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2nd Zari, Year of Reeds
…they may say that rains at the end of summer wash things clean, and standing there in the downpour, my face upturned, cool and refreshed, I could almost believe it. The facades and awnings roared with sheets of rain and the accumulated soot began to fade as if by magic. You did not have to be a lifelong resident of the great city to know that that was not the end of the story. The spillways and sunken alleys that connected with all manner of chandlers’ warehouses, ruined tenements and sewer entrances would fill to the brim with a flood of filth which only became worse as the waters receded and those spaces that stretched beneath the elevated feet of good citizens were left with nothing but slime and flotsam and a substance so vile it could scarcely be called ‘mud.’
I would never have returned to the place of my birth unless necessity dictated it, and it did so this day. I must confess, however, that since I was here my curiosity as to the state of the city could be well satisfied.
Even in the rain, even in a district on the edge of things, Yharnam bustled.
On this street alone I could see knots of flagellants limping together from church to church, and well-to-do citizens doing their level best not to gawk. At the far end of the street a mountebank cried his wares, elixirs and potions and all manner of patent medicine. He would be gone as soon as he could before he attracted the attention of the law- the moment halberdiers in blue oilcloth appeared, it was already too late.
Mendicants sat in their usual spots, awaiting a handful of change though the wet street threatened to wash them away. Beneath a faded awning that strained under the weight of water, a group of displaced foreign soldiers smoked curiously bent beech-wood pipes. Foreigners, indeed, speaking rapidly in a language of slurred vowels and missing consonants. Grognards, they were called, veterans of nameless wars in far flung places. I looked up and the torrents of rain that splashed around them originated from a series of gargoyles nestled among wrought iron spikes.
“Grousers under garglers,” I said to my companion with a chuckle. He looked at me with confusion. He was a foreigner as well, and while he had been born in some western land, he had lived here in Yharnam far longer than I. “Come along, Padraig. No sense in absorbing too much more of the rain.”
Padraig, as an Under-Proctor, was technically my superior, but according to worldly experience, skill, and intelligence, the pants were all mine. As they saying went. He nodded in compliance and we moved as one to the great iron doors of the foundry that was our destination. We each grabbed one edge of a door and pulled them apart, sliding in well-greased tracks that made them seem lighter than they should, and we were greeted immediately by a wave of dry heat. We entered.
It was as if the damp outside had never existed. The fronts of our robes were immediately dry.
The interior of this foundry was a riot of golden light from the great crucibles of molten metal, and there was a din of hammering and the shouting of workmen, but that golden light cast harsh shadows everywhere and these workmen were unable to be seen. Near us, a crucible poured a long rivulet of luminous honey, and it poured and poured into a mold and seemed like it would never cease. The smoky vapors it produced were disturbed, suddenly, and a figure waded through them in our direction.
At first in the glow of the foundry he seemed naught but an incandescent phantom but this illusion passed. He was a craggy old man with a beard and a snow white queue, dressed in what could only be described as the hunting garb of a country squire beneath a leather apron stiff and discolored with slag and ash. He dusted his hands off before approaching us and while I felt quietly impressed by this figure, Under-Proctor Padraig’s jaw had acquired the open posture of a gawking fool.
“Greetings, Sir Hoya,” he said once he’d closed his mouth, affecting a bow, which received no response beyond a scowl. I took a tight fist and thumped twice between my breasts, a salute I’d learned from the sappers and powder-monkeys that made up Long Tom’s gang. He nodded at me.
“Sir Hoya,” he spat, “was my wastrel of a father. You may address me as Bellfounder Hoya.”
The Under-Proctor, to give him his due, was suitably chastened. “Bellfounder, we-”
“My memoranda have gone unanswered. Do you need me to tell couriers how to perform their duties as well?”
Padraig wisely said nothing despite his mouth hanging open.
“Our apologies,” I interjected. “It’s no excuse, but the queen’s post is a joke. I have personally seen piles of lost letters, parcels, party invitations strewn in the street down Hemwick. Are there any questions the Under-Proctor can answer for you, Bellfounder?”
He softened ever so slightly at my lack of vacillation.
“Why did you choose me for your project? There are many smiths in this dismal town your school could have employed.”
“You were not our first choice, Bellfounder,” offered a slightly more confident Padraig. “Out of respect for the specialty of your magisterium, and that the scope of our project lay outside it.”
“We were also turned down by those smiths,” I said. “They expressed a… distaste for some of the specifications.”
