The Night Sky

A prose poem for an Old God.

The sun has set, twilight’s pastel aether faded to cool, thin air, and a vista like a vast sphere of ink hangs over the camp.  In daylight, the landscape had been unremarkable, hill after hill, trough after marshy trough, but the night has taken even those bland features, engulfed them in a void the campfire can only lap at.

At first you see nothing in the dark.  The fire is hot and blinding, and next to it, you surmise you must be safe, though you wonder if the light has simply made you terrified of the beyond to which you’ve been blinded.  In a moment of courage, you stand, you forsake the heat and security of your fire, and you take a small, timid step into the night. With surreal immediacy, pinprick glimmers blink into the sky overhead.  The hills, the trees, the cattails and rocks at the pond’s edge all fold into relief as the night stirs in its sleep, and, slowly, in a sense you can feel only in the space between your lungs, the Night Sky opens its eyes.  On the horizon, from shadow your fire could never reach, the moon rises.

Blight.  Aberration.  What do you dare bring here?

The words are not spoken, but nonetheless they are borne to your ears on whistling wind, the buzz of dragonflies, pond water slapping at its shore.  They are not spoken, but, somehow, you perceive a speaker anyway.

From the horizon, the moon approaches, wreathed by dead branches, clad in bark and tenebrous mist.  Atop an eyeless steed the color of coal, it regards you. You feel its presence, its vastness, its derision–for you–its hatred–for…something else–and as the pale sphere’s gaze moves beyond you, to your camp, your fire, your intrusion upon this dream so clearly not your own, you feel–deeply and certainly–unwelcome.

Children.  Gone astray.  Weak. Blasphemy.  Destroy. Devour.

The words are no longer coherent.  They still suffuse the air, spoken in that half-sense by which the Night Sky speaks, but they are not for you.  None of this is for you any longer, but the Night Sky does not lash out in violence like the creatures of day. It would have you understand your transgression, swallow it, have it writhe like worms in your blood, that you should go willingly to nothingness, for you deserve only nothing.

The moon’s steed turns to you, and its head splits into halves, equine silhouettes spreading like lepidopteran wings, baring yet more swirling constellations within their cranial span.  Then the nightmares begin. All around, you perceive the subtle, fearful shifts. At the shore of the pond, the tiny pebbles glinting in firelight reveal themselves to be teeth, erupting, bloody and irregular, from throbbing gums where ground should have rested.  Leeches wriggle at your ankles, crawling over one another for a taste of the blood you yet owe this place, and in the pitch beyond the moon’s sinister figure, the reeds and grasses flagellate the sky in ways that plants should not move.

The steed continues to approach, vaporous tongues lolling from its mangled wing-face, caressing your cheek, your eyes, the inside of your face, tasting what it is like to be you.  Its touch is icy, alien, shocking in its utter strangeness, and yet its intent cannot be misunderstood: It means to imbibe you, with the night, of the night; to extinguish your heat, your clarity, your definition; to purge from you any pretense of being.

You feel the hopelessness, the isolation of the dark, but instinctively, you rebel.  You tear your gaze from the steed’s hypnotic visage. You run headlong back to your blaze, your bulwark against the night’s advance.  Behind, you hear the steed’s hooves bearing down upon you. You shudder at its rider’s curses, carried on the whistle and rasp of the breeze.  You thrust your hands into the fire and withdraw a flaming bough, and you fling it, whirling, frantic, back at the approaching moon. The flames lick your hands, leaving charred, smoldering marks on your palms, but your aim is true enough.  The branch strikes the rider across the arm, igniting its wooden armor, but even as the blaze engulfs the rider and its steed and the grass and the sky and the nightmare that has swallowed you, the moon’s gaze remains impassive.

You open your eyes to an undisturbed camp.  Your fire has died down, the sky is clear and starlit, and even your erstwhile terror, still ringing in your skull, cannot quite disturb the serenity of this nocturnal silence.  But the moon still hangs between the clouds above, and it occurs, quietly, buried between the ripples of your relief, that the eyes of the Night Sky have still not closed.

