THE PLANASTHAI
All Worse, None Better
Reported by Melody Lauderall
Introduction
The Serpent’s Hand have long been a facet of the Library, for better or for worse. They stand under the unifying ideal of knowledge’s innate and inexorable need to be open to peering eyes of all kinds, serving also as vigilantes, whether they be "guarding" the Library or assaulting one of the many factions they've made enemies of. However— as with all groups to ever exist— this has not prevented division amongst members on the finer details of such nebulous dogma, focusing on the idea of "freeing knowledge," creating groups that separate themselves from the main body.
One such group is The Serpent’s Forearm.
Founded five years ago by former Hand member Levin MacFynns, the Forearm seeks to “do what the Hand is too afraid to do.” This claim, preached by MacFynns, is just as ambiguous as the ideals they claim to be fleeing, changing as need be, though the twist from the Hand's belief remains consistent: that knowledge should be free to those that it was meant for. This, of course, excludes the groups who they look down on. MacFynns, while idealistic and stubborn, lacks the charisma necessary to espouse this mantra when needed. This is where his second-in-command, Johnny Derall, comes into play. Derall is MacFynns’ hype-man, for lack of a better term. He spouts their mission with an infectious glee, espousing not only the virtues of it, but the moral obligation to fulfill it.
Alongside these two is Yelie Ghask, a major backbone of the Forearm. Where MacFynns is the figurehead and Derall is the motivator, Ghask is the buttress of practicality. He organizes, plans, gathers, and advises. Of everyone I've met in my time within the organization, Ghask has proven to be far and away the most intelligent, most cunning. Yet, in spite of his clear rationale, he is just as fanatical as the rest, harboring not only inane convictions, but also a similarly rooted perspective of hate.
The Forearm, while sparse in number, make up for it in passion; even the greenest recruits itch to make their mark, to be "the difference makers of the Hand’s past." This fervor is best exemplified by one young recruit: Samuel Whae. Samuel is enamored with the Forearm and its mission, desperate to climb the ranks until he is able to make “real change.” “Hungry” comes to mind as an apt descriptor. He proposes every idea he has at meetings, trying to strike gold. And strike he did, being the one to incite the infamous event that would simultaneously lead to the near complete dissolution of the Forearm and give them tabloid fame.
These four men— only a fraction of the Forearm’s population— quickly became my items of focus.
The Serpent's Forearm were not difficult to find. They're a boisterous bunch, choosing a route opposite to many of their Hand counterparts. With the help of a long-time friend and fellow Planasthai writer, Swey Houler, it took roughly five and a half hours to find the Way to their homebase. It was another two hours before we learned the Knock.
Both the location of their Way and the associated Knock will not be detailed here. As much as my interactions have very much soured me towards them, they requested that the information remain under wraps and I'm inclined to grant them such a wish, though if that stems from a sense of journalistic integrity or a hope that it bars some perspective members from successfully joining their ranks, I'm not ready to say. Either way, our wants aligned.
Walking through the Way, I found myself in a foyer. The small, square room had a small sliding window that looked into a security office and a steel door that separated me and the rest of the place. The first thing that struck me when I entered was the smell. It was the musky, sour odor of people who've never discovered deodorant mixed with cheap booze, cigar smoke, and marijuana. The second thing was that the guard in the office was passed out and the high-security door was ajar. I briefly attempted to wake the guard by knocking on the window out of a sense of courtesy, but the half-empty handle of an unlabeled alcohol and scattering of pills told me that he wasn't going to stir anytime soon.
The door led to a hallway that led to a large, open area, presumably a form of recreation room. A few TVs were scattered about, all blaring different channels, creating a cacophony of noise that seemed impenetrable to the unprepared or unwilling ear. One wall bore a mural of a flexing arm, a snake coiled around the forearm. Some members sat on couches, watching whatever was on their respective TV or playing cards at a coffee table. Near a corner of the room sat a ratty, jerry-rigged pool table, from which approached a tall, imposing man, presumably some form of muscle.
Making sure to brandish his pool cue the entire time, he questioned me on who I was, what I was doing there, and how I got in, all of which I answered honestly. By the time he'd finished, a slug-adjacent man— who I would later learn was Levin MacFynns, founder of the Forearm— greeted me, sending the muscle back to his game of pool.
I explained the situation to him in its entirety, withholding no information. Initially, MacFynns barred me from being a proverbial fly on the wall. His reasoning was not for any reason related to secrecy, but simply a matter of upholding club policy: no women allowed. However, he soon became enraptured with the idea of being "immortalized," alongside hoping that my participation as a female would bolster their image, show that they weren't "misogynists keeping women out simply for being women," but that they had truly deeper ideals rooted in logic.
Thus began my katabasis amidst these dogmatic madmen.
The members of the schismatic Forearm meet regularly at their clubhouse, a warehouse turned into a three-story shindig through sheetrock, two-by-fours, and enough safety violations to give an inspector an aneurysm twenty times over. Most of these "meetings" are nothing more than casual get-togethers, no official business discussed, though there is rarely anything worth discussing in the first place. Most members come and go, but there are a few that live in the clubhouse, sleeping on the third floor, away from the ruckus of the ground floor. These few are the bigwigs of the organization, official and unofficial, as clout means just as much to these men as anything earned through merit or election, though these themselves become commodities bought by the very same clout.
Members come from all of the similarly varied backgrounds that one might find by polling a sample of Hand members, but all share a similarity in that they began as Hand members, none coming from outside the organization. Their reasoning(s) for leaving the Hand for the Forearm fall into similar camps: some feel snubbed by the Hand, some dislike their relative inaction, some simply want more, and others cite a sense of hypocrisy.
Their leader, Levin MacFynns, has feet in all of these.
Levin MacFynns
🝎
Sitting in his office, one might find it hard to see Levin MacFynns as a leader of few, much less the leader of an entire organization that stands in almost-opposition to its alive and well predecessor. He's a portly creature of 4'10", a heliomessic gastropod, his flesh bulging over the armrests of his worn desk chair. He speaks with a voice that seems to struggle through layers of phlegm before escaping, flopping over a swollen tongue, eyes half-open in perpetual sleepiness.
The bloat, the thickness in throat, and inattentiveness are likely all sourced from the same vice: liquor. To find MacFynns without a bottle or glass in hand is to witness a minor miracle. He sips, never chugs, always on a slow slope out of sobriety, keeping track of time with his blood-alcohol level. Because of this, speaking with MacFynns quickly becomes a test of strategy, the time you choose to speak to him depending on the matter at hand. If you want serious, genuine advice, you speak to him in the morning. If you're asking for funds for a project, you speak midday. If you're going to talk about a more tumultuous subject, save it for the evening. Of course, this all hinges on the day he's had. New recruits quickly learn to abandon all thought of leveraging any lack of sobriety if MacFynns' day has been poor. However, these poor days have become more and more common as the Forearm has grown in size, more issues arising with the increase in membership, more actions taken to garner scrutiny, especially from the Hand.
MacFynn's founded the Forearm in a drunken stupor, sitting in a puddle of rainwater and cheap booze outside a bar. An hour before, he'd been sitting inside, warm and dry, across from another member of the Hand. The two had met to discuss MacFynns' potential for rising within the organization, taking on more responsibility and heading more operations, with MacFynns planning on injecting ideas to bolster the Hand where he could. According to MacFynns, he'd been a devout Hand, doing what he was told without question and pledging continual allegiance all the while. It was only until around a month before the meeting at the bar that he had begun to become critical of the Hand and how it handled its ultimate mission as proclaimed by those higher up the chain than him. Wishing to make a greater difference, he scheduled the meeting. However, it didn't go his way, the unnamed Hand member dismissing his ideas entirely, chastising him for his doubts. MacFynns set to arguing against her, passionately defending his vision to her until he was physically removed from the bar, the rest of his drink tossed like a chaser, spilling onto him and the street. "It was utterly disrespectful," MacFynns said, taking a larger than normal pull from his glass.
According to MacFynns, the name "The Serpent's Forearm" came from the idea that the forearm is further up an arm than a hand, signifying a greater purpose and strength. He also acknowledges the inherent flaws of the name, well aware of the ridicule it has garnered from outsiders for its "stupidity" and "parody-esque nature." However, he stands by it, no longer ashamed of it like he once was. Originally, in the cold sobriety of morning, he was embarrassed by the name, but his right-hand man, Johnny Derall, quickly twisted it into inspired genius, washing away MacFynns' poor mood, the scant few members of the Forearm at the time embracing it.
The Serpent's Forearm— now roughly eighty members strong— have begun to come into their own, engaging in missions and movements to "further their beliefs." The Forearm is a "fraternity of like-minded chauvinists who believe the Hand have lost sight of their mission," MacFynns boasts, adding that their aim is to "do what the Hand is too afraid to do." In accordance to this, the focus of these missions and movements have been to facilitate, in one way or another, the spread of knowledge, keeping it from being kept behind closed doors, regardless of the rationale behind the lock and key. As would be expected given my nearly being barred and the self-description of "chauvinist," the Forearm is made up entirely of men, no others allowed to join, women facing the most prejudice. When asked about this, MacFynns denies all claims of various phobias and prejudices, misogyny in particular. He says that it is simply a matter of "deflecting all possible turmoil and facilitating the most keen focuses and minds possible, ridding of any possible schism or disruption."
That day's meeting was not one held for recreation, instead designated for discussion, all present members gathering in the common room. When a genuine discussion is called for in advance rather than brought on spontaneously during a meeting, it signals that the topic will be one of three things: internal politics, idea gathering, or mission discussion. The conversations on the internal politics of the Forearm are as bog-standard as one would expect from a club, with legislation, official positions, and other such red tape being the focus. Idea gatherings are en masse brainstorming sessions, with any member encouraged to propose an "idea." An idea can range anywhere from a minor schedule alteration to the dissolution of power structures entirely (something actually brought up once, to much disapproval. The member who'd suggested it was demoted and put on undesirable assignments as punishment.)
That meeting was of the third variety: mission discussion. As the name implies, a meeting of this type is brought about when a proposed mission, privately or publicly, catches MacFynns' eye. While MacFynns has the ultimate say-so, he showcases a surprising level of democratic thought in his dedication to being forward with the members of the Forearm, bringing the idea to a public forum for approval, critique, and/or dismissal. While this does not happen one-hundred percent of the time, MacFynns occasionally approving missions he feels are too essential to bother with the democratic process, a majority of them are brought before the assembly during a meeting.
Once the Forearm members who'd shown up to the meeting had all settled, MacFynns took to the stage in the common area (a stack of pallets assembled for the occasion, sat in the middle of the room.) He took a sip of his drink before clearing his throat and addressing the crowd, welcoming them and thanking them for coming. He was quick to the point, wasting no time with flowery speech. The mission proposed was one of juvenile vandalism: breaking into the meeting house of a small group of Hand members who'd been harassing high-ranking members of the Forearm and trashing the place.
This was met with disagreement, many members raising objections. Their primary qualm wasn't with the petty nature of the mission, but that it was targeted towards Hand members, regardless of the group in question being made up of only minor grunts. This feeling seemed to stem from a mixture of fear and continued reverence for the Hand, emotions long ingrained from their time within the fold.
Dissent isn't common for these meetings, but it isn't unheard of. Of course, MacFynns could give the mission the green light as he pleases, the people be damned, but he's well aware of the instability of his position, that it relies on the continued approval of the members of the Forearm, which is why he chooses instead to sway them. MacFynns himself is utterly uncharismatic, incapable of altering the general opinion, but his right-hand man, Johnny Derall, who swaggered onto the stage like a breeze rolling through trees, has a tongue coated in platinum.
Johnny Derall
♗
Wherever Levin MacFynns is to be found, it's a safe bet to assume that Johnny Derall is close behind, staggering the much quicker gait his tall, lanky frame affords him in order to stay two steps behind MacFynns. He's a pale human, sporting a stubble and neck-length brown hair that flows under the guiding hand of some kind of gel, his wrinkled, baby-blue button-up tucked into khaki pants, all coming together to create an image of a well-groomed mess. When he speaks, his eyes emote as much as his hands do as they wave about, his left holding an old, leather-bound Bible, the letters "KJV" stamped on the spine in gold foil.
He hails from a place called "Alabama" where he used to be a preacher, occupying a small church in a small town named after its first mayor. He was notorious in his hometown for being a snake handler, gently wielding a venomous serpent as he preached, supposedly showcasing God's sovereignty and guiding hand. Derall was not the progenitor of this act, merely a wake from a stone of greater cultural impact, lobbed into the sea of religion. According to Derall, the practice is divinely inspired, finding it's roots in the biblical passage of Mark, which states that spreaders of his religion's gospel "shall take up deadly serpents".