The Bellfounder barked a humorless laugh. “They have a distaste for competence as well. The steel bones of Yharnam’s architecture, the mechanisms of its elevators- such wonders are lost to this generation. So your needs must overlap into my… magisterium.”
He turned away and stepped over to a cluttered workbench, retrieving a bulky object obscured in the haze and flickering glow. With bold steps he returned towards us and threw it at our feet with a clang. “Now…what in the Seven Deeps of Agartha, is this?”
Padraig smiled as it clattered almost to his toe. As far as I could see it was a cage of thick wrought bars in some glistening metal resembling a blued harquebus barrel, roughly the size of a glass metheglin carboy. As Padraig picked it up and held it up, I could see that the inner diameter was such that it could fit easily over the head. I had a sudden pang of unease. I should have known about this.
“It is exquisite,” Padraig answered. “I’m sure it has surpassed the Proctor’s specifications.” The Bellfounder ignored him and looked to me as removed a small notebook from a pocket in his apron. He tapped it with a flat pencil as he began to read.
“Bradden steel, nickel, zinc, orichalcum… the magenein was an interesting surprise. It would not have been my choice, but inspired, for an amateur. Siderite would have been more effective, hmm?” He tapped the pad again, brows creased. “A grain each of calomel and orpiment. Then… your particular ingredients.” He spit. Padraig flinched.
I turned to the Under-Proctor. “Is there something I should be concerned about?” He had nothing to say. “Perhaps you could explain the problem, Bellfounder? My talents are not chiefly in the finer points of science.” He glowered but then seemed more baffled than I would have expected from such a tough old fart. Maybe the idea of a Scholar who was not chiefly a scholar? He flipped through the notebook and thrust a smudged page into my face.
It was the scrawling illegible hand of the engineer, though the symbolic shorthand of various chymicals was plain. Beneath that, however, an illustration so curious I felt the bottom of my stomach drop out.
I am not afraid of much. Before embedding myself here, before serving my current master, I used to run with the Old Man. His crew, that is, not his “menial” day job at the College. There are plenty of horrible things I’ve done, in his service alone. Until the old pirate shuttered his shop and disappeared, probably for good. Horrible things, and I hardly flinched.
But this… was vile.
The Bellfounder shared my feeling it seemed, though I kept the face I was trained to use by bluffing in a card game the crew played. Caravanserai, it was called. Hoya’s insight into human tics must have equaled that of his insight into the stuff of metallurgy.
“This vile concoction. This filth. This list of perverted science. I could take it and with the magenein alone cast an unorthodox bell. WIth siderite, I could cast such a bell whose effects would be unbelievable. Or the lensmaker’s effluvium, doped with siderite…” He seemed to have forgotten his disgust, lost in the dream of the genius. “A lens might capture occulted images in starlight. But your request… imagine if I made a bell with it? How sinister might its tone be? What might it call?”
“I don’t feel that it was an unreasonable task,” Padraig interjected, “so-”
The Bellfounder interrupted him, crossing the intervening space in a blink, and a strange pistol appeared in the Under-Proctor’s face. I was cold and smooth and fast in situations such as this but I could not even touch the kama concealed in my robes before it happened.
“Now, I was contracted to create this prototype, and a foundry-master would never break a contract. So here it is. I will not proceed with the rest of your request. It would be a waste of materiel, for one, and any apprentice farrier could as easily make the rest of these with pig iron. If anyone from your… school attempts to contact me again…” He waved his free hand in the general direction of the sputtering molten metal. “Well, a bit of human carbon doesn’t hurt the casting. And you…”
He turned to me, the hatred in his eyes softened not a whit. “Consider a better field of study.” He pulled the trigger.
My hand made it to the grip of the kama before time itself froze.
The Bellfounder was gone, only the impression of the barrel pushed against Padraig’s forehead remaining. He had pissed his pants. The sound around us muffled, and my ears popped like we were at an inhospitable altitude. The glow of the foundry began to fade. I felt a suction as if caught in the pull of a maelstrom, and then…
We stood in an abandoned shop, silent save for a disgraceful dripping from the Under-Proctor’s robes. Dust and soot covered every surface, disturbed only on the floor by our footprints leading in from the street. Padraig toted the cage thing as if cradling a baby.
I have questions. I have letters to write.