The Blaze

There was once a warrior renowned in the northern reaches.  Renowned for his prowess, renowned for his cruelty. In the time before the Great Southern War, he led great campaigns of conquest across the Gravestones.  Fortresses fell to his armies, villages were razed, countless lives were claimed by his spear, but in his journeys, he fell ill, and a great fear overtook him.  With so much more of the world to see, so much more that he must dominate, he grew terrified that the sickness would break him before his work was finished.

He sought out the Alchemist, Exelcis, whose expertise was said to be the bane of all disease, and demanded that he be cured.  This was, though, not all he demanded. In those days, rumor had spread that the Alchemist had discovered a deeper secret, an elixir that linked the body and the soul, conferring longevity–or imperviousness, or immortality; the stories differed with each telling.  The warrior demanded as well that the Alchemist gift this elixir unto him, that he may finish his work no matter what impeded him. For reasons no one will ever know, the Alchemist acquiesced.

One cannot say whether the serum he provided the warrior was given in good faith.  Perhaps he had judged the cruel warrior unworthy, deserving of punishment. Perhaps the hell that would come with the Alchemist’s gift was merely the price of its boon.  But as the warrior imbibed it, and his blood was turned to flame and his body transformed, made an undying Blaze, a prison and a pyre, invincible even in the midst of his perpetual, burning agony, he slew the Alchemist in rage, and any understanding of what ought to have been died with him.

The warrior suffered for years, but with time, he came to find truth–a sort of manic salvation–in his torment.  He no longer desired to conquer the world. No, he would not be a tyrant, for he had been made a prophet of his own burning heaven.  He bade his soldiers scour the Alchemist’s ruined library for the means of replicating the tincture that had so exalted him, that he may create creatures in his image, elevated men who would ever burn, would ever remain, would ever–beautifully, rapturously–suffer.

Extremely Brief Update

I made life a little inconvenient for myself. I had begun writing the Crossroads pieces as a piecemeal way to describe an era in the Rale world that, so far, has very little description, but then I went and started a tabletop game in the same setting (War Torn/Rale was, after all, originally developed as a game). So that my updates didn’t become spoilers for my players, I stopped making them. They will return, as they become the players’ past instead of their future.

One Wing, One Eye

This piece was jointly written by Leland and I. He wrote the “primary sources”, I wrote the framing. The things being described are connected to recent pieces as well as one that will be coming soon. I’ll leave you to sort out how.

In my task, I found myself poring over the contents of the Great Library when I came upon a most peculiar scroll. I asked the librarian: “What do you know of this work?”

It seemed veritably ancient.  The parchment was thin, dry, the ink a charcoal black that seemed alien amidst the other works of the library, transcribed by the Mignikolai in their invariable rusty pigment.  Most curious was its language. It was neither the sacred tongue of Kol nor any of the earlier, forbidden dialects of the Diarchy. This was something completely different, making use of characters I knew not how to pronounce.

The librarian seemed surprised.  He apologized: I had evidently come upon an out of place original.  He bade me wait a moment while he fetched the translation. Upon his return he explained that this particular work was among the oldest held by the Kolai.  It had, of course, been inherited En Sacristi, though it was difficult to tell when the Goetia had acquired it. Curiously, the translation had also been inherited–the language was an archaic dialect of the Windwood that fell into disuse some time before the fall of Thago, and the librarian doubted there were any alive today that could read it.

He advised that the subject matter of the scroll was almost certainly unrelated to my research–and he was right–though I make separate mention of it here because it is curious to me.  There are, in fact, two distinct works represented in the scroll, and though, stylistically, they cannot possibly share a source, one cannot ignore the (somewhat unsettling) similarity in their themes.  Understanding the significance of folklore is difficult even with the best of context, but a certain feeling persists that these pieces refer to something of power.  Perhaps the half-creature of these stories is connected to the Gods which came before, those whose mantle the Blood God has so gloriously donned. 

I have made myself a separate copy.  See here for both:

The One-Winged Lark

The lark has dreamed another night for me.

It flapped up to my window.

Tapping the glass

Tap tap

Tapping me to open it.  Tapping to follow

It’s one winged flight

Up and down and around and around

Circles up and down and around and around

It flew up like a whirlwind

Like a pretty petaled whirlwind

Swirling

And I followed it.

And swirled upwards, flapping my wing.

My one wing.

My one sweet wing.

And it took me it took me.

It took me to the moon.

