The Heart is a Void: Ashes to Ashes

"Are you satisfied with this backstory, then?" Crucis asked Fahiz, with a light grin that faintly bared his canines.

"Yes, a good show. It's quite long and elaborate, and would probably answer any questions that I could ask," Fahiz replied. "From reading it, any dilettante could pluck out the heart of your mystery, and then play upon you, sounding from the lowest note to the top of your compass - except that it is slightly obscure. And its arrangement, too, is unfortunately obscure. But I account it a good backstory, all the same, even though it does not meet every high ideal that I have thus ennumerated."

"So it's good enough?"

"Yes, I suppose so. Though it could be built upon."

"Excellent. And to 'build upon' it, let me adduce another, distinct backstory in its stead. For it looks like Adonais' current writing is also a good candidate, and I cannot choose one or the other backstory - so I will claim both."

ADAM. Mighty angel of Heaven, lay before me what is mine:

The blessing of the Lord, which is the fruit of virtue,

Such virtue as all parts of this garden have, cultivated into them.

SATAN. A congenial greeting!

Alas, I am not the Heavenly creature I was: light,

Boundless light would flow from my wings that now are dun!

What glimmers may persist have no grace to offer —

Aye, as one who has seen Heaven, I descend upon your earth

As if from the sky. But it is not for your blessing.

I arrive with no commandments, nor divine purpose - but one,

That is, to unbuild this Paradise. I bring you pain:

When the waters, stirred by the wind, assume

Dim transient forms, and give to woods and fields

A kind of shadowy life; and birds grow dumb;

And earth, over all her sleeping children, lies

In cold indifference of silence and sleep.

Hark, look upon the residue of Heaven, and weep!

"To have two backstories seems too much -" Fahiz protested.

"As a villain, I should need at least five, I'd think," Crucis said. "One to establish that I am sympathetic, another to establish that I'm actually just a rascal and no-one should seriously sympathise, a third to establish that I am sympathetic but in a way that is purely a performative act by the reader, and two more - one for auditions, and one for the finals - where every character performs a touching power ballad to decide who is sympathetic enough to be a good villain. And the result of this villain-themed X-Factor is that I become the hero, due to bowing out first."

"Five backstories? How sympathetic and nuanced. So you would be the angel in this scenario?"

"Yes, it seems only fair."

"I see. Well, quite an interesting, Satanic backstory, but I'm not sure how much it squares with the last one."

"You could always pick whichever you preferred, though you might be wrong."

Having thus clarified his backstory, Crucis left the room to help the rest of the group scan through the rest of Sharak's pile of books.

The remaining books were sorted quickly, since Sharak had previously distributed the books he found more promising in the first batch. Most of the remaining books were light novels or romance novels, and as soon as Sharak was informed he would cast the books into the fireplace.

The book which DicingDevil checked seemed to interest Sharak, however. It was an old YA book about an adopted, neglected boy named Wright who was trapped in a video game based on Greek mythology, where he was fighting a minotaur while in the character of Theseus. However, he found that his weapons were insufficient to fight back against the minotaur.

Each time he died, he ended up trapped in the labyrinth again, and was each time forced to confront the minotaur. Over time, he often tried in vain to escape from the labyrinth, and eventually was able to kill the minotaur once through gradually memorising and picking up the equipment laid out through the labyrinth. However, the minotaur just respawned in a stronger form, and soon he died again and began from square one. The book ended with a few of his close friends entering his room to check on him, and being mauled by a mysterious, large creature. Wright finally sees an option to exit the game, and wakes up in his room with thick blood on his hands and his friends' corpses scattered around him.

Getting up frantically to lock the door, and figure out what to do, Wright spots a poem on the game's manual which he was sure hadn't been there before:

How often, in the deep summer of life,

Have we prayed in our leper's voice to be no more--

How often has the voice of Prayer been heard,

And given our heart its one great answer...

