The books that I keep by my bags are full of your stories and I never could have known.
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Info
This infobox contains recommended listening and total word length.
Total Length: 9.9k words
Reading Time: 45 minutes
Themes:
Overall themes:
I of the Storm - Of Monsters and Men
The Golden Land - Evan CallTilda Moose:
Our Destiny – Thomas BergersenM.:
The Library, 1950 CE
A magician has endless tricks stuffed up their sleeves. Such is the way of these creatures to be prepared for the unexpected, to entertain, or to learn of that which they should not know. In the Library, there is much to know that goes unseen, and much to see that should not be known.
But the question on Tilda D. Moose’s mind is: where can they find the truth when the Library itself lies? There are deeper secrets to be uncovered. At the heart of their journey lies an ancient history of the fragmented, disparate groups of wandering souls that outsiders now call the Serpent’s Hand.
They look down at the notecard with its single, hastily written, sentence.
“Look for the one known as M., a Sorceress of great renown.
-The Seeress.”
It was only a few days ago that everything had changed.
The walls had been shifting again. As they often do within the confined spaces of the section of the Library dedicated to Magicians, Charlatans, and tricksters. Moose was seated in a comfortable armchair, notating on loose sheets of paper. The topic? A particularly cheeky little spell they’d stumbled upon earlier in the day. Taken from a rather poorly labeled tome in the crossroads leading into the deep Arcane sections of the Library.
With little warning, there came a voice, filling Moose’s entire mind with echoes.
“Hello, Moose.”
They jumped in the seat, startled enough that their arm knocked the inkwell all over the paper notation. Then, of course, it dribbled onto their suit. They cursed the mistake, jerking the chair back and out from underneath the desk. This rash decision had the unfortunate effect of splattering more ink down their pants.
“Dammit,” they mutter to themselves.
“Apologies,” the voice came again.
The pitch and tone were indisputably matching their own thoughts, though that could just be a product of its echoes in their own mind. The inflection was slower, weighted with an exhaustion that they couldn’t quite place.
“Who’s there?” Moose asked, glancing around to try and find the source. “Where are you?”
“I’m in here. Don’t panic.”
“In where?” they ask, blinking with confusion.
“Your head.”
Moose paused, blinking several times. They retreat slowly, putting a corner of mirrors at their back. The Magician started to mentally finger through their quite pathetic catalogue of offensive tricks and spells. When that effort produced nothing of use, they instead thumb through the minor door effects that would let them, at the least, make an escape attempt. The bonus of that approach would be the generation of an afterimage made of fragile glass. Though they were only an academic, they were not completely helpless.
“I don’t believe you,” they hiss. “What are you, what do you want, and how are you speaking in my head?”
Dumb question really. It could be any one of multiple thought projection charms.
“I am you, from a different time.”
It was such a bizarre and unexpected answer that it rooted them in place.
There’s no way that’s true.
“I don’t believe you,” they hiss again, fingers already splaying the charm behind their back against the mirror. The surface was starting to ripple like liquid.
“When you were seven, you took your first steps into the hidden world beneath the surface at a summer camp. An imposter of a man claiming to be a magician pulled a rabbit from the hat. He denied you the following year the secrets of that world. You decided that then, you hated Magicians. Yet here we are, having become one ourselves.”
Moose sat with those words, stunned for several moments. Through the Astral1 wreathe of the mindscape, that other shape pressed its hands upon the looking glass. There Moose began to see the shape of another them. An older them that does not look it.
“Anyone could know that. You could be an augur.”
“When you went to college, you finally met your equal. A young woman dressed all in black—”
“Stop! Stop,” Moose shouts aloud with wide eyes and shaking hands.
Their heart hammers in their chest with a sudden sharp panic. It causes them to lose their balance. In the moments that follow, they tumble backwards through the mirror into an endless space of fractal reflections. A moment later they are ejected from a different mirror in a different aisle within the section for charlatans where they roll across the floor like a log.
There was no doubt now. They had warded those moments against the possibility of scrying. One of the first little Arcane tricks they’d picked up somewhere in their forbidden dives into the world beneath the veil.
“Do you believe me now?” This second Moose asked, with profound amusement.
“Yes. But I don’t understand, how?”
The explanation had been long, made very little sense with what Young Moose knew about the world. Some fantastical device had sent their newfound head mate back in time three quarters of a century.
Yet, now they were being incredibly stingy and reserved when it came to the task that they had given to Young Moose.
Are you sure this is the way to find them?
Where in a library of endless knowledge does one find a Sorceress whose whispers ripple through the endless dream of dreams we walk in? M. is a creature of such character those other Nomads speak of her only in the quietest of tones.
That or, to Young Moose’s own perception, Older Moose simply knows much less about their task than they have let on.
Is this another riddle?
No, the answer is simple and obvious. You will find her where one may find Arcane knowledge.
Why her? they ask. Surely there must be others capable of stopping the oblivion you keep talking about.
Perhaps there are, but some things are far, far more than they seem, and the truth is not worth letting slip away.
As the endless starlit ceiling above twinkles, the boundless library arches its shelves into a portcullis through which they step into another wing. Like any other section of the Library, the wing containing all the books ever written on Magic, Arcana, Thaumaturgy, or whatever else you may wish to call that fantastical topic of spells, enchantments, curses, charms and other acts of miraculous artifice, is shaped by the nature of its contents.
This particular entryway into the wing of Arcane texts is framed by shelves towering high towards an endless ceiling; fairytale trees of shifting colors wreathed with overly embellished decorative wooden staircases. Tomes are mismatched with scrolls, tablets, and wood etchings containing neatly ordered arrangements of different traditions. In the distance they can see grand floating sky islands, sweeping fields of towering grasses, floating oceans filled with shelves of coral, and thousands upon thousands of other sections. Each shaped by the ecological makeup of a section’s Arcane contents.
Moose scans the endless chaotic arrangements of disparate aisles. There truly is no real sense of organized layout to be found here.
At least the section on Magicians, charlatans, and tricksters has some sense of segmented organization. Even if the aisles are constantly changing and playing tricks on them. This, this is just pure madness. They let out an uncharacteristic noise of exasperation.