Unlike most members of the Hand (and by transitive property, the Forearm), Derall stumbled into the Library by accident at a young age, not born into the fold or introduced by an elder. Whenever Derall recalls his first encounter with the Library to others, it takes on a sense of religious glory, God's guiding hand leading him through the Way. How he became involved with the Hand is equally shone on by God's light: the first eight times he visited the Library, the first person he would meet was MacFynns, which he attributes to God's will. Decriers who have heard this testimony attribute it more to Derall's Way depositing him by a liquor store, but he remains firm in his conviction nevertheless.
Derall came into the fold of the Hand under MacFynns' suggestion, quickly becoming enamored with the mission, entwining it with his religious fervor. "It's in 'ccordance with the words a Solomon in Proverbs, who was blessed by the Lord with wisdom," Derall said, "'The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.'" When questioned on the defensive, often violent side of the Hand's mission, his retort is that "just as declared by the holy prophet Isaiah, 'as birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts deliver Jerusalem,' so too will the Lord deliver us from our enemies, for they are the enemies of the Lord too! An' in His Word, men were brought forth to be that defense."
Though no longer a part of the Hand, Derall parades these ideals still, now under the flag of the Forearm. In reference to his departure, Derall says that "the leaders of the Hand have succumbed to the folly that is all too common to creatures of sin: they've turned away from righteousness in favor a personal gain. Just as Israel did so many times before."
Derall's stance was casual, one hand hanging limply by his side, partially tucked into a pocket, while the other calmly wielded the Sword. Discussion amongst the crowd, which had been at a gentle roar, quickly subsided into hushed whispers. All had heard Derall speak before, now being reeled in before he'd even said a word, the anticipation growing, welling up like aquifer.
"I understand your apprehension," Derall began, making sure to enunciate with a surprising elegance, "and I know of the well from which it is drawn. But I ask you this: is a man not ordained to protect his home?" There was a moment of silence, the question hanging in the air. "I said: is a man not ordained to protect his home?" The crowd, now cognizant of the call and answer nature of the speech, let out a volley of hesitant affirmations, still unsure if they should be speaking.
"And is a man not responsible for the wellbeing of those residing within?" Again, more yeses and yeahs.
"These Hand members have been harassing, have been deriding, your spiritual kin! The members of your family, residing within your home, our home!" Derall raised his Bible, "KJV" glinting in the light. "When God's people were set upon by tyrants and Philistines, He sent forth his righteous Judges to enact His will! Remember Samson, brothers, and remember his strength and fortitude. Are we not to reach down and pick up the jawbone of an ass when our enemies have come to bring us to knee?" The crowd grew rowdy once more, quickly buying into the righteous anger Derall was selling them.
"So what say you? Are we gonna let these Philistines breathe down our necks? Trample our crops? Or! Are we gonna stand up for our people? Stand up and push back?"
The crowd was back to full energy, some even rising to their feet. Derall left the stage, a well-pleased grin lying on his face, whispering something to MacFynns as he passed by, returning to the stage. The speech was short, but showcased Derall's charisma and ability to both spark and focus fervor. Despite most other members not adhering to his religious views, the passion by which he communicates his message through biblical allegories that they know little to nothing of transcends the barrier of understanding, injecting pure fire and brimstone. In the end, it also gave them something more fundamental: righteous reasoning for doing what they do, the ultimate pass.
After hoisting his squat form over the lip of the stage, MacFynns initiated a vote by way of raised hands on whether or not the mission should be conducted. While it was not unanimous, it was now heavily in favor of committing the deed, so many detractors now bought into not only the idea, but some underlying philosophy to it as well. Some of the hands that did not immediately rise were also soon brought to agreement after judgmental stares and sneers were levied at them.
After the meeting had concluded and the members had begun to disperse, a smaller, closed meeting was held in MacFynns' office. MacFynns sat behind his desk, reclining in his worn desk chair, a slowly-emptying tumbler of whiskey held reverently in his hand. Derall was slumped in one of the two chairs sitting on the other side of the lacquered, wooden desk, resting his cheek on a fist, eyes quickly losing focus as he zoned out. Both were listening to the third man in the room, his chair left vacant as he paced back and forth: Yelie Ghask.
Yelie Ghask
♂
The most comprehensive summary of Yelie Ghask's function within The Serpent's Forearm would be "the man behind the curtain." Upon first seeing Ghask, it's easy to become intimidated by his 7'2" stature, a height unusual for a chasmosaurin, the ribbed horns protruding from his brow-fan of thick, scaly, vermillion flesh inspiring gruesome thoughts of being gored. This notion is short-lived once Ghask is spoken to, revealing that he is of an anxious disposition, prone to getting lost in his head. His height is somewhat mitigated by a perpetual slouch, as if all the worries and stresses he carries around— self-inflicted or otherwise— enact a physical toll on his stature.
Further dissonance is thrown in to fuel the fire once one finds out that Ghask is the third highest ranking member of the Forearm. However, this is a position that hasn't come through nepotism or bribery. It's a status he has more than earned in the eyes of his fellow Forearm members. What Ghask lacks in intimidation, physical strength, and courage, he more than makes up for with his intelligence and intelligence gathering skills. Any members in need of information quickly learn who to talk to, Ghask seemingly able to dig up more than was likely there in the first place. Alongside those, he also displays a passion that transcends most members, pushing him to break personal barriers of fear at times. And if it's to his personal advantage in one way or another, if the opponent can't lay a finger on him, he'll puff out his chest happily, a man of opportunity.
Before joining up with the Forearm, Ghask did similar work for the Hand, collecting intelligence on Hand targets and disseminating it to his higher-ups. According to Ghask, one of his reasons for joining the Forearm was because "they profited off of my work, they got what I deserved." He cites a continuous snubbing as being the reason he was stagnant in not only his position within the Hand, but also in social circles as well. "They got to tout their big name around the place. Free drinks, devotees, fawning chicks. I got stuck with nothing. I was just another tool for most people, a brain to squeeze for know-how."
Ghask and MacFynns first met when the latter went to see if he could procure any information for a fetch mission he'd been assigned, looking for someone who could be quick and thorough. According to MacFynns, when he'd asked around for the best of the crew, he'd been almost unanimously pointed in the direction of Ghask with little hesitation, everyone he talked to speaking highly of his talent, though they warned him of Ghask's "temperament," as MacFynns put it, summarizing their more "colorful descriptions."
When MacFynns formed the Forearm and invited Ghask to join, Ghask quickly accepted. "I was more than ready to work under someone who recognized my talents," Ghask said, "Someone who appreciates what I do." Though he continues to put his "temperament" on full display, he meets much less scrutiny within the Forearm, most only citing a general annoyance with him and little more.
"I'm just still not sure this is too good an idea," Ghask said as he continued to pace around, adjusting his armless glasses— one of his many nervous ticks.
MacFynns sipped his drink and grunted. "They started it."
"Yeah, but this is the Hand we're talking about! Do we really wanna cross them?"
"Seems you weren't here for my speech," Derall chuckled, his leg bouncing. When he wasn't giving grandiose speeches, his manner of speaking became much more relaxed, falling back into his native dialect.
"No, I was out getting their address, like you told me to," Ghask responded, pointing to MacFynns.
"Which I assume you got?" MacFynns asked.
"Of course I got it. They weren't exactly hiding their little hedonism shack." Ghask took out a folded piece of paper from his pocket, tossing it onto MacFynns' desk.
"What's this?" MacFynns asked, his hands too busy to open it as he refilled his tumbler.
"It's a flyer for a party they're having. Celebrating something or another."
Derall reached for the thick square, picking it up and unfolding it. "Gonna be in a couple a days. Say we do it after, try to catch 'em in the throes a whatever vice they got going."
"From what I can tell, mostly alcohol and women," Ghask said, following it with a mutter, "Lucky bastards."
"So 'least the aftermath, get 'em when they're all tuckered out. No brawls needed."
Ghask fell into the empty chair. "If you're insistent on doing this, that'd be the best moment, I imagine."
MacFynns loudly set his tumbler down on his desk, causing Ghask to jump. "Yes. I'm insistent."
Ghask shied away from Levin, wrapping his arms around his chest, almost like he was hugging himself. "Look, I just don't like the idea of hitting Hand members."
Derall snorted. "Ain't gonna try to woo ya with eloquence. Know you think in logistics so lemme put it like this: the Hand don't care 'bout some band a thugs with a snake on their backs. Ultimately, it's harmless."
Ghask rolled the thought around in his head, similarly rolling the word "harmless" around in his mouth, quietly muttering it again and again. After a moment, he looked back at Derall. "And this isn't just more of your lip service?"
"Brother, this is puttin' my rear in just as much risk as yours. At least trust in the truth a self-preservation."
"Fine. Still can't say I'm all that thrilled with it, but I can't stop you."
Levin piped up, "Unfortunately, we do actually need you for the mission, Yelie. We're sending some muscle-headed goons, not geniuses, and you know the layout of the house, I assume."
Ghask sighed, "Yeah, yeah I've got an idea of it. Mostly from peering into windows, piecing it together."
"The success of this mission relies on your aptitude. I promise they will listen to your orders this time, no cajoling or hazing; I've told them myself," MacFynns said, layering his voice with an unnatural amount of assurance and warmth.
Ghask sat silently for a moment, thinking it through. "Fine. Just don't expect me to stick around if things go south."
MacFynns smiled, "Wonderful! You're doing the Forearm a great service."
"Sure, sure," Ghask grumbled as he stood up, about to leave the office, but MacFynns stopped him. "And Yelie? I want you to take the reporter with you."
This was a surprise to me. In the time that I'd been with them, I'd asked to accompany a group sent out to perform a "mission" a multitude of times, but had thus far been rejected every time. I hadn't even bothered asking the last few times, nor this time either.
It was apparently a surprise to Ghask too as he asked, "The snitch?" pointing at me, sitting in the corner with my notepad and audio recorder. "Why?"
"She needs to see what happens so she can document it."
"So you want a record of us vandalizing the place?"
"Posterity is important, Yelie. These are the beginnings of something grand, let history be bereft of no detail."
Ghask only rolled his eyes in response, quickly leaving before MacFynns could ask more of him, roughly closing the office door behind him.
"Sure laid it on a bit thick," Derall muttered after he was sure Ghask was out of earshot.
"It wasn't entirely untrue, the mission will go smoother with him coordinating it."
"Suppose."
"And while I don't have your skills in sway, I know how to speak Ghask's language."
"Jus' feed his ego."
"Easy as."
"Though, he did have points, I'm 'fraid."
"Yelie only thinks in worst case scenarios. Besides, we've already had this debate, Johnny. We're doing this."
"Right, sure." Derall acquiesced.
A collection of twelve brutes sat in a thicket, antsy. All either bouncing legs, fidgeting with bludgeoning arms, or some other idle activity that betrayed their excitement. At the outer edge, Ghask watched the small house through a pair of binoculars. The house wasn't far from the edge of the clearing, letting Ghask peer into the uncovered windows from a distance. Bright lights, slowly fading between a multitude of colors, poured out from them, hazy clouds that quickly fizzled out.
An hour earlier, the band had dutifully stepped through a Way in the Library, arriving in a small, abandoned town. Painted with rundown buildings, broken glass, and weeds that creeped up through the cracked asphalt and concrete, the street inspired unease and wonderings as to what had happened. No one was allowed to ruminate on it though as Ghask quickly led the group out of the town and into a nearby forest. We walked a faint trail for about ten minutes in complete silence save for our footsteps, closely following Ghask.
Finally, as dusk began to settle, we stumbled into a clearing where the aforementioned small house lay. Across the way, a gravel road ran from the house and into the woods, several old, ramshackle vehicles resting at its end. When some grumbling at rose up after seeing the gravel path, Ghask explained that he took the back way in an effort to avoid being sighted. "Tonight's a party, meaning people are traveling down that road," he told us.
We sat in the brush for hours, listening to the faint sounds of music coming from the house. Most of the twelve mumbled under their breath, complaining about the wait, but none raised any true objections to Ghask, as commanded by MacFynns. I sat with them, crisscross on the ground, relying on a pocket of moonlight to be able to write notes as I asked them questions, learned more about them and the Forearm. This seemed to ease their rowdiness, giving them a self-centered distraction from the wait. Each saw themselves as righteous fighter for betterment, passionate and self-aggrandizing, eager to pull me or any other woman to their hip once they'd conquered their foes. They weren't cogs, they were entire machines. Those that opposed them were ontologically incorrect and in need of correction, one way or another. These are sentiments that are common among members of the Forearm, ones that are slyly obscured by members who know better, but worn on the sleeve of most. There exists no gray in their eyes, only the ends of the spectrum, and everyone lies in one camp or the other.
