This is the submission box for statements to Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. As an avatar of the powerful entity known as the Ceaseless Watcher, Jon’s wellbeing requires him to take in information about the terrifying supernatural experiences of others in the form of statements. If he does not do so on a regular basis, he may begin to feel sickly or exhausted. But you can help!
Using the comments below, write a short narrative (IC) describing a frightening paranormal experience. Jon’s abilities as the Archivist allow you (and to some extent compel you) to describe your experience with great clarity and in the form of prose, so spare no detail.
Statements must be at least 3 paragraphs long and must specifically be about paranormal experiences that left a deep impact of fear on the individual. There is no maximum length. Jon’s target is 5 statements per month, and he gets a small bonus if he meets this quota.
Statement taken directly from subject via written statement on July 22nd, 16:52, Pumpkin Hollow. Statement begins.
From a very young age, I was aware of my destiny. From the moment I was born, everyone knew that I was made for the purpose of greatness. That I was privy to a holy power, passed down to me from a human incarnation of the goddess herself, through all the women in my bloodline, along with the name "Zelda."
As a child, my training was rigorous. Countless hours of study, learning my lineage and their history. Entire days of prayer, asking the goddess to bestow her blessing, wisdom, and voice to me. Practice at the techniques of controlling energy and breath that would help me manipulate my holy magic when at last it arrived. But all my prayers fell on deaf ears. For seventeen years, I prayed, focused I begged, I screamed, I cried, I fought. I knelt at the foot of every statue of Hylia I could find and I pleaded with the goddess to please, please, let me hear her voice, let me fulfil my birthright, let me protect my people.
Silence.
I hated them. I hated all of them that came before me. Who played their parts in their legends, who sealed Demise away and had exactly what they needed. I hated Link, another chosen one who never seemed to question or doubt his destiny, never faltered. I hated my parents for thrusting this name on me when I wasn't worthy. Sometimes, I even hated the goddess.
On the day of my 18th birthday, I tried one more time. I went to the goddess statue at Lake Lanayru, said to be the birthplace of wisdom and forbidden to children. I stood in that freezing lake and I prayed and prayed. And when my prayers still went unanswered as dawn broke, I wept.
It was that very next morning that the apocalypse came. A huge cloud of swirling black and red bloomed in the sky like a sickly flower, lightning cracking down from it in flashes of nauseous magenta. Its body erupted from the ground, serpentine and noxious, but it roared with the face of a monstrous boar. It was larger than the palace, wrapping its hideous form around the stone titan of a building I had once called home. Once called safe. Creeping tendrils sprawled across the castle, the ground, the sky, covering everything in poison. Horror and despair sucked the breath from my lungs. Apocalypse.
In a matter of hours, all the preparations we had done were reduced to naught. The Divine Beasts and Guardians, machines of the ancients we had spent years learning to use to protect ourselves, stolen. The Champions, who spent their lives honing their own holy powers, murdered. Thousands of innocent Hyruleans lay slain. And it was all my fault.
As Link and I fled for our lives, a bitter rain making the night grow dark earlier than it might have and drenching us in cold water and mud. All at once, I felt myself grow unable to go on, falling to my knees. What was the point? Why did I even deserve to live when those who had done so much more than me lie dead? Why did Link have to turn from his own glory to protect one useless princess?
He should have scolded me. Should have dragged me along. Should have left me behind. But instead, he knelt before me, and he held me. And in the rain I wept in his arms.
That was when the corrupted Guardian came for us. And it was only in saving him that I finally, finally claimed my power. Far too late. But it wasn't over yet.
I would need Link to stand by my side in order to have the power to seal the darkness, but he was hurt. I had no choice but to enshrine him until his power and life was restored. I sent him with my trusted attendants, and finally I stood to meet my own fate.
I stood before the castle. I called to it, trying to look brave. But I was more terrified than I ever had been in my life. I channeled every trace of the goddess' light that I could pull from the heavens into my heart. I glowed with ferocity. And the monster rushed me. At the moment of contact, we were transported, ascending beyond the physical, I a being of pure light, and Calamity Ganon, of pure darkness. I felt the gloom and sickness coil around my soul, trying to rip it from me, trying to creep into the cracks of my divine light and rip me apart.
And so we would remain for one hundred years. A century of stalemate, tearing each other apart and building ourselves back, pressing against each other, formless and divine, numb to all but my divine agony.
(CW: brief mention of cult behavior and ritualistic death)
Via written statement:
I'm guessing you don't want some dry IOPSA-style report so I'll give you the skinny as it comes to me. If you're interested in something less...whatever the hell this is going to be then swing by the office sometime or drop me a note.
The Town Hall’s Board of Safety posted about Lake Sal-Co-Penn recently and how we should avoid it at all costs. Which is exactly the kind of thing that I think needs looking into and boy did it ever.
I went out a few times. First of all, the water is unnaturally still. It didn't seem to matter if it was windy or not, no matter what that water wasn't moving. It made it look like glass and the water is dark, but I could still make out some shapes in the water. At first I thought they might be logs or stones under the water, but in every case they turned out to be bodies. Not just any bodies, but people I knew. People that Milo and Connor and Andy knew, too. But the ones I knew where from when I was a kid, it's one of the few things I remember from living in Germany. The last memory I have of my biological parents. That they got wrapped up in some cult bullshit and drank the kool-aid and lights out! They were floating out there in that lake with those stupid cups.
I've seen a lot of death in my line of work and it's always hard. Every single time it's just knowing that another life is gone, that whatever future they had is lost. It's never routine, if it ever gets that way I need to get the hell out of this line of work, but what I'm trying to say is that this...hits different. It's a memory I'd like to forget and sometimes I do. But it always comes back, just not like this.
I'm not sure how to describe it other than I wanted to claw out of my skin and run for the hills, dude. Being afraid like that just breaks something in you, I guess? I'm not sure. No one should ever have to experience that once but like lucky me! Twice! I should go buy a lotto ticket or something. I mean, if Pumpkin Hollow has a lotto. It's weird because I feel like I could write all of this stuff down right now and get it out of my head, but I don't want to at the same time. I'm too scared to face that again I guess.
I'm rambling. I don't even know if this makes any sense but I'm too much of a weenie to back and reread it. Hopefully that helps you? If not, maybe we can chat.
Statement taken directly from subject on July 30th, 10:00 AM sharp, Pumpkin Hollow. Statement begins.
"Hahahahaha, hahaha...ha...I've been trying to figure out where to even start since we arranged this meeting! No one here seems to understand things that seem obvious to me, but - well, Madam Princess Zelda said - she - I think I've got something for you! It's just gonna be a bit of a hike!" Jean had asked for tea for this interview, and now stirs their cup - black, there's nothing to stir into it, and yet - with a distant expression in their wide eyes. That resting slasher smile hasn't been on their face this whole time.
They're grappling with something big enough that its mere motion is knocking over the shelves in their mind. Maybe this will help. They hope this will help.
"...The thing you have to understand about the City is we talk about it like it's carved into Districts that are ruled by the Wings of the World, the corporations that govern us, but that's not quite right! Every District is surrounded by the Backstreets, those parts of the City no Wing claims, and it gets...it gets...it's bad there, Agent Jon. There's not enough food and resources to go around. You get blackouts! Usually you grow up under the governance of one of the Syndicates but they're, hahaha, they're...they're fun..." The spoon clinks as Jean stirs slowly, one finger on the end of it to make a smooth and regular motion. "For three hours a day in the dead of the night there's the Night on the Backstreets, when all crimes are legal by writ of the Head. No matter who supposedly owns the place, or sets the taboos, Syndicate or Wing or what have you, it's all legal, and if you try to report whatever happens? The Head takes you. You just die, screaming. It's always screaming, for hours and hours..."
Their free hand is tapping the table. That motion is far less regular, far less controlled. Every now and again Jean twitches, and every time they do they try out a sunny smile, the effect somewhat spoiled by all those strangely sharp teeth.
"All that's just context! People will do anything to get off the Backstreets! I know I sure did! To work for a Wing, and live in their Nest, never go hungry again, not just get your organs harvested so someone else can make rent - that's the dream, right? And I did it! I signed up with Lobotomy Corporation - L-Corp - and moved into Nest L, and there was just, so much, so much going on all the time. The food, everywhere, people going to and from their jobs without getting attacked in the streets, the bars - the karaoke! Oh I miss that! I haven't done karaoke in...doesn't matter, I suppose."
Jean clears their throat. Their normally manic voice is slowly dipping down, becoming pained, if still very energetic. Those wide eyes slide past Jon's shoulder, and stare into the wall. "I was...hahahaha, ha, I was so feral when I signed up! Surviving the Backstreets makes you tough as hell, don't get me wrong, but L-Corp's Agents were a whole different level, guys were tougher than some Fixers - uh." An interruption in the pained recollection as Jean realizes they've dropped another Proper Noun. "Fixers are...they're...warriors for hire? Mercenaries is sorta the right word except not every Fixer Office owns an army, is the thing! And not all of them act like it! But if you take money in the City to fight things and people, you get really good at it or you fucking die! Anyway, they trained me up. It was nuts! They even had guns, and those cost a fortune! I could sell my whole house in the Nest and buy one bullet and still need to get the gun! And here L-Corp was spending bullets like water to teach us how to parry them!"
The stirring pauses, and Jean looks down at the tea.
The stirring resumes, and their eyes slide back to the exact same spot on the wall. "L-Corp was a power company, providing energy to the entire City, and I was an Agent in the Disciplinary Team. Every department had a set of Abnormalities, these...they're not people, not even the ones that really, really seem like people, but 'things' doesn't sound right either. All kinds of shapes and sizes. Trees and spiders, self-styled 'magical girls', headless suits of armor, plants...the birds...the birds were awful. They all need things, want things, do things that they shouldn't be able to do, and if you put them in the right kind of cell, and develop the right kind of relationship with them, they produce Enkephalin, and L-Corp turned that into cheap, clean electricity. Sometimes that just means taking care of them like a pet - feed them, water them, clean their cell, some of 'em really love that. Sometimes it means getting a personal relationship with them, you, you listen to their stories, or share your own, you hug someone that seems like a sad girl, or, or give 'em advice, whatever. Some of 'em just want to be studied! Isn't that weird? Super happy just for you to walk in with lab instruments and go to town. And. Sometimes they need to be repressed. Talked down to, beaten, restrained, denied...I was good at that job. Repression work. Must be the Backstreets, huh? Ha...ha..."
The spoon wobbles. Jean closes their eyes and exhales slowly and gently, then breathes in deep. Their eyes open again. "...Electricity isn't the only thing L-Corp derived from Abnormalities though. Hike's over, Agent Jon, we've arrived where I was going with this. The Enkephalin could be used, somehow, I never knew how, to manufacture E.G.O. equipment - weapons, and armor in the City style. That stuff handles like a dream! Every Agent eventually had their own set that they wore, and boy, we needed it! It helped us survive! It always fit perfectly, always comfortable, and some of it just, it did things, above and beyond the other things it did. Some of those weapons could carve up the body like it was gelatin, some of them attacked the mind directly, some would decay both...and then there's PALE damage..." A full-body shudder. "...Mine was Crimson Scar, derived from the Little Red Riding Hooded Mercenary. Little Red. How to even..."
"...Abnormalities aren't people. Not even the ones that seem like people. Little Red really seemed like people. This young lady with a rough voice, always wearing her red hood and her armor and this mask decorated with wolf teeth that only showed one yellow eye. I was assigned to handle her in day to day operations. Easy to get along with, really, she's...a professional? Little Red had no grudge about being in our cell, even got authorized to help us with containment breaches! What a sight! Red could carve her way through other horrors, cash out her Enkephalin paycheck, and walk right back to her cell! Just um. You gotta not stand in front of her. Little Red doesn't understand friendly fire. Or. Maybe. She does. I never...never did ask..."
The stirring stops. Jean goes to pick up their tea, and they just...can't. Eventually they give up and resume stirring it, breathing shakily. "She had this relationship, with another Abnormality, the Big And Will Be Bad Wolf. Said it had maimed her as a child, and she hated it. If it ever broke loose, she'd breach containment too and hunt it down. Get anywhere near that fight and you'll just die. If they'd been outside...the collateral was bad enough in the facility. I learned to hate it too, at first. She talked about...she'd always be saying, 'I've been grinding this axe instead of picking flowers since I was sixteen'. I made a mistake, hahaha, I thought...I thought she was a person. But they're not people."
"Wanna know how I know?"
"I was given the first set of E.G.O. derived from Little Red, Crimson Scar. Two parts, a copy of her weapons, and a suit a lot like her armor. Moved like a dream, and if you pair them together you get faster, faster and faster, you can run to a fight like you're flying! The gun and sickle meant I could join a fight from far away and then get in close and protect people! I loved that. I miss it. The weapons here are...the equipment is so bad. I'd do just about anything to get a real City weapon! But I hadn't been paying attention to the company literature."