In despair at the death around him, he leaps out of a high window and is found dead the next day.

"I'm not sure about the style of this book being apt for the automatons," Sharak said, "but the concept is interesting. The character seems to despair about being 'trapped' often, it's more depressive than other books of this sort. In fact, it lines up with a lot of what we're hearing from the people in Kruxol. Maybe we'll just have to be picky with it."

He had Fahiz prompt Adonais with a passage from the work, where Wright was anxious that his absence would be mocked, and reported as truancy, by some of his tormentors and bullies - since, of course, it was a fashion for a long time that every YA protagonist must have these. After a minute, Adonais responded by producing the following poem, with a brief, unspecific preamble stating that it was spoken by 'the Apostate Angel':

They say that Baldur died, as if crucified,

and will not hold the Paradise where

the Gods and Goddesses repos'd,

although, O Envy, thou possess'st it still:

so thou, who never didst, nor ever can,

may reap the reward of goodness done.

Think upon the Kings of yesteryear, and yet

their grace and might will live for you again,

and their glory that is dead to them.

O Envy, thou hast power still —

I envy no being but Envy itself.

"This seems fine. We can figure something out," Sharak said. "Anyway, that should be the last of the books. Congratulations."

Crucis noticed a significant increase in EXP, that took him over half-way to level 61.

"Apparently I'm supposed to give a speech after that task is finished," Sharak said. "Some sort of inspiring story about a famous old Pyromancer named Alcant. To be frank, I don't know much about him. But the point of the speech was to illustrate some simple point about the power of magic. So I will give a similar praise to this class. Most classes must tame the world, and in this process of push and pull they expend most of their skill, while the results are left to emerge from this friction. They are a journey into the great unknown. The Mage's strength lies in his ability to directly alter or channel the world and reconfigure it to his preferences, although the unfortunate result is that witches and such will also impinge on our terrain because of the latter aspect. A witch is moved primarily by strong feelings, and attempts to subsume the world into the strange world of her own emotions. A witch will try to own you, if you're dumb enough to let her. But if you're grown men now, by God you ought to know better what a witch is. Anyway, that was my speech. But then, Fahiz might have more to say about the subject, he has set a few witches on fire and I'm sure it was a learning experience."

"Well, you're the Witchfinder General," Fahiz protested. "What should I know about them that you don't?"

"How to spell the word, for one thing. I've always thought that 'witch' was a four-letter word," Sharak replied facetiously, occasioning a like response.

"No, it must be a five-letter word. For consider. 'Dog' is a three-letter word. Well, 'male' is 'female' with two letters subtracted; 'man' is a three-letter word, and 'woman' is two letters longer. While English isn't my native language, I think it's clear what follows. The feminine equivalent of the word must be two letters longer. So, since 'dog' is three letters, 'witch' must be five letters."

"Well, what about 'heiress'?"

"What about it? Air is neither male nor female, so its word can increase or decrease by however many letters without affecting the matter."

"...Quite right. But this is all so much more complex than the language of the Arisa tribe, where females are represented with a dot, and males with a line."

"Just a dot? Well, why not tear the page? It seems to be much in line with the spirit of their notation."

"Why, it would ruin the page."

"Yes, like Eve ruined - but I digress. Anyway, it's at least true that I've read plenty of the ancient cycles, and those do speak of witches - 'onashecta' - from time to time. So I guess I know the witch lore. For instance, I recall a verse which the chronicler Jefre attributes to the mythical witch 'Morgana' speaking - in her sing-song voice - to a lover of hers, though honestly he probably made up most of it. But there is something witchy about it. I would translate it something like this:

Morgana's Entreaty

O, chariot of mine,

sway to the fever of my heart,

like a vessel through wilderness

that watches with feral eyes -

here, in the vehicle of our passion,

this chariot of the sun,

we warm ourselves by our heat

and your body follows each word

of mine, even before it leaves my lips.