Eventually, I ran dry of inquiries, and they went back to huddling close to one another, whispering and laughing about what they planned to do once Ghask set them loose. They knew they were supposed to be as quiet as possible, to avoid causing a scene, only stealing and sabotaging whatever they could, but still they champed at the bit for violence, gently rubbing and fiddling with the blunt weaponry they'd been allowed to bring in the event that it all went wrong, fantasizing about breaking noses and bones.
Overhearing them led me to consider the weight of what I was doing for the first time. I'd said nothing of the planned assault to anyone, choosing to let fate ride out as it would, assuring myself that since I would be taking no part in the revelry, I was exempt from obligation, from guilt. I had not encouraged their ideas, but had also not admonished them. I was a fly on the wall, watching in as much silence as possible, as separated from them as I could be. But now I was crouched in the foliage with them, watching and waiting for Ghask to set them loose. I would be walking into the house with them, watching as they tore into it. I've always believed that inaction is just as much a consciously taken action as anything else, so what did my being with them in silent observance mean? Was my lack of any opposition a sign of encouragement to them, or did they even care?
My own doubts were cut off as Ghask hissed at us to get our attention. The music was still blaring, but most guests had left and the remaining people inside were incapacitated, as best he could tell. "Haven't caught any movement in a while, can see into the big rooms from here. Kitchen, den, a couple of bedrooms. Their current keg hasn't run dry, far as I can tell, but hasn't had any visitors either, which is a good sign. Probably all sleeping off the booze with whatever floozy made the mistake of choosing them.
"Here's the plan: try the front door, I doubt it's locked. The music and inebriation will help to obscure us, but still keep to quiet vandalism. Steal valuable things, but don't weigh yourself down. Given the open-invitation nature of the party, they probably don't know everyone there, so if you stumble into someone still awake, try to keep it casual. If they're onto you somehow, shut them up quick. If they catch you in the act, jump straight to putting them out of commission."
One of the muscles, a burly minotaur named Jai Vadera, cleared his throat. "What if they don't wanna quiet up?" he asked.
"I don't care what they want, Jai, and neither do you. Just do whatever it takes."
With that, Ghask began slowly walking towards the house, the rest following closely behind. Working his theory on guests, he didn't try to sneak towards the house, he simply moved at a relaxed pace, hands in his pockets. We all followed suit, trying to act as casual as a band of thugs brimming with ill intent possibly could.
Now at the front door, Ghask gave the knob a twist. Just as suspected, it turned with no trouble, and he easily pushed it open, only the hinges' creak telling that it had even happened. Ghask let out a breath he'd been holding in, still very much a victim of his nervous personality, seemingly only driven forward by a sense of obligation. He looked back to the group and nodded his head towards the doorway, silently inviting us in. The muscle all went in first, Ghask holding the door open for them, before cutting me off and going inside himself, letting go of the door.
Ghask spent a moment giving brief instructions to people, shouting into their ears over the music, telling them how to get to certain rooms and what to look for, making directional motions with his hands as he did. The group quickly scattered, trying to seem like casual party-goers, some more convincing than others. A few even stopped at the keg, plucking red plastic cups from the counter, though if this was to help them blend in or for their own pleasure is hard to say. However, as they made their initial once-overs of the rooms, Ghask's prediction very much came to fruition. All of the remaining partiers were asleep— induced or otherwise— making their stealth largely unnecessary as any noise was masked by the booming music, now so loud that it drowned out all attempts at verbal communications that weren't screaming or talking directly into another's ear.
The first person I followed was Kerrie Raouth, a short lizard-man, as he sauntered into the living room. Sitting in the center was a large table surrounded by couches. Various drinks, snacks, and drugs were scattered about the table and floor, three party-goers out of commission on the couches, one of them laying on top of another. Sitting in all four corners of the room were large speakers, a smaller speaker atop each, which were the source of the pounding music. I saw Raouth momentarily consider the receiver before thinking better of it.
The focal point of the living room, however, were the four dummies that hung from the ceiling by nooses made of bright orange nylon rope. Each dummy wore deep blue and black military fatigues and body armor, with helmets and masks that completely obscured their faces. A few baseball bats sat around the dummies, on the floor or leaned against a couch. Raouth closely inspected one of the dummies, slowly spinning it around, a forked tongue flicking out occasionally. When the left shoulder came to face him directly, he stopped and stared at it for a moment, cocking his head slightly, before letting go of it, the stuffed thing swinging faintly as he walked away.
Walking up to it myself, I turned the dummy to get a look at what had caught Raouth's interest. Velcroed to the shoulder was a PVC patch, emblazoned with the royal blue star of the Global Occult Coalition, wreathed by a light blue laurel.
Moving to another room, I found Jai Vadera peering into a large trunk resting on the floor. Much to my surprise, it was filled with various kinds of firearms, all unloaded, no magazines inserted. Vadera muttered under his breath about finding the missing ammunition and began throwing open any other container in the room that he could find. In the few minutes I watched him, he never found any ammo.
In another, a man— whose name I noted as being Jera Hoppt while speaking to him earlier— was smashing his weapon of choice— a sturdy nine-iron— into an array of CRT TVs and flat screens. With no sleeping Hand members in the room and the blaring music, it was a fairly risk-free task, one he seemingly took great pleasure in as he laughed and whooped. The system seemed to be a combination security-entertainment complex, the TVs all showing different views of the house's perimeter. To my surprise, I saw a few screens showing parts of the town we'd come from, though I wasn't able to consider them for long as Hoppt swung with wild glee.
I continued to pass from room to room, watching the event unfold. In one room, two Forearm members were busy spray painting vulgarities on the walls and furniture. In another, a houndish brute was working to break the lock on a small safe box, cycling through various methods involving applying gradual pressure or strain on sensitive parts. Room after room, they continued on their subtle havoc. They were quick to move on, never taking too much time in one place, trying to cover as much ground as possible. Aided by the thunderous music, substance use, and sheer tiredness after excessive partying, the vandals had thus far managed to keep under the radar, none of the sleeping bodies in the house stirred.
Finally, I stumbled into Ghask again. I found him rifling through papers, folders, and notebooks in what was the closest thing to an office that the house had, with a shoddy desk sat against a wall and a few shelves set up nearby, occupied by a collection of large beige boxes. Ghask was sitting on the floor, now part way through one of these boxes, skimming its contents. Halfway through the box, he lost interest in both it and all of the other boxes, standing up to search the cheap desk.
The drawers loudly squealed in protest to his opening them, though it seemed to be from the wood parts rubbing against one another rather than a failing track. Ghask quickly sifted through the four drawers, still finding nothing, ending his search with what was on top of the desk. There were only a few papers laying on top, alongside an opened letter. Picking these up and holding them close, the dim lighting somewhat hindering his sight, his eyes shifted from a fast movement to a slower, more intent pace. Whatever he'd found had caught his attention, enough to reign in his skimming. After a moment more, he folded the papers and picked up the unsealed envelope, sticking them inside, and then shoving the whole collection into his pocket.
Satisfied, Ghask left the small office, taking the time to peer into a few other rooms to check in on the other Forearm members. I followed him out, deciding to make my way back to the living room, closer to the exit.
Upon my return, I found that a handful of the group had gathered around the hanging Global Occult Coalition dummies and were discussing something I couldn't make out over the music, leaning into each others' ears, back and forth. Ghask was close behind me, inspecting the dummies from a distance. Eventually, they worked to loosen one of the nooses, gently slipping the head out, careful to not let it fall— though the noise would likely have been drowned out by the music. Once they'd laid it on the ground, they got to work taking the uniform off, working as a group to unbuckle, unzip, and untie anything holding the outfit together before slipping the pieces off. One the first dummy had been stripped, they hung it back up by the noose. As they moved onto the second one, one member broke off and got to spray painting a crude snake on the naked dummy's chest, alongside another piece of iconography that I can only assume was meant to be a forearm.
This process repeated for a while more, each dummy systematically lowered, stripped, and then hung back up to be graffitied. The second dummy read:
G
B
The third read:
E
EN
And the fourth only had the chance to have "T" sprayed on the top row before all hell broke loose.
While part of the group had been busy stripping the dummies and the rest had been packing up whatever goodies they'd found, Ghask had taken to availing himself of the keg. So keen on watching the strippers' process, I lost track of Ghask entirely. I only took notice of him once he moved over to one of the couches in my periphery, the one with the stacked pair of party-goes.
Ghask paid no mind to the sleeping man, focusing more on the scantily dressed woman laying unconscious on top of him. Ghask stared wide-eyed at her, his focus bouncing between her face, her chest, and her waist. Uninterested in his lecherous staring, I focused back on the group working on the GOC dummies, trying to ignore the nagging sense of dread in my stomach.
As they stripped the fourth dummy, I found myself looking back to where Ghask was, urged on by the pit in my belly. To my horror, he had moved to a kneeling position, one knee on the couch, and was looming over the unconscious woman. His hand was inches away from her chest and he was shaking nervously, panting. As his hand moved closer, a Forearm member who'd been shoving the firearms they'd found into a duffle bag walked into the room and saw what Ghask was about to do. He quickly dropped the duffle and dashed over to Ghask, ripping him off of the couch. Likely more focused on stopping Ghask than his own footing, the tangled pair ended up falling onto the floor next to me.
The man who'd grabbed him now had one hand clenched around Ghask's stumpy snout, keeping it shut. "Do you want us to get caught?!" he hissed loudly.
Ghask struggled against the grapple until the grip on his mouth was released. "No one'd been the wiser, asshole! Bitch's out cold, let me have this! Please!" he yelled back. By now, the fourth dummy had been strung back up and the suits stowed away, the others taking notice of the commotion.
"Get a hold of yourself, dumbass!" Ghask's grappler yelled as Ghask returned to struggling, trying to wiggle out of the grip. Much to the grappler and I's surprise, Ghask managed to slip free, standing up in a stumble. As he tried to back away, his footing shaky, he fell and crashed into the couch, landing on the sleeping pair.
The two shot awake, stammering in surprise as their drug-sodden minds caught up with their nerves. In the fervor, the man roughly shoved the woman off of him, sending her tumbling off of the couch, her head hitting the corner of the table that sat in the middle of the circle of couches. She crumpled to the floor, completely still, blood leaking from the new gash in her forehead, eyes lazily open. The man was now standing, trying to take in what had happened, breathing heavily as adrenaline was pumped through his veins.
"What- what happened?" he mumbled, "Who're y'all?" His drunken attention turned to the catatonic woman, eyes widening. "Jess?"
Suddenly, Hoppt ran forward, his nine-iron reared back, and swung with all of his might, twisting his body like he was a batter at home. The head made solid connection with the man's skull, crashing into his cheek and following through to his nose. "THIS IS FROM THE FOREARM!" he screamed, the others quickly collecting their bags and making a mad dash for the door. As the man writhed on the ground, holding his face in his hands, blood leaking out, Hoppt made a final comment at the door before slamming it shut behind him.
"DON'T FUCK WITH US!"
We sprinted back the way we came, Ghask following the trail he'd memorized, the rest of us following the person in front of them. We ran through the forest for a while, dodging protruding roots and wayward branches as best we could in the darkness, the world a blur of afterimages.
Two days later, Derall sat with MacFynns in his office, MacFynns idly sipping brandy behind his large desk while Derall fidgeted in his seat, reading his Bible. Not a word was spoken between the two, both waiting for Ghask to arrive. They'd sent a liaison to fetch him twenty minutes earlier and Derall was getting more and more anxious as time passed, muttering to himself, frequently glancing at the cuckoo clock on the wall. Their contrasting temperament heralded a clash as they both had the same subject in mind. Both had agreed to meet with Ghask to discuss his conduct during the vandalizing of the Hand sect's home.
Finally, Ghask opened the door and casually sauntered in, seemingly oblivious to the weight of what he'd done, though MacFynns' idle attitude would certainly inspire ease. Walking up to the desk, Ghask flopped down into the chair adjacent to Derall, putting his hands behind his head. "Alright, what did you guy wanna talk about?" It seemed the event had left his consciousness entirely.
Derall roughly closed his Bible, the sharp thump! making Ghask jump. "Surely you're well aware of the issue at hand," he said, taking on the enunciated eloquence of his speeches, though this time feeling more like a father sitting his son down for a stern talking to.