"She talked to me, when I wore her E.G.O., is the thing. All the time. Her angry voice in my head, talking, always talking. 'Look how they're hurting your friends'. 'Take your revenge, kill them, kill them again and again, make it hurt a new way every time'. She hated. That's all Little Red really was, is the thing, hate. Whatever made her, whatever happened to her, she's just hate and anger and sorrow and she wanted me to, to be like her, she'd talk about my life on the Backstreets, every wrong an Abnormality ever did to me or my co-workers, every time, her voice, in my - in my fucking head -"
Jean spills the tea when their hand twitches. They don't seem to even notice. "...I wore Crimson Scar until the end of my employment, Agent Jon. Clock in. Fight Little Red about who I am. Fight Abnormalities. Meet my quotas. Clock out. Clock in. Fight Little Red..."
Erik has heard some talk of Jon but has yet to formally introduce himself. That recent post to the bulletin, however, gives him an idea. Maybe not a good idea, but he's grown bored and restless in this small setting. So, he seeks out this Archivist to see what he is about.
"Good afternoon. My name is Lord Erik Osborne and I've come in regards to your advert on the bulletin, Mr. Sims. Is now a reasonable time to request that beverage of choice?"
[ Well, this was a new face - seen in passing on fleeting occasions, sure, but here he was, at Jon's little sea-side shack. He gladly waves Erik in after having gotten a look at the new face, offering him a polite smile. ]
Yes, of course, come in, Mr. Osborne. And, ah--- of course, I'd be happy to get you whatever you'd like before we begin. Any preferences? I have water, of course, as well as a few varieties of teas, and I recently bought a bit of powdered cocoa if you'd rather something sweet...?
Had a moon almost passed since that awful day? Mo'rtajha hasn't quite adapted to an unfamiliar calendar system just yet, but it sure felt like it. She'd heard whispers since then that someone was seeking information on terrifying experiences and...seven hells, had the Pine Devil's attack been one of those. The only problem is she lacked the knowledge to put those memories into words on paper, so she's arrived on Mr. Sim's doorstep.
With faked confidence she knocks loudly a few times, and curtsy's once the door is opened. Despite this her voice starts trembling immediately, "S-s-ser Sims? I wished to s-speak to you about...well. Someone said you are collecting harrowing tales! And I have one! It was awful!"
[ Quick to the door at the loud few knocks, Jon opens it with clear interest - though as she starts to speak, his brows quickly furrow with concern. Whatever it was that she had seen, it must have been horrific. (Though, it was quickly becoming clear that that wasn't all too uncommon, here of all places. ]
Of course, come in, come in. Take a seat anywhere you like, I'll get you something to drink. Was what happened to you... recent? I know old frightening encounters can leave horrible scars, but you seem particularly rattled. Are you alright?
It will take a moment for him to be situated. He doesn't seem particularly good at existing around other people, but, well. He's been offered coffee. He's grateful. If there's milk available, he's even more grateful, as he arranges himself with his daughter in her sling across his chest with a bottle. Here and there in the recording, there will be the sound of infant burbling.
"Uh...ok, to start off, it didn't begin with me. We're not totally sure when it officially began. Some time mid-twenty-first century, the line between world of the living and the dead started getting blurry. Anyone died, they started stayin' put. Not their bodies. Bodies started decaying faster. Too fast. We called it 'going necro'. Decomp process on overdrive and it made it real important to get 'em out to where they could be disposed of completely. Usually cremation'd do it but you have to be careful of the smoke. It was the chiral matter doing it-
"Lemme explain. When something's a chiral reflection, it kinda works like your hands. It's perfect reflections but only when situated a specific way. Palm to palm, perfect mirror, but if you lay one hand over the other-" A shuffling as he lays the palm of one hand over the back of the other, "-it's not perfect anymore. Thumb on each side, fingers don't like up, you get it. Anyway, chiral matter's a lot like antimatter. You know what happens when antimatter comes into contact with regular matter? Yeah. Big fuckin' explosion.
"So, you get antimatter seeping into the world, through the umbilical tether that keeps people tied to where they passed. Ghosts doubling as big fuckin' bombs. But they only get tripped when they come into contact with human beings, so basically it's not a problem if nobody dies around other people.
"But that's just not how people work. They need each other to survive. Sometimes you can't help when shit happens.
"Thing is, some of us, we can't die. Between the chiral contamination, the Seam letting some of us find a way back, and a persistent tether between the Ha and Ka, the body and soul, we became repatriates. Means even if we get grabbed by a BT- uh, a Beached Thing, something stuck in limbo, and the hand of god comes down and-" A clap, one hand coming down to slap onto the other, "-craters the last of a fuckin' city, sometimes there's just one guy sitting in the middle of it all, wondering what just hit 'em. Don't get me wrong, it still hurts like hell to die. Never gets any easier. But I know like this I won't become a BT. Small favors, huh?"
[Content Warning: Body horror/rot, sexual harassment of a minor]
We all encountered It alone at first. That's how It hunted, you see... isolate, terrify, attack. It said to us, "You taste so much better when you're afraid."
And yes, It would literally eat the children that It hunted.
I'd go to the train yard when I couldn't find anyone else to play with on Saturdays. I always liked trains, and cars too. Great big freight trains would still come through Derry when I was kid, and I loved to watch the big northbound car-carriers. I'd dream about having one of those shiny-new Fords, or even better... a Cadillac. Those were the kind of little dreams I didn't feel like sharing with anybody. To just hop in a car and go... get away from everything but the road and yourself.
Maybe the fact that I was thinking like that at eleven should have been a red flag, but like I said, I never told anybody. And what eleven year old knows about red flags?
I was a cautious kid, and one thing about the train yard and its trains worried me -- the tramps and hobos that traveled on them. It's one thing to be kicked out of the train yard by the trainmaster, and it's another thing entirely to be hassled by a tramp. They frightened me (already frightened by my mother's horror stories of what disease could do to you) with their cold sores and cracked skin. They'd come up and slur out, "Ya gotta cigarette?" which I never had.
Neibolt Street was in the neighborhood near the trains, and it was one of the rundown places in Derry. A lot of those houses would get broken into so the tramps could squat there.
I always thought the the hobo under the porch at 29 Neibolt Street had leprosy, and that terrified me. My friends Bill and Richie, who I told about it later, said it was more like he had "the Syph" (and trust me, reading about advanced cases of syphilis at age twelve left its mark, too). But whether the real hobo had leprosy or not, that's what It saw was in my mind and that's what It used when It targeted me.
It was springtime, and for some godforsaken reason I felt the urge to go check out that space under the porch. I think that might have been It pushing at my mind, to get me there by myself and spring It's trap.
It looked like the hobo, but gone even worse. Eaten away by rot and still alive -- the skin of It's forehead was split and leaking pus, and I could see the white, white bone underneath. Like it was shining in that dark space under the porch. It's lower lip sagged down, and the inside was spotted all over with dark blotches. There was no upper lip at all, and I could see all of the horrible yellow teeth and inflamed red gums. It didn't have a nose either. Where the hobo from before had one nostril eaten away into a red channel, It had made it worse -- just a ruin of gristle and infection. One rotten eyelid was sagging down into an empty socket, and the other eye stared at me, gleeful and blue.
"How bout a blowjob, Eddie?" It said.
The hobo had said something similar -- hey kid, I'll give you a blowjob for a quarter.
Both times it terrified me, and both times it felt like it took me forever to run away.
The leper began to crawl out toward me, and even though most of my brain was trying to process what I was seeing and just kind of screaming over all of it, I had one clear little thought when It reached out one rotting hand for me.
If It touches me, if it touches my bare skin, I'll start to rot, too.
That broke through all the panic, and even though I was wheezing something horrible and my head was spinning from lack of air, I managed to scramble backward.
It kept talking to me, crooning that I'd like being down there with all of them, that my friends were down there, and that one blue eye never looked away from me.
I got out from under the porch and back into the sunshine. In the movies, even the scary ones, you're safe in the light. I grabbed for my aspirator and triggered it, and the taste of the medicine was a relief. I could relax...
And then It's rotten hands burst through the old porch, clawing at the wood and leaving bloody streaks. The leper was wearing a colorful clown suit, with big orange pompom buttons down the front, and somehow the sheer ridiculous contrast of that suit with the horror of It's face made everything worse. I think the terror of that moment levitated me straight up, because I don't remember getting to my feet. I just remember running, running like I'd run from the hobo, and knowing that I was going to be too slow to beat the leper that It was. I could hear It breathing hard behind me, but there was no wheeze in It's lungs like there was in mine.
I could hear It's feet in those big clown shoes tramping after me, as I ran for my bike. Stupid kid that I was, I'd left it by the sidewalk that ended four houses before 29 Niebolt Street. But if I could get to my bike, I could get to safety... even though it felt far too slow as I ran.
I swear I felt those bony fingertips snag into my hair a moment before I grabbed the handlebars. I kept my head down as I swung my leg over the bike and just focused on getting on and getting out of there... but I heard it whisper one last thing.
"Blowjob... come back any time, Eddie. Bring your friends."
"These...stories, they don't have to end dismally for them to count, right? I mean, terror is terror, isn't it? So it shouldn't make any difference if they end on a positive note, with things working out for a while. Don't you think?"
"...Well, let's try it anyway. It should make an interesting experiment, and I...I want to talk about Liu Qingge, this time. Maybe it defeats the purpose a little, trying to make myself feel better, but...I do miss him. I think I was on pretty good terms with all my martial siblings, but he and I...we had a special bond, for reasons that you'll see shortly."
"As you might have already gathered by now, I'm not really a proper cultivator. I was never initiated into any sect, never passed any trials or studied martial arts in my youth, unless you count a few tai chi classes I took in high school for a PE credit, which you shouldn't. I did read a lot of cultivation stories, but not anymore than I read palace dramas or Western fantasy or other things. I read Harry Potter even, more than once. My favorite character was Remus Lupin."
"When I was...placed, in Shen Qingqiu's body, I inherited all of his skills. I suddenly knew how to do everything he'd known how to do, how to cultivate, how to wield a sword or to fly on it, how to cast spells. I no longer needed to eat or sleep unless I wanted to, and I didn't really got cold anymore, even though I was living in a bamboo cottage with no insulation on a mountain top. It was amazing...but I still felt like something was missing. Knowing how something is done isn't the same thing as being able to do it, after all; if it were otherwise then every single basement-dwelling Bruce Lee fan would on some kind of government watchlist as dangers to society. And I won't get into it now but my first night hunt was very nearly a complete disaster. I knew that if I was going to be a real cultivator, a real and proper peak lord, then I needed...well, I needed to put in some work. I needed to cultivate."
"I asked the sect leader for permission to enter the sacred caves on Qiong Ding Peak, and of course he agreed. That's probably how Shen Qingqiu reached immortality in the first place, despite starting so late and having so many glaring personality problems, the kind of thing that's supposed to make it harder to reach the right degree of tranquility and inner peace -- Yue Qingyuan probably helped him cheat somehow, with trips to the sacred caves and special artifacts and who knows what else. He shouldn't have, but since I was benefiting from it now it didn't seem right to complain. So I just silently judged him a little and went on my way."
"The caves were...okay? I was expecting some kind of enchanted grotto like out of a book, aesthetically curved walls and stalactites and maybe some bioluminescent moss and a gently babbling brook, to create that perfect atmosphere. Feng shui may or may not be a real thing in your world, but in this kind of setting it very much was, and places with naturally high feng shui became basically reservoirs for spiritual energy, like how water naturally runs downhill. That's why these caves were sacred."
"Well, the shape of the cave was okay, and there was a little brook, but nearly all the moss had been hacked off the walls with a sword, leaving gouges as deep as my hand. There was this odd residue on the walls too, that flaked like a very thin layer of paint, and smelled faintly of copper when I held my fingers up to my face."
"It was very bizarre. Still, I could feel that the place was still teaming with spiritual energy, so I sat down on a sort of natural stone pedestal and settled in to meditate. It was surprisingly easy. Shen Qingqiu had known how to do this too, and I fell into a detached state in only a few minutes. It was...comfortable. Like stepping into a warm bath, in a tub big enough you could stretch out, raise your feet, and just...float there. In a timeless eternity. I don't know how long I'd been resting there when I heard the first scream."
"I snapped out of the meditative immediately. I probably don't need to tell you that people are absolutely not supposed to be screaming in the sacred caves, but...well, they aren't! I sat there in the dark for a long moment, wandering if it had been real, if maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me because I was so unused to the quiet. But then it came again."
"It was long and...the sound was somehow jagged, as if the person doing the screaming was in such immense pain that they couldn't draw a deep breath, but they had to scream anyway. As if they couldn't help it. I thought of the coppery dust I'd found on the walls -- obviously it was blood, what else could it be? -- and I wondered, how long has it been since anyone came in here? Could the sacred caves be...haunted?"
"I got up to look. I wasn't going to embarrass myself by running out of the caves claiming I'd heard a ghost, only for it to turn out to be nothing! I walked deeper into the cave, ears pricked for another scream, or the sound of someone else moving around in the dark. As it happened I saw him before I heard him; a human figure that glowed from within, as if his body had been built from some kind of luminescent marble. He was dressed in white, with long black hair streaming down his back, and he screaming in agony as he chopped at the walls with a shining sword."