This opalescent ball of crystalline light

Swirling in front of me.

Pulling and pushing and undulating and wrapping 

Warping around itself

This icy light that poured on my skin.  Rubbed me down.

And cleansed my pores, leaving them oiled and clean. 

I was bathed.  I was bathed by the lark.  This little one winged lark.

My little one winged friend

Who flies like a whirlwind

Made of soft feathers, and moonlight.

The Fable of the One-Eyed Crow

Once upon a time, there was a big black wood.  With slim tall trees and thick black moss. And in a tiny old house, near a tiny old town, there lived the hag of the black wood.  And the tiny old town loved the old hag, more and more still. She’d take sick little children and she’d fix them up well. Broken limbs and sniffles and little snake bites all would be fixed in her cottage at night.  And the things that happened there were happy and happy, until one day, when the blue marks started.

Tiny blue peck marks, like chickens dipped in ink, appeared on children’s underarms, in their mouths, in their stink.  And then they started coughing, and then they couldn’t stand, then the people from the tiny town, went to the house for a hand.  They went to the old woman, the old hag of blackwood, and told her of the blue marks, and she just stood. They asked her to fix them.  She said no. They begged her to fix them. She said no. They threatened her to fix them. She said no. And the children started dying.  And grieving came full storm.

And the town became a thunder cloud.  Ricocheting anger. Every child dead. Little blue marks all over. 

And the Blackwood hag, who had fixed so many bug bites.  Had stood there and watched as their children laid down, coughed, and died.

And then a young boy, not ten years and twenty, yelled she must have done it.  That’s why, that’s why.

And the men and the women and those undecided, all were so sad, so angry, they bought it.  That’s why. That’s why.

And the thundercloud crashed, through the woods, with metal pots.  With torches and fire, and anger and plots. And dozens of angry fathers, and dozens of angry mothers with the faces of their children in their eyes came to find her.  The hag of blackwood. The one that watched them die. The one who must have done it. That’s why. That’s why.

And they found her.  In the wood. Near her tiny old house, near the tiny old town.  And they pulled her body open. And gave her tiny marks. Marks of red all over her body.  Marks of red, to pay her penalty. Marks of red to match those of blue. Marks of red for her to scream to. 

And they ripped off one foot.

They cut off one hand.

They gouged out one eye.

And sliced open one breast.

For the woman half there for them, and half just stood.

And they left her there to die.  That’s why. That’s why. 

Micropost: A Visitor to the Crossroads

The figure seemed to glide across the street, its thin cloak swaying in the breeze but betraying no motion beneath, as if to convince onlookers of the materiality of the cloak, with no regard for the appearance–or lack thereof–of a body within it.  Onlookers–for there were many that day–were not eager to greet it. The people of the village were well familiar with the trappings of powerful magic, and this foreboding individual stunk of it.

It approached first a housewife. She was sweeping her doorstep, aware of the thing approaching her just as she dearly hoped it would pass her on.  It did not. Instead it spoke, in saccharine, reverberating tones like song in a metal cavern: “I carry a message. Where is one with authority to hear it?”

The housewife was taken aback for a moment.  The strangeness of its voice, its curiously still visage hidden behind its hood, everything about it was alien, of course, but what stayed her tongue was simply that the figure’s question, in its echoes and vibrations, was difficult to understand.  There was a moment of silence before she pointed, suddenly, firmly, to a taller house at the end of the street.

The Crossroads

The village had always been between.  In the beginning, Old Marie’s stories said, it had been a trading post, a depot connecting the waterways of Riverlands to the woods and mountains of the north.  Merchants and enterprisers would enter, transient but somehow still fixture, carrying lumber and pelts and cloth and ore. Sometimes they would pass through, sometimes they would return the way they came.  Those that called the village home did well for themselves in those days. They made fortunes in trade–anything they could want somehow found its way there from afar. And, of course, those plagued by wanderlust had no shortage of opportunity to escape.  All they had to do was jump in with the next caravan that came to town, and they would most assuredly see the world.

The War was not kind to the place, but even that was mitigated by its betweenness.  The village was far enough south that it saw the horrors of the roaches but still northerly enough that its people, broadly speaking, survived.  Its young men and women proudly aided the Harmony resistance in the Battle of the Ouroboros, and then they returned to a peaceful existence at their crossroads.  For a short time, things were as they were before. But soon, new wares began to make their way through the village, and with those wares came news.