“How will I ever find her in here?”
The answer to that otherwise very reasonable question seems very far from reach indeed as they walk on into chaos. The Elder Moose is certainly of little use.
Please tell me you have some sort of guess as to what deep riddles she may reside in among these shelves? Somewhere to begin.
Sadly, no. We will have to scour our way into her presence.
How long do they spend drifting up staircases where the clouds themselves become shelves? Each contains tomes and scrolls which are made from water vapor with the consistency of paper. Yet the lingering wetness of raindrops. How many long walks are spent on dizzyingly upside-down catwalks through fluorescent cityscapes? Where the skyscrapers serve as metal shelves for neon pulsing tablets. How many accidental missteps end with drifting down to lower floors through places where gravity is but a suggestion? Where lines of stacked light become repositories of information to be gleaned through simple touches?
When the fatigue of travel finally sets in, they find a place to sit.
This is like attempting to find a needle in a haystack. If only we had some way to draw her to us.
An idle wish I’m afraid that will remain.
You don’t know anything about her, do you?
No. We never made contact.
A cushioned seat sings out to them, placed meticulously in a spacious cubby within what might amount to a wizard’s tower in mundane reality. White stone bricks are mortared together as shelves in a quite large diameter. Against one curved wall rests a wooden table with chairs produced by some long gone master carpenter. There’s an animated broom sweeping on the far side of the cubbyhole. It’s complemented by several casting circles made of peculiar microfilm machines, and a completely nonsensical ordering of alchemical distillation apparatuses. There are even some specimen jars with scrolls and tomes floating in the liquid, as useless as that might seem.
A good a place as any to sit and close our eyes.
Yet compared to the more fantastical environments they just came from, this is a place of little relative imagination. At least, to any unfamiliar with the true absurdities of the fantastical world of the Arcane. Still, it’s a good enough place to close one’s eyes for a small power nap.
It’s certainly boring.
There are things of interest to find in even the most unremarkable of cubbyholes.
Perhaps it is by the grace of the Seeress’s own tugging upon the strings that the double Moose comes to rest here, of all places. Not that they would have ever believed in the concept of “strings of fate” prior to encountering that strange ancient creature on the eve of reality crumbling to pieces. Yet in the midst of a light dream, something tugs at the edge of their senses.
Wake up.
What? What is it?
Do you feel that?
A noise filters in through the vision, pulling Young Moose steadily towards wakefulness. Shuffling of papers. The creak of ancient tomes. The scent of book must on a draft. Then comes the presence of another. Like the sudden heavy air pressure that descends before a powerful tornado, Moose’s natural Arcana sense, fifteen meters across, suddenly begins to fill. Such an intense field of magic discharge sends goose pimples crawling up their arms.
How does one react to the sudden appearance of an apex predator? Young Moose, on instinct, freezes in place and pretends to be asleep. If, for no other reason, than to try and dissect the frenetic energy sloshing into their resting place. It’s practically flooding every possible piece of the Magician’s interface with ambient thaumic emissions of so many different disparate traditions. Each stacks together in a prism of blinding technicolor brilliance that it is nearly impossible to begin to detangle.
By the Ethereum2, what is that?
The rapid realization that the threads keep increasing in intensity leaves Young and Old Moose scrambling to try and document as many of the Arcane traditions as they can reasonably pull apart.
No, not that one. I already got that one.
They don’t have long before it becomes too intense to adequately assess with any meaningful separation. Even after the resolution of their innate Arcana sense has been saturated, it still takes a stunningly long time for the epicenter to finally come into reach.
With eyes closed, they can fully visualize the shape of her in the center of it all. She’s not terribly tall, nor of immediately fascinating shape. But it’s everything else that is stealing Moose’s breath away. When they narrow the focus of their sense, there are items on her person which evoke such intense emissions of their own that it becomes almost nauseating. Particularly the cloth wreathing her flesh. A robe filled with such familiar power.
But there is one thread of Arcane character that stands out from everything else. It tickles an old, burning obsession with one of the mysteries of a bygone world.
Blood Thaumaturgy.
A small shiver runs up Moose’s spine. Fueled by the rise of an uncharacteristic excitement.
Surely, she can’t be one of them? Were they not wiped out in the mists of myth?
Tamp down your excitement and be cautious about any assumptions. Compose yourself before she realizes we’re here.
Do you believe it’s her?
Impossible to say, but I’m sure we are about to find out.
Before Moose can professionally compose themselves, before they can open their eyes and address what can only be the quarry they have been searching for, her voice cuts through the fog.
“If you’re pretending to be asleep, you are doing an exceptionally poor job of it.”
You are, without a doubt, a terrible actor.
I’m going to try something.
Moose, the reckless Young Magician snags a tiny conceptual mark from the Ethereum. With a single motion they bind it to their eyes as an Arcane Vision charm. Normally a useful tool to assess persons or objects of a certain character. Especially if they may be of some interest to the disparate small clusters of nomads.
No, wait!
“I wouldn’t do that.”
The warning from both Elder Moose and the stranger comes almost as quickly as they’ve cast the mark. Still a hair too late. Young Moose opens their eyes and immediately regrets it.
A sharp noise of pain escapes their lips when the waiting inferno rushes in, washing over their eyeballs.
Moose’s curiosity has produced an effect that might as well be equivalent to staring at a high luminosity search light with a pair of night vision goggles. Or, perhaps more aptly, staring directly at the Sun while four times closer than on earth.
They jam their eyes closed. It is an effort to bring their hands up in silent agony and hastily dispel the charm. Nothing but a splitting headache to show for it. Their eyes feel scalded straight through, head throbbing.
Is your brain made of mashed potatoes, what were you thinking! Reckless, idiotic, you could have fried your brain doing that, and me with you.
A languid sigh fills the space. Footsteps echo as Young Moose tries not to panic.
I thought— the thought cuts off.
“I did try to warn you not to do that. An arcanist of your innate talent potential cannot withstand the deployment of Arcane sight in the presence of a higher order Arcana that comes from someone of my pedigree. Did no one teach you the dangers of such recklessness?” she scolds Moose like a child.