***
Letter found on School grounds, filed for inclusion in Epistles of the New Church . -Edgar
My dearest companion M., it is too long since I have seen your face, and my apologies for not corresponding.
There is very little to report from my assignment at the ducal library. As well you know the work of the scholar and of the archivist is not as portrayed in the popular literature, fevered translation punctuated regularly with astounding discoveries. These sensational moments are but one hundredth of the work, the remainder being consumed by necessary drudgery. There are times indeed when I wish for our successes to be as frequent and melodramatic- I would surely be as a hero from the romances of older times. Could you see me as such, dear M.? Would I cut a fine figure in a gleaming set of epaulets and a golden gorget?
You may think me addled with such fancies, the fruits of the delirium of boredom, but that is far from the truth. A caravan passed by and the muleskinners traded rumors of a distant kingdom, where some scions of a fallen lineage had begun excavations of their ruined ancestral manse. Brigands and sellswords of every stripe were perpetually retrieving loot, artifacts and objets d’art. Though it had been put out that scholars were welcomed to help categorize the piles of documents and inscriptions, our group was hesitant to travel there.
It seems that a neighboring village had hastily converted itself into a cottage industry supplying the excavators with supplies before their expeditions and divertissement after. Upon hearing that, our decision was made and we set off in a caravan post-haste.
It is here in this village that I write to you, curled up in a comfortable nook in the third addition to the village inn. Perhaps it is not the most relaxing place- all around are cursing from gambling-tables, moaning from the brothel, and the occasional drunken hiccup. The pleasures of the flesh are- well, a problem for anyone gone on the road for so long, and it is almost painful, but as you know, my affections remain closer to home.
There is greater danger here, even for scriveners. The documents that return from the ruins began as drier stuff- travelers’ adversaria, lost fragments from important genealogies, etc. but the deeper the delve, the darker the content. This noble house has seen abominable acts in the name of science and dark sorcery, unexposed cultic rites… it is a taint the like I have never seen.
Physical danger as well, indeed. The warriors that enter the ruins confident return grim and haunted, but often do not return at all. They spend their wages in vain pursuit of normalcy through vice or religious zeal. The ruins contain a plethora of monsters, both human and otherwise and I dread when it shall be my turn to enter.
Do not be concerned, my dear M. You know that I can take care of myself, but I concur with the Vice Deacon on the wisdom of the scriptures in prescribing “two stout monks” for such situations. This was made flesh in the persons of Stanislaus and Adny who will guard me from any threat outside the mind itself.
I had hoped to simply regale you with tales of this journey and share my honest thoughts with your beloved ears, but perhaps this discussion is the best juncture to level with you.
You are in great danger as well, dear M., and of your own making.
This is not censure, and please do not take it as anything but the concerns of a friend. Your genius is humbling, and your zeal for natural philosophy inspiring, but it has always been known, since antiquity and beyond, that those attributes are easily transubstantiated into hubris.
Between our own conversations and official correspondence I maintain with other scientists, I have learned a few facts about your goals for the School, and while innocuous on their own, become a disturbing sum greater than its parts. Yharnam is changing.
When I left, surgeons were deprecating the nostrum in favor of the knife, which is fine, but as the knife can cut out living tissue to remove a tumor, so too can an entire people fall to experimentation in the name of progress.
You have not spent as much time in the Wards as I. Did you know that very few midwives remain? The birthing bed is overseen by surgeons now, with their knives. The loss of mothers and children has always been the curse of our humanity but if it leads to material for misguided experiments, is that position not a conflict of interest?
The custom of the carpenter is booming, and when last I visited the streets had begun to stack with tiny coffins.
No, my dear M,, I do not blame you for any of this. The concern I bear for our people gnaws at me though it is childish to expect myself to solve everything. My faith in the holy medium and its potential for a panacea may consume my attention as well.
I have been speaking in a general sense so let me speak in a more concise manner. I have met a great number of new faces since I have been here but the author of our first practical discovery is of note. A be-turbaned alchymist from a distant region, stymied by his lack of findings, was the one who did it, with our assistance of course. The Yharnam team had found a shelf of codices in an elegant script none of us were capable of reading, which turned out to be the language of our new friend’s homeland, and after a period of sleepless study, he had created a formula for a powder with the property of revealing that which is invisible.
Yes, in the fairy tales a fine flour of milled grain can be tossed on invisible creatures to reveal their powdery outlines, but this formulation is insufflated and the user’s mind reveals the unseen. It was tested practically in a subsequent excavation but the details of what was revealed are… unsavory.