"No need to be all pissy, Johnny, thing went well, been doing some looking into on that letter I got," Ghask said, sneering.
"What did you find?" MacFynns asked, one eyebrow raised.
"Hey! There's something more important to be discussed here!" Derall interrupted, snapping his fingers and pointing at MacFynns.
MacFynns sighed, "Right, right. Yelie, your actions at the house were by and large all well and good, but nearly waking up the woman was reckless. You could have gotten us all in trouble if it had gone worse."
Derall was aghast. "Are you serious? That's why you're mad? How about the fact that he nearly molested her?!"
MacFynns squinted at Derall. "Yes, the mission being completed with as few complications as possible was a top priority." He turned to Ghask, "It's why I sent you in the first place."
"And I apologize for that, it won't happen again," Ghask quickly answered, standing up to leave. Derall stood up too, putting a hand on Ghask's chest, "No, no, no, you don't get off that easily."
"If I wanted to hear what you had to say, I would have pulled your head out of Levin's ass, Johnny," Ghask spat, baring his teeth.
"Sit down, Johnny!" MacFynns snapped.
"No! I ain't gonna let Yelie slip out of this!" Derall shouted back.
"Oh don't act like you're a saint, Johnny. You think I haven't pried into your history?" Ghask hissed, shoving Derall's hand off of his chest. "I'm a holy priest compared to you."
Derall's eyes widened, "That was years ago. I did my time, I'm a different man."
"Oh, just because you 'found God' you're suddenly a pure soul?"
"No, I believe I spend every day repenting for what I did, and that nothing I can ever do will truly earn her forgiveness, and I will bear that burden."
"Then get off my case! Doesn't that thing got something in it about not being your brother's keeper?"
"Oh if only you knew, Cain."
"Whatever, I don't care what that ratty tome has to say, not my god. Besides, you weren't there Johnny, she was asking for it with the way she was dressed; probably woulda liked it too."
Derall's jaw tensed, his teeth clenching , the muscles on the side of his face taut. "Son, I pray I misheard what just came outta your mouth."
"She. Was. Asking for it."
Derall dove forward, slamming Ghask into the ground. The two wrestled for control on the floor, each trying to get a blow in on the other. MacFynns leapt up and rounded the desk, throwing his half-full tumbler onto them, the glass hitting the back of Derall's head, soaking his back in brandy. Ghask quickly slipped out while Derall was stunned, giving him a stumbling kick in the stomach.
"ENOUGH!" MacFynns shouted, standing in front of Ghask, "BOTH OF YOU!"
There was a moment of stillness, MacFynns staring Ghask down while Derall tried to pick himself up from the floor, holding his head and groaning in pain. Once he managed to get to his feet, MacFynns relaxed a bit, taking a deep breath. "Now. I am the leader, and I have made it know to Yelie his wrongdoing and he has promised to not let it happen again. You," he emphasized, now looking Derall in the eyes, "are not the leader. You answer to me and my word is gospel. Understood?"
Derall tilted his head a bit, eyebrows slightly furrowing, still recovering from taking the glass cup to his head. "You serious, Levin?"
"Very much so, Johnny."
"Look, I ain't here to mutiny you, but this ain't somethin' we should just be sweepin' under the rug!"
MacFynns sighed. "I'm not 'sweeping it under the rug,' Johnny. We simply have more important things to discuss."
"Levin, brother, why're you tryin' to—"
"Enough, Johnny!" MacFynns snapped. "I won't say it again!"
Johnny stared at MacFynns, "Look, Levin, brother. Women were given to man by the Lord, an' we're called to give 'em due care an' love jus' like you would any other gift."
Ghask snorted, "Have you seen any chicks around here lately besides the Planasthai siren, Johnny? Much as I'd love to have a few around, it's just what's best for the Forearm."
"I ain't talkin' 'bout bringin' 'em into the fold, fool. I'm talkin' 'bout abusin' and mistreatin' 'em. We're supposed to protect 'em! Especially from bastards like—"
"Johnny, you question me again, and we will have serious issues. I'm only letting this go because of our friendship," MacFynns spat, uncharacteristc steel in his voice.
Derall quietly considered it, eyes darting around the room, refusing to look anyone in the eye. "Right, fine," he relented, slumping back down onto his chair, hand coming down from his head, tinged red at the fingers. MacFynns pointed it out to him with a tone of pure innocence, Derall dismissing it with an "I'm fine. Just dug into me a little's all."
Satisfied, MacFynns returned to his side of the desk, first stopping at the small table nearby to procure the bottle of brandy he'd been imbibing. He quickly filled a new tumbler before hopping into his high-set office chair, calmly setting the glass on the desk and clasping his hands together. "Now, Yelie, you said you managed to look into those documents you took from the house?"
"Yeah, did. It's what I was hoping to talk to you about. Those GOC uniforms we found were from a raid that group did on a little outpost. Temporary setup, some kind of field op. Easy to miss, easy to hit."
"Interesting. Do we know what they were looking into?"
"Whatever it was, the info got shipped over to some big wig Hands, letter was just an expression of gratitude from them for it."
"Strange that they only got four outfits out of it."
"Well, like I said, it was a small operation. But, my guess is that they only grabbed ones not being used. There were far more guns, quite a few of them standard issue for GOC grunts, and the outfits were lacking in unrepaired combat damage, plates and all. So they probably assaulted the place, took the guns from the lockers and corpses, and only took the unworn uniforms."
"Good theory 'n' all, but why only take the undamaged ones? Others didn't make good 'nough trophies?" Derall interrupted.
"I don't think they were trophies," Ghask answered, "I think they were taken to be used. Nothing like a uniform and confidence to get you into places. Undamaged armor says you didn't just take it, like damaged armor would since that kinda stuff would be replaced— aside from small rips in cloth and stuff that's easily repaired."
MacFynns raised his eyebrows, taking in the suggested value of such items. Derall, however, was still skeptical. "Others said it seemed they're beatin' 'em with bats like piñatas though. If damage is somethin' to avoid, why go beatin' the hell outta 'em?"
"Bullet holes are much different than some scuffs with a bat. More than likely, the damage to armor with a bat is gonna be the kind that's glossed over repair-wise. That, and they were drunk morons."
Derall assented, grunting as he crossed his arms. MacFynns raised his glass of brandy to Ghask, "Well done, very well done!"
Ghask smiled, "Thank you, sir."
"We'll find a use for those suits, no doubt about it. Now, if you'll please excuse me I have someone else I'm meeting with—" MacFynns was interrupted by a set of knocks on his office door. "Speak of the Devil," he muttered before loudly announcing, "Come in!"
Gently opening the door, a human peeked his head into the office, his shaved scalp reflecting the lamplight.
"Sammy!" MacFynns said, "Please, please, take a seat. These three were just leaving."
Samuel Whae
𝄌
The Serpent's Forearm takes in new recruits on an infrequent basis, owing to their initially secretive and isolationist nature. However, in recent time, the drizzle has slowly turned into a somewhat steady influx of new members as their public showings have gotten more and more boisterous, though still largely cloak and dagger. Some wish to stay hidden within the shadows, but many members of the Forearm have come to believe that stepping further into the public eye is the only way to reach their ultimate goal (which conveniently goes undescribed, leaning on the dogmatic shell of the group and some unspoken "agreement" on what it boils down to.) One of the people trying to drive the Forearm outwards is Samuel Whae, a recruit who's only just begun to lose his green tint, a member for no longer than a year and a half. In that time, though, he's managed to garner a shining reputation, becoming something of a poster child for the ideal recruit.
Whae is attentive at meetings, engrossed in the topic. He volunteers for nearly every endeavor. Most notably, whenever brainstorm meetings are held, he never fails to propose an idea. A majority of these ideas are rejected, either for their risk, cost, or sheer stupidity. Ideas such as "flying a small biplane and dropping flyers behind," "pipebombing a Hand facility," and "'Highways'— open Ways that need no Knock and can move multiple Wanderers at once," are what make up his repertoire. He takes on a philosophy of quantity over quality, trying to strike gold by sheer happenstance rather than refinement. That's not to say that all of his ideas are rejected, even some of the more colorful ones.
Readers may remember the brief quarantining of the manifestos, E-K, while an infestation of cellulose-devouring bacteria were eradicated. This incident was never fully resolved, the culprits gone long before the damage was discovered. The exact source of the infestation, as reported by various Librarians to The Planasthai, was never pinpointed, nor the perpetrators. What I quickly learned through a braggadocios conversation with Whae was that it was the work of the Forearm. He'd proposed during a brainstorming meeting that they rid of some of the more famous manifestos created by both early and modern Hand members. Of course this raised the obvious question: how does one destroy a Library book without becoming staff? The solution, thought up by Ghask and Whae together, was to dump a massive amount of cellulose-hungry bacteria on the books, bolstered by a bit of delayed thaumaturgy to significantly hasten the process. The time between placement and discovery was enough that the Forearm members tasked with planting the bacteria were able to successfully cover their tracks and flee.
Whae is determined, through sheer brute force, to make a name for himself, both within the Forearm and without. He embraces the fervor and extremism of the Forearm gleefully, eager to forward whatever notion Derall and MacFynns may be harping on any given day. In the few discussions I've managed to have with him, he's proven to be an ambitious and dedicated man. Unfortunately, it's hard to get him to speak to me as he leans on the side of referring to me as a "snitch," afraid to divulge any information he deems important— but this frequently clashes with his ego, the need to place himself on a pedestal overwriting his paranoia.
In terms of stated reasons for abandoning the Hand for the Forearm, Whae largely conforms to the standard: he believes the Hand is doing too little, are complacent, and wishes to make a real change, for the betterment of knowledge and freedom. However, he also takes on a stance more unique among Forearm members, believing that the Hand is far too decentralized and bloated to be able to accomplish anything, even if it wanted to. They're spread too thin with little to no cohesion, sects acting more like independent groups that happen to share a symbol. Whae believes that a smaller, more tightly knit organization is needed for anything to be done.
Ghask stood up from his chair, reaching his hand out to Whae. "Sammy, how've you been?"
Whae happily shook Ghask's hand, smiling. "Pretty good, you?"
"Can't complain! Got us some stuff that should be useful in the future."
"That so?"
"Just you wait and see, Sammy," Ghask grinned, slipping out of the office.
Whae lowered himself into the now empty seat in front of MacFynns' desk, putting his hands behind his head.
"Alright, Johnny, you can go now," MacFynns said.
"What? I don't get to hear none a this?" Derall asked, confused.
"Sammy asked to meet in private, just the two of us, so I'm obliging."
"It's real sensitive stuff, y'know?" Whae added.
"Fine," Derall muttered, standing up. He looked to Whae, giving him a small nod. "Samuel."
Whae nodded back. "Johnny."
"And that goes for you too," MacFynns said, pointing at me and making a dismissing gesture.
The small park was quiet, completely empty save for the four of us that sat underneath a pavilion. A light rain was falling, gently beating on the sheetmetal roofing. The air was thick, the heat of summer mingling with the damp ground. Despite the rainfall, the sun was still shining, the world engulfed in a shimmering, pale blue that seemed to cloud one's vision.
"Devil's beatin' his wife," Derall remarked to no one, almost in a whisper as he gazed off into the distance.
"Where the hell is Sammy?" Ghask asked, his leg bouncing, fingers tapping on the picnic table.
"I'm sure he'll be here soon," MacFynns answered serenely as he sipped from a large flask.
"Can we at least get a head start then?" Ghask asked.
"Fine," MacFynns acquiesced. "You two remember a few days ago when Sammy had a meeting with me after you?"
Ghask and Derall nodded.
"Sammy had asked for that meeting so he could talk one-on-one with me about an idea he had."
"'Nother one a his harebrained schemes?" Derall jokingly asked.
MacFynns glared at him. "Many of his ideas have been useful to us, Johnny."
"Not like him to not blabber about it at a meeting," Ghask remarked, furrowing his brow. "Must've been important to him."
"It's important to all of us," MacFynns said. "That's why we're meeting here. No possibility of prying eyes or ears."
"Except the journalist," Ghask said, looking at me.
"She didn't snitch about the raid on the Hand base, did she?" MacFynns asked, pulling Ghask's attention back to him.
"No, she didn't."
"And just like then, this is about posterity. Actually, it's even more so about posterity this time."
Derall cocked an eyebrow. "That so?"
"Undoubtedly. This very well could be our magnum opus act," MacFynns answered, his voice laden with conviction.