“I didn’t expect—” But the woman cuts them off.
“Of course you didn’t. You’re self-taught?”
The Magician’s eyes throb as they fall silent.
“How can you tell?” they ask, trying to stay focused through the pain, even as the strain leaks into their voice.
Of course that may have been a mistake, as the Sorceress proceeds to descend into a long-winded lecture.
“Self-Taught wanderers, and especially mages, have unique character to their conceptual auras, which are shaped by the nature of their innate affinities. Whereas any wielder of magic who was schooled through a tradition, a mentor, or through more academic study is shaped by those principles. While yours fluctuates in such a way as to suggest academic induction, those markers are fresher, more indicative of sporadic application. If you’d had more traditional Arcane training, you’d likely know all of this yourself.”
A hand brushes across Moose’s brow, parting hair away from their face. The eyes burn beneath the shielding of those eyelids, throbbing with an idle heat.
“You can tell all that after only a few minutes?” Moose asks, trying to use the conversation as a distraction.
Why are you asking her stupid questions?
“I am a sorceress; I would be a stain upon the title if I could not. Now, open your eyes please. I need to see how bad the damage is.”
“Why?”
“Because despite your innate foolishness, I could have reacted quicker and shielded you from the worst of it, so I bear some responsibility in this.”
Moose’s eyes open slowly as they acquiesce to the demands of the stranger. Instant pain sweeps down into their optic nerve, as the unfiltered air provokes a heightened burning. Everything is a hazy sheen of barely detected light. They’ve been blinded.
Well, hopefully you will learn the lesson from this.
“I—I can’t see.” Their breathing starts to pick up.
Calm yourself, I’m sure she can fix it. As long as you aren’t even more reckless.
Another languid sigh fills the space between them. Then, a shadow falls across the hazy lights.
“As I feared. The thaumic corrosion burned almost completely through your retinal cells. You’re lucky it wasn’t worse.” The Sorceress certainly has no qualms or shyness about touch judging by the way she pulls open each eyelid. Which has the added effect of making the stinging worse.
Extremely fortunate in fact.
There comes a sound of rustling fabric, accompanied by the clink of small glasses. The shadow briefly fades and Moose can make out footsteps.
“Useless, no, no, that would never work… yes. That’ll do it.”
As Moose waits, listening to the Sorceress’s complaints, liquid sloshes, they can vaguely make out the motions of what might be a mortar and pestle. Then the shadow comes back.
“Keep your eyes open, I need a moment to prepare a draft and a healing spell,” she commands, her fingers pulling open the eyelids to their widest length. Some Arcane effect abruptly pulls the skin taut, letting her pull her digits away.
“Alright. Thank you, I think.”
“You can thank me by reading a long list of tomes I’m going to give you when I’m done. It would be dangerously negligent of me to let you maim yourself on someone else.”
At least something of worth will come out of this.
A bit of heat creeps up the back of Moose’s neck, an uncharacteristic feeling of inurement with this mysterious sorceress attending to them. There’s something brushing against either side of their legs, fabric on fabric.
“Drink this. It will be unpleasant, but it will help with the pain.”
A narrow-mouthed glass vessel presses into Moose’s fingers. They press it to their lips, the taste bitter and harsh against their tongue. They cough after swallowing.
That’s awful.
A few seconds later the pain behind their eyes begins to rapidly dull.
“Now, I have a tincture here that I am going to drip into your eyes. It is going to sting, but I need you to stay still if you want your eyesight fully restored right now. Otherwise, I will have to go get more herbs from a garden on a jungle world, and that will take me some time.”
“Alright.” Moose braces for the sting of falling liquid.
An additional spell settles into the skin of Moose’s eyelids, holding them wide open. ‘Sting’ was perhaps an understatement. The first drops hit the right eyeball, and then the left. A thick bolt of stinging pain seeps down into the flesh. It runs the length of the optic nerve crashing into their brain. Moose’s head tries to move on reflexive instinct, but a firm, soft hand grips their chin, holding them in place.
“Don’t blink, don’t move,” Her voice is a quiet hiss.
Are you just incapable of listening to instructions?
I am trying, believe it or not.
Try harder.
Then, strange words begin to pour from her lips. Harsh sounds and syllables that might as well be gibberish stacking atop each other in layered voices. From where her fingers grasp Moose’s chin, a puerile heat pours into the flesh. It spreads rapidly across their face in a slow soothing wave. Bit by bit, the haze of light sharpens as cells in each eyeball rapidly regenerate to the point of absurdity. Shapes begin to resolve with the ability to differentiate colors trickling back in.
Soon, the shape of the woman becomes more apparent. It refines itself again and again with increasing detail. Her nose is wrinkled with focus, the lines on her brow scrunched together. Pursed lips with a naturally vibrant pink and just the barest suggestion that she's biting into that flesh. Her face is youthful. Were Moose not otherwise informed, they might have believed her only to be late twenties. Early thirties at most.
Oh.
Stay focused.
Three things immediately catch Moose’s attention after the initial appraisal. First, the eyes are a rich lilac, trimmed with depths of sweeping shadows that twist and dance to an unseen flame. There’s a piercing intensity that’s difficult to look away from. A richness suggesting a deep well of experience. Second, are the ears. They consist of a long, elegant curve ending in a pointed, sylvan tip. Elven one might call them, but so very much not human. The final detail is the presence of sweeping marks flowing across her skin and clothing. Purple lines forming Arcane symbols, sigils, glyphs. But perhaps most jarringly, there are linguistic marks among them. All too familiar characters that send an excited but tense chill down the Magician’s spine.
This is not a dream, right? We are not hallucinating her?
What a fascinating development. No, no my young friend, she is quite real.
Now who is losing focus?
A black hooded robe is cast across her shoulders, draped around her body. The rest of her is covered by a half skirt of white cloth, tan shorts, fishnet leggings, knee high boots, and an off shoulder detached quarter sleeve top that leaves her midriff exposed.
In the reflection of those eyes, Moose watches their own pupils dilate. The purple sparks arcing through their eye sockets finally settle. In the next instant, the marks across her skin vanish, leaving her seeming quite barren now in comparison.
Stop staring like a lovestruck puppy and say something.