A countryman of his from antiquity- al-Hazard, as he is called in a heretical hagiography, his only mention in our corpus- was a scholar who was devoured in a market square by some invisible beast, a tragedy that has haunted that culture ever since and could perhaps have been solved immediately with the powder.
That Bahometian alchymist expressed his gratitude by giving me a curious candle and instructing me in its use. Perhaps I shall show you when I return. He further expressed an interest in visiting our city, as he averred that the advancement of our aesculapical knowledge is far greater than that of his homeland. I took pause at the thought of this, not only because his people have a history of learning unpunctuated by dark ages as ours has, and he is likely being modest, but… I shudder at the thought of an outsider’s first impression of our recklessness and ambition. Were there dark deeds that led to the underpinnings of that formulation? More than likely, but its purpose began to be actualized with a practical, helpful effect, and its potential as a tool for natural philosophy may be without limit, and not at the expense of the pain and suffering of innocents.
Is there a powder to reveal the gaps in our ethics? At what point does curiosity beget focus, focus beget fetish, and fetish beget mania?
I ramble again, dear M. My curse. Again, I do not blame you for these ills, simply that I see in you a vigor and drive and intellect through which anything may be possible, and I do not wish your gifts to be corrupted by the nature of our dismal world. I pray to see you soon, -L.
***
Letter found among School documents, damaged but restored and filed for inclusion in Epistles of the New Church . -Edgar
My dearest M, I remain in the cursed place but perhaps for only a little while still. The things we have found on that hellish site are sobering, even though they are of great value to our studies. And of course, I would prefer to be in your company in the flesh.
I receive correspondence from scholars all around the land, with discourse on many topics, but I find one very unsettling. One of your students penned a quite brusque letter asking- nay, interrogating- me on the uses and properties of siderite. I was pleased to answer and elaborate, as the sharing of knowledge is my reason to be on this sphere, I feel. I was further pleased to receive your subsequent letter.
The capturing of frozen images? On vellum treated with a reagent containing siderite? Truly a miracle! That your students immediately found a use for it, recording the results of experiments, the preservation of illuminated texts, et al, was greatly encouraging.
The use you found for it, dearest M? Upon seeing the “astrograph” you included in your letter… I cannot blush enough. I cannot safely view the picture of you anywhere outside the brothel, and I regret to admit I took advantage of its services for relief.
Silvery paper bathed in starlight, capturing form. It is an unbelievable achievement. I thought of your form, and I thought also of moonlight. I thought of the lake. I thought of those times Master Willem’s ponderings took him elsewhere, and we were left alone to wander the shores of the lake and take an assignation in the copse there…
I burn, M. I burn.
All fires must fade, even temporarily, and it is with great regret that I must turn my words from flesh to that of the soul. My concerns remain.
We all burn, from the inside, at least in potentia. That is a fact, as established by the greatest theoretical minds in all natural philosophy. At least, until it was superseded by our discovery of that rarefied aether that suffuses the cold darkness of the void, and is present as a motivating force within our very bodies.
Or as the quiddity, or the Aeolian monad. Words for nothing, words for something just outside our grasp, and we as mortals need something to grasp onto, don’t we? I feel that to turn inward in this pursuit is a mistake. You recall our Provost’s insistence- which I say borders on blasphemy- on the primacy of eyes in the natural sciences, and the metasciences? I think his faith and fear were arranged contrarily- he should have put his fear towards the inward-looking eye.
That is a logical segue into what I felt I must discuss with you. If it becomes harangue then I apologize, but needs must.
Have you heard of the Schwarze-Kugel? Perhaps not under the name of its discoverers, but there was never a formal name for it. The arcane eye containing a portal to the outer void that can spit meteors? Did you know that for a time that the idea of rocks tumbling from the sky was impossible, and to assert otherwise heterodoxy? I digress.
Did you know there were three such eyes? And that that one was the least dangerous?
It was the first eye to have been discovered- if we can say with any certainty that it did not discover us. Its connection to the outer void was easily found, but it was the opening of same that required work. You may recall that for experimentation the inmates of our hospitals and sanatoriums have proven quite pliable. For the most extreme of these trials we prefer those blackguards who were rendered asylum-wise by the foulest of crimes. The younger students refer to all these reprobates with alliterative names- Deacon, Dagmar, Dwight… to prevent any personal attachment, you see.
