor. Everything settles.

"We good?" Leifos asks.

"Except we left the bags in there," Kerka says. "I'll just... get them."

Juane whimpers as you start cutting off his pant leg with your tiny scissors, which takes entirely too long because your tiny scissors are very tiny.[15] What is revealed is a surprisingly non-bloody, but heavily discoloured and misshapen lower leg, which you proceed to nudge at to get an idea just how bad it is. Juane screams and tries to recoil away, but Leifos pins him down.

It's bad.

"What are you doing?!" Leifos asks you.

"You're not dead," you tell Juane. "Good sign."

Juane just whimpers some more.

"We need to... tie it. With supports," you say.

"Great," Leifos says. "Because he's not breathing right either."

You pull off your outer robe and cut/tear some strips off it and start wrapping Juane's leg tightly. You're fashioning a splint with some sticks when Kerka returns with the bags.

"Plan?" Kerka asks.

"I don't know," Leifos says. "I don't know."

You borrow Kerka's notebook when you finish, and sketch out a basic stretcher, indicating Kerka and Leifos carrying it, with you scouting ahead. "You carry, I... look ahead, find a path. We need... branches? Handles... no. Um."

"Lengths? Slats?" Kerka asks, indicating a potential length with his arms.

"Yeah."

"See what you can find. I'll look, too," Kerka says, and adds to Leifos, "You stay put."

Leifos nods blankly.

You head out in opposite directions, lightsticks out, weapons ready. You check a few rooms, don't find much of anything, find some potential slats, find some other supplies, dump them in piles in the hall to grab on your way back. After a bit, though, you just stop, and listen. It's very quiet down here, pressingly, cloying, but there's almost a fuzz to it, like something is muting the sound. Even the darkness feels closer, heavier.

You hear a clatter, somewhere. Juane's moaning has stopped, which may not be a good sign. Some scratching. Settling walls, trickling water. A soft echo like the wailing of distant wind.

You turn, and the shadows scurry away like rats.

You continue on, gathering possible supplies in piles.

You notice a couple of hatches in the ceilings, but with no way up to them, they as good as useless.

You think you hear a noise from a room, and stop, listening, waiting to see if it happens again. It happens again. A faint cry, sounding almost like a kitten squeak. You squeak back, but it comes out wrong. You try again, repeating, changing, remembering the sound. Boxes of kittens, purring. The squeaks. The mother. The happy.

The squeak sounds out again, tiny, lost, distant.

You head in, shining your lightstick around, eyeing the broken furniture and heaped dirt and piles of chitin and skulls. There is nothing ominous about the room at all.

You squeak, and the squeak replies, and you follow it to a pile of broken furniture. You start digging at it, tapping at various bits, and the squeak starts going constantly, like the better part of half a conversation: eow, ew, neow, eow, eow new new neow.

You don't have time for this, but you follow it down regardless, unearth a drawer, pry it open with your knife. A small black wad, barely any bigger than the spiders in the stairwell, scrabbles out and buries itself in your tunic.

"Eeow," it says, in a squeak, as you pick it up. It appears to be some sort of three-legged, headless, hair-clump creature.

"Uh," you say, but then give it another meow-squeak back. It occurs to you that you hadn't really thought this through.

You take it with you, and head back, re-collecting the best of the supplies.

Kerka is already there working on building a litter when you get back. There's not much left of your robe, so you tear off a length to use as a scarf and stuff the creature in that for the time being.

"He's not waking up," Leifos says, hunched uncertainly over Juane. "He's still alive, but worse. Just getting worse."

You try to hurry, getting the litter fastened together, pulling Juane onto it, tying him down.

Kerka and Leifos pick up the litter.

"Which way?" you ask.

"I didn't see anything promising. You?" Kerka says.

You shake your head, but head down the same way you'd gone earlier regardless, scouting ahead, taking the forks you hadn't tried earlier, chalking Xs on the walls. The others follow behind you. Sometimes you double back, catching them before they go down the same path, and telling them, "No, other way." Mostly it's just whims, sometimes grounded: blockage, a bad smell, unstable-looking architecture.