The Young Magician tries, which is quite hard when there’s an intense academic interest blooming in their breast. It’s not the only emotion scrambling every coherent thought trying to form in their head. All the while, this strange woman looms over them looking all the world like a creature from a distant dream.
You are feeling the exact same way, and it is distorting my ability to think clearly.
Then compartmentalize.
Before they can say something, the woman speaks.
“Follow my finger,” she orders, one finger already held out at the edge of their vision.
They do as commanded.
Appearing satisfied with this first test, the sorceress then pulls out a small penlight. She briefly shines it into each pupil. The tiny rod vanishes again into her blouse a second later as she claps her hands.
“Okay, it looks like reflexes and light responses are back to normal. Tell me what you see? So I can make sure we haven't missed any withered nerves?”
Moose blinks a few times, realizing the woman is basically straddling them.
What do I do?
Pull yourself together and act like a professional.
“I, uh—” Moose stumbles over their words. The more they look at her, the more flustered they become by every action she takes.
Oh, good heavens.
There’s a ripple in her expression; the ears shifting in a way that Moose isn’t expecting. First, they stand horizontal to her skull which accompanies the wrinkling of her nose. Then they sweep up and back in a slight tilt. A small upward curve takes to the corner of her lips.
“Never mind, it’s written all over your face.”
By the Ethereum, close your mouth before you start drooling!
Moose closes their mouth. Heat burns against the nape of their neck. Her ears then seem to purposefully wiggle; a reflection of a different expression. Somewhere close to amusement, except marked by the hooding of her eyes.
She releases Moose’s chin, unstraddling them, and steps back. They sit up slowly, feeling rather dizzied by the entire affair. Young Moose takes a moment to rub their eyes, fully cognizant of the woman’s gaze still on them. Attempting to regain their composure, they look towards the woman. She waits patiently, arms crossed just under her chest with a remarkably imperious air.
“Feel better?” she asks with an air of amusement.
“Yes, quite a bit. I do apologize for the trouble.” Moose rubs the side of their face, and their eyes again for good measure.
She shrugs.
“I assume you got lost and sat down for a rest?”
Why is her tone almost accusatory?
Just answer the question.
“No, not so much lost as I was searching for someone. The Arcana wing is, as I’m sure you can appreciate, quite large. I exhausted myself trying to find them. Though in a quite curious turn of events, she seems to have found me first.”
Good recovery.
I would, at this point, appreciate it if you stopped backseat driving. I can handle it from here.
One eyebrow rises up.
“You were looking for me?” She points to her chest.
“Well, I believe so. I was given a quite vague description.” Moose gestures with one hand. They reach for the notecard stuffed in their jacket pocket with the other, before thinking better of it.
Better to not give away our actual purpose here.
“Let’s hear it then,” the Sorceress says as she moves over to the nook’s table.
Was that tea set there before?
Their eyes focus on the pot for a moment. It’s oddly shaped into the contours of a Trireme, where the cups are otherwise, normal.
No, but it might be hers. A trireme… strange.
“A woman who calls herself M. Purple eyes, sylvan ears, and Arcane marks flowing across a dark robe. Descriptions which are not very common across the Library. Much less the Serpent’s Hands,” Moose gestures as they rise from the comfortable sitting chair.
The Sorceress pauses as her ears twitch. There’s a momentary expression flittering across her facial muscles that Moose doesn’t quite catch.
“Yes, well, I’d agree with your assessment. You have found me; the Sorceress M. To what do I owe the pleasure?” She holds her arms out with a somewhat anticlimactic flair.
This is really not how I expected this to go.
“Erm—”
Don’t stumble now, you were doing well.
“Oh, wait, don’t tell me. You’re here to debate the necessity of violence in seeking out freedom from domination, freedom of self-determination, and freedom of knowledge?” again she cuts Moose off, this time with words overflowing with a sense of bitterness.
What?
Well, that seems like a red flag that this has happened quite a lot recently. Tread carefully.
“Uh—"
“I am sorry to say, I have no interest in being lectured by another young ideologue who thinks they completely understand the purpose of the Hand,” for the third time, Moose is stopped from answering, now starting to wonder if this M. just likes to hear herself speak.
That is not what I meant.
She didn’t let me get a word in.
She leans over the table, beginning to collect the tea set. She’s clasps a bag in one hand that seems to have been produced out of thin air. Moose blinks once, trying to deconstruct the layered implications and closed off body language of the woman before them. There are certainly additional questions to be had there. But first, they need to actually find a way to stop her from leaving.
Well don’t just let her walk away. Use the approach we discussed beforehand.
“No, I can’t say I’m here to debate the necessity or utility of violence in pursuing freedom. In all honesty, I’ve come to believe that the often unpleasantly authoritarian regimes that dictate the world we live in are not simply going to roll over by appealing en masse to better sensibilities.”
A moment of silence between them. M. scrutinizes Moose for a long moment with a mild sense of distrust.
“Then, why are you here?” she asks.
“Well, that is a complicated question now isn’t it. May I sit?”
M. cocks another eyebrow, and gestures with an open palm to a chair. She puts the tea set back on the wood table, which Moose is only now realizing has faint etched Arcane marks all across its surface. They are glowing now in response to the Sorceress’s ambient magic.
Plenty of surprises today.
“Tea?” M. offers a saucer with a teacup on it. Upon closer inspection, Moose finds a dragon etched into the porcelain.
“Please.”
About a minute later, Moose is seated across from the Sorceress. Her eyes watch the Magician’s every movement, expression inscrutable. The tapping fingers are clear signs of growing impatience. They, in turn, are taking advantage of sipping from the cup to find the right words to bring to the forefront in what is very quickly becoming a joust of wits.
“Before we start, may I ask you a question?” they ask.
M. sips from the cup for a moment before responding.
“Go on.” She makes a small sweeping motion with one hand, not really looking at Moose.
“Are you doing that on purpose?”
M. waits a moment before looking at them.
“Are you going to specify or…?”
Moose blinks.
“Your thaumic emissions. I could feel them before you ever stepped into the cubby. Are you intentionally projecting them?”