It was one of these Dursts who was peering into the pupil of the eye when the right combination of phantasm and mudra opened the portal, and sent the first rock tumbling from the void. That unfortunate Dinsdale’s… fragments were of such distribution that it is said the students in the room were quite fearful of the blood that day, if I may be crass.
The second eye of course would only respond to a different configuration, and the whole thing was attempted with a modicum of safety. None but a Dalton was allowed in the “line of sight,” and the researchers all hid behind stacks of bricks and iron plates. It would do little good. This eye showed no rocks, only darkness and the faintest red stars. Once the bezoar and mudra combination was found, the eye opened. But it opened the wrong way.
My specialization is aesculapian, not ontologic, but even I can see the vast utility of the data. There have been experimental hints before, terrestrial dabblings, but the results of this gazing session showed us much about the great void.
It hungers, my dearest M. The contents of that room- students, Dietrichs, bricks, bezoars… all engulfed into the maw of that eye, as a cold wind sucked down into its throat. Devoured, all, save for a single porter whose foot caught in a decorative railing. He survived after screaming into the tempest for a good hour before the arcane essence depleted and the great void withdrew, taking the eye with it.
That was not the worst. Now, a trinity again.
Even greater safety precautions were decided on this time. The experiments were moved to a quarry down the valley, and all researchers observed from a safe distance, or so they thought.
Again a Dirk met the eye’s gaze, but this time the mudras were performed by one of the more rational patients. Owing to their lack of technical knowledge, it took some time, but at last the feat was achieved. We had no direct witnesses that time, owing to the obliteration of the site of the experiement, but as any Yharnamite up before dawn that day can attest, the sudden sunrise was blinding. Of course the eyes can show us the great void, and if the great void lies beyond the vault of the sky, then why couldn’t they show that bright star that dominates it? If the sun can burn and blister skin from its lofty distance, imagine the result if one were suddenly open to its blaze through a portal the size of a penny-kruna?
That is then the tale of the eyes. The “blacksky” eye, with its unpredictability and short range, was deemed of utility only as a tool of the assassin, or a curiosity, and was locked away for research. Hands-off research, of course.
The tale of the eyes is a cautionary tale, my dear M. Vistas of understanding and insight, an overflowing goblet of sheer arcane power, and to what end? A curiosity. Things could have been much worse. If we attain the perfection of our science without the tempering influence of faith in something greater, then what? When confidence ebbs, when love is distant, when horrors rise, what have I but faith in what I do?
Within the darkest of the hillside caves outside the manor, we found something that could only be described as the holy medium of yet another world. I can scarce describe it, but barring any further incidents I shall return with it and the true work can begin.
Return, my dear M? Perhaps you have felt in your bones a pulling influence, and I must confess that it was me. You recall the strange candle given me by my Bahometian friend? I put it to its intended use. I set its base upon the skull of what I hope is an ape- upon the floor and lit the wick with tinder of some ancient cedar. As it lit the room I performed the assigned ritual, and as instructed I thought of home. The lake. The dormitory. You, dear M, and I felt such a warmth inside. You were to feel it as well, at any distance, and know that you will feel it sweetly as I begin to return to you.
For now, please be careful. It will not be long. -L
***
15th Listopa, Year of Reeds
I hate this place. Not Yharnam, not solely, but its environs as well. Every time I turn around the city glistens with the accumulated slime of a thousand rainy seasons. The foothills bristle with tribesmen- a canny lot, with a history and oral tradition that is hardly primitive, but every bluff and switchback is full to the gills with grisly human trophies. The outlying settlements, the “civilized” regions are more atavistic and brutish than any of the hillfolk. Perhaps I might throw a great potlatch and convince the latter to annihilate the former?
My master has given me great leeway in my task, but that would probably be greatly out of its purview.
Sadly, my task is roughly cognate with the goal of saving the thrice-damned city.
Here in the filthy hamlet of Yahar'gul I was reminded of all of that. The inhabitants were bandits of the worst kind, devotees of some forgotten snake-handling cult who wandered the woods listlessly. Some of them were known for their great burlap sacks in which unwary travelers were captured and brought to the College for experimentation.
If the rain cannot clean this place, then perhaps fire? Maybe when my task is done, I will leave the city a few surprises as I leave.
A cough reminded me that I was not alone. I did not have the luxury of reverie, and admonished myself silently for standing there staring at a painting.