The sound of splashing broke through the conversation, Whae running through the sodden park towards the pavilion.
"Sorry I'm late," he panted as he slowed, now under the cover of the pavilion. "Got caught up in some logistics stuff for the thing."
MacFynns nodded, waving dismissively. "It's quite alright, Sammy. We only just started discussing the idea you proposed to me."
Whae slid onto the picnic table bench, resting his arms on the tabletop. "Right, right. So, where are we at?"
MacFynns took a hearty gulp of the stuff in his flask. "Now, as I was saying: this could be the thing that defines the Forearm for the rest of its existence."
"C'mon Levin, you're puttin' me at the edge a my seat here," Derall said, a bit exasperated.
"Hmph. Why don't you tell them what you told me, Sammy?" MacFynns said, frowning at Derall.
Whae leaned into the picnic table, eyes widening with excitement. "So, I'm at this little shindig, lotta Hand and former Hand members there. Get to talking with this old timer who's sulking in the corner, says he's something between a former and current member. Ask him what that means, he says 'Just have a lot of disillusionment. I feel like an outsider.' I say, 'Why do you feel like an outsider?' He says, 'Cause I've seen the most wonderful thing, but no one believes me.' 'Really?' I say. 'Truly, son, truly.'"
"He tell you what he saw?" Derall asked.
"Hold your horses, Johnny, I'm getting there. Now, I'm just trying to cheer the guy up, y'know how being in the Hand for a while can get to ya. So I decide I'll humor him, say 'What'd you see, gramps?' He gave me a bit of a sour look, probably 'cause I called him 'gramps,' but then he gets real quite and whispers to me, 'I saw her, son. Met her!' Now I'm even more confused, so I start prying, 'Who's "her," man? Who is she?' Eventually, he spills his guts, 'the Serpent!'"
Everyone was quite for a moment while Whae let the reveal land, glancing around the table as if trying to pry into how each listener felt. Ghask was the first to break the silence, snickering and shaking his head. "You're kidding."
"I'm not! And neither was that old man! He went on, gave some more intimate details, dropped hints about how to get there. I think he actually found her."
Sitting off to the side with my audio recorder and notepad, I couldn't help but laugh under my breath. In the silence, this caught Whae's attention and he turned hostile. "Got something to say?" he demanded, standing up slightly from the bench.
"Didn't mean to throw myself into the ring," I apologized, "Just slipped out accidentally."
"Speak up, then," MacFynns coldly demanded, staring at me.
I sighed. "Nearly every day, someone walks into the Planasthai offices claiming that they've meet the Serpent. Some are delusional, most are attention seekers. None of 'em met the Serpent."
"You calling me a liar?" Whae bit, cocking his head at me.
"Simply stating my experience," I told him.
Ghask jumped in, "What kind of proof did he give you?"
"Guy was desperate to feel like he was believed, so he was dropping off all the evidence he could on me. When you put all of it in one place, it's basically a map leading to her." Whae pulled a small notebook out from his pocket, opening it and reading off information he'd copied down, many times directly quoting the old man. For reasons that will become obvious, the intimate details of the old man's route and methods won't be recorded here.
Throughout the entirety of Whae's divulgence, Ghask's eyes were narrowed, listening intently. The more Whae went on, the more enraptured he seemed. When he'd finished his spiel, Ghask got up and began pacing the pavilion. MacFynns and Derall marinated in the silence as well, each lost in their own thoughts at the picnic table.
Derall cleared his throat, "So that's the path to the Serpent?"
Whae grimaced, "Not exactly. It's the way there, but not the full thing."
"Then where's it go to?"
"It's a route to the Basement, isn't it?" Ghask asked quietly, still standing a few feet away.
Whae nodded. A weight fell over the group, decades of cautionary tales and superstitions racing through their minds. I know because it's what went through mine. It was yet another bombshell Whae had obviously been hesitant to drop, striving to get his foot in the door with more appealing and convincing details. MacFynns was the only one who seemed largely unaffected by the notion, idly sipping from his flask, eyes half open.
"It's strange," Ghask began, turning to stare off into the light rainstorm that continued to beat down on the earth and sheetmetal roof. "You hear so many rumors and stories about where it could be— if it even exists— and nothing ever comes of it. But you lay out all the pieces in order like that, it feels almost obvious."
Derall shook his head, "S'all a whole lotta nothin'."
"You're not convinced?" MacFynns asked, genuinely surprised.
"'Course I ain't convinced. Basment's just a rumor, frankly. Old wives tale."
Ghask looked back at the group. "I used to think so too, but… I dunno. Something about it rings true. I've heard all the rumors, all the tales, theories, whatever. None of them really clicked like this."
Derall rolled his eyes, "Oh, so now we should be trustin' your instinct?"
Ghask just shook his head, still somewhat lost in reverent thought. "I wouldn't call it instinct. It's more like I'm finally looking at the picture on the puzzle box for the first time after trying to put the pieces together for years, some of them upside down, some of them missing tabs."
MacFynns was grinning, happy to see that a third had been swayed. Still, Derall just sneered. "Look, I ain't gonna sit here an' argue it with ya, neither us are changin' the other's mind."
"Well that just won't do, Johnny," MacFynns said sternly.
"An' why's that?"
"Because we need you to sell it to everyone else."
"'Course you do," Derall sighed. "You ever try it yourself?"
MacFynns smiled, "Why do that when I always had you?"
Derall's face softened a bit and he let out a gentle sigh. "Still don't agree with all a this, seems like a waste a time. But fine, I'll grease 'em up."
MacFynns raised his flask, "Cheers to that!" After he took a deep drink, he wiped his mouth and said, "Gentlemen, we are closer than ever to becoming the powerhouse the Forearm was always meant to be. Now, Yelie, I want you to get to work with Sammy. Map out a good plan for us."
Ghask, now out of his stupor, sat back down at the picnic table. "We still don't know how to get to the Serpent from the Basement."
"Oh! Yeah, I was gonna get to that, but y'all started arguing," Whae said. "Old man wouldn't give me much on it, said he'd forgotten most of it. All he said was that we needed to find the reflecting pool at the heart."
MacFynns harrumphed. "Mm, not the best, but still, something to go off of! Alright, that settles it. Let's get to work gentlemen, we've got a lot of planning ahead of us."
With that, the group disbanded, each going their separate ways, off to perform their respective duties. For my part, I sat in the pavilion for a while longer, wrestling with what had just occurred.
A month later, the pivotal meeting was finally scheduled. Unlike other times, MacFynns didn't take to the stage to first introduce the mission to be voted on. Instead, Derall went up, set to handle the entire speech. He walked with his usual swagger, loosely hopping up onto the makeshift pallet stage, Bible in hand. A gentle din wafted from the crowd as they were confronted with the most irregular thing to happen at one of these typically uniform meetings, but were quickly brought back to quiet observance as Derall cleared his throat, brushing some hair from over an eye, tucking it behind his ear.
"Brothers, I come before you today with a prospect as glimmering as gold," he began, "though I should warn you not to be swayed by its mere beauty alone. For remember: it was the golden calf which brought the wrath of the Lord upon the Israelites, their worship of it in His stead. Let this prospect not distract you from the real heart of the Forearm, remember you the ultimate purpose and make your decision on that: knowledge. As is said in Proverbs eight, 'Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.'
"I stand before you today with a mission that could be the most pivotal moment in the Forearm's history. Recently, a member came across a package of information, one that discussed a locale that I'm sure many of you are familiar with, how it could lead to a treasure I'm sure all of you are familiar with. Though, familiar only in the sense of stories, rumors, whispers. Crack open a dusty tome and it's there, spoken of apocryphally. Never sure, never concrete, always in flux.
"Brothers, we are now in the possession of the key that could potentially bring solidity to the wayward sands of questionability. And is that not our mission? What we strive for? Truth in the face of uncertainty? Discarding the sand the house was built on and replacing it with stone?
"The one he'd spoken to had been holding the story in his cupped hands, mustard seeds that he cast to and fro as he passed down the road, through fields, through the hallowed halls of the Library. The more he told, the fewer that believed him, a feeling I'm sure is all too familiar to you: being rejected, being scoffed at; brothers, I know that feeling well.
"The raconteur slowly became more and more reticent as his pile of seeds waned, his hope for interpersonal connection. But, and listen closely, but he found fertile ground. Soil in which to sow the mustard seed. He found us. We hold that seed in our hands. As the Lord says, 'If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.'
"The seed we hold in our hand has blossomed, and in its yellow bloom we have found a grand truth. I tell you this with utter certainty: that we have found the Basement of the Library."
The silence was shattered as a subtle cacophony grew from the now murmuring crowd. Derall let them sit on the information for a moment longer, taking a few steps around the pallet stage.
"BUT," he loudly interjected into the white noise of discussion, "that is not all! I can hear your concerns, your debates, your scoffing in these moments. 'For what purpose?' you ask, 'For what purpose?' And I rejoice in that curiosity, in that questioning, for it is a continued assurance that this is the purpose. It's not what lies within the Basement that matters, but what lies beyond."
The crowd was quiet once more, dangling on the cliff Derall had left them on, their eyes wide in anticipation.
"What lies beyond is her. She who was the roots of the Hand. She whose image they used to so piously kneel before. Brothers, we have found the Serpent."
The din came back with a vengeance, louder and more hectic, people even beginning to stand up from their chairs.
"We have found the Serpent and we are going to bring her back! We are going to release her upon the world once more! She will be a reckoning for our enemies, the beginnings of our reclamation of the known and the fathoming of the unknown!"
Most were now standing, some were cheering, some were yelling. The rest excitedly spoke to one another.
"So, I ask you: will you come with me? Will you walk those dark and dangerous paths? Will you be the Forearm?"
The cheering grew to a roar. Derall held his arms wide, as if embracing the wall of noise that pummeled him. MacFynns trudged up to the stage, getting atop it with some effort. He stood next to Derall and held his hand up, beckoning for silence, which the crowd obliged after a few moments more. He called for a vote, for those who agreed to green light the mission to raise their hands.
It was unanimous.
On the eve of the journey, I found myself restless, unable to sleep. Once an hour had passed without managing to sink into the sands of slumber, I slid off the twin bed I'd been given, the mattress lumpy, the faint scent of mildew leaking from it. I pulled my small lockbox out from its hiding place beneath a dresser and unlocked it with a key that hung around my neck, pulling out two of my journals, some pens, my audio recorder, and a cheap pair of headphones, internals exposed in multiple places down its length.
With all of these in arm, I slowly walked downstairs to the ground floor, the space completely empty and silent, every Forearm member who didn't live at the place having already gone home. I walked over to the "kitchen" which was two industrial sinks, a large trashcan, a refrigerator, a stovetop, and two dirty microwaves. Separating it from the rest of the rec room was a counter that ran out of a nearby wall, maybe twenty feet long, barstools of various makes framing it. Once I’d set my stuff down onto the soapstone countertop, I gently pulled one of the barstools out, the feet briefly protesting as they were drug across the floor, but quickly piping down as I laid the stool to rest.
I spent the next hour or so slowly making headway on a draft for the meeting in the pavilion, referencing both my written notes and the recording of the event. I got lost in the process, the world around me fading away, idle sounds blocked out by my headphones, ghosts of conversations playing over and over again at my behest, thumb on the device. I only came out of the trance as the refrigerator opened up in front of me, Samuel Whae silhouetted by the light inside as he reached in. I gently pulled my headphones out of my ears and watched him for a moment as he knelt down, reaching into the fridge. He was struggling with cheap plastic rings that once held six cans of beer, only four left. Finally, he managed to wring a beer free and returned the remaining stash, closing the fridge door behind him as he turned around, almost immediately making eye contact with me.
Whae and I don't see eye-to-eye in the slightest, though he hides his general disdain for me behind a suspicion of my intentions. We've rarely spoken to one another, Whae refusing most questions I've posed to him. He remains something of an enigma as I’ve only able to piece together who he is through conversations with others and watching him from a distance, listening in on meetings as he spouts his many ideas. As far as I can tell, he’s bold, brash, energetic, and ready to do what was needed without question. The ideal Forearm member.
"What are you doing up so early?" I asked him as he opened the beer, still eyeing me. The crack and hiss sounded out loudly in the quiet of the early morning.
"Couldn't sleep."
"Neither could I. Decided to get some work done if I was gonna be awake anyways."
Whae harrumphed, rolling his eyes. "Writing up your op-ed on us lowlifes, I presume?"