“Projecting? Oh, you seem to be mistaken. I am masking quite heavily,” she says so very simply with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But even suppression only goes so far."
Both Young and Old Moose sit with that information for some time in stunned silence.
I believe, we are in way over our heads.
I think that was obvious when she burned my eyes out.
Several more seconds pass before she speaks again.
“Now, please continue, I am a busy woman with much to do.”
Tread very carefully.
“I suppose you could say there are several reasons why I have sought you out above others,” Moose finally begins after recomposing themselves.
She says nothing, her expression completely impassive. With the exception of her eyes, which swirl with cold calculation.
I like that look less with every passing minute.
“The first would be of an academic interest, which I’ve already validated for you. A woman of such skill, power, and knowledge would be among the greatest of teachers to an ambitious magician such as I. With the caveat that I am hopelessly outclassed in terms of raw potential.”
A half-truth. I hope for both our sakes, she doesn’t see through it.
“I hope you understand that while I firmly believe all knowledge, all magic, should be accessible to any who desire to learn it; I do not teach cheap parlor tricks. Nor would I allow a mage to try any applications of the Arcane that they do not have the innate potential to reach.” M. gestures, every word cutting straight through the carefully crafted cuff of Moose’s statements.
“Of course. Anyone would be a fool to approach you with that in mind.”
“Then knowing that fact, what possible reason could you have for asking after mentorship? Especially if you cannot apply the majority of what I have to teach?”
She bought it.
Or at least is pretending to. Appeal to her ego, the Older Moose encourages.
“See, that is a wonderful question, M. My answer, I believe, will speak to your basal desires,” Moose lets the statement hang between them, a smile on their lips.
“You are making a lot of presumptions.” She leans back in the chair.
“I am, you could say, a collector. My collection is the academic knowledge and study of magic.”
The wandering of M.’s eyes shift back to focus on Moose. Her pursed lips twitch.
“Oh?”
Took the bait.
Reel her in.
“Yes. You could say it’s my passion; my life’s work.”
“You have my attention,” she leans slightly forwards, placing her elbows on the table.
Moose lets the smile drift down across their lips.
“Who could be better to serve as a companion and mentor in this department? Certainly it would be a Sorceress. Especially one who is rumored to have spent centuries, if the handwritten exchanges between Hand members are even remotely accurate, accumulating a library of every potential spell tome, scroll, and tradition she can get her hands on.”
M. laughs. It’s a sharp amusing noise that catches Young Moose slightly off-guard.
“Centuries? Is that what they are saying now?” she asks with rolling chuckles.
“I take it the assertion is incorrect?”
“I’m sure you would like to know,” M.’s pitch twists somewhere between a tease and an admonishment.
“But you’re not going to disclose it, are you?” Moose presses.
Don’t press.
She steeples her fingers on the table.
“No, I don’t think so. At least not at the moment. But please, go on. If nothing else you are amusing. A refreshing turn of pace from the usual nomads who come wandering into my presence.”
Well. I think she may be toying with us.
Just be calm.
“Well, you see, my other interest is the academic documentation of the history of Magic, the Library, and the hidden world. Particularly of the loose coalition of various freedom seekers who are sometimes referred to as the Hand.”
The atmosphere of the space shifts, the shadows darkening with a latent hostility. The expression on her face twists from a casual, almost dismissive interest to something far more dangerous. It makes every hair stand up on the back of Moose’s neck.
“Why?” The question is cold from her lips, sending goosebumps up Moose’s arm.
Advice?
Her gaze is a focused laser now. It burns a hole through the Magician’s skull in-between their eyes.
Hit her with the second half. Then hope that’s enough to swing the pendulum back.
“Because we don’t know our own history. The cycles that our little movement goes through are left to whispers and easily lost notes passed between groups. There is no easy way to untangle that Gordian knot, not without primary sources that are truthfully, probably all dead, or at least uncontactable. But imagine my excitement when your name passes over my book desk. The concept of our fight is bigger than any one person, but it had to begin with something. Someone.”
Her expression remains guarded, but there is an interest there in the way her ears shift. The Magician is beginning to pick up on her body language.
“You’re assuming that there weren’t previous iterations of the Hand for many thousands of years.” She drags a finger through the air, as if drawing something.
There’s a mote of magic there that Moose doesn’t quite catch.
What was that?
A spell, didn’t catch the concept. She’s absurdly fast.
“No, actually. My presumption is this centuries old manifestation of the movement is not the first. Perhaps not even remotely close to the true beginning. Frankly, you do not look remotely the age I suspect you might be. Your eyes scream it.”
“Are you attempting to flatter me?” she asks, in an almost playful tone.
“No, simply being honest.”
She audibly hmms.
How should I close out?
Honesty.
“Look, I suspect that if there was a beginning to the concept of the Serpent’s Hand and the wanderers who make up its folds, someone like you would have seen it.” Moose leans forward, trying not to let the desperation bleed into their lips.
M. sits back in the chair, that piercing gaze not leaving Moose’s face. A thousand different night fires burn in her pupils, casting all the world about them in the flames of a deep history no one remembers.
I wish I could crawl inside that skull and pull every piece of her mind apart.
In all honesty, I can’t say I disagree.
She eventually looks away. Up towards the ceiling and the top of the endless shelves. Her expression is inscrutable to Moose’s gaze. There is a flicker there in the twitch of her facial features, something old and sad. Then, she closes her eyes. Another small note of magic cuts back down from somewhere overhead. Neither Moose can get their fingers around it.
“This is not a place to discuss such things, presuming they were true. Which is assuming I was willing to tell you or that I knew of them at all. We are never alone here, and there are dangers which remain even with the passage of time.”
“Of course, I completely understand.” Moose starts to get up.
That’s it then, I failed.
After a moment, she opens her eyes and looks up at Moose.
Hold on a second.
“So, Tilda D. Moose, Magician, trickster, academic, I will take up your offer.”
Moose pauses, a wash of relief rolling through them. It blooms into a smile. Then they completely freeze.
I didn’t give her my name.
Well. Things just got more interesting.
“Don’t look so surprised. I have many eyes in many places,” she says with a smile that is far too predatory for Moose’s liking.