It seemed Lord Ka had kept a secret from the world.  It was a stone, rough, heavy to hold, unimpressive to the eye.  But the power.  To the mystics, the magically inclined–no matter their inexperience–it was a sun.  At the fall of Bloodhull, soldiers of Harmony who had never once in their lives channeled mana held this stone–the Hellstone, as it came to be known–and felt that power, that gruesome possibility thrumming in their hands.  They said that Harmony destroyed the Hellstone, that its power might never be unleashed upon the world again. Some did not believe that story, but they missed the point. The Hellstone’s legacy was not its power–rather it was a realization: Such objects could exist, objects that would make gods even of petty fools like Lord Ka.  

The art of putting magic into inert things was not new–hedge mages had been quietly crafting oddities for centuries.  None had possessed such power as the Hellstone, but after its discovery, that hardly mattered. A plain man with ten or twenty weak but useful magical artifacts could play at the same superhumanity.  A new order was materializing then about a delicate but ruthless balance between mankind’s lust for power and a fear among the powerful that they may at any moment be devoured by those seeking their possessions.  In this order, the village, which had always been a crossroads, became a hub of a different kind of resource.

At first, the artifacts were simply commodities.  Merchants who previously sold spice or textiles would arrive at the village, carts laden with curios and magical knickknacks they had bought at a pittance from looters and refugees.  Most of them were useless: stones that would chirp birdsong when thrown to the ground, a silver fish sculpture that bled an endless stream of effervescent crimson from its eyes; but the ones that weren’t found purpose with alacrity, after one villager–Sam, the cooper’s son–was murdered in broad daylight by one of the merchants’ customers. The killer had used a pair of gloves that rendered his hands–and their activities–unnoticeable, and when he escaped the guards following this grim test of his new purchase, the proper merchants saw the signs.  Most left the trade. Many left the region entirely. Either way, the village saw little of them from then on.

Of course, lust for power and the knowledge that enabled it would never fade away simply for lack of sellers.  Even then there were those hovering at the fringes of civilization with fearsome arsenals and stores of wealth, willing to make very rich the one who brought them a means of surpassing their rivals.  But they were murderers. For all their wealth and power, everyone knew they were cutthroats, and no trinkets, no magical elevation could change that. It was no secret they would just as soon save their money and kill for what they wanted if it was an option.  What was missing was a class of trader capable of persuading them toward the latter.

It was Marko who solved this problem for the village.  He had always been a scoundrel, well connected in spite of his sclerosed reputation, surviving on his ability to find buyers for the occasional item the merchant overclass knew it should not have.  His arrival had been timely. In another era, Mayor Bergen would have had him jailed for one of his violent altercations, his lewd demeanor, any of his all-too-public vices; but with the village’s mercantile lifeblood all but vanished, Marko’s ability to sell the artifacts–which, for a time, looters were still attempting to offload in the village’s streets–saved the livelihood of everyone there.

The village remained between, even as the world had changed, between the abandoned manors and shrines of mages long dead, the looters that trawled them in hopes of a windfall that would raise them from squalor, and the elusive buyers that Marko sold to, petty thieves and killers made greater than they ever ought be by the panoply of lies they carried.  They called themselves gods, but that wasn’t precisely true.

Notes on the LaSein Account (Full)

Gathering all of the parts of the LaSein story into a single post for ease of discovery and linking. I’ve also added the bare bones of a frame.

You don’t have much time.  Getting your wits about you, you shuffle down the hallway with all the haste you can manage in the dark, cramped space.  The hag doesn’t look like much, but she’s a Maker. No way she’s survived this long without some way to protect herself, and if she comes back and finds out what you really came here for…well, it would be much better if she didn’t.

It’s hard to hear in this place.  You can no longer feel the reverberations of her milling about in the distance.  It’s all ticks and whirs from within the walls now. But good fortune: The passage opens to a messy study, well lit if still jarringly noisy.  No gizmos in sight, but lots and lots of parchment. That’s fine. You’d settle for getting out of here with some schematics–the brokers would pay top dollar for those, and besides, you can still sell the old bat’s location. 