You shine your light into a side corridor, and it illuminates a little elf girl, simply standing there, holding a doll limply in hand. Her eyes are white. Her skin is mottled. She stares at you, as if unseeing.

You flick your light off her, and then flick it back. She's still there, but doesn't seem to notice. Her mouth moves, shaping soundless words. She takes a step forward.

You continue on, passing the side corridor by.

Whispers follow you, scuttlingly, lingering at the edges of corners. You can't make them out, if there's words, or even what language it might be.

A darkness, full of purple eyes, watches you as you pass from a room with no door. You give it a wide berth. It reaches out a tendril of black after you, but then withdraws it a moment later.

You go back periodically to direct the others.

Wraiths, like towering wisps of ratty fabric and mangled limbs, their faces thankfully shrouded, block your path, three of them. You all just stop and stare at them, hoping maybe they'll go away.

They don't.

You continue to stare at them. You don't particularly want to turn your backs on them, either.

You turn your own back on them anyway, watching the other direction, letting Leifos and Kerka stare at the wraiths for you.

The figure of a woman, also shrouded in black, drifting rather above the ground, glides purposefully out of the darkness toward you, and toward the wraiths.

"Oi, back. To the wall," you tell the others. They do, getting up against the wall, taking Juane's litter with them, and you get out of the way as well, against the other wall.

You can almost hear her speak: a soundless mangling, an idea of words, reverberating in your skull. A wrongness, not unlike...

Leifos cries out in pain and drops his end of the litter, clutching his head.

She passes you all by without acknowledgement, and stops in front of the wraiths. The wraiths... something, as well. It hurts. Your head hurts. She's speaking. They're... speaking? It's all soundless.

And then they all turn and head back down the corridor.

You continue on.

You scout ahead. You report back. You scout ahead.

You find more strangeness, more ghosts, more questionable architecture, and navigate around the worst of it.

You find silence and darkness.

You hear voices, footsteps. A vague glow guides you toward them, and they stop in surprise as you round the corner: three guys in robes not unlike your own, with swords out and magelights hovering over their heads. They raise their swords warningly.

"Stay back!" one of them says.

"Hello, excuse me," you tell them, stopping a safe distance away.

"Uh, who are you?" another asks. "How'd you get down here?"

"Fell," you tell them. "Accident. I seek directions, a path up. Can you help me?"

"Yeah, back the way you came, take a left about sixty paces on," one of them starts, but then another interrupts him.

"What are you doing?" he asks incredulously.

"What?"

"We don't even know if she's alive!" he says. "Don't just go talking at her. This might be a pretext to eat us or something!"

"I'm no ghost," you tell them. "I don't believe you'd be able to hear a ghost."

"What?"

"Why not?"

"I saw some," you tell them, gesturing back. "At times it appeared how they were trying to speak, but I couldn't hear them."

"What, actual ghosts?"

You shrug. "I believe so? Sixty paces?" You gesture back.

"Yeah, take a left, down that way until you get to the avenue - you can't miss it, it's really wide, has some fountains and shit, go right and you'll get to the stairs at the end."

"My thanks," you tell them, bowing slightly, and back away, keeping an eye on them to be sure they don't try anything, before hurrying off in the indicated direction.

You scout up to the avenue before you turn around again, and nearly run into the pile of detritus that turns out to be a man suddenly getting up next to you, a large figure in tattered fabrics hanging off in layers.

"Oh, sorry!" you tell him, backing away even as he turns to try to grab you. His flesh is grey and craggy, his face a shadowed ruin. You smack at him with your pole, but all it does is slow him down a little as he reaches ponderously forward.