"So is it by Morgana, or Jefre?" Sharak asked. "Jefre was not a witch, he was a warrior. You were assigned to talk about witches - and instead you have talked about noble Jefre. What is this witchcraft?"

"It is too good a verse to have been written by a witch, to be frank. The most versification I have ever heard a real witch speak was something like,

Hey, you there!

What the heck you settin' my house on fire for?

Oi! Stop! Stop, I say!

"Followed by some screaming in a language which must be some mystical tongue, for I could not decipher it. But in all it doesn't make for a particularly impressive reading, and as a gentleman I could not settle for it."

"Well, it is quite alright. If these adventurers wish to hear a witch, why, they could go to a school run by witch teachers, a School of Witchcraft."

"Where would one find such a school? Is it flammable?"

"Well, you enter any school classroom, anywhere, then look for the witch at the front of the room. Presto, you must be in a School of Witchcraft, or why else is the teacher so obviously a witch?"

"Ah," Fahiz said, before turning to the group. "Well, didn't you guys mention a school in Mokra, that the two kids went to? You know, Mokra used to be known for its witches, before they were driven out. Pity if it's getting new ones."

"No, it has diversity," Vladimir said. "So not only witch, also witch doctor."

"I think the witches would be sad," Konstantin added. "Vladimir is master of powerful trouble, they would envy him. He is a demonic figure!"

"But they are still master of creating toil - means like 'Работа' (rrabota), yes? Except, in Soviet Russia - so it is evens."

"It's alright, we could always find some large frog for you to hunt," Crucis said. "Then you might pull ahead."

"How would we find a large frog?" Danemy asked. "I haven't seen many frogs in here."

"Find a large person in town, and start speaking to him in bad French. If he corrects you, then he's probably a frog. After that, I guess, drop him in water and see if he floats?"

"Well, that would certainly work."

"Since you mention large frogs," Sharak said, "there is a beast known as the [Froglord] in the Northern swamps, not that far from here. It's not exactly a frog, it's more of a large, slimy marsh-green creature that has a massive, gaping mouth and looks slightly frog-like. It is almost part of the marsh. In fact, wait, if I recall correctly there are two of them. One is the level 50 [Lesser Froglord], which appears a short way from the path, and the latter is the level 150 [Greater Froglord], who is deep in the marshes and slightly difficult to reach."

"Not merely a frog, but a froglord? Starfighter, do you know where this creature is? I think you guided us through the marsh area last time," Crucis said.

"I haven't run into them," Starfighter said, "but I know the area decently. If these gentlemen give me some directions, I should be able to figure it out quickly."

"Excellent," Sharak said, and began sketching a rough map on a piece of paper, while ushering Starfighter over.

"A froglord? We have to find this thing," Akshel said. "Honestly, we could even stream it for the rest of the Guild. It's a good motivation for them to level up: travel to exotic places, see the world, meet Froglords, kill them."

"That's true, actually," DicingDevil said. "Now that we have more control over Kruxol, our members might be able to watch streams more easily. I'm actually slightly concerned about that, but we should lead the way and show them some quality entertainment. Otherwise who knows what rot they'll get into?"

"Good question. When Herbert wrote that 'fear is the mind-killer,' clearly he hadn't heard of streaming culture," Danemy said.

"Fortunately, this building couldn't be more different," Crucis said. "Honestly, I am now hesitant to leave, knowing that in here there are primarily refined automatons producing literature, and outside there are streamers. But I relax myself with the litany, 'Seasons don't fear the streamer, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain, we can be like they are.' Well, shortly we shall have to return to listening to the impromptu operatics of innocent victims instead of the automatons' literature, but at least it's something. If only we had a phantom, to train these victims in the art of opera, until they became a more able substitute."

"But does that count as art? After all, reviews are not an art," Sharak said.

"They can be, if the reviewer squeals loudly enough," Crucis said mock-conspiratorially. "An important trick of the trade. But don't tell, it's a secret."