You begin rifling through the scrolls on the shelf.  Histories. Sketched artwork. A whole bunch of scripts you can’t read.  You shove the most mundane to the side and shovel the more arcane works into your satchel.  Better to value them later, once you’re outside. Then you come to a folio. Drawing out the first page, the parchment practically cracks in your hand.  It’s old. Very old. And though it seems unassuming–it looks like a journal–you are taken aback by its language. It’s a dialect of the southern Revián, they spoke it where you were born.  You haven’t seen anything like it since your village was overrun. In spite of the danger, you find yourself unable to resist reading through it.

At the top of the first page is a smudged symbol that may indicate a date.

I have received word of a costly skirmish in the northern reaches between one of our peacekeeping floats and an enemy raiding party.  Diarchian, according to the scouts. The presence of the troublemakers in the area is of course no anomaly, but the outcome was apparently dire: They sunk the entire float.  Barring the amassment of a far more significant force than we anticipated–a possibility the scouts’ report attempts to discredit–this is highly irregular.

The captain of the vessel was one Euphonia LaSein, and it seems she escaped with her life.  The scouts found her maimed and delirious. Her recovery will likely take some time, but I am eager to hear her report as soon as possible.

A second symbol marks the top of the next page.

I have decided that I will compile these notes separately from my regular reports to the Shareholders.  Captain LaSein’s account unsettled me, and I fear spreading it might induce a panic in the barge-districts we ought pointedly to avoid.

I had an opportunity to visit the LaSein estate on the northern plaza two days hence, and I found the captain there in a sorry state.  She was confined to an infirmary chair, wheeled by her butler, as during the battle for her float, her leg had been crushed beyond any hope of healing.  The scouts amputated it in the field. This war is a sordid business, and I shall be well glad to be rid of it when Spar is finally crushed. Still, though, the captain spoke very little of her physical state beyond those spare facts explaining her disposition.  Her worries seemed to lie elsewhere.

She confided in me a disturbing theory.  That her forces were defeated in the first place she was able to explain: The Diarchian raiding party attacked in the midst of a mutiny by the float’s slaves.  However, that they were ready and waiting for the opportunity, indeed that they were even aware of the mutiny merits further examination. Captain LaSein posited that a portion of the slave crew–a group of ten or so that the float had captured while following a lead in the Windwood–had been deliberately planted by Spar.  The slaves, in her opinion, had an unusual level of military training and cooperation, and the timing of their revolt alongside the raiding party’s assault could not have been a coincidence.

It is clear she fears the Diarchy may attempt a similar tactic closer to the Federation’s primary holdings, perhaps even within Thago itself.  While I do not wish that such exaggerated fears should spread among the populace, I do think her story merits cautious concern: I intend to immediately undertake an evaluation of my subordinates’ loyalties, in case some sort of infiltration has already begun.

Of course, I attempted to relay the same measured concern in my feedback to the captain, but it seemed she found my reaction insufficient.  After a time, she lapsed into an angry silence, and her butler, an elderly gentleman in conspicuously plain clothes, asked me politely to take my leave.

A third date symbol, resembling a small blade.

Charges were brought against Euphonia LaSein today by Prince Cotnoir on behalf of the Shareholders.  I understand their reasoning. News of defeat means the riverways aren’t safe. It scares investors, or it would if it were a sign we were not handily winning our war.  Thus, the reason for the destruction of Captain LaSein’s float must have been isolated incompetence on the part of her crew, and as her crew is entirely absent–almost entirely confirmed dead, by her account–the scapegoat must be Captain LaSein herself.

I do understand, and I understand as well that the Federation’s fortunes may have a bearing on the outcome of this war beyond the Shareholders’ personal profits, but the particulars are most inconvenient.  From a strategic perspective, the LaSein account may indicate an actual threat from the Diarchy of Spar that we ought to mitigate. If Captain LaSein’s credibility is crushed here, I will lose most of my ground for argument on that point.  Unfortunately, I fear that is exactly what will happen.