You smack at him again, harder this time, and jump back, into the avenue itself, dropping both pole and lightstick. He lumbers toward you, and you draw your sword and evade as he lunges at you. You swing at him, and your blade hits his arm, slicing, stopping at the cloth and bone, so you yank it back and swing harder, bringing your sword around in a wide sweep. You miss, but he's not even trying to avoid you, so you keep trying, hacking, slashing, swinging, evading his awkward grabs. You chop at him, manage to hit joints from time to time, hack off an arm, through his torso, at his legs, his other arm, before finally getting his head. He topples, finally, hitting the floor with a sickly, dusty crunch.

You hurry back to grab your lightstick and pole, and find the three guys at the entrance to the corridor, staring at you. You stop.

"Did you just...?" one of them asks.

"You are so badass!" another says.

Apparently they followed you back. "Er, what?" you say, watching them worriedly. You wipe off your sword on your pants.

"You just killed a walker!" a guy says. "Just like that, you killed it."

You glance back to the corpse uncertainly. "Yes?" you say.

"Well, I mean," the guy says, "weren't you afraid?"

Another smacks him.

"I'm sorry, I really don't have time," you tell them, "I don't!"

You hurry past them, back the way you came.

7

It's late[16] when you all finally make out the stairs ahead after traversing the long, wide avenue. They're grand and ornate, as wide as the avenue itself, leading upwards, illuminated by the magelight over the head of a man standing at their base, almost as if waiting for you. You go to him ahead of the others, and he nods at you as you approach.

"You aren't who I was expecting," he says. He's wearing a light armour over his tunic. His swords are worn comfortably at his side. His discs are different. You don't recognise them.

"Can you help us?" you ask him, and gesture back to the others. "He is hurt."

The man strides past you, and you sit down on the steps in relief. Rest. Finally.

"Put him down," he tells them.

Kerka and Leifos back away as the man places a hand on Juane's chest, and then he gestures, casting a spell. A light spreads over Juane.

He gets up. "Get him rest," he tells them. "He will live."

"Thank you, sir," Kerka says, bowing.

Leifos just stares.

"Now," the man says, his tone becoming much graver. "More to the point. Who are you, and why are you here?"

"We fell in a hole," Kerka tells him. "Total accident."

"Six levels down," the man says. "And you fell in a hole."

"Yes," Kerka says, looking totally innocent. He seems to have a special talent for it.

The man turns back to you. "Do you have anything to add to that?" he asks.

You give him a blank look, and then shrug. "We fell," you tell him. "We walked. We saw some ghosts. It was a beautiful afternoon." You pull yourself up again, using your pole as a crutch. "And what is all this?"

Kerka, meanwhile, flicks Leifos in the ear, and Leifos finally stops just staring and smacks back at him.

"This?" the man asks.

"You're here with the kids, right? I talked to a group for directions..."

He nods. "Guardians in training. I'm one of the instructors, overseeing their task. How they respond on their own in an unknown environment, how they handle situations that arise, and how effectively - and quickly - they can accomplish their task."

"How are they doing?"

"They only just began."

"And what is 'badass'?" you ask.

"It means 'cool', 'tough'. 'Impressive'," Kerka says. "Did they call you badass?"

"Er," you say. "No. We should... go."

"Onward!" Kerka says, and Leifos looks at him in surprise.

You turn, and find the girl with the doll on the stairs in front of you, staring at you with her blank white eyes. She mouths words, but you hear nothing.

You stare right back at her for a moment, and then poke her with your stick.

She flickers and vanishes.

You glance back to the others. Leifos and Kerka are picking up Juane's stretcher again, apparently not having noticed, but the instructor has - he's watching, alert, sword half-drawn.

You glance back and the girl there again, but now several steps up, further away.

"A ghost," the instructor says.

You wave at her.

She says something else, and gestures a bit.

"All right, look," you tell the girl in english. "I'm not a deader. I can't hear anything you're saying, and I can't read lips."

She stops, and then says something else, rather insistently.