I'd been working with the Forearm for long enough now to know that I had to adapt to the masculine performances happening around me by screwing up my guts and playing the game, otherwise they'd chew me up and spit me out. If they bite, bite back. I've only gotten socked in the face a few times for my insolence, other men generally taking the opportunity to make fun of the guy for getting talked back to by a woman. "Lowlifes is putting it too kindly, I think I'll use terms like 'mangey alley trash' and 'waste incarnate.'"
"Cute," Whae dryly spat, leaning back onto the stove and yawning. As he did, I quickly set my audio device to record while he wasn’t paying attention. I also decided that I needed to change strategy away from the self-defensive rhetoric I'd taken on as a protective measure. At the moment, I wanted to pry a bit into Samuel, see what I could find in the waxing hours of dawn.
"Couldn't sleep so you decided to grab a beer for an early breakfast?"
"No, I plan on getting a few more hours of sleep here soon."
"That so?"
Whae only responded by toasting with his beer as he reached into his pocket with his other hand and fished out a pill. He gently tossed it into his mouth and washed it down with booze, pulling a few healthy chugs while he was at it. Once he was satisfied, he walked off towards the bathroom. The warehouse they'd built their base in was connected to a communal washroom of sorts, filled with a dozen or so toilets and five shower stalls, a long row of sinks sitting before a single, giant mirror opposite to the other faculties. It’s the only bathroom in the whole place, unfortunately. I've suffered much in my time here trying to perform the most basic of hygienic tasks. I look forward to showing at home again, alone. A place where I won't have to see men slink out of the bathroom into the common area completely naked, trying to catch my attention, woo me with their natural gifts.
After taking his shirt off and tossing it to the side, Whae knelt down and dug around one of the cabinets beneath a sink, procuring a razor, a small bottle of shaving cream, and a towel. Setting his items down on the counter by the sink and draping the towel over his shoulders, he turned the faucet on and stuck his head under the water, wetting his scalp. After that, he came back up and sprayed some shaving cream into his hand, using his palm to layer it over his head.
"Far as I could tell just now, you were already a cueball," I remarked from the counter.
Whae didn't look away from the mirror as he continued to coat his scalp with saving cream. "It's relaxing."
"You worried about tomorrow?"
"I already told you, I couldn't sleep. That not enough of an answer for you, narc?"
"Just curious."
"You're curious about an awful lot. Gonna bite you in the ass one day," Whae retorted as he began dragging the razor back across his head.
"So is it just nerves?" I asked, trying to pry further.
"Bad dreams."
"Bad dreams about what?"
"About the mission."
"Things going wrong, I assume?"
"People dying, becoming Pages or Docents for eternity. A kind of death in of itself."
"Do you think it's an omen?"
Whae chuckled, "Not at all. I get like this every time we get around to doing one of my ideas."
"That so?"
"Without fail. But we always come out on top. Always."
The conversation died there, both of us fleeing to our respective tasks, choosing to be lost once more.
As mentioned before, the details of the journey have been nixed. For reasons that are obvious now and more that will make themselves known, I decided that it was best to obfuscate the finer details of navigation. As I write this notice for the final draft, my remaining drafts, notes, and tape recordings are burning in a hearth. This single excerpt is the only remaining part.
I usually gather my thoughts and write out sections after the events unfold, using notes and recordings to aid me. This part, however, was written impromptu, on the scene. Swey Houler, a good friend and coworker who has helped me edit and assemble this, felt it important to include, unedited.
The scent of burnt wood and paper sits heavy in the air, obscuring any other odor. The fires that burned and scorched this part of the Library were seemingly extinguished a long, long time ago, but still the stench is tyrannical. I'm hesitant to say that we're sitting in some forgotten aftermath of the Searing, but it's hard to not think so as the soot coats our bodies, our throats, our minds. A bit away, a pack of Shelfstalkers are idly grazing on the detritus, slowly doing their peaceful, natural work of clearing it away.
Forearm members are mingling around the area, much to Ghask's chagrin as he's warned them of the dangers of staying ungrouped and wandering a multitude of times now, dangers they've seen evidence of themselves. But he has no sway over them and can only shoot them nervous glances while Derall and MacFynns continue to deliberate their next move. We've been traveling for eight days, the group of volunteers weeded down from the original thirty-six to fifteen, the dangers of the Library seemingly only worsening the deeper in we go. In the end, despite sometimes being horrific or esoteric in form, the dangers were still just wild animals, uninterested in anything beyond their fill. We've been fortunate to have not yet encountered anything truly bloodthirsty, that hunts for sport.
MacFynns and Derall continue to argue, Ghask watching from the sidelines, occasionally injecting his opinion. Skirting, though prone to interrupting Derall far more than MacFynns. It's the same debate they've been having for a few days now: what to do once we reach the threshold of the Basement. According to the old man, it's crawling with Docents. They have a multitude of plans in place, none of them were shared with me. Yes, they care for "posterity" in the most egotistical sense, but there are still things they keep close to their chest. They won't argue the finer details near me, so they stand far away enough so that I can only tell that they're talking, the exact words becoming meaningless sound by the time they reach me. It's a strange moment of solitude with no one at my back, peering over my shoulder at my notes; no one trying to get interviewed, try to sell themselves as prominent and important figures; and I'm not wrought with fear that at any moment some creature could jump me and tear my throat out. The area is a tranquil no man's land, save for the rowdy Forearm members that stomp around it now, minus the arguing three and Whae.
Whae is sitting a bit away from everyone else, head in his hands. With every day that's passed, with every Forearm member we lose, it seems like he loses more and more of his confidence. He's a nervous wreck, but trying to hide it. From what I can gather, all of the mission's he's volunteered for— his own or otherwise— were more clandestine in nature. Not all that dangerous to him.
In the stillness, where no notes are being feverishly scratched, I find myself reflecting on the journey. I've been living amidst The Serpent's Forearm for almost half a year, peering into their daily lives. I'd initially expected to find that they were just a loose collection of extremists who performed the occasional petty crime, but there's a fervor that's hard to understate. Yes, they've functioned mostly as juvenile crooks, but their disturbing passion shines through in moments like this, deep within the Library, further than any of us have ever gone. Even Ghask is up to the task.
They seemed mostly harmless from an outside perspective, but this is what they've done left to their own devices.
I'm thinking of my own culpability, having largely not tried to put a stop to their plans in any way, save for this one.
There are a few patrons I've met in my time in the Library who, having never left the Main Hall, think of the Library as an inanimate structure bolstered by cosmic magics. This line of thinking is not only completely inaccurate, but deadly. The Library is very much alive, and a certain reverence should be held for it, though what the Library is on a fundamental level is a concept I have neither the intellect nor religiosity for. Regardless, the Library should be respected, never taken for a fool. Anyone who's stepped beyond where maps feign certainty will tell you: the Library is dangerous.
It was with the proposal to seek out the Serpent that I strained the restrictions I'd placed upon myself and later voiced my opinion to MacFynns, the two of us alone in his office. Unlike some of my peers at the Planasthai, I am ill equipped for self-defense outside of the tried and true art of retreating. There still stands, however, that barrier between myself and the rest. Reporter and reported. It's something I'm choosing to hold tight to, a harness to keep me from falling to the depths should I slip. It may just save my life.
Obviously, the words of a clean-nosed reporter had little sway over him.
Still, in spite of my fears, I decided that I'd follow them into Hell itself. As much as I would like to say that journalistic courage steeled me, that a shifting paradigm drew me from my hiding place, or maybe even that a complete stripping of the woman I once was had occurred, it would be far from the truth: I have no idea why I chose to stay.
Maybe their madness has infected me. Maybe curiosity's eroded my better judgement. Maybe I'm finally going gonzo.
Now here we are, trudging through the backwoods of the Library, everyone armed to the teeth with guns, many from the raid on the Hand sect. Even MacFynns is carrying a handgun. The only ones who aren't armed are Ghask and I, both of us too frightened by the physical power behind the trigger.
A few Forearm members are taking potshots at the Shelfstalkers with their rifles, laughing.
On the twelfth day of travel, we finally made it to our destination. We sat huddled in a pseudo-brush, the trees and bushes made up of what seemed to be machined metal, still as complex and complete as normal flora. Each individual leaf was made of a shimmering, polished metal— maybe platinum or silver— veins engraved carefully onto their surfaces. Their little stems were attached to the brass branches and trunks with joints that could be easily moved around, positioned as one wished. The brass roots of the trees plunged into the black ground, a grassless soil made up of shredded rubber. Occasionally, a strong breeze would make its way through the area, bringing with it a pungent miasma of cut metal and grease, the branches and leaves shuddering in its wake, filling the air with a sound like chaotic, tinny windchimes.
The area didn't have a name as far as any of us were aware, all we had to go on were the descriptors given by the old man Whae had met, which the scene before us matched perfectly, much to my and a few others' chagrin as we quietly peered through the treeline. In front of us was a clearing, the treeline sitting in a straight line that ran to our left and right into the distance beyond our sight. The shredded-rubber ground stretched out in front of us until it met a massive concrete structure. The side facing us was completely flat, its face broken only by a single, massive archway that led into the building, a pocket whose depths were quickly swallowed up by darkness.
And just as the old man had promised, a set of Docents patrolled the entryway. There, the Docents were canine in nature, massive hounds of Hell. Their fur was deep crimson and flecked with black, seeming to be bristly. Their snouts were encased in solid, slick metal muzzles— their version of the masks bolted to Docents' jaws, keeping them silent. From their tails hung their lanterns, the chain wrapping down to their body, protruding from their flanks. Unlike the canines their form was based on, they didn't keep their nose close to the ground as they wandered the perimeter, likely unable to smell much through their muzzles.
The remaining nine of us sat in silence as we all took in the sight, coming to terms with the fact that we had actually arrived at what was supposedly the entrance to the Basement. Myth becoming reality, as if we were mere children wandering the woods at night, confronted with the beast our parents had told us fairytales of to keep us in line.
I was knelt next to Whae as he stared forward with the rest of us, his eyes wide and afraid, lips trembling. "Just like in my dream," he whispered, just barely loud enough for me to hear him. "All they're missing is the glistening teeth, the trails of blood and saliva between their hungry jaws."
"Alright," MacFynns broke the stupor. He turned to three Forearm members who were already huddled close together. "You ready?"
"There's only three of us, sir. We lost Kilir two days ago," one of them whispered, his nerves getting the better of him as his voice broke.
"You expect us to turn around now?!" MacFynns hissed, his anger kindling.
"But, sir, the plan was for four. Ghask said if we divided it up by four, we stood a good chance of survival."
Whae quickly threw himself into the conversation, his voice shaky, "I can go with them."
MacFynns turned to him, eyebrow raised. "Are you sure, Sammy? Do you not wish to see the mission through? It was your information that got us here."
"I'm sure," Whae said, voice still trembling. "It'd be an honor, furthering the Forearm's goal. Help guarantee your entry, the others' survival."
MacFynns nodded, "Alright, if that's what you want."
"We really doin' this?" Derall asked, his own fears breaking through. "Samuel didn't say nothin' 'bout canine Docents."
"They'll be fine, Johnny," Ghask whispered, a smile on his lips as he pat Derall on the back. "Besides, he's going with them, no?"
"Samuel's scared outta his mind, course he'd bail. I'm just sayin', what if it don't work?"
"I've told you, it's gonna work," Ghask said.
"Besides," MacFynns interjected, "we already debated this multiple times on the way here, and each time you were outvoted. We're sticking to the plan, Johnny."
"Look, all a that was before we knew the Docents would be in a form that can probably outpace most things runnin'-wise," Derall whispered.
"They're going, Johnny," MacFynns hissed, his patience running thin.
Before anyone else could raise their doubts, before their nerves got the better of them, one of the Forearm members opened up their pack and pulled out the four Global Occult Coalition outfits that had been stolen from the Hand sect as the designated four began stripping down to their underwear. Quickly, they slipped into the uniforms, Whae's a bit too big for him. Final words of encouragement were shared between the members as the four double checked their rifles, making sure that they were primed, their safeties off. After a few deep breaths, they snuck away from us, leaving only MacFynns, Ghask, Derall, a Forearm member whose name I would soon learn, and myself. We all snuck forward, closer to the edge of the treeline, peering out at the patrolling Docents, waiting for whatever came next.
"Get ready to run," Ghask whispered to the remaining Forearm member and I, the only hint at what was to come, still completely in the dark about the plan.
Not long after, a gunshot shattered the serenity of the metallic Eden, the Docent closest to the entryway thrashing its head around as it was shot in the flank. Before it could react, bursts of gunfire broke out, three other Docents reacting to being shot alongside the first as the volleys made impact. Peering through the shimmering foliage to my left, I could see the disguised Forearm members standing just outside of the trees, semiautomatic rifles tucked to their shoulders as they aligned sights with the Docents, pulling their triggers again and again.