My research subsequent to my meeting with the captain has yielded a disturbing connection as well.  The current commander of the Diarchian pseudo-military in the Revián is a man who goes by the name Selenus Ignigoet, and though it is not widely spoken of, he served in a security company in Thago some decades ago under the command of the very same Euphonia LaSein.  Evidently he betrayed his unit, leaving LaSein as the only survivor, stole a cargo skiff, and bolted north. Though it is clear from the record that LaSein was in no way involved in this mutiny, it remains a point of curiosity that Ignigoet did not kill her as well. I did not have to search hard for this information–I have little doubt it will be raised in her trial.

Also, though Captain LaSein did not raise this connection as a factor for her concern in her most recent report, I suspect it is very much relevant.

Another date symbol, altered only slightly from the previous one.

It seems Captain LaSein has additional secrets the Shareholders would prefer buried.  I met with Prince Cotnoir today to raise my concerns regarding the timing and publicity of her trial.  He was not receptive, but as he understands my concerns to be related to his own safety, he did share with me the reason for his beliefs.

This is, according to the Prince, the third time that Euphonia LaSein has emerged with her life from a massacre, each one very costly to the Federation.  The second was, of course, the incident with Ignigoet, but the first predated it by nearly twenty years, well before my time, indeed before any of the present Shareholders had reached their current positions.  LaSein was only a child, but it was then that her father, Arman LaSein, was put on trial for unlawful magical experimentation.

The crime is familiar to me: I have known Riverwalkers to occasionally develop an unhealthy interest in the occult, and I have personally presided over investigations into those uncommon cases of mages acquiring an interest in the dissection and other subjection of human specimens in their research.  The penalty for such actions is, of course, death, and this was precisely that prescribed for Arman. According to the records, he was executed in the third week of the harvest, nearly forty years ago. I was aware of this conclusion, aware as well that Captain LaSein’s military career was no doubt stunted by her inauspicious parentage.  I did not hold it against her. What I did not realize was the extent to which the former Shareholders had been able to obscure the true narrative of Arman LaSein’s execution.

The Prince was in the audience on the day of the old mage’s hanging, had been brought there by his own father, and all seemed to go according to plan until the moment the block was kicked from under LaSein’s feet.  As he dangled there, the Prince told me, Arman LaSein did not kick, did not thrash, indeed, did not die. He simply stared with “eyes like coal” upon the crowd, and as he did, the hangman, the guards and magistrates, all in attendance who facilitated the execution fell to their knees and died with rope-marks about their necks.  Amid the screams, the Prince did not see what became of LaSein, but when the commotion finally settled, the old man was gone.

It is his opinion that a pattern has emerged, and the danger posed by Euphonia LaSein’s continued citizenship in Thago is greater than any possible threat she may profess regarding the defeat of her float.

I do not know if I agree with him–I feel that Captain LaSein’s account still merits preventative action–but it does not appear the point is negotiable.  Even so, I am far, far more concerned by the fruits of my visit to the records office following my appointment with the Prince. I sought to glean background on his story in a report on the precise crimes of Arman LaSein, but my eye was taken by sketch of the man appended to the main document.  I have seen this man before, in the LaSein estate, barely a week ago. I mistook him for the butler.

The same altered-knife symbol as the previous entry, appended with two tally marks.

The events immediately following my previous entry are rapidly decaying to something of a blur in my memory, but I will endeavor to recount them as accurately as possible.  Upon realizing my oversight (which, in retrospect, could hardly have been blamed on me despite my feelings of foolishness), I rushed to assemble a unit of guardsmen, and, having done so, I proceeded to the LaSein estate in order to apprehend the old man I now understand to be Arman LaSein.

My greeting there was not so warm this time, though not for any hostility on the part of the estate.  Perhaps it was our lack of appointment or the armed demeanor of the guards, but beyond distant acquiescence from the servants, we were not greeted at all.  Rather, on our own, we found Arman LaSein in a far-flung parlor, playing some sonata on an old grand piano. He informed us, without interruption to his melody, that the Captain was unwell and would not be able to entertain that day.

I of course replied with the truth: We were not there for the Captain.  As he nodded, still playing his music, I directed the guards to arrest him, but they would not.  The sergeant just shook his head at me and departed. His subordinates followed, leaving me dumbfounded in the parlor when, at last, LaSein stopped playing.  Unnerved but undeterred, I asked him a number of questions there, but still I cannot help but feel that his answers have not substantially enhanced my understanding of the situation.