"And you can't hear me, either, can you," you say. You try again, this time using signage: covering your ears, shaking your head, gesturing to your mouth that you cannot speak. Deaf-mute. Essentially true, to her.

The child looks at you curiously, and then does the same. You nod, gesturing between the two of you, but then gesture from yourself to your others and shake your head, and gesture to her and off to her other side and shake it again. You have no idea if the meaning of this is even remotely clear.

She just stares at you, and then holds out her doll toward you, mouthing a word: it looks like 'ovi'.

You shrug, smiling helplessly. You have no idea how to tell her 'And even if I could hear you, I still wouldn't be able to understand you because of language barriers.'

She mimes sleeping, putting her hands together and leaning her head on them, using the doll like a pillow, and gives you a desperate look. She gestures to herself, and then mimes it again, shaking her head.

"You want to sleep?" you ask her, not that she can hear you.

She sighs, sagging her shoulders and head, and puts on a look of total weariness.

You nod. You're pretty tired too.

Suddenly she's standing right next to you, at your side. She pushes her doll at you.

She gestures back down the avenue, and starts to move that way herself, indicating for you to follow her.

"Uh..." you say. You turn back to the instructor and ask, in Desh, "Oi, person what knows things, she wants me to go with her. Bad idea?"

"Very bad," he says.

The girl tugs at the hem of your tunic, looking up at you pleadingly, and tries to give you the doll again.

"How bad is very bad?" you ask, taking the doll, really not sure what to do with it.

He gives you a flat look and moves a bit toward you. The girl shrinks away from him, hiding behind you, and then vanishes entirely when he continues.

He stops, and she reappears, clinging to your belt and tunic, using you like a shield to peer around. Her hand is on your sword's handle, so you drop a hand over it guardingly. It doesn't feel right, like jelly, almost, but cold and dry.

She looks up at you in surprise, her white eyes wide.

"Okay," you say. "How do I explain to girl who can not hear me that I am sorry and I can not help her?"

"You... don't," Kerka says, staring at her. "We should just... go? Maybe?"

You give the girl your best apologetic look and shake your head, trying to pull away, and try to hand her back the doll.

She comes with you, holding on, and refuses to take it.

You press it into her arms and back away up the stairs, shaking your head, and she lets go, just standing there. The doll falls to the floor. She stares at you pleadingly. She repeats the mouth cover gesture, and then signs seeing you... and seeing back. She gestures to herself again, and everything around, then just stops, shaking her head.

She picks up the doll, and holds it out to you again.

"Perhaps you should go with her," the instructor says.

"Er, what?" you say.

"Okay, you work that out, we're going to go... go," Kerka says. "Is this a straight path back to the main temple?"

"Stairs, all the way up," the instructor says.

"Right," Kerka says. "Thank you. Don't die." He directs that last bit at you.

"Yeah, um, good luck," Leifos adds.

"Okay," you say.

They head up the stairs.

You stare after them dubiously, and then, lacking any better ideas whatsoever, take the doll back from the girl. She beams at you. With totally empty white eyes. It is incredibly disturbing.

"Take this," the instructor says, handing you a small round object, brownish, a bit flattened on one side. "If you find yourself in danger, break it. It will summon me to your position." The girl has vanished again.

"Okay..." you say.

"It has to be you," he says, backing away, and the girl reappears behind a fountain, peering at him fearfully. "She's given you her token. You've made the connection, gotten through to her, and she may be able to rest, with your help. But if it does turn out to be a trap, if you find anything amiss, use the stone, do you understand?"

"Yes," you say, which is a total lie.

"Keepers guard your path," he says.

8

You follow the girl back down the avenue, and down corridors, and down a set of stairs, and then another, marking on the walls with chalk, numbering in various shapes to indicate direction and relation. Everything is just surreal, now. You're too tired to think straight. You're dreaming.

You've put your pole away, slung across your back, your lightstick tied to it. Your sword is sheathed at your side. All you have in your hands are the doll and chalk.