At my feet was a Scholar, his dark outfit ripped and caked with mud, and he panted and coughed with great pain, as I had broken his ribs not long before. We had taken refuge from the elements in the ruins of an ancient tabernacle which boasted a stone roof mostly solid to keep out the rain.
“Please,” he gasped. “I just want to leave.”
I glowered at him. “Not yet. You planned an escape. You must have known what was about to happen. Were there others?”
“O-others? You were there. If there were others it would have been obvious. Just me and the Doctor.”
“Did she bring you to make contact with the Church?” He hadn’t mentioned it but the polearm I’d taken from him was the holy variety. “Or did you strike off on your own?”
He let out a wet groan but did not reply. I pulled the kama from my robes and slashed the air casually. “You. The doctor. And me. Though I was never really part of it anyway. This was all according to plan.” His expression made no sense- he had to have known. My infiltration was solid, and the scholars in general were prone to idiosyncrasy, but I had to have stood out somehow. That might have been why I was the Proctor’s go-to for making things happen.
“Everything’s done now. They’re all gone. Can I leave this place? Please? I’m not proud of the things I’ve done, but I can start again. Anywhere but here.”
I shrugged. “Sure. Why not? We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. I certainly have.” We both suppressed the urge to sigh. I remembered an important requirement of my mission. “Problem is, I’m not done.”
The kama flashed in and out of the defector’s face and neck, and again, leaving him in ruins. In the ruins.
I wiped the blood off using the hem of my robes. I didn’t need them anymore and pulled them off, my sturdy traveling outfit beneath. The defector was staring at me in death, so I tossed the bundle of robes over top of his face and prepared to go, returning my kama to my belt. As I turned to leave, I looked at the fresco again.
I’m not sure why it captivated me so. The pastoral scene was one that had been in style two generations ago- much younger than the chapel itself. Perhaps there had been a major repair to the wall and the fresco painted in while the plaster was wet. It showed a trio of shepherds resting with their herd in a pleasantly lit graveyard, where they marveled at an ancient tomb, whose inscription read only ET IN IARNAM EGO.
“And in Yharnam I…” I what? What did I do? I’ve done plenty. What did that nameless tomb-dweller do? Why was a pleasant pastoral scene so unsettling?
Enough questions. I had work to do.
Leaving the tabernacle I made my way through the depressing countryside, towards the School of Mensis. I’d learned enough to be as knowledgeable as any scientist, but that knowledge was gained in such an arcane way I would not consider myself a scholar.
I learned a lot working for the Old Man as a young, impressionable girl. For a time I practically worshiped his right hand woman, Bloody Mary. Once things went south I’d left Yharnam, for what I hoped was forever. I’d settled in a foreign land about as opposite to the city of my birth as could be. Golden sand, white limestone ziggurats, domesticated tigers… and there I fell into another school, of all things.
The school had been run by a sorcerer, formerly an anchorite corrupted by his realization of the ultimate truth, as he claimed. He instructed a dozen young students in an academy deep within a haunted cave, guarded by a demon in the guise of a grinning tiger. We learned a great deal of esoteric knowledge there, and at the end of our term the worst student would be sacrificed to some dark power and never seen again.
That student was me, and I was not sacrificed. Instead I was sworn to eternal service with the sorcerer and that may have been worse.
The skills I’d learned in my early life were a perfect fit for the infiltrator he desired to unleash on the world, and his first ministrations on me were to prepare for that. I drank the smoke of al-Hazard’s Lamp, which turned out to be his literal lamp, and not a euphemism. I read the Brochure of the Ashen Museum, and survived to gain its benefit. The sorceror beamed and called me his little vajra, before binding me to a stake and allowing the thunder of an unnatural storm to reach down from heaven and touch me. Barring violence, I would never die. The perfect servant.
The worst part was the preparation for my specific infiltration missions. It was simple enough- I had to put on an enchanted ring of sinister aspect. Then the memories of a thousand dead souls flooded my spirit. After the screaming- my screaming- subsided, my mind was packed to the corners with knowledge on one particular field of study. In this case, the metaphthisical research of Yharnam’s infamous College. I knew as much as any junior scholar, but it was rote, mechanical… I would never innovate.
It had been more than enough, I thought, as I approached the oddly quiet School. I had waited long enough after my visit the night before, and I went in.
Things were laid out almost exactly the way I’d left them- dozens of seated scholars in their peculiar iron head cages, and the lead researcher himself in the prototype cage we’d brought back from the Bellfounder’s. There was one major difference, however…
They were all dead.