One of the Docents spotted them too, pulling its head back, the muscles on its neck tightening as a low growl broke out, its head shaking slightly. Suddenly, its solid metal muzzle split in two, revealing lines of taut flesh and muscle, thick strands of blood and saliva bridging the gap as well, pearl fangs shimmering with the fluids. Its snout now freed, the Docent raised its head and let out a low, bassy howl that ran ice through my blood. As the bray rang out, my mind was filled with images of combat boots marching in time, M4 carbines ejecting hot brass, and massive fires that ate through books and shelves with a terrifying urgency. All of the Docents in the area reacted to the howl, their heads twitching and front paws clawing at the ground, all beginning to strain against their muzzles. At almost the same time, they all crouched and began to snarl, the sound barely escaping their muzzles, save for the one who'd raised the alarm, raspy as it breathed heavily between growls, every sound it made sodden with fury.
"Back, back, back!" One of the uniformed Forearm members shouted, turning heel and sprinting into the forest, the other three following suit. One by one, the other Docents forced their muzzles open, splitting the metal, spilling blood and drool onto the shredded rubber. Each Docent, after revealing their heinous maw, sprinted into the forest after their perceived Global Occult Coalition prey, one after the other in rapid succession. After the last Docent had leapt into the machined brush, Ghask sprinted out from our hiding spot, making a mad dash for the entryway. The rest of us quickly followed after him.
Quickly, we were subsumed into the darkness of the entryway, sprinting forwards with little to go off of save for the echoing sounds of our footfalls, breaths, and our rapidly deteriorating vision, the area a muddled blur of afterimages that violently shook with our gait. Much to our collective surprise, the floor began to slant downwards, each of us crying out for a moment as we rapidly adjusted to the new footing. At the bottom of the tunnel, now revealed as we passed the lip, was a faint smudge of stark white light. We rapidly made our way down, polished concrete below our feet, all of us trying our damndest to not trip lest we be sent tumbling down the rest of the way.
Once we were finally close enough to the sterile light, we could see that the floor bottomed out with the light, the archway of the tunnel's end revealing itself through the haze. We rushed through the archway, digging our feet in to fight the momentum we'd begun to ride down the tunnel with before stumbling over one another as we were distracted by our new surroundings. The tunnel opened up into what seemed like a massive hallway, maybe twenty feet wide, a multitude of tall, iron doors, breaking the otherwise straightforward, plain concrete walls, evenly placed on both sides, the occasional intersection breaking up the monotony. Looking up towards the distant ceiling, the source of the light made itself known, a multitude of fluorescent tubes running for the entirety of the hallway as it stretched into the distance. Eventually, it too opened up into an even larger room, though it was too far away to make out any details, a faint cacophony escaping from it. And ahead of us, slowly slinking through the hallway, was a creature I'd never seen before in all my time in the Library.
The thing's upper half was similar in shape to a Page one would find in the Main Hall— though far more reminiscent of some kind of armored silkworm. Its lower half morphed into something arachnid, spindly legs quietly moving in an elegant flow. Its carapace was stark white, reflecting the soulless, clean light from above. Each of its arms on its upper half ended with what I can only describe as a small palm, six pointed "fingers" on each, also made up of the pale chitin. They were surprisingly dexterous and flexible, the shell divided up around joints, proven as the creature idly fiddled with a spool of a silvery thread, swiftly weaving elegant shapes between its upper limbs like a child making a cat's cradle. The creature had a multitude of belts and bandoliers scattered about its body, various pouches and tools hanging from them. The vast array of tools— scalpels, scissors, tweezers, forceps, chisels, hammers, drills, and on and on and on— all gleamed in the light, polished steel.
Suddenly, behind us, we heard the faint sound of screaming. Derall was the first to move, making a dive for the nearest iron door, the rest of us following as he began pulling it open, struggling against its weight. The screaming was rapidly growing closer, the sound of scraping soon joining it. All four of us ran into the room blindly, Derall and the anonymous Forearm member working together to pull it closed behind us. Paying no mind to the room, Ghask and I piled up onto the door, trying to slyly peek out through the rectangle of dark glass that sat embedded in it, our collective curiosity burning. The screaming was now much more muffled as it tried to penetrate the thick iron, but it was still easy to tell that whatever was making the sound was nearly at the bottom, moving far more rapidly down than we did.
To Ghask and I's shock, what emerged from the tunnel was a figure clad in military gear, deep blue and black. It was one of the Forearm members who'd been disguised as a GOC grunt, his helmet and mask still on, preventing us from seeing who it was. He slid out of the tunnel on his back, rolling once he hit where the floor bottomed out. His clothes were ripped in various places, blood seeping from wounds on the revealed skin, the body armor damaged. Quickly, he tried to reorient himself, crawling on the ground, panicking, screaming for help. Soon after, one of the hound Docents that had been patrolling the entrance ran through the archway, pouncing on the disguised Forearm member. It sank its teeth into his arm and began dragging him down the hall, his feet kicking, trying to fight for friction on the scuffed, cracked floor.
Once they'd long passed us, the screaming slowly fading out, Ghask cracked open the door, peering out into the hallway. With the door ajar, we could faintly hear the Forearm member's screams again, still quickly fading, joining the quiet din that radiated from the unknown room beyond the hall. The ghostly-white creature was still slowly making its way down the hall, seemingly unperturbed by the event.
The danger past, we finally took in the room. It was just as sterile as the hallway that led to it: stark white concrete walls and fluorescent lights. Sitting in the middle was a large steel table, perfectly clean, reflecting the light. Questions bubbled up in my mind, but I didn't have time to ponder them as MacFynns began making his way through the cracked door.
We slinked out of the room, careful to not let our feet fall too heavily on the concrete, every sound amplified by the hard, barren walls and floor. As we approached an intersection, Derall sped up and passed us, quickly peering around the corners of the intersection before waving us over to him. Turning the corner, we found that the perpendicular hallway was nearly identical to the primary one, save that both ends ran so far as to turn to vanishing points.
"I say we let this thing move 'bout its business 'fore we get caught sneakin' up behind it," Derall whispered to the now gathered group, eliciting nods of agreement from all of us. This fear though, just as when we waited out the passing Docent hound, did not manage to stifle Ghask or I's curiosity as we carefully watched the thing continue walking down the hall, waiting to see what it would do. To our great fortune, it wasn't much longer until it suddenly stopped its steady gait and turned to one of the iron doors, gently tugging it open and entering the room. Though the doors were tall, it still had to duck its head, the segments of its long neck knocking into each other as it did so, making a series of quiet clacking sounds, like a line of dominos being tipped.
"Alright, let's go," MacFynns whispered, walking back out into the primary hallway, the rest of us following closely behind. We didn't make it far before we again heard the sound of screaming coming from behind us. Just like before, we ducked into one of the rooms, Ghask and I watching through the window. And again, we witnessed one of the disguised Forearm members being drug down the hall by a canine Docent, thrashing as he was pulled, trying desperately to escape the Docent's maw.
"I thought your big plan was supposed to keep 'em safe while still bein' a distraction," Derall hissed at Ghask as he watched through the glass.
Ghask shrugged, "Kept us safe."
Once the Forearm member's cries had faded into the din that itself grew louder and louder the closer we got to the end of the hallway, we slipped out and continued on our way, keeping a keen eye out for any Docent or unknown chitinous creature.
For the third time, we heard a commotion behind us and fled to the safety of a room behind one of the multitude of iron doors, Ghask and I not even bothering to take in the interior before we turned back around peer through the window. Just as expected, a third Forearm in GOC fatigues was pulled down the hall by a Docent, crying out and beating his free fist against the Docent's snout, futilely trying to land an effective blow on the split metal muzzle, digging his heels into the floor though there was no purchase to be found. Eventually, he met the same fate of the other two and was drug until his voice was lost in the white noise.
"Guess that leaves only one of them," Ghask idly muttered to himself, about to open the door before a faint groan in the room froze him dead in his tracks. Both of us whipped around in surprise, shocked to find that the large table that had been empty in the previous rooms was this time occupied, MacFynns and Derall staring in silent fear. We'd been so quick to leap in then peer out that neither Ghask nor I had noticed, and MacFynns and Derall were seemingly too stunned to say anything.
Splayed out on the table was some creature that had been so disfigured that its natural state couldn't be intuited by any of us. Its chest and stomach were laid open, the flesh that had been slit down the middle pulled away and pinned to the foam pad that lay on the table, large steel pins gleaming in the sterile, medical light. To our horror, the view of the interior only confirmed what the groan had suggested.
The creature was still alive.
Its many organs were twitching and undulating, lungs inflating with each shallow breath, heart still pulsating. Its skin was losing all color, turning to a dull grey as it was pulled taut, various mechanisms attached to the thing's arms and legs. Every few moments, there would be a subtle clicking sound, and the gears on the mechanisms would turn, the frame length increasing ever-so-slightly, slowly turning the poor creature into a disproportionate, lanky nightmare. It wasn't until I looked down at its left wrist that I finally understood what I was seeing.
Just as with its torso, the flesh of its wrist was splayed open, skin pinned aside. Interwoven with the veins and sinew was a long steel chain that ran upwards until it disappeared in meat and muscle, buried deep. Hanging from the other end of the chain, loosely dangling down, was a Docent lantern, only a small, partial mote of soulfire contained within. Running down the chain— leaking from the creature's arm— and into the lantern, dripping like an IV, was a viscous, deep red liquid. At first I thought it was blood, but it had a faint luminescence to it. The terminology I've always heard in reference to the flame contained within a Docent's lantern— and as I have used here— is "soulfire." I still don't know the accuracy of the term for certain, but accuracy fell away from my mind as it instilled an even deeper, more existential fear in me while watching it slowly drain into the lantern. Any remaining doubt I had was quashed as I noticed the three metal objects laying on the table next to the creature's head: two eyepieces with crimson lenses and a metal mask, the kinds seen on Docents within the Main Hall, fused to their eye sockets and bolted to their jaw to keep them silent.
"We've gotta go," Ghask hissed, the first to come out of shock.
"I always wondered…" MacFynns muttered, still lost in the sight.
"It's like some unholy intersection a transmutation an' manual mutilation," Derall said.
Ghask put a hand on MacFynns' shoulder and lightly shook him, "We have to go, now. Process this later."
MacFynns slowly acquiesced, making his way to the door. Derall followed suit, looking back only once at the horrific sight. "Oh, to have become a pillar of salt," I heard him mutter.
Slowly, we continued our way down the hall, the din growing louder and louder as we grew closer and closer to the archway. The sound blatantly revealed itself to be the congealing of a countless multitude of voices crying out, though we still couldn't parse their meanings outside of occasional shouts that sounded out above the others. But still they rang out a sensation of hopelessness, of terror. The image of fighters walking into an open-air arena flitted through my mind, but I feared we weren't well-trained, seasoned gladiators, but peons to be slaughtered.
At the archway, we crowded up in two groups at the edges, peering into the massive, cylindrical room, the cacophony of endless vocalizations deafening us. The ceiling raised far, far up above us, almost turning to a point with how far away it seemed, vertigo rushing through me. The continuous wall was covered in cells, pocketing it like leprosy, a walkway wrapping all the way around at every level. In the center was a massive tower, a spiral staircase running up and down its outside, breaking through the floor downwards. At various parts of the tower were platforms on which stood Docents of various kinds, seemingly watching the cells. Working alongside them, Docents with the ability to fly or float meandered around the tower, patrolling.
At ground level, at all eight compass points, were large archways, one of which we were peering through. We could see a team of Docents dragging a rowdy bunch of captives through a distant archway, escorting them off into other hallways, likely filled with the same operating rooms we'd passed.
"'S'like a panopticon," Derall commented, forced to speak up a bit due to the overwhelming despair that permeated the prison.
"That's because it is one," Ghask retorted snarkily, though it quickly gave way to a wide-eyed expression as he muttered to himself, drowned out by the din.
"What's wrong?" MacFynns asked, seeing that Ghask was working through something.
"It's a panopticon," Ghask repeated, "the eye…" he trailed off as he gazed up at the tower, his eyes slowly following the staircase down. "We have to go down."
"Down?" MacFynns asked.
"We can't just waltz in there," Derall retorted, "Let's go back and try another hallway."
"Old man Sammy talked to said the reflecting pool was at the heart, no?" Ghask asked, still staring forward.