"I finally realized what was happening. It wasn't a ghost, it was Liu Qingge, my martial brother. In the book he'd died off-screen, and Shen Qingqiu was eventually accused of murdering him -- but I'd just gotten there, and here he was. It was clear that he'd experienced a qi deviation, a catastrophically bad one. Cultivation isn't an exact science, you see, even in settings where people have been doing it for thousands of years. Every person is different, and some people pick cultivation techniques that are bad for them, or they don't pay close enough attention to what they're doing, or they keep pushing themselves into experiences that disrupt their inner peace. Whatever the reason, Liu Qingge was qi deviating. As I watched, I saw that he was bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth, that the entire front of his shirt was soaked with it. I knew he didn't have much more time -- and that his only chance of survival lay in my help."
"There wasn't time to go fetch another person, and how would it look if I said I'd found Liu Qingge in the caves, and by the time we found him again he was dead? Plus, if he lived...well, one good turn deserves another, doesn't it? But that wasn't the full reason that I wanted to help. You see, as I stood there watching him suffer, I just felt...so terribly sorry for him. Liu Qingge was the strongest warrior in our sect, you see! Probably the strongest human warrior in the world, even if Yue Qingyuan outmatched him in purely spiritual might! He wasn't technically an ascended deity, but there were people who already called him the War God of Bai Zhan Peak. Wasn't there something awfully pitiful, about someone so strong dying like this, alone and screaming, in a pool of his own blood? Not to mention..."
"Well, this probably sounds a little shallow of me, considering the circumstances, but...at the time, I was also struck by how beautiful he was. It made a certain degree of sense, his sister was Liu Mingyan, the most popular of Binghe's wives on Zhongdian Literature website for pretty much the novel's entire run. Nobody apart from Binghe had ever seen her face, Airplane never even wrote a smut extra about her, but they say that she wore that gauze mask all the time so her beauty wouldn't blind people. Looking at her brother, I could believe it. He was clearly a man, but he had this...softness about him, like one of those Renaissance statues that were so perfectly carved that the marble looks like flesh. He had high, arched cheekbones, and a strong jaw...a hero's jaw, I remember thinking. And he had this cute little mole under one eye...what do they call those? Right, beauty marks. What?"
"No, shut up. This is relevant! Hey, what are you complaining about? Didn't I just tell you what an amazing warrior he was? I was in mortal peril here! All it would take was a single misjudged step and he'd chop me into tiny pieces, like mincemeat! Not to mention that if I set up the spiritual connection wrong his qi deviation would propagate into my spiritual veins, and then we'd both die bleeding out the face! It was a dangerous situation, you can't blame me for getting a little hung up on the details."
"Ugh, philistine. Are you sure you're really gay? I mean I was only appreciating him platonically, if I was gay I'd probably have started salivating on the floor or something, even with the blood he was just that pretty. Sometimes you can just tell that someone would clean up nicely, you know? Anyway. I knew I had to move quickly, before he could do the mincemeat thing. So I gathered my spiritual power into the palm of my hand and, as Liu Qingge turned to face me, I struck him in the chest! He went flying, rolling and landing on his face-- proof, if any more had been needed, of the savagery with which his qi deviation had wracked him. If I'd tried that on a fully healthy and powered-up Bai Zhan War God, I'd have been the one who went flying!"
"I knelt over him, placing my hand on his back. He struggled, trying to get up, but I pinned him in place and began to pass him spiritual energy. I'm not sure I have words to describe the terror and excitement that surged through me in that moment, feeling such a powerful man struggle and writhe beneath me, huffing and growling like an angry beast and knowing that I would only survive if my will didn't falter. I tried not to think about all the different ways Liu Qingge could kill me -- breaking my neck, tearing my limbs off and leaving me to bleed out, blowing me to pieces with a blast of qi -- and focused instead on keeping the flow of qi between us steady."
"It felt like it took forever, but eventually my qi found a place to settle and take root in his spiritual veins, and he began to quiet. A few minutes more and his breathing slowed and he lay still. He seemed almost to be asleep, but when I released him and stood up he scrambled to his face as well, staring at me like...like he was the one who'd just seen a ghost."
"I pulled out my fan and averted my eyes, to preserve his dignity, and asked him how he was feeling. I could hear him grinding his teeth in the dark before he finally muttered my name -- Shen Qingqiu in a harsh growl -- before snatching his sword up off the ground and storming off! So ungrateful! But I forgave him, naturally. Of course a strong man like that would be embarrassed after being seen in such a moment of weakness."
"But later, after I'd been poisoned with Without a Cure and he stepped up to finish driving an invasion of demons off our mountain, he seemed to think things were even between us. He became my number one assistant in managing the symptoms, and after I...sent Binghe away, we even went on a number of adventures together. He was always taking me on this journey or that, or bringing back pieces of his kills if I hadn't been able to come along. You'd never have expected it from his reputation, but in the end...Liu Qingge really was very kind. His friendship meant a lot to me. I hope that somehow, someway, thanks to the circumstances under which I died, Luo Binghe will give up his vendetta against Cang Qiong. I really...really don't like the thought of the two of them fighting."
Statement Taken Live From Subject Over Tea, Third September, Year Unknown Due To Calendar Clashes
"...I feel like Zelda doesn't want to believe this, even though I keep trying to tell her, but I need you to understand - Gebura was a good manager. This story isn't all bad...hahaha, maybe we can call it an experiment. Because I am afraid, but I'm also proud! I went into this knowing what I was doing, and I'd do it again, so...I dunno. Maybe it'll balance your diet, Comrade Sims." In sharp contrast to many of their other Statements, here Jean actually takes a sip of their tea, and their eyes close gently. "But let's start at the beginning, give you some context to a few of the things I've said before..."
They chew their lip for a moment. "The Library worked by invitation, as I've said before. A Guest was never compelled to enter the Library and face its ordeals...but they did receive their invitation when it seemed, to them, like the Library had every solution to their problems. When accepting would get them away from someone else trying to kill them, when they were low on money, when our knowledge could solve their every life problem - we preyed upon them, make no mistake, and it was still a fairer deal than you could find anywhere in the City. And it was still wrong. I know that now, and I know now that the Director understood it before I did. Still, once the invitation was signed, they would come to the Library, and the various Floors would decide which of us would give them battle. Mine was chosen often, once we'd awoken from our sleep, and I know why. We were the Disciplinary Team, once, the mad dog that bites its master, and as the Floor of Language we were still beasts of ruin and sorrow. There is not a warrior in any world I would place my faith in over Madam Gebura, and we were her team."
Jean dips a pastry in their teacup and nibbles it, thoughtfully. They're trying to figure out where to continue their story. There's - no, no, the direction is obvious. "Each Floor had several Abnormalities, sleeping within their Books, bound to it. To gain their services we had to meet them within their domains. Some demanded that we offer them battle; others, assistance, compassion. Ours were Little Red, the Wolf," here Jean touches the lapel of Cobalt Scar, in which sleeps the spirit of their friend Vah Midna, "the Mountain of Smiling Corpses, Nosferatu, and Nothing There. Violent things, all of them, terrors to the body and the mind, rending flesh, drinking blood, offering unending and relentless war. Perfect for us. Maybe I wouldn't have taken so long to warm up to Vah Midna if I'd understood what it meant that Little Red and he started working together, there in the Library..." They shake their head. "I'm getting off-topic!"
They flash a guilty grin at Jon, sip their tea. It's good tea. One of these days Jean is going to remember that Martin is the one who taught Jon how to make this tea at the same time that they're at Oak and Iron in the morning, and thereby order it from the OG.
"The Abnormalities couldn't be summoned, you have to understand. They lent us the power of their stories, which we could call on when emotions climbed higher, and higher, and more feverish, when the Light was stoked to a frenzy. They gave us their blessings or their powerful curses, and in return we, in some sense, embodied them; they would move through us, and feel their stories enacted upon our enemies. I need to tell you about the Mountain, Jon. It's a thing of death, of despair, it's...hahaha, it's the feeling that life is so hard that it's better to die, because then no one can expect anything from you. No one can demand anything of you. No one can ask you, and you do not have to answer. I hated it. We needed it. The Mountain, too, is a person of the City, after all. A thing like me..."
"We still weren't ready for the first time we called it down on ourselves."
In the manner of Jean's Statements, Jon begins to hear music.
"The mercenaries of R-Corp's Fourth Pack, like all Guests, were desperate. Without the capital they could gain by attacking us and selling our knowledge, their way of life would die out. Gebura argued strenuously to be the one to give them battle, that it would be an insult not to face them herself. They had...the leader of the Rabbit Pack idolized Gebura, and was close to her. It was the service of a friend, to be the one to strike her down, an acknowledgement of a fellow warrior. So we received them, determined that no other Floor would get involved."
"The Fourth Pack are difficult to describe, as warriors. They are varied, professional, dauntless, terrifying. Their Reindeer troopers lashed us with psychic blasts to both body and mind; their Rhinos, on the front lines, protected the more vulnerable Reindeer and Rabbits. And the Rabbits...the Rabbits...I usually think of guns as silly things for weak people, Comrade Sims, but a Rabbit marksman could make me bleed. The sheer volume of bullets, the deceptively tactical placement, no thing living could block and dodge them all. And the Fourth Pack brought many troopers. Five Librarians, Comrade. More than forty mercenaries. We vowed to take them all on."
They go to take a sip of their tea. Hesitate. And then complete the motion, with a soft shudder through their body. They don't like this memory. But...
"The fight was long, and grueling. And you have to remember what I've said before - though Director Angela would remake our bodies if we died, we lost the knowledge of this when we gave battle, so that we would fear our deaths and therefore build up the passion needed to stoke the Light and to summon the power of the Abnormalities. We knew the power that the Mountain offered to us, and it had been decided, all of us, that we would only resort to it in extremis. You understand? Only if everyone agreed. Gebura would not order us to do it, and she would not decide; we all had to say yes. And, hahaha, things were looking bad! Izzy was about to die, Mari was on their last legs, even I was losing that fighting spirit, and there were so many, so very many, many and more and each one of them a worthy opponent...so we said yes. We drew the Mountain down on us."
"The power of the Mountain is this: it kills Gebura's team, and feeds our corpses to her, amplifying her power. I still remember, it's burned into me, the way we started catching each other's eyes. Me to Mari, Mari to Dominic, Dominic to Izzy, Izzy to Madam Gebura. We knew. It had to happen. We thought it would be forever, you understand? We thought we were giving up our lives, and we still said to her: do it. And she drew the Mountain of Corpses down. It ground us up, and fed us to her, and later I awoke to be told of our victory."
"But."
They set their cup down in the saucer, with a soft clink, and their voice is low. "It hurt, Comrade Sims. It hurt to die, and it hurt while I was dead. I could not see. I could not hear. I know nothing of the battle after my death, but I know this: every motion from Madam Gebura was a world of agony. Every parried blow was a burn across flesh that belonged to her now. Every wound she took, I shared. It hurt, and it did not stop hurting; it hurt, and I knew nothing but pain or the brief absence of pain that only made it hurt more. It hurt like nothing that has happened to me before, or since, has ever hurt. But after the battle, the Assistant Librarians, we got together, and we agreed not to tell Gebura. We still haven't. She's a good Manager, Comrade. She cared for us, and fought to keep us at her side, to protect us and to let us protect her. If she knew the truth...if she knew the truth, she'd never call the Mountain again, and that was unacceptable."
"So we lied, and we never did tell her what it meant, when we said: yes, consume us, in the name of victory."
Jon is quiet, as he always is throughout Jean's statements. The music sits in the back of his skull, and slowly creeps away from him as it had crept in to begin with. Though he's taken many statements from many people at this point, Jean's somehow manage to linger at the forefront of his mind with the most sticking power. Perhaps it's the vicious, senseless violence, or the imagery they paint with gruesome, entirely-too-tangible strokes. He's never quite sure.
He takes a sip of his tea, letting out a breath as he's finally able to pull away from it, needing a few moments to process, not unlike a tape-player rewinding.
"Another R-Corp incident... you'd dealt with them with fair frequency, by the sounds of it. Or, all at once, and their attacks were all at once, but so distinct between each group," He remarks, tapping his fingertips against the tea cup. "I've spoken with Zelda briefly about the nature of your management, though, yes. Her opinion on that... has not changed, as far as I'm aware."
He pauses, his lips pulling into a thoughtful frown.
"...I'm not sure if that would remain the case, if she knew of the reality of the situation. I believe she's of a similar mind that I'd been, which was that your management had been... complicit, if not fully benefiting from the events you all endured. Not as a comrade of equal footing in as much of a leadership role as once can be, still so in the thick of everything, but still caught in the same snares that you and the rest of your team were in."
"I am a thanatologist. More than a simple doctor, I am a person who specializes in the academic study of death. I know its ins and outs better than any person around- trust me on that. I have spent years of my life studying the dead, and many sleepless nights pondering over how to eradicate death itself."
"When I arrived to Town-on-Gorkhon, this cursed little town in the middle of nowhere, I had done so in order to perform my job, as a thanatologist. Where do I even begin to explain the violence of the outbreak that had followed my arrival? It was as though it had been waiting for me to take one step into town in order to begin. I am not a virologist-- I'm best at caring for dead people, not the living. And yet, that is what I had to do. That town wasn't even equipped with a hospital! Could you believe this? How did the women give birth, how did the ill get treatment? Truly, it was nothing like my beloved Capital. It was a miserable, pathetic town, and I had suddenly become one of the only people capable of saving it."