The girl turns and pauses, waiting for you to catch up when you lag behind, skipping ahead, glancing back at you from time to time, vanishing and reappearing, flickering from point to point.

You stumble from time to time, and trip on the uneven flooring.

She takes your hand, helping you back up, drawing you along happily, like a child would take her mother's hand on a walk.

Wraiths watch as you pass, their shapes appearing in the shadowed maws of doorways.

You proceed onward, downward. The architecture changes, becoming rougher, lower, more cramped. The walls seep, and water trickles. Ice forms in the corners. Frost forms fern shapes on the walls. The chalk quits working.

You hear, faintly, the roar of waterfalls.

You continue downward.

She stops as you enter a wide, low hall, and tells you something, but of course you cannot hear her. Doorways lead off into gloom, full of harsh shadows off your lightstick. A small stream trickles through the glistening stones, having carved itself a path long ago.

You shake your head vaguely.

She cups her hands over her heart, and gestures around, and all around, wraiths drift toward you, trailing tatters and shadow. She crosses her arms over her chest, touching her hands to her shoulders, like a mini hug.

The wraiths linger around you. This many, this close, you feel an aura emanating off of them, a sort of vague horror permeating your bones, cold and sickly.

The girl shakes her head, and turns and continues on. The wraiths drift out of her way, and as you proceed once more, follow with you, a drifting, tattered escort.

At the door, two figures pull themselves out of the stone, scrapingly, like stone themselves, almost deafening against the almost silence. They're humanoid, but with vague, smoothed, geometric features. What resemble swords dangle from the simulacra of hands.

The girl says something to them. They bow. The door opens.

The darkness beyond is a vast cavern, natural, unfinished, full of the roar of water. The stone is rough and broken, giving way to pitfalls and cliffs and terraces... or something, at least. Your light only illuminates a very small amount of actual ground. You pick your way after the girl as she navigates effortlessly around obstacles, sometimes leading you exactly, sometimes simply appearing around, or on top of various rocks and rubbles. Some of it looks like columns, evenly spaced, but toppled and ruined. There's a significance to that, somewhere, but you can't quite place it.

There is a hanging smell of grass mould, lingering in the wet and rocks.

Your lightstick goes out. The darkness is sudden, absolute.

You stop. You have no idea where you are, what's around you. The undead are almost completely silent, but you still feel the wraiths nearby. You sense motion, almost. A wind. The roar ahead. It's dizzying.

The girl takes your hand. The strangeness of her touch is a gentle thing, vague and not quite there, but now almost familiar to you, and as she draws you along in silence, you let yourself be led, walking flatly, as if on ice.

You let your mind wander. You dream, flittingly, of brighter places, and think of all the things you need to do. You can't think of anything. For once in your life, there are no looming deadlines... or perhaps you just don't remember what they are.

You stub your foot, almost tripping, but catch yourself. Mist drifts down from the roaring water as you continue to approach, wettening your bare arms.

The girl stops you with a light touch, and then pulls back. For a moment, in the silence, there's nothing there. You're alone, and lost, and trapped, no way out.

Lights begin to rise from the rocky ground, all around, vague glows with no discernible form, casting a soft illumination throughout the cavern. It's a large space, rough, full of cracks and clefts and toppled columns. The waterfall is just ahead, crashing down through an oddly circular shaft, carving a deep basin, and pushing its way through the chasm with unstoppable force. Ghosts, too, fill the cavern, a sea of forms not quite right, discoloured, off-shape, blurred, too much bloom. Closer, other undead gather around - your escort of wraiths, and also a group of well-armoured mummies, guards of some sort, all matching, a set. Zombies, too, linger, watching from between the ghosts, and around the guards. The girl, of course, is the center of all of it, the convergence as they all drift closer, eagerly awaiting the fin.

In the corners of your vision, you think you see other shapes, figures watching, floating, glowing, but when you look directly, there's nothing else there.