Young Moose swallows.
How exciting, this will be a game of chess for the ages.
“Come,” she says, rising from her seat. A portal of light opens at her back, trickling into the room.
There isn’t supposed to be a Way in this room.
Now how on earth did she do that?
“I will take you to a place shaped by dreams. There we may discuss many things, and I will truly assess whether you may then walk truly free.”
As Moose rises to walk around the table and join the Sorceress, the Elder can’t help but think: What have you gotten me into, Seeress.
????, 1950 CE
I really thought this trip through the Way was going to be uneventful.
It seems fairly clear we were both wildly off the mark in our assumptions.
There were details about the tunnel that were… strange. Things in the star-speckled arrangements beyond the fluttering boundaries of spiderwebbing lights. They didn’t know how to otherwise describe them. Largely because they appeared as distant shadows, displacements of space and time that Moose had never encountered before.
Why? the Elder wonders, as the blinding doorway of light rapidly approaches. Why are there no such things in the Ways to and from the Library?
Perhaps, the Library wiped them out.
It’s a stunning realization. The lights grow and grow. Then, they pass through the threshold. There is nothing. A strange statement which echoes in tiny curls through Moose’s mind in the static white haze that obscures the senses. It takes but a moment to realize, their brain is attempting to project what none of their senses can register.
What’s happening?!
Do we exist?
There drips a deep sense of listlessness. They reach for other senses, smell, hearing, and find the same answers as touch and sight. Nothing.
Or, almost nothing. A voice cuts through the abyss.
“Moose, exist.”
Just like that, the voice blooms something from the endless nothing like seeds planted in a garden. Moose looks around, their eyes taking in the shape of an endless white, with no clear boundaries of terrain.
How, what, where?
Stop yelling.
“Down here,” M.’s voice echoes endlessly from every direction.
Which direction is down?
Question of the hour.
Moose looks in the relatively downward direction first, finding nothing there. Then they look up. Again, nothing. Finally they look behind them. There she is, perpendicular to Moose’s current position. She stands, with feet planted on some surface that’s indiscernible from anything else in this white void.
“How are you doing that?” Moose asks, twisting their body to face her direction.
“Use your imagination.”
“What?” The confusion washes across their features.
Is this some sort of practical joke?
M. sighs deeply. With a fluid motion, the sorceress spins several steps forwards. Her robe catches aflame with purple light. Spiraling out from her feet in ripples of spinning glyphs and sigils emerges multiple rings of spells.
All at once, there is a gravitational tug on the Magician, which yanks them in her direction. An undignified squeak escapes their lips as they tumble through the air. Seconds later, they bounce to a halt upon a soft floor of marshmallows. Hands and legs sink into the soft mush very briefly, as they try to right themselves.
They stare down at the white with confusion.
“Marshmallows?” they ask aloud.
“A girl can indulge in a bit of whimsy,” comes M.’s voice as her boot steps echo on what sounds like tile.
As they try to regain their bearings, M.’s shadow falls over them, a hand offered. Moose pulls themselves up onto their feet, looking around.
“Where are we?” they ask, looking back at the Sorceress to stop the sense of vertigo trying to rise in their stomach.
“I suppose that explains it. No one bothered to tell you.”
Oh how the tables turn.
M. walks past them, over the cushion of marshmallows. Wherever she steps, purple circles of light spin out from her feet in flashes of expanding fluorescence. She rocks her hips, a strutting catwalk as if challenging the world around them to try and stop her.
Stop staring and focus on her word game.
“What?” Moose asks, looking after her with echoes of confusion washing through the Younger’s mind.
Moose starts to follow when she doesn’t slow down. Their attention drifts to the rippling spiderwebs of color that trickle out from every step the Sorceress takes. Tiles form in the endless white, pouring out for many meters. Each echo with a satisfying noise as they settle into place. The tiles ultimately halt a fair distance away, manifesting as fragmented pieces that seem to fall off into the eternity.
After a second, the sound of shattering tiles begins to echo behind them. Moose’s quick backwards gaze reveals a rather terrifying fact. The flooring M. trails is starting to fall away, after she gets a certain distance from it.
Better not get caught in that.
They pick up their pace to catch up.
“Or maybe no one else remembers it exists?” M. idly wonders aloud, “That seems likely, given the aggravating trends among the Wanderers these days.”
“Sorry, what new trend?” Moose asks, brushing off residual marshmallow from their red suit. They’re power walking but M. is moving surprisingly fast.
“I suppose it’s not really new. Same old cycle of endless debates and arguments over peace vs. violence in the pursuit of true freedom.”
“Hold on—” Moose starts, halting in place. The frustration begins to bleed into their expression, as M. becomes more and more cryptic with every step.
She’s starting to sound like you.
Well, it is truly maddening. What a wonder it would be to have a window inside that mind.
Stop daydreaming and help me figure out what she’s done and why she’s ignoring our questions.
You’re on your own for this one.
“It’s the general atmosphere that develops each time we go through this dance. Where the newest blood has little to no conception of just how little peaceful approaches work on their own. Then we have a pendulum swing, where the old guard who know that violence can be effective are run out or pushed to the fringes.”
“Stop!” Moose finally demands.
M. stops walking and turns back to face the Magician. One eyebrow is cocked, ears tilted up.
“Where are we? What’s happening? Why were there marshmallows—what’s going on with the floor?!” they ask, letting their lips curve down in annoyance.
M. tilts her head with a quizzical half-curve to her mouth.
“How to best answer such a question.” She taps one finger against her chin. “Tell me, are you a vivid dreamer, Moose?”
Oh, this really is going to be fun.
If you’re not going to be helpful, can you please be quiet?
“What does that have to do with anything?” Moose lets the exasperation bleed into their voice.
“If this is going to work, you’ll need to start trusting me. I can’t explain every little move I make, it just wastes time. So, humor me,” she says so simply.
Truly a woman after our own heart.
“We just met and you have flung us both into some sort of… I don’t even know. You want me to trust you?”
“Yes, you’re a scholar and an explorer are you not?” she asks, side-stepping the question.
“Yes, but—”
“Then, you’ll need to take a leap of faith with me,” she cuts Moose off. “Now, please, answer the question.”