Before the ritual had started I convinced a few of the scholars to partake in an antecelebratory tipple, breaking open some dusty bottled wine from the School’s largely unused cellar. They even thought it had been their idea! I can be quite convincing when I put my mind to it. All the scholars involved took a drink, which meant they all imbibed the poison I’d put in it. I fled the school before the ritual began, as it was unclear the effect it would have on the enchantments to my person. There was plenty of danger from the ritual itself, as I understood it.
Their twisted faces were dry and gaunt as if the juice had been squeezed from them. The poison? The ritual? Both? I walked carefully among them, looking for signs of life and finding none. As I got closer to the Proctor’s chair, I felt a faint vibration, and peering at him, I noticed that he was alive, and smiling. Grinning, in fact. He noticed me as well and laughed.
“My poor students… a terrible thing. But worth the risk!” Tears began pouring down his cheeks even though he smiled in near ecstasy. “Such vistas. The learning of a thousand spheres… they have promised me such, and even now I understand better than any mortal before.”
“I suppose you do.” His eyes looked to me, then darted around the room.
“This place is but a dream. A tawdry dream, miserable. But I have found the true dream! And they are here welcoming me, with such promises I can barely stand it, for the glee. Forgive my distraction- to speak to dull phantoms such as yourself is tiring. You would not understand.”
I did not understand. I’d run a cold calculus of all the permutations of how this scenario would go, but that did not speak to the larger picture. There was little left for me to do, to end this sortie into the country antithetical to the goals of my sorcerous master, and I could not wait. The last of the scholars peered into my eyes and spoke with a desperately fervent tone. “Is it… is it accomplished?”
“It is accomplished.” He sighed in relief and the tears began to flow again. I thought briefly of drawing my kama instead and putting him out of his misery, but that was not the way the mission would be completed. A shame. He was an artist, a pioneer. Is this the way for all true genius to go? The philosophy of it was beyond me, even if I had puzzled out more details than I needed.
Wedged in my belt was an implement wrapped in soft leather, and I withdrew it now. A tuning fork, much larger than those that might be used to bring a clavier up to temper, but a tuning fork nonetheless. The unfortunate scholar of scholars looked at me with the first hint of unease I’d seen. “Bradden steel, nickel, zinc, orichalcum… siderite.” I laughed. “A grain each of calomel and orpiment. Not quite the elegant formula you came up with, but one extra ingredient.
“I corresponded with that vicar friend of yours. He’s away in some dreadful village, yes? I managed to get his advice on certain aesculapical matters and he quite innocently suggested a final substance to be added.” At the mention of the vicar, he had a brief spasm and a distant look in his eyes. “Final, yes. Now…” I shrugged.
He started screaming before I was able to complete my downward swing, ringing the tuning fork against the metal of his head cage.
There was a pulse in the air, a tone so pure it hurt to think about. Vertigo. The light seemed to change- blue became indigo and gray became blue. There was a sizzling sound. Behind me and slightly to the left I heard distant voices speaking in panicked Pthumerian. I heard another voice elsewhere, saying only “I burn.” Then the words burned. The voice burned. For a moment the chief scholar burned as well, and as a low howl faded from nowhere, the room returned to normal.
Only the faintest thrum of the tuning fork remained in my fingertips. The chief scholar kept screaming. He continued screaming as I turned to leave. I briefly considered smashing some of the lanterns and burning the whole forsaken place down. Best to just finish the mission and return home. Some wicks are too bright to trim.
The moment I emerged from the building, I caught a glint of light in the distance.
I’d been followed by a bespectacled man for about a week, a balding milquetoast in the tweedy garb of the gentleman surveyor. I knew the look of a spy, however, and I was suddenly struck with the idea that perhaps that vicar had been sent away so the church could get away with some skullduggery that his scruples made awkward. No matter. Let them fight it out.
By morning I’ll be on my way. Some rest, and then on to the next mission. I hear there is a plague-ridden island nearly destroyed by its tyrannical lich-king. Might be a nice change of pace…
Partially burned Ms, recovered from a destroyed coach leaving the village of Denebray, all passengers slain and burned beyond recognition. Filed with other Mensist ephemera . -Edgar
Please, dear Mic
to me. Your student from
is not who she s
Do not let her
Act with hast
Signed,
Your fondest Lau