"And lord, I tried. I tried everything, believe me. I studied the question from every angle, even at great risk of getting infected myself. I treated dying women and children alike, had to break upsetting news every other hour. Medicine had been such a meaningless matter to these townsfolk that I had to barter with tiny, tiny children in order to acquire proper antibiotics. It was never enough. The town was being decimated, district by district."
"I may have failed to mention, all this time, that I was not the only doctor in town. One Artemy Burakh, the son of the man that urged me to visit the town, had also arrived in town, same day as I did. He did not have a degree, but was a talented surgeon. He specialized in alternative medicine, that I did not have any trust in whatsoever, but he was a stubborn and steadfast man. He had a goal and never wavered from it. I think, eventually, I found myself believing he was capable of making a miracle happen. He was just that sort of person."
"Perhaps that is why his death, from the Plague, hit me so hard. Perhaps that is why seeing his dead body shook me to my core. Perhaps that is why I lost my cool that day."
"His death had meant I was the only one left that was qualified to fight the outbreak. I ordered quarantines on infected districts, and the few employees I had made sure the townsfolk stayed informed of the progression of the Plague. These employees wore these - frankly, ridiculous - bird costumes that we had retrieved from the local Theater's wardrobe. They were massive, made of a cloak with a tall mask with a long, curvy beak. I found them quite effective in preventing the Plague from reaching the people inside, and so that is why I ordered the orderlies to wear them."
"On the day following Burakh's death, I had a frightening dream."
"I had just woken up, and the entire district I lived in was infected. My district had been the last safe haven there; the last place I could have rescued from the Plague, and I had failed. Dead, dying people sat in every corner of the building I woke up in. Desperate people, blaming me for my inaction, my failures, trying to beat me to death for it."
"Then, I met it."
"At first, I believed it was an orderly. It was dressed the exact same, in that big, bird-like costume. He stood over me quite the same. But I did not recognize its voice; and it did not speak to me the way an orderly would. And yet, its voice was familiar, so very familiar, it made my hands tremble when no other sight had ever done so before."
[shaky exhale] "It announced to me that I was dead. That it was time for me to come to terms with it. I thought it to be a joke, at first, but it seemed intent on making me see 'reality'. Of course, I was very much alive, and I insisted upon my failure being a mistake. I am a man used to winning, you see, and it felt impossible for it to be any other way. And-- and it laughed at me, like I was the one being ridiculous."
"When it let me go, I woke up once more."
"It was the day after Burakh passed away. I was in my home, and everything was still under control. As I traveled through the town, I spoke to many townspeople; some optimistic, some not. But I was ecstatic : that dream had not been real. I had not lost. There was still work yet to be done. It was the rumors that came soon after that made that optimism come undone. The townspeople spoke of men who actively hid the infected in their homes in my district. If that rumor was to be true, it would spell disaster. It would mean the Plague had already reached the last healthy district. It would mean, once again, that I lost."
"I spent the day tracking the rumor. One child there, a few adults here and there. They told me to go searching buildings, to try and hear the death brewing inside. And... and I found it."
[pause]
"The moment I found the infected bodies, it was all over. I had opened the door, allowed the plague to escape the room they had been locked into. Even if I hadn't opened the door, the people that had brought them there were likely already infected, and freely roaming the streets. And so, I had failed."
"I ran, ran, ran, tried to quell the worst of it as best as I could, but there is no winning against an enemy that is a million times larger than you. Eventually, there was nothing more to do, and I went back to my lodgings."
"And, again-! Again it was there. The orderly-like creature, standing so much taller than me, looking down on me. He spoke like it knew everything about me. Listed my achievements, my failures. Asked me if I was ready to die. I could feel every limb in my body trembling with terror, my legs shaking as though this decision was my very last, like those words I was hearing would define my fate."
"I wasn't ready. How could I ever be? Is anyone truly ever ready? So I told him to leave. I refused the fate that had been imposed on me. I truly, wholeheartedly believed I was able to change fate."
"And I woke up, again, in my bed. The district was once again free of the Plague, everyone was still optimistic, and so was I. But I carried a feeling of dread in my stomach the whole time I walked through town, spoke to the same people, said the same words. It felt like the day was repeating in every possible way, and so my inevitable failure with it."
"I can't remember. I can't remember how many times I refused death. I can't remember how many times I looked at its lifeless eyes, heard its disappointed voice. I'm Daniil D. Dankovsky, Bachelor of Medicine, founder of Thanatica. I simply couldn't lose against my worst enemy. I couldn't allow it to take me. I was scared! No, scared wouldn't begin to describe it. It was a terror that gripped me at my very bones, that froze me in place and made me all the more unable to fight destiny. Every time I woke up in that bed, I knew exactly what awaited me, and still I was reluctant to accept it."
"...perhaps it was the greatest relief in my life to come to terms with my failure. Looking at the beast's long beak, and telling it that I wanted it to end. That I, Bachelor Dankovsky, was ready to die."
"From the very beginning, I never had a chance. I counted on others to do my work. I rationalized the outbreak every step of the way, refused to perform work that was below me, or sounded too ridiculous for me to accept. I told myself I couldn't do anything but win, because it was all I was ready to accept. But I'm weak. I'm weak, I'm powerless. I could hide that weakness from everyone... except from death."
"What do I have left? Nothing. I have nothing left."
A merrow can heal, as long as there's a soul within to sing to.
When I learned that, there wasn't a one of them who could stop me from putting on my magic cap and taking my human form again. There wasn't a one of them who could keep me from going back to the mountains I grew up in, and tracking down my old friend, Harrison Swain.
I only heard it secondhand and years after it happened. But there was a fight between Harrison and one of the town boys, and it ended with Harrison getting kicked in the head. Couple other Swains dragged him out of there, but not to the doctor, it seems. They went back down to the hollow, and it was months before anybody saw Harrison again.
I hardly knew him when I saw him next myself. He let his hair grow long and tangled it up into those nasty mats that're the closest us white folks can get to dreadlocks. Half his face was hidden by a big dark beard, but I could see the white, white teeth whenever he grinned. He grinned a lot, like there was some big joke going on that only he knew about. Which wasn't like him at all -- when my friend Harrison had a joke on his mind, he'd share it. He liked making people laugh, which was why he'd always told so many stories. This new Harrison was laughing at the rest of us.
It was his eyes, though, that unsettled me the most. His eyes were always wide and staring, as if he were trying to see through to the most vulnerable parts of a person. And one of his pupils, the left one, was always blown wide... from the damage that kick to his head had done.
There was something else in his head with him. That was the thought that came into my head when our eyes met the first time after it all, and I wasn't able to shake it. Turns out I was right.
It was his some-kind-of-cousin Rowan Swain who told me about the fits that Harrison would have. These fits were... suspiciously well timed, never happening at a time that would interrupt what Harrison planned, but he had them often. It sounded like epilepsy to me, the way Rowan said Harrison would stare off into nothing and shake, or fall over stiff as a mannequin. Rowan was usually the one to make sure Harrison didn't bite his tongue or choke on his own vomit when the fits happened. That's probably why he talked to me about it, when he saw how worried I was. Because he worried, too.
When I found him, down in the hollow, preaching mad things to his cousins and various other family members, I didn't waste a moment. I sang to heal his hurts, even as it drew every eye to me.
The song did nothing. And as he realized what I had tried to do, he started to laugh. "Oh, little fae. Focalor was called here by his hate, with no thought to his hurt."
There was no soul to sing to. Harrison was dead already, with something else in his skin. And here I was, surrounded by people who saw him as a leader. I couldn't run, and everyone knew it.
The thing in Harrison laughed even harder, so much that it almost sounded like a scream.
[ OOC: If you like, we can pick up the siren Q&A at Heather's inbox. Figured I owed you another statement as well :) ]
Edited (Me: Oh hey let's go through this list of demon names, this one sounds good... Also Me: Shit. Dummy. It sounded good because it was familiar.) Date: 2025-01-26 03:36 pm (UTC)
[ It's a late October afternoon, sometime before Pumpkinfest is due to open. Gerry stops by Jon's quaint little seaside cottage to see if he wants to grab some of those big ass turkey legs from the food stalls, knocking on the door. ]
[ It doesn't take long for Jon to open the door, and he offers a playful smile as he does. It'd been a fairly quiet afternoon, and this was just the lift in energy he'd needed. ]
I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not accepting any solicitation at this time. I haven't got the money for any magazines, or... vacuums. [ He starts, clearly joking. ]
The door to Jon's small, seaside home is left unlocked. A light coating of dust begins to form, barring a few surfaces - he clearly didn't stay long, when he returned from his last voyage.
Laid out neatly on his desk is a note, typed out on a typewriter, and poised purposefully beneath the desk's lamp.
To whom it may concern,
I'd like to apologize, first and foremost, for my deception. I've made it known for the last several days that I would be absent for a short time while Jean and I ventured on a study of some of their findings from Dr. Coldwood's expedition. This is not the case, and never had been the case.
If this note is found, that likely means we have been gone for longer than anticipated, and it is possible we will not return.
Our intentions were, to put it as simply as possible, to defeat and potentially kill the Prince of Fools, Mendel. Jean is a warrior with great capabilities of waging onslaughts on those not of our world, and our hopes are for my Sight to be able to guide us beyond the barrier, to the jaws of the Infernal. They have harmed our people enough, and this is our attempt to take direct action.
Doing so does not come without cost, of course. If we are to fail, we will be doing so outside the barrier. I do not believe we will be able to come back from this.
I'm sorry to anyone I've left behind, who are hurt, betrayed, or wounded by my avoidance to discuss it. I won't try to hide behind excuses: it is cowardice on my part, not being able to leave someone with worries so heavy. I can only hope that, should the worst have come, you know that I was doing my best to help the people of this town, and that, someday, you will find it in your hearts to forgive me.
To Zelda: You've been a wonderful friend to me, and I wouldn't have made it nearly as far as I have without you. Thank you for everything.
To Gerry: Be good, will you? Feel free to take any of my journals, as well as my stash of cigarettes in the lockbox beneath my bed, should any of it be of use to you.
To Annabel: I'm so sorry you had to find out like this. You deserved more from me. I love you. I've left you a pocket-watch I found in the sea. Please exercise caution with it. It may be cursed. I hope it isn't.
To Neil: You've bared the greatest brunt of my dishonesty, and for that, I understand if you cannot forgive me for it. I love you dearly, and I hope this cursed town someday sees you as you are: a man so fully of the people, willing to lay his neck on the line, all for the sake of truth and justice.
For anyone I've not written to directly, please take little offense from it - I'm writing this quite late at night, and am still grappling with the idea that it may ultimately be unnecessary. Be well, all of you, and may your lanterns always be lit.
"Sims! Are you busy?" Shen Qingqiu's voice is bright and animated with excitement over the sending stone, a far cry from the subdued nervous he'd spoken to Jon when they first met or the clipped and accusing way he tossed words in his face soon afterwards -- but then, they've been on much more friendly terms for nearly a month now, and Shen Qingqiu himself is close to completing his ninth month on Marrow Island. It'd been a surprising little luxury, adapting to the local culture and the cultures of his acquaintances at his at his own pace, picking and choosing which of his own habits he'd keep and which he'd...oh, not discard, certainly not. But put up on a shelf for now.
(A few changes were necessary, in the end. For all his prickliness and pretensions Shen Yuan had always been haunted by a deep-seated need to be liked, and that didn't exactly go away when he became Shen Qingqiu.
If anything it got worse.)
"I found the most amazing thing at Calloway's," he's explaining now, grinning at his sending stone as though Jon can see his face. "You have to see it. Actually you should just come over. Whenever you're free."
When his sending stone chimed, he hadn't expected the voice that came through it, but it's certainly not unwelcome. He pulls the stone from where he keeps it in the breast pocket of his coat, listening with a keen interest. Sure, he's out on errands right now, but considering how completely and utterly thrilled he sounds--- God, how often is it that people call him with good, exciting news anymore?--- how could he deny that call to come have a look? He's barely even left the Bluffs; a small detour to Northwest Hollow to meet a friend is well worth the slight trek out of the way.
"You caught me at a good time, coincidentally. I'm in the neighborhood," Jon's attention skims over the roads, trying to wrack his mind for house numbers and directions. "If it's as incredible as you're letting on, I think the trip to the market can wait just a while more. Can I ask what it is, or am I going to have to wait to see?"
Well that can't be anything good. For a while, Jon considers what to do - instead of going to speak, he writes back.
John,
I'm sorry to hear that you and Neil had an unfortunate run-in. Would it be any trouble to ask what happened? I'd like to stay as informed as possible on things that happen, being that you're both friends of mine.
Also: congratulations on the impending foal. I'll be sure to visit with Helga more often on my way into town.
A woman enters the tea shop while Jon is working. She is wearing a red linen dress and a brown leather coat, rough and piecemeal in its construction with a jagged hem, creating an odd silhouette. The pieces of hide that form it look fused, not sewn, and a wreath of battered black fur rests upon her shoulders like laurels. The features of her face draw the eye far more than the coat--- striking attractiveness, raven curls, dark eyes like scalpels, long doe's eyelashes, a cherry red lip like a warning. Danger! Danger!
She sits at the counter. As soon as he makes eye contact, the air is electric as two forces of nature collide. She's old. It doesn't take the Eye's blessing to sense that in a fellow avatar. But her skin has been replaced, her organs refashioned as many times as she needs.