And I thought you enjoyed being obtuse.
As if you don’t take great joy in it yourself.
“I have dabbled,” Moose responds.
“I think you would agree that the intelligent mind is a funny thing. Biology is a series of biochemical signals, constantly reacting to the environment in which they exist. Intelligent life forms have been organized into incredible complex bundles of flesh, with tens of billions of neuronal connections. Those connections create a waking mind that is a wondrous thing. The mind creates an interiority, thoughts, feelings, the capacity to picture things that are not immediately before it. And from this ability springs something mesmerizing, something magical in the young of intelligent beings. Especially of hominids like us, would you not agree?”
“I’m not sure precisely what I’m agreeing to?” Moose asks.
M. smiles. Holding her hand out and grasping at what seems like nothing. She almost seems to shape from the air an orb, filled with the spinning disc of a galaxy. Its psychedelic colors shimmer in endless waves.
A slow realization curls across Moose’s skin. The Older Magician gives thought to the instinctual tremors curling through the flesh.
Oh, oh I must be blind. How fascinating!
What?
Have you not been paying attention?
Just tell me. I am running out of patience.
She hasn’t used magic. Nor, come to think of it, has she cast any other Arcane effects since we’ve entered this space. She fooled our perception by projecting the gleaming Arcane symbols she leaves in her wake. Bravo Sorceress, what a brilliant play.
The thoughts slam into young Moose like a freight train, stealing the breath from their lungs.
With a simple, elegant twist of her wrist, she casts the orb upwards. In an instant, the transparent marble-like boundaries inflate outwards in a rush of wind and light. It drowns out the white with a tide of darkness, soon lit beneath the arcs of space dust and gas that spin overhead in rings of stars. Moose stares, mouth agape.
“Children have this miraculous ability to bring people to life,” she snaps her fingers, and the environment shifts. A city of neon lights, endless crowds of people pouring in streams around them.
“Monsters,” another snap. A gargantuan thing of multi-colored scales looms above, smoke pouring from its nostrils. A thunderous roar tears from its throat.
By the Ethereum!?
Duck!
In a flash, Moose dives for cover. The beast rears back, ready to smite them down with endless streams of flame.
“Things,” another snap. Mechanical whirs fill the sky. The source, an airship, rumbles past as Moose looks up to trace its arc. It cuts a graceful path through the air, drifting towards an archipelago of floating islands. Each one is wrapped in spiraling organic towers of twisting shapes and pinkish colors.
“Entire Worlds,” another snap, and they stand above the endless twirl of a foreign planet wreathed in an atmosphere of deep orange. Its surface is marked with swirling lights.
“and entire universes,” a final snap, bringing them back to the endless spirals of stars twirling overhead. Moose picks themselves up from the ground, looking around wide eyed.
“How are you doing this? Are you reality-bending?”
“Not quite. This ability to conjure these revolutions of concept within their head, these many narratives, is imagination. Most will lose this ability as they grow up. Drained by the pressures of society bearing down on them, wicked away by the cynicism of the world, and withered by the demands of adult responsibility. Though there is great power in the mind; imaginations, hopes, and dreams all originate from one place. When the imagination of a child rots away, what they leave behind is cast back into it. It’s a nothing, a Void, if you will.”
She reaches into her robe, pulling out what, for all intents and purposes to Moose, looks like a censer had a baby with a meteor hammer.
Be ready to run.
I do not believe that will stop her.
They take a cautious step backwards.
“What does this have to do with Vivid Dreamers, or where we are now?” Moose asks carefully.
“An excellent question, my new student. The Void is a place of malleability. Those fair few who maintain their imaginations into adulthood, your painters, sculptors, fiction writers, musicians, and mages, continue to draw upon the small trickles of the Void while awake. But even though they might drift their mental fingers through drops of narrative canvas, complete physical or mental access to the Void is beyond the Library. It is beyond all categories of intelligent things. All except one.”
Moose’s eyes slowly widen.
“Vivid Dreamers.”
M. smiles slowly. She begins to twirl the meteor hammer in slow, languid arcs. Smoke crawls across the floor beneath the stardust, thick with a sharp woody scent. Legs move, slow, methodical steps in time with the half-twirls of the meteor hammer, walking towards Moose. Hairs stand up on the back of the Magician’s neck.
“Yes. All dreamers are immersed in the Void, where the deep crevices of the intelligent mind warp their folds to their emotions. But it is the Vivid Dreamer who walks unhindered through the endless nothing of the Void and may shape it to the limits of their imagination. A particularly clever dreamer with the ability to bridge the gap between the waking and the dreaming may, if determined and resourceful enough, find or make a path to walk there in the flesh.”
Realization dawns across Moose’s face as they look around, instinctively taking another step backwards. There’s a sense of panic rising in their lower abdomen, a deepening pit.
“A Way, you created a Way into the Narrative blank space between the folds of reality?!”
“No, my wife birthed a path between the waking world and the stuff of dreams.” Her eyes blaze with a quiet, brilliant madness.
She’s insane!
No, it’s worse than that. She pulled us into the Void, the narrative blank space between worlds. She’s a genius. I’m quite afraid that the game was rigged from the start.
The magician works their jaw, trying to peel the multi-faceted implications of that statement apart. M. does not stop moving toward them.
“Good heavens, you’ve brought me into the Void?”
“Correct. I’ve brought you where the Library cannot see or listen, in order to decide your fate.”
All at once, the surface upon which they both stand ripples outwards into a sheen of starlit water.
Do something!
“And I, Tilda D. Moose, am a Vivid Dreamer.”
M. spins across its surface, the meteor hammer arcing through the air. Smoke and metal blur across the space between them.
Moose freezes as the streak of death arcs across the gap between them almost in slow motion.
It was a trap!
The coming moment plays out in their head a thousand times, their skull splitting open beneath the weight of that metal. The imminent end of their task before it even begins.
But the chain arcs past their head, serpents curling around their frame. There’s a moment where they’re not quite sure if they’re in the post-strike dream.
Did she miss? Or are we dead?
I don’t think we were the target.