It occurs to you that you are in way over your head, rather like that time you tried to set up a wikifarm with a tiny team of volunteers and no budget whatsoever,[17] except where failure there just meant nothing happened as a result, failure here would mean your death. Or worse. The instructor wouldn't be of any help, either. If it came to it and you managed to summon him, he'd just die too.

You're not even sure what your goal here is. What would you be failing at?

The girl looks up at you expectantly, her guards flanking her. And they are her guards - whatever they were before is long-forgotten now. Somehow everything down here, all the lost dead, have rearranged themselves around this one little girl.

"What do you want me to do?" you ask. You gesture to yourself, and then her, and shrug enquiringly.

She looks down, and you realise what she's standing on. Bones, old and broken, scattered at her feet. A child's bones.

She says something, then repeats the sleeping gesture, putting her hands together at the side of her head, then leaning into it, then falling, softly, like a feather, to the ground, where she disappears.

You give her bones a confused look, and then glance to the guards, and the wraiths.

One of the wraiths passes you a cloth, dark and silky, almost wispy. Almost whispery.

You take it, but you're not really sure what it expects you to do with it.

Another wraith drifts down to the ground and tries to pick up one of the bones, but its hand passes right through it.

"Oh," you say.

It continues the motion, showing gathering them up, and you understand.

You lay out the cloth and gather up the bones yourself, and fragments of bones, watched by a broad, silent audience. The wraiths lead you to a few you initially missed, and finally nod that it is done. When one of them gestures for you to take the bones with, you roll up the cloth into a tight bundle, the size and shape, almost, of a swaddled infant.

You turn to go, and find the girl smiling up you.

A moment later, she's vanished again.

9

Two wraiths break off from the others to escort you back, appearing and disappearing along the way. Several of the lights also drift along with you, dancingly, in and out of the floor and walls, and doorways. You almost think you hear them warble, but perhaps you only imagine it. But maybe this is what ghostlights look like to the average person. Maybe. Ghostlights warble.

The girl doesn't reappear.

As the passageways become more familiar again, you start to see your markings, leading the way back. It feels like another lifetime ago, almost, when you put them down.

Finally, you come back to the avenue and its empty fountains. The lights drift around you. The wraiths drift in and out of view, not always there, sometimes ahead, sometimes to the side or behind.

The instructor is still there at the foot of the stairs, now with another, both apparently arguing with a different group of students, but they quickly end the argument and come to meet you as you approach. The lights fall away into the floor, no longer needed.

"You made it," the instructor says. "I was starting to wonder. Any trouble?"

You hand him back the stone and shake your head. "It was very... down," you say.

"Deep, you mean?" the other asks.

You nod.

"So, uh, are you one of the new recruits, or what?" one of the students asks you.

"What," you tell him.

"Which is... what?" he asks, confused.

You don't really pay attention as the other instructor draws them aside. "I have her bones," you tell the first instructor. "The girl. What should I do with them?"

"Here," he says, reaching out to take them.

A wraith appears suddenly, threateningly, beside you. It says something at the instructor, blocking him.

He immediately withdraws. Blood trickles from his ears.

"What the fuck?" one of the students yells. Another nearly falls to the floor, clutching his head. The instructor with them draws his sword, getting between them and the wraith, motioning for them to stay behind him.

You just sort of stand there, holding the bundle, not really sure what to do.

The wraith proceeds to also stay put, lingering beside you, looking down on the Guardians, daring them to try something.

"What is this?" the first instructor asks you.

"They..." you pause, trying to find the words. Your head hurts too, now. "They're with the girl. Brought me back. Guides."

"They?" he asks.

"There went... there were many dead," you reply. "Two... of these and some lights were my guides back."

"I see," he says. He gives the other instructor a confused look.

"It looks like it wants her to do it herself," the other says. To you, he adds, "Did they specify where they wanted the girl interred?"

You shake your head. "I can't understand them. It's the same for me." You tap your head for emphasis.

"Then why trust you?" he asks. "Why allow you to walk in their halls unharmed, and even aid you back out?"