The smell of steak and garlic. Of wine and chocolate. Of blood and sex.
The Flesh.
"Hi honey." A smile finds her lips. Her accent is American with just the slightest hint of German. "Any chance I can get a London Fog?"
There aren't many avatars on Marrow Isle, and certainly not ones that Jon hasn't come to expect. When Daisy stops by, the looming presence of the ties of Hunt are immediately palpable; when Martin enters a room, a breeze of Lonely follows him. There have been glimmers of other things in people who have come and gone, familiarity found among those who would flirt with inhumanity but never lose themselves to it entirely.
But never, save for objects kept carefully under lock-and-key, has there been Flesh.
It's so palpable that it almost leaves Jon stunned, floundering for a moment, before he comes to his senses again. This version of himself had not yet had his encounter that would leave him forever marked; he doesn't know just how far the Flesh's reach can go.
He does not return the smile, but he's not unpleasant; this island is made up of all kinds, and he's not exactly in a place to judge, considering his history.
"Ah--- good morning," he manages with only a brief stumble, setting aside the freshly-washed pitchers he'd been returning to their place on the counter behind them. He tries not to look too deeply. He fails. What a strange, immaculate patchwork she is. Every seam fits together just so.
He tears his attention away before he can look any deeper. There's work to be done, after all. "Of course. Would you like that hot or cold?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Archives of Pumpkin Hollow
Date: 2023-07-22 04:36 pm (UTC)This is the submission box for statements to Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. As an avatar of the powerful entity known as the Ceaseless Watcher, Jon’s wellbeing requires him to take in information about the terrifying supernatural experiences of others in the form of statements. If he does not do so on a regular basis, he may begin to feel sickly or exhausted. But you can help!
Using the comments below, write a short narrative (IC) describing a frightening paranormal experience. Jon’s abilities as the Archivist allow you (and to some extent compel you) to describe your experience with great clarity and in the form of prose, so spare no detail.
Statements must be at least 3 paragraphs long and must specifically be about paranormal experiences that left a deep impact of fear on the individual. There is no maximum length. Jon’s target is 5 statements per month, and he gets a small bonus if he meets this quota.
Thank you for your contribution!
Statement begins.
Statement of Princess Zelda of Hyrule, regarding her confrontation with Calamity Ganon
Date: 2023-07-22 07:36 pm (UTC)From a very young age, I was aware of my destiny. From the moment I was born, everyone knew that I was made for the purpose of greatness. That I was privy to a holy power, passed down to me from a human incarnation of the goddess herself, through all the women in my bloodline, along with the name "Zelda."
As a child, my training was rigorous. Countless hours of study, learning my lineage and their history. Entire days of prayer, asking the goddess to bestow her blessing, wisdom, and voice to me. Practice at the techniques of controlling energy and breath that would help me manipulate my holy magic when at last it arrived. But all my prayers fell on deaf ears. For seventeen years, I prayed, focused I begged, I screamed, I cried, I fought. I knelt at the foot of every statue of Hylia I could find and I pleaded with the goddess to please, please, let me hear her voice, let me fulfil my birthright, let me protect my people.
Silence.
I hated them. I hated all of them that came before me. Who played their parts in their legends, who sealed Demise away and had exactly what they needed. I hated Link, another chosen one who never seemed to question or doubt his destiny, never faltered. I hated my parents for thrusting this name on me when I wasn't worthy. Sometimes, I even hated the goddess.
On the day of my 18th birthday, I tried one more time. I went to the goddess statue at Lake Lanayru, said to be the birthplace of wisdom and forbidden to children. I stood in that freezing lake and I prayed and prayed. And when my prayers still went unanswered as dawn broke, I wept.
It was that very next morning that the apocalypse came. A huge cloud of swirling black and red bloomed in the sky like a sickly flower, lightning cracking down from it in flashes of nauseous magenta. Its body erupted from the ground, serpentine and noxious, but it roared with the face of a monstrous boar. It was larger than the palace, wrapping its hideous form around the stone titan of a building I had once called home. Once called safe. Creeping tendrils sprawled across the castle, the ground, the sky, covering everything in poison. Horror and despair sucked the breath from my lungs. Apocalypse.
In a matter of hours, all the preparations we had done were reduced to naught. The Divine Beasts and Guardians, machines of the ancients we had spent years learning to use to protect ourselves, stolen. The Champions, who spent their lives honing their own holy powers, murdered. Thousands of innocent Hyruleans lay slain. And it was all my fault.
As Link and I fled for our lives, a bitter rain making the night grow dark earlier than it might have and drenching us in cold water and mud. All at once, I felt myself grow unable to go on, falling to my knees. What was the point? Why did I even deserve to live when those who had done so much more than me lie dead? Why did Link have to turn from his own glory to protect one useless princess?
He should have scolded me. Should have dragged me along. Should have left me behind. But instead, he knelt before me, and he held me. And in the rain I wept in his arms.
That was when the corrupted Guardian came for us. And it was only in saving him that I finally, finally claimed my power. Far too late. But it wasn't over yet.
I would need Link to stand by my side in order to have the power to seal the darkness, but he was hurt. I had no choice but to enshrine him until his power and life was restored. I sent him with my trusted attendants, and finally I stood to meet my own fate.
I stood before the castle. I called to it, trying to look brave. But I was more terrified than I ever had been in my life. I channeled every trace of the goddess' light that I could pull from the heavens into my heart. I glowed with ferocity. And the monster rushed me. At the moment of contact, we were transported, ascending beyond the physical, I a being of pure light, and Calamity Ganon, of pure darkness. I felt the gloom and sickness coil around my soul, trying to rip it from me, trying to creep into the cracks of my divine light and rip me apart.
And so we would remain for one hundred years. A century of stalemate, tearing each other apart and building ourselves back, pressing against each other, formless and divine, numb to all but my divine agony.
Statement of Lucas Kovach, IOPSA Medium, in regards to Lake Sal-Co-Penn
Date: 2023-07-23 04:55 am (UTC)Via written statement:
I'm guessing you don't want some dry IOPSA-style report so I'll give you the skinny as it comes to me. If you're interested in something less...whatever the hell this is going to be then swing by the office sometime or drop me a note.
The Town Hall’s Board of Safety posted about Lake Sal-Co-Penn recently and how we should avoid it at all costs. Which is exactly the kind of thing that I think needs looking into and boy did it ever.
I went out a few times. First of all, the water is unnaturally still. It didn't seem to matter if it was windy or not, no matter what that water wasn't moving. It made it look like glass and the water is dark, but I could still make out some shapes in the water. At first I thought they might be logs or stones under the water, but in every case they turned out to be bodies. Not just any bodies, but people I knew. People that Milo and Connor and Andy knew, too. But the ones I knew where from when I was a kid, it's one of the few things I remember from living in Germany. The last memory I have of my biological parents. That they got wrapped up in some cult bullshit and drank the kool-aid and lights out! They were floating out there in that lake with those stupid cups.
I've seen a lot of death in my line of work and it's always hard. Every single time it's just knowing that another life is gone, that whatever future they had is lost. It's never routine, if it ever gets that way I need to get the hell out of this line of work, but what I'm trying to say is that this...hits different. It's a memory I'd like to forget and sometimes I do. But it always comes back, just not like this.
I'm not sure how to describe it other than I wanted to claw out of my skin and run for the hills, dude. Being afraid like that just breaks something in you, I guess? I'm not sure. No one should ever have to experience that once but like lucky me! Twice! I should go buy a lotto ticket or something. I mean, if Pumpkin Hollow has a lotto. It's weird because I feel like I could write all of this stuff down right now and get it out of my head, but I don't want to at the same time. I'm too scared to face that again I guess.
I'm rambling. I don't even know if this makes any sense but I'm too much of a weenie to back and reread it. Hopefully that helps you? If not, maybe we can chat.
Statement of Agent Jean, Pumpkin Hollow Recovery Task Force, regarding workplace dress code policy
Date: 2023-07-29 04:44 pm (UTC)"Hahahahaha, hahaha...ha...I've been trying to figure out where to even start since we arranged this meeting! No one here seems to understand things that seem obvious to me, but - well, Madam Princess Zelda said - she - I think I've got something for you! It's just gonna be a bit of a hike!" Jean had asked for tea for this interview, and now stirs their cup - black, there's nothing to stir into it, and yet - with a distant expression in their wide eyes. That resting slasher smile hasn't been on their face this whole time.
They're grappling with something big enough that its mere motion is knocking over the shelves in their mind. Maybe this will help. They hope this will help.
"...The thing you have to understand about the City is we talk about it like it's carved into Districts that are ruled by the Wings of the World, the corporations that govern us, but that's not quite right! Every District is surrounded by the Backstreets, those parts of the City no Wing claims, and it gets...it gets...it's bad there, Agent Jon. There's not enough food and resources to go around. You get blackouts! Usually you grow up under the governance of one of the Syndicates but they're, hahaha, they're...they're fun..." The spoon clinks as Jean stirs slowly, one finger on the end of it to make a smooth and regular motion. "For three hours a day in the dead of the night there's the Night on the Backstreets, when all crimes are legal by writ of the Head. No matter who supposedly owns the place, or sets the taboos, Syndicate or Wing or what have you, it's all legal, and if you try to report whatever happens? The Head takes you. You just die, screaming. It's always screaming, for hours and hours..."
Their free hand is tapping the table. That motion is far less regular, far less controlled. Every now and again Jean twitches, and every time they do they try out a sunny smile, the effect somewhat spoiled by all those strangely sharp teeth.
"All that's just context! People will do anything to get off the Backstreets! I know I sure did! To work for a Wing, and live in their Nest, never go hungry again, not just get your organs harvested so someone else can make rent - that's the dream, right? And I did it! I signed up with Lobotomy Corporation - L-Corp - and moved into Nest L, and there was just, so much, so much going on all the time. The food, everywhere, people going to and from their jobs without getting attacked in the streets, the bars - the karaoke! Oh I miss that! I haven't done karaoke in...doesn't matter, I suppose."
Jean clears their throat. Their normally manic voice is slowly dipping down, becoming pained, if still very energetic. Those wide eyes slide past Jon's shoulder, and stare into the wall. "I was...hahahaha, ha, I was so feral when I signed up! Surviving the Backstreets makes you tough as hell, don't get me wrong, but L-Corp's Agents were a whole different level, guys were tougher than some Fixers - uh." An interruption in the pained recollection as Jean realizes they've dropped another Proper Noun. "Fixers are...they're...warriors for hire? Mercenaries is sorta the right word except not every Fixer Office owns an army, is the thing! And not all of them act like it! But if you take money in the City to fight things and people, you get really good at it or you fucking die! Anyway, they trained me up. It was nuts! They even had guns, and those cost a fortune! I could sell my whole house in the Nest and buy one bullet and still need to get the gun! And here L-Corp was spending bullets like water to teach us how to parry them!"
The stirring pauses, and Jean looks down at the tea.
The stirring resumes, and their eyes slide back to the exact same spot on the wall. "L-Corp was a power company, providing energy to the entire City, and I was an Agent in the Disciplinary Team. Every department had a set of Abnormalities, these...they're not people, not even the ones that really, really seem like people, but 'things' doesn't sound right either. All kinds of shapes and sizes. Trees and spiders, self-styled 'magical girls', headless suits of armor, plants...the birds...the birds were awful. They all need things, want things, do things that they shouldn't be able to do, and if you put them in the right kind of cell, and develop the right kind of relationship with them, they produce Enkephalin, and L-Corp turned that into cheap, clean electricity. Sometimes that just means taking care of them like a pet - feed them, water them, clean their cell, some of 'em really love that. Sometimes it means getting a personal relationship with them, you, you listen to their stories, or share your own, you hug someone that seems like a sad girl, or, or give 'em advice, whatever. Some of 'em just want to be studied! Isn't that weird? Super happy just for you to walk in with lab instruments and go to town. And. Sometimes they need to be repressed. Talked down to, beaten, restrained, denied...I was good at that job. Repression work. Must be the Backstreets, huh? Ha...ha..."
The spoon wobbles. Jean closes their eyes and exhales slowly and gently, then breathes in deep. Their eyes open again. "...Electricity isn't the only thing L-Corp derived from Abnormalities though. Hike's over, Agent Jon, we've arrived where I was going with this. The Enkephalin could be used, somehow, I never knew how, to manufacture E.G.O. equipment - weapons, and armor in the City style. That stuff handles like a dream! Every Agent eventually had their own set that they wore, and boy, we needed it! It helped us survive! It always fit perfectly, always comfortable, and some of it just, it did things, above and beyond the other things it did. Some of those weapons could carve up the body like it was gelatin, some of them attacked the mind directly, some would decay both...and then there's PALE damage..." A full-body shudder. "...Mine was Crimson Scar, derived from the Little Red Riding Hooded Mercenary. Little Red. How to even..."
"...Abnormalities aren't people. Not even the ones that seem like people. Little Red really seemed like people. This young lady with a rough voice, always wearing her red hood and her armor and this mask decorated with wolf teeth that only showed one yellow eye. I was assigned to handle her in day to day operations. Easy to get along with, really, she's...a professional? Little Red had no grudge about being in our cell, even got authorized to help us with containment breaches! What a sight! Red could carve her way through other horrors, cash out her Enkephalin paycheck, and walk right back to her cell! Just um. You gotta not stand in front of her. Little Red doesn't understand friendly fire. Or. Maybe. She does. I never...never did ask..."