Then, they blink and turn to watch as M. carves upon the Void a structure, every twist and twirl of chain gashing through the stars. A chimney belches smoke up into a quickly rising, star-studded sky. Marble columns fade into castle walls. Castle walls fade into clapboard Tudor housing then into endless stretching arrangements of wood, brick, mud, and stone. Each surface is matched with haphazard windows, many of which shine into further interior walls. It is pure madness.
It’s not quite right, shimmering as if an imperfect realization of M.’s intent.
Why would she hand construct something that resembles the Library itself? This does not seem entirely fitting of her imagination.
She’s hiding something.
M. walks past Moose towards a drawbridge arcing over a river of endlessly flowing lava. The wood of the great door creaks with a forgotten age as it lowers to bridge the moat and welcomes them inside.
“Are you coming in?” she asks over her shoulder.
Moose breathes out all the air they didn’t realize they’d been holding in their lungs. A deep relief pours through their chest.
“I thought you were about to kill me,” they exclaim, putting a hand over their heart.
“If I wanted you dead, I would have simply let your consciousness dissolve into the blank canvas. My strength would have been wasted on you,” she waves a hand dismissively. A tinge of amusement curls through her upward slanting lips.
Well, that’s disquieting.
Moose takes a moment to just breathe, letting the callousness of M.’s statement wash over them. Eventually, excitement takes its place.
Take heart, we’ve passed at least her first test.
“Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined being brought to such a place!”
M. laughs.
“In a different age, you would have been brought here the moment you became vetted by the other Wanderers. But I suppose, there are so few left who know of such things. Fewer still who I would yet trust to keep this secret from malicious minds.”
She turns and walks in. Moose follows, making note of a gatehouse full of strange objects that look vaguely like turrets. M. snaps her fingers and they power on, glimmering with purple light.
“What are those?” Moose asks.
“Arcane defenses. Though this is the Void, and it is a blank space, there are things that dwell in the faded grasp of lost narratives. Nightmares which wander between the oneironic realms of dreams and use this place as a shortcut to find their next meal are but one such example. A man named Crowley worked with me on their design.”
“Why not bring others from the Hand within these walls?” Moose inquires. They look around at the walls, where tapestries of a serpent wound around a hand flutter in some invisible breeze.
“As I’ve said, there are sharp differences in perspective between my wife, I, and the current disposition of many of the wanderers. With the end of the World Wars on Earth, the attitude has pivoted away from the use of incredible violence to pursue the depths of freedom,” She languidly drags one hand through the air as they walk deeper into the structure.
Wife?
I was waiting for her to bring that up. Was starting to get concerned we had the wrong person.
Wait, you knew about that?
It wasn’t important in the moment.
They pass workshops of many different functions and sizes. Including an odd alchemical/pharmacological laboratory carved from oddly colored assortments of lovingly decorated woods. The door abruptly shuts with a bang as M. walks past, leaving Moose to stare back for a moment. They almost run face first into a wall.
“This is a pendulum you’ve seen many times before, I believe you said?” Moose rubbernecks between different spaces as they walk.
In another room there is a furnace fueled by the heat of that same river of lava seen from the outside. Its path traces beneath the floor of the workshop, made of fully transparent stone that resists the heat in ways no actual material could. Beside the furnace is a smithy, with anvils, racks of tools, and anything else one can imagine.
“Yes. It never fails to arise. Usually with young wanderers after a period of incredible violence where many oppressive systems have been dismantled. Lack of experience paired with the recency of the horrors of war frequently lead them to the misguided assumption that freedom is better achieved purely by peaceful means and the spreading of love.”
On they walk, past workrooms for enchantment, a kitchen, bedrooms, fletching, stonemasonry, carpentry and many other crafts. They are carved in purely nonsensical, almost hastily organized arrangements.
“Which allows the blood stained fingers of authoritarian systems to creep back in. Love only gets one so far.”
“Exactly,” she says. “Then the cycles repeat again. It’s not the first time my wife and I have been pushed to the fringes. Always at the whims of those who don’t learn from the past. It may very well be the last.”
“You mean to abandon the Hand?”
“I mean to retire,” M. says as they climb a staircase.
The landing coils out into a sprawling, open planned library dense with magic. Thousands upon thousands of tomes. Each covering countless Arcane traditions within the grasps of their shelves. There is a constant glimmering with an unusual oscillation of barely visible light.
“You would leave us then, taking all this knowledge with you? Deprive the future of the many systems by which the cycles of the past fought for Freedom?” Moose asks, tone almost accusatory.
There’s a small ripple of irritation that washes off the Sorceress, as she turns her head to glare at Moose.
“We have been in this fight for longer than you can imagine. Maybe we weren’t the first, but we stood at world’s end and fought reality itself to build a better world. The sacrifices we have made, the friends we have lost are too many to count. There were people we could have saved, whole societies that burned while we were trying to convince the Wanderers that they needed to see the benefits of violence. Frankly, I won’t lose anyone else because some young whelps won’t listen.”
Moose takes a step back, hands half raised as they try to find something to say.
“Have you considered that, perhaps, the source of the issue is the lack of resources? That the history you’ve so obviously lived through has never been properly recorded?”
The silence is heavy between them. After several moments of Moose’s words hanging in the air, M. sighs.
“Perhaps,” the anger slowly ebbs from her eyes.
“Then I would think, by all accounts, that we should fix that, no?”
M. chuckles.
“That is the reason I have brought you here. To begin to detangle the many strands of this frayed history between all of us. Now, sit.”
Moose does as commanded. As the sorceress moves towards the shelves, a thought flitters through Moose’s mind.
“You said you have a wife?”
“I do,” she calls back as books and papers shuffle out of view.
Don’t press.
“Will she be joining us?” Moose asks, remembering her words about the birth of a Way.
Elder Moose sighs internally. You’re going to get us killed.
“Maybe someday, but certainly not today. I do not trust you that much yet.”
“I suppose that’s fair,” Moose mumbles.
M. reemerges some minutes later with a giant stack of books, dropping it on the table with a rattle that shakes Moose’s teeth in their jaws.
“Now, as your first Arcane lesson has finished, let’s begin your first history lesson.”