I asked him what he had done to the guards–he said he showed them the truth.  I asked why he was here in the city–he replied it was to persuade his daughter to cease her patriotism.  I asked him what any of that meant, and he just sneered, asking me in return why I thought he was bothering to answer my questions at all.  Without waiting for my response, he began to play again, a cyclical series of variations, alternating between dissonance and harmony. After a few moments, he elaborated:

He stated that he had devoted his life to the study of a particular pattern, and he had returned to Thago to answer the question of whether that pattern might be able to be broken if its components were simply made aware of their preordination.  I remained bewildered as he bade me farewell, but then he issued a pointed suggestion: “Why don’t you write it down?”

That is what I am doing now, though I must confess I feel no wiser and all the more discomfited by Captain LaSein’s impending fate.

The symbol resembles a spiral with four blade-like appendages.

Captain LaSein’s trial is a mere two days away, but it seems there has been a fire at the LaSein estate.  Reports from the guards indicate that the captain remained inside as the house burned. In her condition, I fear there is little hope she made it out alive.  I am amidst preparation to visit once again, though I understand there is little left of the structure.

A few inches below, there is more written in a different hand.

Commissioner.  I shall take this opportunity, in your absence, to bid you farewell.  Despite my hostility during our last encounter, I do believe you come far closer to understanding me than the rest of your city, and I, perhaps in a maudlin wish that my daughter was right, see you as something of my last hope that a cycle I’ve long believed inexorable might, in fact, be broken.  Perhaps you know this cycle, perhaps you are still coming to understand it–you see it always begins in a particular way: Discord. Betrayal. Destruction of the harmony which reigned before, will reign after, and, somewhere beyond, will be shattered again. It has always been, and I wonder whether you can prove to me whether there is some chance, a glimmer of hope that its course might even temporarily be averted.

As you are no doubt aware by now, my daughter is dead.  Though my material circumstances made a typical paternal relationship difficult, I’d like you to know that I still pinned a great deal of my hope for the world to her and her success.  She was a better human than most, far better than me. I have little doubt that her death will be repaid in kind, but the betrayal which presently bears scrutiny is different. It is the one that arose from her own countrymen, unconsummmated but very certainly noticed.  It is not for me to speculate at the circumstances from which this dissonance arose, but I have become quite capable of measuring that Vengeance which restores harmony. Understand me, Commissioner: Euphonia devoted her life to this city and its Federation. Every action she took, even under threat from those she would defend, she took with Thago in mind.  For this betrayal, the Old Gods should burn. Perhaps an extraordinary outpouring of goodwill would douse them.

Forgive my brevity–I genuinely do wish you good luck.

-Arman LaSein, aspirant to Harmony

The notes end here, but you notice an additional page, wrinkled and of diminished quality, tucked behind the final entry.  It reads:

Selenus:

The officer we killed in the riot at LaSein’s house had this back in his desk.  Looks like they would have been ready for us if we’d got here any later. The business with her father is spooky too, but we’ve looked, and there’s no sign of him anywhere around here.

Anyway, the plan is working so far.  Ham and I are ingratiating ourselves with the smugglers in the lower-barges.  Marilyn has reestablished connection with her father, and now that LaSein is dead, there’s no one to contest her “miraculous survival” story.  I should be able to get the city’s underbelly amped up pretty soon, and then I understand she’ll be able to persuade her father to back a crackdown.  Riots, I get it. It’s all a bit fucked, but I get it.

The shit with LaSein was a bit more fucked, though, and if it didn’t mean my own ass if we failed, I would have refused.  When this is all over, we don’t intend to ask much of you, but know this: I’m looking at what happened to her as a warning.  I’ve been warned, I know what to look for.

-Jonathan

Having read the final page, you put it back in its place at the end of the folio and place it all back in its place on the shelf.  As you do, a small scrap falls out from between the pages and lands at your feet. There are only a few sentences written on it, but they are written in an exquisite, ornate script:

Little Hawk, see the pattern, see the machinations that lie beneath.  They are but carrion, still walking only because they cannot see what we have seen, that their race has died and now begins to rot.  These intrigues, their greed, their righteous indignation, it is by these tools that we shall craft a more convincing image of humanity.  In its shadow, they will have no choice but to be convinced.

At the bottom of the scrap is a mark resembling a bird’s foot with a long back claw.