The stirring stops. Jean goes to pick up their tea, and they just...can't. Eventually they give up and resume stirring it, breathing shakily. "She had this relationship, with another Abnormality, the Big And Will Be Bad Wolf. Said it had maimed her as a child, and she hated it. If it ever broke loose, she'd breach containment too and hunt it down. Get anywhere near that fight and you'll just die. If they'd been outside...the collateral was bad enough in the facility. I learned to hate it too, at first. She talked about...she'd always be saying, 'I've been grinding this axe instead of picking flowers since I was sixteen'. I made a mistake, hahaha, I thought...I thought she was a person. But they're not people."
"Wanna know how I know?"
"I was given the first set of E.G.O. derived from Little Red, Crimson Scar. Two parts, a copy of her weapons, and a suit a lot like her armor. Moved like a dream, and if you pair them together you get faster, faster and faster, you can run to a fight like you're flying! The gun and sickle meant I could join a fight from far away and then get in close and protect people! I loved that. I miss it. The weapons here are...the equipment is so bad. I'd do just about anything to get a real City weapon! But I hadn't been paying attention to the company literature."
"She talked to me, when I wore her E.G.O., is the thing. All the time. Her angry voice in my head, talking, always talking. 'Look how they're hurting your friends'. 'Take your revenge, kill them, kill them again and again, make it hurt a new way every time'. She hated. That's all Little Red really was, is the thing, hate. Whatever made her, whatever happened to her, she's just hate and anger and sorrow and she wanted me to, to be like her, she'd talk about my life on the Backstreets, every wrong an Abnormality ever did to me or my co-workers, every time, her voice, in my - in my fucking head -"
Jean spills the tea when their hand twitches. They don't seem to even notice. "...I wore Crimson Scar until the end of my employment, Agent Jon. Clock in. Fight Little Red about who I am. Fight Abnormalities. Meet my quotas. Clock out. Clock in. Fight Little Red..."
"...And I...still want Crimson Scar back. I'm weak now. I can't. Protect anyone."
Statement ends.
[Action First - He's a bit shy with personal details]
Date: 2023-08-28 09:45 pm (UTC)"Good afternoon. My name is Lord Erik Osborne and I've come in regards to your advert on the bulletin, Mr. Sims. Is now a reasonable time to request that beverage of choice?"
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Date: 2023-09-01 10:38 pm (UTC)Yes, of course, come in, Mr. Osborne. And, ah--- of course, I'd be happy to get you whatever you'd like before we begin. Any preferences? I have water, of course, as well as a few varieties of teas, and I recently bought a bit of powdered cocoa if you'd rather something sweet...?
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Date: 2023-08-30 11:04 pm (UTC)With faked confidence she knocks loudly a few times, and curtsy's once the door is opened. Despite this her voice starts trembling immediately, "S-s-ser Sims? I wished to s-speak to you about...well. Someone said you are collecting harrowing tales! And I have one! It was awful!"
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Date: 2023-09-01 11:09 pm (UTC)Of course, come in, come in. Take a seat anywhere you like, I'll get you something to drink. Was what happened to you... recent? I know old frightening encounters can leave horrible scars, but you seem particularly rattled. Are you alright?
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From:Statement of one Sam Porter Bridges re: BTs, Void-Outs, and Repatriation
Date: 2023-10-08 07:53 am (UTC)"Uh...ok, to start off, it didn't begin with me. We're not totally sure when it officially began. Some time mid-twenty-first century, the line between world of the living and the dead started getting blurry. Anyone died, they started stayin' put. Not their bodies. Bodies started decaying faster. Too fast. We called it 'going necro'. Decomp process on overdrive and it made it real important to get 'em out to where they could be disposed of completely. Usually cremation'd do it but you have to be careful of the smoke. It was the chiral matter doing it-
"Lemme explain. When something's a chiral reflection, it kinda works like your hands. It's perfect reflections but only when situated a specific way. Palm to palm, perfect mirror, but if you lay one hand over the other-" A shuffling as he lays the palm of one hand over the back of the other, "-it's not perfect anymore. Thumb on each side, fingers don't like up, you get it. Anyway, chiral matter's a lot like antimatter. You know what happens when antimatter comes into contact with regular matter? Yeah. Big fuckin' explosion.
"So, you get antimatter seeping into the world, through the umbilical tether that keeps people tied to where they passed. Ghosts doubling as big fuckin' bombs. But they only get tripped when they come into contact with human beings, so basically it's not a problem if nobody dies around other people.
"But that's just not how people work. They need each other to survive. Sometimes you can't help when shit happens.
"Thing is, some of us, we can't die. Between the chiral contamination, the Seam letting some of us find a way back, and a persistent tether between the Ha and Ka, the body and soul, we became repatriates. Means even if we get grabbed by a BT- uh, a Beached Thing, something stuck in limbo, and the hand of god comes down and-" A clap, one hand coming down to slap onto the other, "-craters the last of a fuckin' city, sometimes there's just one guy sitting in the middle of it all, wondering what just hit 'em. Don't get me wrong, it still hurts like hell to die. Never gets any easier. But I know like this I won't become a BT. Small favors, huh?"
Written Statement of Edward Kaspbrak - First Encounter with It (Monster under Derry, Maine)
Date: 2023-10-24 11:17 pm (UTC)We all encountered It alone at first. That's how It hunted, you see... isolate, terrify, attack. It said to us, "You taste so much better when you're afraid."
And yes, It would literally eat the children that It hunted.
I'd go to the train yard when I couldn't find anyone else to play with on Saturdays. I always liked trains, and cars too. Great big freight trains would still come through Derry when I was kid, and I loved to watch the big northbound car-carriers. I'd dream about having one of those shiny-new Fords, or even better... a Cadillac. Those were the kind of little dreams I didn't feel like sharing with anybody. To just hop in a car and go... get away from everything but the road and yourself.
Maybe the fact that I was thinking like that at eleven should have been a red flag, but like I said, I never told anybody. And what eleven year old knows about red flags?
I was a cautious kid, and one thing about the train yard and its trains worried me -- the tramps and hobos that traveled on them. It's one thing to be kicked out of the train yard by the trainmaster, and it's another thing entirely to be hassled by a tramp. They frightened me (already frightened by my mother's horror stories of what disease could do to you) with their cold sores and cracked skin. They'd come up and slur out, "Ya gotta cigarette?" which I never had.
Neibolt Street was in the neighborhood near the trains, and it was one of the rundown places in Derry. A lot of those houses would get broken into so the tramps could squat there.
I always thought the the hobo under the porch at 29 Neibolt Street had leprosy, and that terrified me. My friends Bill and Richie, who I told about it later, said it was more like he had "the Syph" (and trust me, reading about advanced cases of syphilis at age twelve left its mark, too). But whether the real hobo had leprosy or not, that's what It saw was in my mind and that's what It used when It targeted me.
It was springtime, and for some godforsaken reason I felt the urge to go check out that space under the porch. I think that might have been It pushing at my mind, to get me there by myself and spring It's trap.
It looked like the hobo, but gone even worse. Eaten away by rot and still alive -- the skin of It's forehead was split and leaking pus, and I could see the white, white bone underneath. Like it was shining in that dark space under the porch. It's lower lip sagged down, and the inside was spotted all over with dark blotches. There was no upper lip at all, and I could see all of the horrible yellow teeth and inflamed red gums. It didn't have a nose either. Where the hobo from before had one nostril eaten away into a red channel, It had made it worse -- just a ruin of gristle and infection. One rotten eyelid was sagging down into an empty socket, and the other eye stared at me, gleeful and blue.
"How bout a blowjob, Eddie?" It said.
The hobo had said something similar -- hey kid, I'll give you a blowjob for a quarter.
Both times it terrified me, and both times it felt like it took me forever to run away.
The leper began to crawl out toward me, and even though most of my brain was trying to process what I was seeing and just kind of screaming over all of it, I had one clear little thought when It reached out one rotting hand for me.
If It touches me, if it touches my bare skin, I'll start to rot, too.
That broke through all the panic, and even though I was wheezing something horrible and my head was spinning from lack of air, I managed to scramble backward.
It kept talking to me, crooning that I'd like being down there with all of them, that my friends were down there, and that one blue eye never looked away from me.
I got out from under the porch and back into the sunshine. In the movies, even the scary ones, you're safe in the light. I grabbed for my aspirator and triggered it, and the taste of the medicine was a relief. I could relax...
And then It's rotten hands burst through the old porch, clawing at the wood and leaving bloody streaks. The leper was wearing a colorful clown suit, with big orange pompom buttons down the front, and somehow the sheer ridiculous contrast of that suit with the horror of It's face made everything worse. I think the terror of that moment levitated me straight up, because I don't remember getting to my feet. I just remember running, running like I'd run from the hobo, and knowing that I was going to be too slow to beat the leper that It was. I could hear It breathing hard behind me, but there was no wheeze in It's lungs like there was in mine.
I could hear It's feet in those big clown shoes tramping after me, as I ran for my bike. Stupid kid that I was, I'd left it by the sidewalk that ended four houses before 29 Niebolt Street. But if I could get to my bike, I could get to safety... even though it felt far too slow as I ran.
I swear I felt those bony fingertips snag into my hair a moment before I grabbed the handlebars. I kept my head down as I swung my leg over the bike and just focused on getting on and getting out of there... but I heard it whisper one last thing.
"Blowjob... come back any time, Eddie. Bring your friends."
Statement of Shen Qingqiu, regarding his first meeting with his favorite martial brother.
Date: 2024-08-19 11:15 pm (UTC)"...Well, let's try it anyway. It should make an interesting experiment, and I...I want to talk about Liu Qingge, this time. Maybe it defeats the purpose a little, trying to make myself feel better, but...I do miss him. I think I was on pretty good terms with all my martial siblings, but he and I...we had a special bond, for reasons that you'll see shortly."
"As you might have already gathered by now, I'm not really a proper cultivator. I was never initiated into any sect, never passed any trials or studied martial arts in my youth, unless you count a few tai chi classes I took in high school for a PE credit, which you shouldn't. I did read a lot of cultivation stories, but not anymore than I read palace dramas or Western fantasy or other things. I read Harry Potter even, more than once. My favorite character was Remus Lupin."
"When I was...placed, in Shen Qingqiu's body, I inherited all of his skills. I suddenly knew how to do everything he'd known how to do, how to cultivate, how to wield a sword or to fly on it, how to cast spells. I no longer needed to eat or sleep unless I wanted to, and I didn't really got cold anymore, even though I was living in a bamboo cottage with no insulation on a mountain top. It was amazing...but I still felt like something was missing. Knowing how something is done isn't the same thing as being able to do it, after all; if it were otherwise then every single basement-dwelling Bruce Lee fan would on some kind of government watchlist as dangers to society. And I won't get into it now but my first night hunt was very nearly a complete disaster. I knew that if I was going to be a real cultivator, a real and proper peak lord, then I needed...well, I needed to put in some work. I needed to cultivate."
"I asked the sect leader for permission to enter the sacred caves on Qiong Ding Peak, and of course he agreed. That's probably how Shen Qingqiu reached immortality in the first place, despite starting so late and having so many glaring personality problems, the kind of thing that's supposed to make it harder to reach the right degree of tranquility and inner peace -- Yue Qingyuan probably helped him cheat somehow, with trips to the sacred caves and special artifacts and who knows what else. He shouldn't have, but since I was benefiting from it now it didn't seem right to complain. So I just silently judged him a little and went on my way."
"The caves were...okay? I was expecting some kind of enchanted grotto like out of a book, aesthetically curved walls and stalactites and maybe some bioluminescent moss and a gently babbling brook, to create that perfect atmosphere. Feng shui may or may not be a real thing in your world, but in this kind of setting it very much was, and places with naturally high feng shui became basically reservoirs for spiritual energy, like how water naturally runs downhill. That's why these caves were sacred."
"Well, the shape of the cave was okay, and there was a little brook, but nearly all the moss had been hacked off the walls with a sword, leaving gouges as deep as my hand. There was this odd residue on the walls too, that flaked like a very thin layer of paint, and smelled faintly of copper when I held my fingers up to my face."
"It was very bizarre. Still, I could feel that the place was still teaming with spiritual energy, so I sat down on a sort of natural stone pedestal and settled in to meditate. It was surprisingly easy. Shen Qingqiu had known how to do this too, and I fell into a detached state in only a few minutes. It was...comfortable. Like stepping into a warm bath, in a tub big enough you could stretch out, raise your feet, and just...float there. In a timeless eternity. I don't know how long I'd been resting there when I heard the first scream."
"I snapped out of the meditative immediately. I probably don't need to tell you that people are absolutely not supposed to be screaming in the sacred caves, but...well, they aren't! I sat there in the dark for a long moment, wandering if it had been real, if maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me because I was so unused to the quiet. But then it came again."
"It was long and...the sound was somehow jagged, as if the person doing the screaming was in such immense pain that they couldn't draw a deep breath, but they had to scream anyway. As if they couldn't help it. I thought of the coppery dust I'd found on the walls -- obviously it was blood, what else could it be? -- and I wondered, how long has it been since anyone came in here? Could the sacred caves be...haunted?"