"The girl," the first says. "She must have been their center. And since you'd already spoken to the girl, that would have been enough."

"But if she doesn't have the knack..."

"She used sign language. They can still see."

"So how do we handle this?"

You look between them blankly, not really following the conversation as it goes on and apparently bonks into you a few times.

The students are also watching, staring at you and the wraith, looking what you would normally consider a delightful combination of confused and freaked out. Right now, however, it just makes you feel even more tired.

One of the instructors waves at you, and you give him a surprised look. "Huh?" you say. "What?"

"You'll need to take them all the way," he says. "Do you understand?"

You nod. The other instructor is already ushering the students up the stairs ahead.

"A Deathdealer will escort you through the main temple," he tells you. "Come."

10

The Deathdealer turns out to be a fairly ordinary-looking balding man with a beard waiting by the large, barred, bolted, banded door as you emerge, still accompanied by the wraith.

"Seeker," he greets you, and draws his sword just enough to show the emblem, the dark skull and mask of Kyrule, stamped on the blade below the hilt.

"Deathdealer," you reply.

Another wraith drifts out of nothing into the space next to you and peers down at him as well.

He gives them a long look, and then glances back to you.

You shrug.

"They seem to be guarding the bones," the instructor says. "I'll go clear a path."

The Deathdealer nods.

You proceed to stand around awkwardly for a bit, allowing him a headstart.

Finally, you point to the wraiths and ask, "What are these things?"

"Wraiths?" the Deathdealer asks.

"They're called that?" you say, and try to repeat the word. He corrects you, you 'oh' and try again.

You head out a bit later, the wraiths drifting in and out and ahead of you. It's still early, the sky dark, but there's a buzz all around as the temple awakens. You stick to side corridors and maintenance paths, going around the larger thoroughfares whenever possible.

It isn't always possible. Even when it is, sometimes there's folks around. The Deathdealer warns them off, and seeing the wraiths, they don't argue, hurrying out of the way.

In the thoroughfares, the path is cleared for you, initiates and priests alike crowded into the side halls, chattering. They grow silent as you and the Deathdealer pass, followed by a wraith, and then two. The wraiths stare off into the crowds, out of their long shadows, trailing wisps and tatters silently.

A few priests cast protective spells, or put up wards, forming shields of energy in front of them.

People whisper as you pass.

A hand brushes your shoulder from behind, like icy death, and it burns through your flesh, permeating deeply. You recoil, turning back, almost dropping the bundle. The wraiths have stopped, their cowls pointed in unison to a particular doorway. One of them says something you can't quite hear, even as the not quite sound of it worms into your head, and points, shaking its head.

A woman is standing somewhat out from the crowd, a meter or so into the corridor, watching intently. Her grey hair is up in a messy bun. There's something about her that you can't quite place.

"Who is she?" you ask. Your arm isn't really working anymore, you realise. The shoulder aches horribly.

"Samaran Adith," the Deathdealer says. "One of the Keepers of Magic."

"Can you ask her to move back?" you ask, trying to work around your arm not working by grabbing it with your other hand around the bundle. "The wraiths don't like her."

He gives you a long look.

You start to move forward again, just to test it. A wraith reaches out to stop you again. You stop immediately before it has to.

The Deathdealer goes to talk to her. She backs off, withdrawing into the side corridor.

The wraiths, satisfied, continue on, and you with them.

You get past the bulk of the people at long last, and the next groups you pass are much smaller. They still stare, though, and whisper, and it occurs to you that they're not just staring at the wraiths, and that you probably look quite awful yourself. You're carrying a strange black bundle, and covered in dirt, still a bit soggy. Your pants and tunic are filthy and torn, even a bit bloody in places. Your arms are smudged and discoloured, your hair a wet mass pulled back on your head. You try to wipe your forehead on your shoulder, just to see if you can. It sort of works. It probably makes your face even dirtier.

