Ahhhhhhhhh! (punches self in face!) Sweet mother! Sweet mother! Send your child unto me, for the sins of the unworthy must be baptized in blood and fear! Ohhhh... how wonderful it is that I think I know about exactly how you all are feeling right now. Ricky, Darrel... please, please, please... try to limit your participation in gang violence, please. I don't care of it's instinct, or tradition, it's a turf war, it's stupid and for the most part it HAS to be unnecessary, right? What you talk about sounds like the petty rivalries of medieval monarchs. Maybe you aren't human, but you aren't beasts either, you're something different. Of course... I'm not talking about everything... I mean... fighting a t-rex and stuff... I... I don't pretend to know what's going on there at all, but you both know what I mean. I don't want you guys to get hurt over something really dumb. Please try to keep thinking.
Chris, you're the one I'm most worried about right now. I take back what I said, what exactly have you gotten yourself into? I hope they aren't making you sacrifice anything fundamental to who you are. What could be more precious, and not just to you. We like you the way you are, Chris, or at least I do. I want you to become more like yourself. I think you're scared, and I think you're pretty obviously unhappy and you feel swept up. It might be tough, but for a moment you should try entertaining the idea that you aren't where you want to be right now, and you aren't following your own will. It sounds to me like you've just been convincing yourself to go along with it all so that you don't have to endure the knowledge that you've passed the point of no return. But I'm sure you haven’t, Chris, you're too smart for that. If you think you're in real trouble, get out. Run, or resist in whatever small way you can until an opportunity comes up. There's probably something that's safe to tell us; think real hard about it. If you can let us know indirectly where you are and what you're doing, we can help. I'm sure we all trust your wishes and your judgment but please, be brave and think really hard about this so you're sure what's the right choice.
And now a plea to Lizz. Lizzie? Lizz? Hello, you reading this? I've got two things to... insist of you, if I might. First, stay out of danger. Keep your head down. Come home, if you can. Remember, you aren't the one whose really in danger... when you're in danger. Everyone IN THE WORLD besides you is in danger... when you're danger. You're not gambling with your own life poking your nose around, you're gambling with the lives of about seven billion people. I'm begging you, don't risk their lives. Your place is to be a scholar, that should be obvious. You're not only fantastic at doing your research (it saved your life!) you have to accept it, you are a liability whenever you're out there “in the field”. We all know what happens to a mortally injured sin-eater. If a risk like that doesn't bother you, I... I don't even know who you are anymore. Come home, please. I'm starting to think it was dumb, dumb, dumb for us to split up so completely right now. It's so much easier for us to be picked off like this. If Darrel and Ricky could come back now that'd be excellent to. In case you didn't think more bad schiese couldn't possibly go down, I'm here to tell you, the schiese is goin' down. The reason I've been out of contact the last month is because... well I've sort of had to go into hiding. Not just me, a lot of us in the council, and especially in the Union.
I can't say for sure whether anything specific has happened, but we know there are people in two of the big mage orders, the Mysterium and the “Guardians of the Veil”, who are making very serious accusations and threats against us, particularly the five of us. The way I've had it explained to me is there's this world, mundus, the supernal worlds which are the source of magic, aetherious and such, and between them is the awful gulf: the void. Any magic spell that isn't done right, or that gets witnessed by someone who isn't in the right mindset, widens the gulf. The trouble is apparently that these sorts of things are happening a lot now, a lot more than they used to. People like me who aren't ready for magic are dabbling in it like it was a hobby they could pick up, while a lot of mages feel like they can relax their standards and practice openly now that the cat's out of the bag. Frankly this all makes sense to me, it means despite everything we've seen the real disaster is that our world and the higher, purer worlds are rocketing apart, like two galaxies hurtling away from each other on opposite currents of space. I don't know how they can pin that all on us, though, or even the Union. What do I know, I don't know anything.
So... the Necronomicon is in Harvard. (looooong sigh) The only thing I think I know about Schrodinger's paradox is that it's all bollux. It's not a fair criticism of quantum mechanics, so I'm not sure what you're talking about, Chris. Is the book cursed or something? Is it enchanted to warp my soul or my mind? Or is just words and symbols on paper? I wouldn't be surprised either way. But competing truths, Chris? Come on, now let's be careful how we phrase things. Explain to me how two contradictory things can be true at the same time in the same reality. We've been learning about... something similar, something like that, but it's not really the same I don't think If you can't explain... well I simply don't buy it. It's not that I think I know everything or anything really, it's just I don't have any reason to believe that in particular. Maybe there's a lot in between us and the real fundamental nature of the world, but I don't know what else to expect other than something completely consistent and predictable. Otherwise who cares, right? We might as well welcome the dreadlord's nihilism, revel in it, celebrate it. The children of the elder god have come to tell us that nothing matters and nothing is true, that all life ought to be a party oozing with drink and sex and violence and babbling. Are they wrong or are they right?
Not to say I'm in any hurry to find or read that book. If you have a better idea of how we can learn about our enemy, pitch it. All I care about is knowing my foe, and my way seems like the only way to me right now. You mentioned something about a stone? I'm sorry, I'm exhausted, I really am. Maybe you could go into more detail about that. Not much to talk about on this end. Right now I'm living quite literally underground, in this beautiful old stone room like something out of an Elder Scroll's game. The ceiling is very high, sort of feels like an old chapel down here, and it's nice and cool. It's part of a pretty big network as far as I can tell, but they haven’t let us explore very far. And for once, though there are actually far fewer people coming and going... for once in a long time now I don't feel completely alone. There are two people I'm working with down here, neither of them exactly human. One is a very unique and friendly werewolf who has taken for himself the name of Logosh, which seems strangely familiar to me. I think he's someone both Darrel and Ricky could learn a lot from, and me too for that mater. He goes his own way, he doesn't run with anyone's pack, he fights for the Union. He seems to be in his bestial form very often, but it doesn't really prevent him from being delicate and patient. He also doesn't mind it when I scratch his head... which is good... because... that's a weakness of mine.
The girl is changeling, like your sister Chris, except she frightens me. She always wears a long purple cloak with a hood that mostly obscures her face. The texture of her skin when I catch a glimpse of it seems like sandpaper, rough and splotchy. She's thin, and... well in many ways I'd be tempted to call her a girl after my own heart, she's very polite and straight forward and motivated and serious and intelligent... once she looked me in the face, and it was like a skull. Though her movements and her posture are healthy and vigorous, she looks as if she's been dieing of starvation, and her eyes are filled with some murderous, unappeasable hatred for someone or something. I don't wanna' talk about it anymore more right now, I'm too tired. Her name is June, by the way, or it is now since she's a member of the summer court. Next time I'll talk about the research we're doing. We spend a lot of time with these awesome sort of... extra-planar telescopes... and what happens when you look through one can be really exhausting.
No comments:
Post a Comment