"I got up to look. I wasn't going to embarrass myself by running out of the caves claiming I'd heard a ghost, only for it to turn out to be nothing! I walked deeper into the cave, ears pricked for another scream, or the sound of someone else moving around in the dark. As it happened I saw him before I heard him; a human figure that glowed from within, as if his body had been built from some kind of luminescent marble. He was dressed in white, with long black hair streaming down his back, and he screaming in agony as he chopped at the walls with a shining sword."
"I finally realized what was happening. It wasn't a ghost, it was Liu Qingge, my martial brother. In the book he'd died off-screen, and Shen Qingqiu was eventually accused of murdering him -- but I'd just gotten there, and here he was. It was clear that he'd experienced a qi deviation, a catastrophically bad one. Cultivation isn't an exact science, you see, even in settings where people have been doing it for thousands of years. Every person is different, and some people pick cultivation techniques that are bad for them, or they don't pay close enough attention to what they're doing, or they keep pushing themselves into experiences that disrupt their inner peace. Whatever the reason, Liu Qingge was qi deviating. As I watched, I saw that he was bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth, that the entire front of his shirt was soaked with it. I knew he didn't have much more time -- and that his only chance of survival lay in my help."
"There wasn't time to go fetch another person, and how would it look if I said I'd found Liu Qingge in the caves, and by the time we found him again he was dead? Plus, if he lived...well, one good turn deserves another, doesn't it? But that wasn't the full reason that I wanted to help. You see, as I stood there watching him suffer, I just felt...so terribly sorry for him. Liu Qingge was the strongest warrior in our sect, you see! Probably the strongest human warrior in the world, even if Yue Qingyuan outmatched him in purely spiritual might! He wasn't technically an ascended deity, but there were people who already called him the War God of Bai Zhan Peak. Wasn't there something awfully pitiful, about someone so strong dying like this, alone and screaming, in a pool of his own blood? Not to mention..."
"Well, this probably sounds a little shallow of me, considering the circumstances, but...at the time, I was also struck by how beautiful he was. It made a certain degree of sense, his sister was Liu Mingyan, the most popular of Binghe's wives on Zhongdian Literature website for pretty much the novel's entire run. Nobody apart from Binghe had ever seen her face, Airplane never even wrote a smut extra about her, but they say that she wore that gauze mask all the time so her beauty wouldn't blind people. Looking at her brother, I could believe it. He was clearly a man, but he had this...softness about him, like one of those Renaissance statues that were so perfectly carved that the marble looks like flesh. He had high, arched cheekbones, and a strong jaw...a hero's jaw, I remember thinking. And he had this cute little mole under one eye...what do they call those? Right, beauty marks. What?"
"No, shut up. This is relevant! Hey, what are you complaining about? Didn't I just tell you what an amazing warrior he was? I was in mortal peril here! All it would take was a single misjudged step and he'd chop me into tiny pieces, like mincemeat! Not to mention that if I set up the spiritual connection wrong his qi deviation would propagate into my spiritual veins, and then we'd both die bleeding out the face! It was a dangerous situation, you can't blame me for getting a little hung up on the details."
"Ugh, philistine. Are you sure you're really gay? I mean I was only appreciating him platonically, if I was gay I'd probably have started salivating on the floor or something, even with the blood he was just that pretty. Sometimes you can just tell that someone would clean up nicely, you know? Anyway. I knew I had to move quickly, before he could do the mincemeat thing. So I gathered my spiritual power into the palm of my hand and, as Liu Qingge turned to face me, I struck him in the chest! He went flying, rolling and landing on his face-- proof, if any more had been needed, of the savagery with which his qi deviation had wracked him. If I'd tried that on a fully healthy and powered-up Bai Zhan War God, I'd have been the one who went flying!"
"I knelt over him, placing my hand on his back. He struggled, trying to get up, but I pinned him in place and began to pass him spiritual energy. I'm not sure I have words to describe the terror and excitement that surged through me in that moment, feeling such a powerful man struggle and writhe beneath me, huffing and growling like an angry beast and knowing that I would only survive if my will didn't falter. I tried not to think about all the different ways Liu Qingge could kill me -- breaking my neck, tearing my limbs off and leaving me to bleed out, blowing me to pieces with a blast of qi -- and focused instead on keeping the flow of qi between us steady."
"It felt like it took forever, but eventually my qi found a place to settle and take root in his spiritual veins, and he began to quiet. A few minutes more and his breathing slowed and he lay still. He seemed almost to be asleep, but when I released him and stood up he scrambled to his face as well, staring at me like...like he was the one who'd just seen a ghost."
"I pulled out my fan and averted my eyes, to preserve his dignity, and asked him how he was feeling. I could hear him grinding his teeth in the dark before he finally muttered my name -- Shen Qingqiu in a harsh growl -- before snatching his sword up off the ground and storming off! So ungrateful! But I forgave him, naturally. Of course a strong man like that would be embarrassed after being seen in such a moment of weakness."
"But later, after I'd been poisoned with Without a Cure and he stepped up to finish driving an invasion of demons off our mountain, he seemed to think things were even between us. He became my number one assistant in managing the symptoms, and after I...sent Binghe away, we even went on a number of adventures together. He was always taking me on this journey or that, or bringing back pieces of his kills if I hadn't been able to come along. You'd never have expected it from his reputation, but in the end...Liu Qingge really was very kind. His friendship meant a lot to me. I hope that somehow, someway, thanks to the circumstances under which I died, Luo Binghe will give up his vendetta against Cang Qiong. I really...really don't like the thought of the two of them fighting."
Statement of Agent Jean, Regarding The Tactics And Secrets Of The Floor Of Language
Date: 2024-09-03 11:29 pm (UTC)"...I feel like Zelda doesn't want to believe this, even though I keep trying to tell her, but I need you to understand - Gebura was a good manager. This story isn't all bad...hahaha, maybe we can call it an experiment. Because I am afraid, but I'm also proud! I went into this knowing what I was doing, and I'd do it again, so...I dunno. Maybe it'll balance your diet, Comrade Sims." In sharp contrast to many of their other Statements, here Jean actually takes a sip of their tea, and their eyes close gently. "But let's start at the beginning, give you some context to a few of the things I've said before..."
They chew their lip for a moment. "The Library worked by invitation, as I've said before. A Guest was never compelled to enter the Library and face its ordeals...but they did receive their invitation when it seemed, to them, like the Library had every solution to their problems. When accepting would get them away from someone else trying to kill them, when they were low on money, when our knowledge could solve their every life problem - we preyed upon them, make no mistake, and it was still a fairer deal than you could find anywhere in the City. And it was still wrong. I know that now, and I know now that the Director understood it before I did. Still, once the invitation was signed, they would come to the Library, and the various Floors would decide which of us would give them battle. Mine was chosen often, once we'd awoken from our sleep, and I know why. We were the Disciplinary Team, once, the mad dog that bites its master, and as the Floor of Language we were still beasts of ruin and sorrow. There is not a warrior in any world I would place my faith in over Madam Gebura, and we were her team."
Jean dips a pastry in their teacup and nibbles it, thoughtfully. They're trying to figure out where to continue their story. There's - no, no, the direction is obvious. "Each Floor had several Abnormalities, sleeping within their Books, bound to it. To gain their services we had to meet them within their domains. Some demanded that we offer them battle; others, assistance, compassion. Ours were Little Red, the Wolf," here Jean touches the lapel of Cobalt Scar, in which sleeps the spirit of their friend Vah Midna, "the Mountain of Smiling Corpses, Nosferatu, and Nothing There. Violent things, all of them, terrors to the body and the mind, rending flesh, drinking blood, offering unending and relentless war. Perfect for us. Maybe I wouldn't have taken so long to warm up to Vah Midna if I'd understood what it meant that Little Red and he started working together, there in the Library..." They shake their head. "I'm getting off-topic!"
They flash a guilty grin at Jon, sip their tea. It's good tea. One of these days Jean is going to remember that Martin is the one who taught Jon how to make this tea at the same time that they're at Oak and Iron in the morning, and thereby order it from the OG.
"The Abnormalities couldn't be summoned, you have to understand. They lent us the power of their stories, which we could call on when emotions climbed higher, and higher, and more feverish, when the Light was stoked to a frenzy. They gave us their blessings or their powerful curses, and in return we, in some sense, embodied them; they would move through us, and feel their stories enacted upon our enemies. I need to tell you about the Mountain, Jon. It's a thing of death, of despair, it's...hahaha, it's the feeling that life is so hard that it's better to die, because then no one can expect anything from you. No one can demand anything of you. No one can ask you, and you do not have to answer. I hated it. We needed it. The Mountain, too, is a person of the City, after all. A thing like me..."
"We still weren't ready for the first time we called it down on ourselves."
In the manner of Jean's Statements, Jon begins to hear music.
"The mercenaries of R-Corp's Fourth Pack, like all Guests, were desperate. Without the capital they could gain by attacking us and selling our knowledge, their way of life would die out. Gebura argued strenuously to be the one to give them battle, that it would be an insult not to face them herself. They had...the leader of the Rabbit Pack idolized Gebura, and was close to her. It was the service of a friend, to be the one to strike her down, an acknowledgement of a fellow warrior. So we received them, determined that no other Floor would get involved."
"The Fourth Pack are difficult to describe, as warriors. They are varied, professional, dauntless, terrifying. Their Reindeer troopers lashed us with psychic blasts to both body and mind; their Rhinos, on the front lines, protected the more vulnerable Reindeer and Rabbits. And the Rabbits...the Rabbits...I usually think of guns as silly things for weak people, Comrade Sims, but a Rabbit marksman could make me bleed. The sheer volume of bullets, the deceptively tactical placement, no thing living could block and dodge them all. And the Fourth Pack brought many troopers. Five Librarians, Comrade. More than forty mercenaries. We vowed to take them all on."
They go to take a sip of their tea. Hesitate. And then complete the motion, with a soft shudder through their body. They don't like this memory. But...
"The fight was long, and grueling. And you have to remember what I've said before - though Director Angela would remake our bodies if we died, we lost the knowledge of this when we gave battle, so that we would fear our deaths and therefore build up the passion needed to stoke the Light and to summon the power of the Abnormalities. We knew the power that the Mountain offered to us, and it had been decided, all of us, that we would only resort to it in extremis. You understand? Only if everyone agreed. Gebura would not order us to do it, and she would not decide; we all had to say yes. And, hahaha, things were looking bad! Izzy was about to die, Mari was on their last legs, even I was losing that fighting spirit, and there were so many, so very many, many and more and each one of them a worthy opponent...so we said yes. We drew the Mountain down on us."
"The power of the Mountain is this: it kills Gebura's team, and feeds our corpses to her, amplifying her power. I still remember, it's burned into me, the way we started catching each other's eyes. Me to Mari, Mari to Dominic, Dominic to Izzy, Izzy to Madam Gebura. We knew. It had to happen. We thought it would be forever, you understand? We thought we were giving up our lives, and we still said to her: do it. And she drew the Mountain of Corpses down. It ground us up, and fed us to her, and later I awoke to be told of our victory."
"But."
They set their cup down in the saucer, with a soft clink, and their voice is low. "It hurt, Comrade Sims. It hurt to die, and it hurt while I was dead. I could not see. I could not hear. I know nothing of the battle after my death, but I know this: every motion from Madam Gebura was a world of agony. Every parried blow was a burn across flesh that belonged to her now. Every wound she took, I shared. It hurt, and it did not stop hurting; it hurt, and I knew nothing but pain or the brief absence of pain that only made it hurt more. It hurt like nothing that has happened to me before, or since, has ever hurt. But after the battle, the Assistant Librarians, we got together, and we agreed not to tell Gebura. We still haven't. She's a good Manager, Comrade. She cared for us, and fought to keep us at her side, to protect us and to let us protect her. If she knew the truth...if she knew the truth, she'd never call the Mountain again, and that was unacceptable."
"So we lied, and we never did tell her what it meant, when we said: yes, consume us, in the name of victory."
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Date: 2024-09-04 06:11 pm (UTC)He takes a sip of his tea, letting out a breath as he's finally able to pull away from it, needing a few moments to process, not unlike a tape-player rewinding.
"Another R-Corp incident... you'd dealt with them with fair frequency, by the sounds of it. Or, all at once, and their attacks were all at once, but so distinct between each group," He remarks, tapping his fingertips against the tea cup. "I've spoken with Zelda briefly about the nature of your management, though, yes. Her opinion on that... has not changed, as far as I'm aware."
He pauses, his lips pulling into a thoughtful frown.
"...I'm not sure if that would remain the case, if she knew of the reality of the situation. I believe she's of a similar mind that I'd been, which was that your management had been... complicit, if not fully benefiting from the events you all endured. Not as a comrade of equal footing in as much of a leadership role as once can be, still so in the thick of everything, but still caught in the same snares that you and the rest of your team were in."
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From:Statement of Daniil D. Dankovsky, Bachelor of Medicine, regarding a strange series of events
Date: 2024-11-16 05:03 pm (UTC)"When I arrived to Town-on-Gorkhon, this cursed little town in the middle of nowhere, I had done so in order to perform my job, as a thanatologist. Where do I even begin to explain the violence of the outbreak that had followed my arrival? It was as though it had been waiting for me to take one step into town in order to begin. I am not a virologist-- I'm best at caring for dead people, not the living. And yet, that is what I had to do. That town wasn't even equipped with a hospital! Could you believe this? How did the women give birth, how did the ill get treatment? Truly, it was nothing like my beloved Capital. It was a miserable, pathetic town, and I had suddenly become one of the only people capable of saving it."