You get to the catacombs. They're full of bones and tombs and crap. You're not really paying attention. You just follow the Deathdealer and the wraiths until they stop and sort of look at you expectantly. Or in the wraiths' case, vaguely and deadly.

The walls are full of alcoves and depressions, full of bones and wrapped bodies and probably wrapped bones. There are quite a few urns. It all looks quite old. One of them, though, is empty, so you go over to it, give the wraiths an uncertain look, and place the girl's bundle there. You kneel down and kiss it, and set the doll on top. "Rest now, sweet sister," you whisper. You're not sure why you do this. It just feels right, and you go with it.

As you get up, turning around, the wraiths kneel as well, and then fade away in tatters.

"It's done, then," the Deathdealer says.

"Okay," you say. "Good. Finally. I need to go sleep now."[18]

"Wait," he says, and stops you, placing a hand over your heart, sensing. He casts a healing spell, speaking a quick word, shaping it with his fingers, and touching it back to your heart with a soft, white light. All the aches and pains and soreness just fall away in a strange, almost intoxicating, relief.

"Oi," you say. "Thanks."

He nods. "Get some rest."

As you hurry off, a kitten squeak sounds from your scarf.

"Feck!" you moan. You'd forgotten about the creature.

Notes

  1. ↑ Including, but not limited to, getting useful feedback out of online users; designing dresses that stand up to 50 mph wind; making perfumes with the delightful scents of Putrescence of Orchid and These Mushrooms Are Secretly Onions; opsec; grantmaking; and carpentry in which your wood stock is entirely comprised of old doors.
  2. ↑ Great Value Chewy Protein BARS! The entire wrapper is a hodge-podge of mismatched fonts and jarring colours, except the fact that it's a Wal-Mart store brand protein bar isn't the problem. The fact that it's a protein bar isn't even the problem. The fact that it's a half-eaten, half-melted, well-beyond half past-expiration protein bar, however, is.
  3. ↑ It reminds you of your university orientation, and probably is the general equivalent. And probably about as useful.
  4. ↑ Though really you consider anyone shorter than you 'very short'. You're not even short. You're just used to everyone normally being taller than you for some reason.
  5. ↑ Aside from your group. You and the sword guys are sitting down on the floor.
  6. ↑ Bottom left and top right, respectively.
  7. ↑ At least, you hope so. You still haven't ruled out the possibility that you've just gone insane.
  8. ↑ In which the qualifications typically consist of little lists of potential reasons why it may be totally wrong in order to show that you'll be able to mitigate them when it inevitably turns out to be totally wrong, and thus also mitigating the associated liability.
  9. ↑ Not the handwritten form. The handwritten form of Hebrew tends to look like a bunch of lines, only surpassed in 'how can anyone read that?!' response from the non-literate by handwritten Cyrillic, which tends to look like a bunch of parallel lines.
  10. ↑ Or minds. Or people. Or anything, really.
  11. ↑ The open-note tests were hard. There had also been open-book tests. Those were even harder. The open-book, open-note, open-friend tests where you were to form small groups and work your way through the exam together didn't even bear thinking about. In fact you'd pretty much entirely repressed the memories of these, and probably couldn't if you tried.
  12. ↑ The pole you normally carried around was steel, made up of three two-foot sections of pipe connected by joints. Because you normally carried around a six-foot steel pole, for use. As a pole. Before.
  13. ↑ Technically sandals, but they have proper soles attached to the bottom. This is practically industrial-grade.
  14. ↑ With difficulty, in Kerka's case.
  15. ↑ The blades are about 2cm long. This is not what they are for.
  16. ↑ You don't know how late. It's just late.
  17. ↑ Or that time, when you did have a budget, you tried to redo the entire interface for Wikipedia and all its sister projects... with no team whatsoever.
  18. ↑ 'Curl up in bed with the biggest sandwich I can find' would have been your exact phrasing, had you any idea how to translate it.


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The only cure for madness is madness.