"And lord, I tried. I tried everything, believe me. I studied the question from every angle, even at great risk of getting infected myself. I treated dying women and children alike, had to break upsetting news every other hour. Medicine had been such a meaningless matter to these townsfolk that I had to barter with tiny, tiny children in order to acquire proper antibiotics. It was never enough. The town was being decimated, district by district."
"I may have failed to mention, all this time, that I was not the only doctor in town. One Artemy Burakh, the son of the man that urged me to visit the town, had also arrived in town, same day as I did. He did not have a degree, but was a talented surgeon. He specialized in alternative medicine, that I did not have any trust in whatsoever, but he was a stubborn and steadfast man. He had a goal and never wavered from it. I think, eventually, I found myself believing he was capable of making a miracle happen. He was just that sort of person."
"Perhaps that is why his death, from the Plague, hit me so hard. Perhaps that is why seeing his dead body shook me to my core. Perhaps that is why I lost my cool that day."
"His death had meant I was the only one left that was qualified to fight the outbreak. I ordered quarantines on infected districts, and the few employees I had made sure the townsfolk stayed informed of the progression of the Plague. These employees wore these - frankly, ridiculous - bird costumes that we had retrieved from the local Theater's wardrobe. They were massive, made of a cloak with a tall mask with a long, curvy beak. I found them quite effective in preventing the Plague from reaching the people inside, and so that is why I ordered the orderlies to wear them."
"On the day following Burakh's death, I had a frightening dream."
"I had just woken up, and the entire district I lived in was infected. My district had been the last safe haven there; the last place I could have rescued from the Plague, and I had failed. Dead, dying people sat in every corner of the building I woke up in. Desperate people, blaming me for my inaction, my failures, trying to beat me to death for it."
"Then, I met it."
"At first, I believed it was an orderly. It was dressed the exact same, in that big, bird-like costume. He stood over me quite the same. But I did not recognize its voice; and it did not speak to me the way an orderly would. And yet, its voice was familiar, so very familiar, it made my hands tremble when no other sight had ever done so before."
[shaky exhale] "It announced to me that I was dead. That it was time for me to come to terms with it. I thought it to be a joke, at first, but it seemed intent on making me see 'reality'. Of course, I was very much alive, and I insisted upon my failure being a mistake. I am a man used to winning, you see, and it felt impossible for it to be any other way. And-- and it laughed at me, like I was the one being ridiculous."
"When it let me go, I woke up once more."
"It was the day after Burakh passed away. I was in my home, and everything was still under control. As I traveled through the town, I spoke to many townspeople; some optimistic, some not. But I was ecstatic : that dream had not been real. I had not lost. There was still work yet to be done. It was the rumors that came soon after that made that optimism come undone. The townspeople spoke of men who actively hid the infected in their homes in my district. If that rumor was to be true, it would spell disaster. It would mean the Plague had already reached the last healthy district. It would mean, once again, that I lost."
"I spent the day tracking the rumor. One child there, a few adults here and there. They told me to go searching buildings, to try and hear the death brewing inside. And... and I found it."
[pause]
"The moment I found the infected bodies, it was all over. I had opened the door, allowed the plague to escape the room they had been locked into. Even if I hadn't opened the door, the people that had brought them there were likely already infected, and freely roaming the streets. And so, I had failed."
"I ran, ran, ran, tried to quell the worst of it as best as I could, but there is no winning against an enemy that is a million times larger than you. Eventually, there was nothing more to do, and I went back to my lodgings."
"And, again-!
Again it was there. The orderly-like creature, standing so much taller than me, looking down on me. He spoke like it knew everything about me. Listed my achievements, my failures. Asked me if I was ready to die. I could feel every limb in my body trembling with terror, my legs shaking as though this decision was my very last, like those words I was hearing would define my fate."
"I wasn't ready. How could I ever be? Is anyone truly ever ready? So I told him to leave. I refused the fate that had been imposed on me. I truly, wholeheartedly believed I was able to change fate."
"And I woke up, again, in my bed. The district was once again free of the Plague, everyone was still optimistic, and so was I. But I carried a feeling of dread in my stomach the whole time I walked through town, spoke to the same people, said the same words. It felt like the day was repeating in every possible way, and so my inevitable failure with it."
"I can't remember. I can't remember how many times I refused death. I can't remember how many times I looked at its lifeless eyes, heard its disappointed voice. I'm Daniil D. Dankovsky, Bachelor of Medicine, founder of Thanatica. I simply couldn't lose against my worst enemy. I couldn't allow it to take me. I was scared! No, scared wouldn't begin to describe it. It was a terror that gripped me at my very bones, that froze me in place and made me all the more unable to fight destiny. Every time I woke up in that bed, I knew exactly what awaited me, and still I was reluctant to accept it."
"...perhaps it was the greatest relief in my life to come to terms with my failure. Looking at the beast's long beak, and telling it that I wanted it to end. That I, Bachelor Dankovsky, was ready to die."
"From the very beginning, I never had a chance. I counted on others to do my work. I rationalized the outbreak every step of the way, refused to perform work that was below me, or sounded too ridiculous for me to accept. I told myself I couldn't do anything but win, because it was all I was ready to accept. But I'm weak. I'm weak, I'm powerless. I could hide that weakness from everyone... except from death."
"What do I have left? Nothing. I have nothing left."
The fourth draft of a letter
Date: 2025-01-15 03:46 am (UTC)When I learned that, there wasn't a one of them who could stop me from putting on my magic cap and taking my human form again. There wasn't a one of them who could keep me from going back to the mountains I grew up in, and tracking down my old friend, Harrison Swain.
I only heard it secondhand and years after it happened. But there was a fight between Harrison and one of the town boys, and it ended with Harrison getting kicked in the head. Couple other Swains dragged him out of there, but not to the doctor, it seems. They went back down to the hollow, and it was months before anybody saw Harrison again.
I hardly knew him when I saw him next myself. He let his hair grow long and tangled it up into those nasty mats that're the closest us white folks can get to dreadlocks. Half his face was hidden by a big dark beard, but I could see the white, white teeth whenever he grinned. He grinned a lot, like there was some big joke going on that only he knew about. Which wasn't like him at all -- when my friend Harrison had a joke on his mind, he'd share it. He liked making people laugh, which was why he'd always told so many stories. This new Harrison was laughing at the rest of us.
It was his eyes, though, that unsettled me the most. His eyes were always wide and staring, as if he were trying to see through to the most vulnerable parts of a person. And one of his pupils, the left one, was always blown wide... from the damage that kick to his head had done.
There was something else in his head with him. That was the thought that came into my head when our eyes met the first time after it all, and I wasn't able to shake it. Turns out I was right.
It was his some-kind-of-cousin Rowan Swain who told me about the fits that Harrison would have. These fits were... suspiciously well timed, never happening at a time that would interrupt what Harrison planned, but he had them often. It sounded like epilepsy to me, the way Rowan said Harrison would stare off into nothing and shake, or fall over stiff as a mannequin. Rowan was usually the one to make sure Harrison didn't bite his tongue or choke on his own vomit when the fits happened. That's probably why he talked to me about it, when he saw how worried I was. Because he worried, too.
When I found him, down in the hollow, preaching mad things to his cousins and various other family members, I didn't waste a moment. I sang to heal his hurts, even as it drew every eye to me.
The song did nothing. And as he realized what I had tried to do, he started to laugh. "Oh, little fae. Focalor was called here by his hate, with no thought to his hurt."
There was no soul to sing to. Harrison was dead already, with something else in his skin. And here I was, surrounded by people who saw him as a leader. I couldn't run, and everyone knew it.
The thing in Harrison laughed even harder, so much that it almost sounded like a scream.
[ OOC: If you like, we can pick up the siren Q&A at Heather's inbox. Figured I owed you another statement as well :) ]
Lot 37
Date: 2023-11-02 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-02 02:08 am (UTC)I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not accepting any solicitation at this time. I haven't got the money for any magazines, or... vacuums. [ He starts, clearly joking. ]
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From:A note slipped under Jon's door
Date: 2024-03-05 08:01 pm (UTC)For a Brit, you're not bad.
In all seriousness, I could use your help. Feel free to bring anyone from the Occularum you'd like, including Jean or that Neil bloke.
Check the bulletin board. I'd like to see you.
-I.J.
A Note, Left On His Desk
Date: 2024-03-14 11:55 pm (UTC)Laid out neatly on his desk is a note, typed out on a typewriter, and poised purposefully beneath the desk's lamp.
To whom it may concern,
I'd like to apologize, first and foremost, for my deception. I've made it known for the last several days that I would be absent for a short time while Jean and I ventured on a study of some of their findings from Dr. Coldwood's expedition. This is not the case, and never had been the case.
If this note is found, that likely means we have been gone for longer than anticipated, and it is possible we will not return.
Our intentions were, to put it as simply as possible, to defeat and potentially kill the Prince of Fools, Mendel. Jean is a warrior with great capabilities of waging onslaughts on those not of our world, and our hopes are for my Sight to be able to guide us beyond the barrier, to the jaws of the Infernal. They have harmed our people enough, and this is our attempt to take direct action.
Doing so does not come without cost, of course. If we are to fail, we will be doing so outside the barrier. I do not believe we will be able to come back from this.
I'm sorry to anyone I've left behind, who are hurt, betrayed, or wounded by my avoidance to discuss it. I won't try to hide behind excuses: it is cowardice on my part, not being able to leave someone with worries so heavy. I can only hope that, should the worst have come, you know that I was doing my best to help the people of this town, and that, someday, you will find it in your hearts to forgive me.
To Zelda: You've been a wonderful friend to me, and I wouldn't have made it nearly as far as I have without you. Thank you for everything.
To Gerry: Be good, will you? Feel free to take any of my journals, as well as my stash of cigarettes in the lockbox beneath my bed, should any of it be of use to you.
To Annabel: I'm so sorry you had to find out like this. You deserved more from me. I love you. I've left you a pocket-watch I found in the sea. Please exercise caution with it. It may be cursed. I hope it isn't.
To Neil: You've bared the greatest brunt of my dishonesty, and for that, I understand if you cannot forgive me for it. I love you dearly, and I hope this cursed town someday sees you as you are: a man so fully of the people, willing to lay his neck on the line, all for the sake of truth and justice.
For anyone I've not written to directly, please take little offense from it - I'm writing this quite late at night, and am still grappling with the idea that it may ultimately be unnecessary. Be well, all of you, and may your lanterns always be lit.
Goodbye.
-Jonathan Sims
A Silver Sword, a Plastic Figure
Date: 2024-09-29 12:10 pm (UTC)(A few changes were necessary, in the end. For all his prickliness and pretensions Shen Yuan had always been haunted by a deep-seated need to be liked, and that didn't exactly go away when he became Shen Qingqiu.
If anything it got worse.)
"I found the most amazing thing at Calloway's," he's explaining now, grinning at his sending stone as though Jon can see his face. "You have to see it. Actually you should just come over. Whenever you're free."
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Date: 2024-10-09 12:04 am (UTC)"You caught me at a good time, coincidentally. I'm in the neighborhood," Jon's attention skims over the roads, trying to wrack his mind for house numbers and directions. "If it's as incredible as you're letting on, I think the trip to the market can wait just a while more. Can I ask what it is, or am I going to have to wait to see?"
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From:Note in Jon’s mailbox about a week after the Dance of Celestine
Date: 2024-12-12 01:44 am (UTC)Your ex messed me up bad, and I don’t want to say anything that’ll hurt either one of you.
I hope your current boyfriend is nicer.
-J
P.S.: Helga’s not scamming you for clover anymore, she’s really that hungry. We got a foal coming, you’re second off the ranch to know.
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Date: 2024-12-20 05:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2025-01-03 01:57 am (UTC)She sits at the counter. As soon as he makes eye contact, the air is electric as two forces of nature collide. She's old. It doesn't take the Eye's blessing to sense that in a fellow avatar. But her skin has been replaced, her organs refashioned as many times as she needs.
The smell of steak and garlic. Of wine and chocolate. Of blood and sex.
The Flesh.
"Hi honey." A smile finds her lips. Her accent is American with just the slightest hint of German. "Any chance I can get a London Fog?"
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Date: 2025-01-03 02:18 am (UTC)But never, save for objects kept carefully under lock-and-key, has there been Flesh.
It's so palpable that it almost leaves Jon stunned, floundering for a moment, before he comes to his senses again. This version of himself had not yet had his encounter that would leave him forever marked; he doesn't know just how far the Flesh's reach can go.
He does not return the smile, but he's not unpleasant; this island is made up of all kinds, and he's not exactly in a place to judge, considering his history.
"Ah--- good morning," he manages with only a brief stumble, setting aside the freshly-washed pitchers he'd been returning to their place on the counter behind them. He tries not to look too deeply. He fails. What a strange, immaculate patchwork she is. Every seam fits together just so.
He tears his attention away before he can look any deeper. There's work to be done, after all. "Of course. Would you like that hot or cold?"
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From:cw: gross meat stuff
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