"Right," MacFynns answered, Derall choosing instead to walk back a bit, trying to scout out a new direction to take.
"All the wings we've seen were just that: wings. Appendages. We've gotta go down the throat."
Derall whipped his head back, "We ain't makin' it to the tower 'fore one a those Docents spots us."
MacFynns sighed. "He's right, Yelie."
Ghask shook his head, "Doesn't change what we gotta do."
We all sat for a moment in the cacophonous white noise, trying to figure out what to do. The one to break the silence was the last remaining Forearm goon, speaking up for the first time that day, a canine fellow with four eyes. "I'll distract them, you guys make a dash for the stairs."
"Nah, nah, we ain't sending you out there," Derall protested, "ain't no way it takes all a their attentions, gotta be a couple hundred scattered 'bout."
"But it does give us better odds of slipping by," Ghask added.
"I'll just run to the other side, pop a few shots at them. Easy as," the Forearm member said, taking a few deep breaths, making a gesture with the semi-automatic rifle he held in his hands.
"What's your name, son?" MacFynns asked.
"Ghk'alk, sir."
MacFynns stuck his hand out, "You're doing the Forearm a great service, Galk."
Ghk'alk shook MacFynns' hand. His face was stoney, but the tremor in his hand told the full story in spite of his effort to keep an air of bravado.
"Before you go," MacFynns opened his coat, pulling out one of his flasks, opening it and handing it to Ghk'alk. "Here, for courage."
Ghk'alk gingerly took the flask out of MacFynns' hand, taking a few hearty gulps from it. When the burn finally hit his throat too hard, he lowered the drink and coughed a bit, MacFynns swiping the flask from his hand while he was distracted. With a wipe of his snout and a clearing of his throat, he was back to business. As Ghk'alk stood just before the archway, psyching himself up for the run, Derall spoke.
"Jus'—" He faltered, having trouble saying what he wanted to. The hurry of the moment pushing him forward, he managed to break through the dam. "Jus' make sure you save a bullet for yourself, son. If you're so inclined."
Ghk'alk stared for a moment, the scene of the operating room likely running through his mind. It was running through mine at that moment. He only nodded in response before taking a few more deep breaths and sprinting out into the massive chamber.
To our surprise, he made it all the way to the tower seemingly without arousing any kind of attention, none running out of the tower nor swooping down towards him. After he ran a little further, he brought his rifle up to his shoulder and popped off a few shots at a Docent that flew by far above him. I couldn't tell if he missed or hit, but it did finally catch a few Docents' attention, angling themselves in the air for a quick turn, beginning to dive for him.
Quickly turning heel, Ghk'alk continued sprinting, almost at the opposite archway. We all scrambled to our feet, making a mad dash into the room towards the central tower. Fortune favored us, the stairs meeting the floor on the side we were already running for, saving us from having to run around the tower.
To our great relief, we managed to reach the stairs and begin our descent without being spotted, as far as we could tell, the floor swallowing us up. Part of me had expected us to go down for only a moment before the walls surrounding the stairs opened up again to another layer of imprisonment, but the walls never stopped pressing in on us as we descended.
Our hurried descent would eventually morph into a slower walk as time passed. After maybe twenty minutes of spiraling, we stopped to catch out breath and take stock of the situation. That was what Ghask had said it would be for, at least, but we didn't say a single word to one another as we sat on the stairs. I found myself listening for any sign of footsteps on the stairway, a sign that we'd been had, but none ever came. Eventually, we forced ourselves back onto our feet, driven on my momentum alone as time stretched on and on.
I don't know how long we descended for, it felt as if every one of my perceptions were warping, the stairs twisting and curling beyond the simple spiral that had been there before, the forms of the three men in front of me growing fuzzy around the edges. Any aural sensation was drowned out by the sound of blood rushing through my skull, my breaths, and the beat of my heart, thumping like a kick drum in my chest. The further down we got, the worse it all grew, as if every step was a warning, growing more and more intense.
Finally, though perhaps not mercifully, we stumbled down the final few stairs and back onto flat ground. It took all of us a few steps forward to realize that we'd plateaued, collectively lost in the hypnosis of monotony. Once I found myself focused again, the blurring, warping, and twisting all vanished, reality snapping back into place. Had it been the temporary psychological effects of the strain my mind was going through? Had we passed a barrier, some esoteric Great Filter? Even now, I can't say. It felt like stepping out of a dream into the cold of the waking world, the stone under my feet suddenly solid once more.
Before us was a short hallway; a simple, tall rectangle carved into black marble. There was a room just beyond it, its details obscured by the heads in front of me and the dim lighting of the place, though I couldn't see any light source. Ghask, who'd been leading the line downwards, took the first sure steps forward. As he tread the marble, his footfall loudly echoing out, I realized just how quiet it was. Blood, breath, and heartbeat were all gone.
One by one, we followed suit, slowly moving forward, somehow more hesitant than ever. I suspect that they felt the same creeping dread that had begun to slither up my spine. With every step, the notion that we'd awoken from a dream into reality gave way to the far more terrifying idea that we'd stepped out of the gentle sands of slumber into a nightmare. A horrid tension built in my every muscle, the hallway so narrow as to only allow me to see the back of Derall's head.
Finally, we broke through, entering into the small room, Derall moving to the side once he entered, allowing me an unobstructed view of its interior.
The small, black marble room held only one feature, dug into its center: a reflecting pool, its edges lined with polished marble tiles, black as pitch. At the edge facing us, stairs began, descending down into the inky depths of the water. We stood in silence for a moment, all staring into the pool. We all knew what we had to do, it felt obvious as we stared at its still surface. So perfect, like glass.
"This is it, then," Derall murmured, staring at his reflection.
MacFynns was the only one not engulfed in quiet reverence, wringing his hands in excitement. "Indeed it is, gentlemen. Nothing left but the plunge."
"So it seems," Ghask replied.
"She's there, she's just through there!" MacFynns excitedly proclaimed.
He was the first to move, wading into the reflecting pool, loudly disrupting its serenity as he trampled down the stairs.
"Levin, wait, we don't know what's down there, how deep it is!" Ghask protested, quivering. "For all we know it could go on for miles! You could drown!"
"Yelie, we've made it this far, we can't turn back now," was his only response before taking a deep breath and submerging his head, the warbled outline of his figure quickly disappearing.
Ghask swore under his breath and waded into the pool until he too had vanished in the drink.
Derall looked at me for a moment, then reluctantly followed, whispering a prayer under his breath.
I was terrified, images of my lungs filling with water bouncing around my mind, Ghask's fear infecting me. But the rest of me felt compelled to continue forward. MacFynns was right, we'd come too far to back down now. I'd told myself that I would follow them into the depths of Hell, and now I stood before the precipice, brimstone filling my nostrils.
The water was cold, chilling my skin as I slowly submerged myself into it, icy fingers working up my body until they reached my throat. I took a few deep breaths and pulled my head under, completely engulfed, swallowed whole. I blindly walked down the stairs, my hands reaching out in front of me, trying to feel for what was ahead. As I slowly descended, pushing myself through the water, I realized that I had somehow lost almost all buoyancy, my body perfectly content to stay planted on the ground.
The stairs only went down for a few feet before I suddenly felt buoyancy return, the air in my body raising me up in the water. I expected to hit the top of my head on the interior of the reflecting pool, but I kept floating upwards, my lungs beginning to burn, begging to vent and take in fresh air. Turning my face up and wrenching my eyes open, I could see what seemed like the warbling image of a surface and began swimming up as fast as I could, the vague outlines of MacFynns, Ghask, and Derall above me.
One by one, our heads broke the surface, gasping for breath. We slowly swam then trudged out of the water, crawling onto a nearby grassy shore, soaked to the bone. Turning onto my back, I looked up to find what seemed to be a night sky. A black nothingness that, though I couldn't possibly gauge it, set a pit in my stomach, instincts crying out that it fathomless.
Pinpricks of color sat in the ethereal drink, winking in and out. They would slowly fade into the colorless pitch, sinking like stones, or would flare up before dissolving, shining brighter in their last moments. There seemed to be no pattern, no logic. They shifted in and out of existence with no regard for harmony, the pace slowing down or speeding up at the whim of entropy. I shut my eyes to it, some terrified part of my mind screaming that if I kept looking, I'd be drawn in, become buoyant again, left to drift for eternity. That gravity would loosen its grip on me and I'd tumble upwards into the ink, damned.
"The hell is this place?" Ghask quietly asked. Sitting up and looking around, I found that we'd emerged from a lake, its coast running far into the distance, the opposite shore a hazy blur. The shoreline of the lake ran inland for about sixty yards before being subsumed by a dense forest. The whole area was somewhat illuminated, the aura reminiscent of moonlight, but no such body could be seen in the sky, the water's surface like glassy obsidian with nothing to reflect. In that moment, as we all took in our new surroundings, I realized just how quiet it was. The ambient sounds of nature were entirely absent, the water perfectly still and serene, no trace of it lapping at the shore.
"We have to be close. So, so close," MacFynns said, his voice filled with quiet awe.
Derall still lay on the ground, his breathing quivering.
As we silently gazed at our surroundings, the grey and black settling into our bones, a dull flare of crimson light appeared on the opposite side of the lake. The three of us who were upright all found ourselves captivated by it, staring. It sat unmoving, its aura flickering and wobbling like firelight. Ghask was the first to move, slowly making his way around the shore towards it. MacFynns followed after him, enraptured. Hearing the two walk off, Derall picked himself up and took in the area, his trembling only growing worse.
Without thinking, I found myself slowly stepping forward, my feet barely lifting from the soft grass. All I could hear in that moment was my own breathing, shuddering. Something began wrapping its fingers around my chest, squeezing tight, draining my heart of blood, leaving my chest cold and numb. I heard Derall scramble up from the ground, stumbling forward until he was right behind me, matching my pace. Almost mindlessly, we walked closer, closer, closer to the crimson light, circling the shore of the lake. Dread pooled in my stomach, fear overwhelming as we neared it.
Once he was close enough to reach out and grasp it, Ghask stopped. One by one, we stopped near him. The crimson light was a mote of soulfire, the kind in a Docent's lantern, though this was free from any constraints. Its heat was cold, empty of comfort, the faintest flickering of agony in its heart. It let off a dull drone, almost a moan of despair, a husk of a sound that sat on the precipice of fading away into nothingness but never quite did. Fire dripped from the heart, viscous, slowly sinking into the grass once it had fallen. The light revealed the head of a trail that wound into the woods, quickly eaten by the night.
The dread in my stomach wound its way up my esophagus until I found myself on all fours in the grass, vomiting. Acidic bile forced its way out until it lost the aid of pressure and volume, left to trickle from my lips. Derall had fallen to his knees, weeping, grasping at his hair. Ghask was muttering nonsense to himself, anxious word salad. MacFynns stared empty-eyed into the mote, drool falling from his lip, mouth agape. Then, the mote faded away, its grueling atmosphere departing with it, leaving us to sit in disoriented silence, our minds slowly coming to. Further down the trail, the flame reappeared, lying in wait for us.
"We- we have to follow it," MacFynns whispered, blinking his eyes.
"It's like its radioactive," Ghask muttered, already stepping down the trail.
Despite how sick I'd felt the closer I'd gotten to it, there was still something alluring about it, that beacon of color in the stripped night. I was already on my feet, ready to keep walking when Derall spoke. "Oh Lord in Heaven above, what have we done?" He was still kneeling on the ground, head clasped in his hands, breathing hitching as he cried.
"C'mon, Johnny. I think it's just the flame, it has some weird effect on us," Ghask said.
"It ain't just the flame," Derall said, voice still trembling. "It ain't. Jus' finally broken, Lord's finally shattered my hardened heart."
We watched in silence as Derall clasped his hands together, pressing his forehead to them.
"All this time I've thought I was Isaiah, come to proclaim the fire a the Lord, here to witness His glory. Thought us the rocks a the mountain that Nebuchadnezzar saw, but we're only the iron an' clay feet. The flame's the writin' on the wall, angelic hands come to spell out the end. I'm not Esther, not Mordecai, I'm Haman.
"No, no, I'm Ahasuerus, drug along in his own foolishness and passion by Haman," Derall pointed to MacFynns, beginning to stand up. "But there'll be no redemptions, no decrees made, I already allowed for the slaughterin' of both the Jews and those that hate 'em, turned my head from Esther, but still brought Haman to his gallows," he said, staring at MacFynns.
"Get a hold of yourself, Johnny," MacFynns growled. "You're spewing nonsense!"
"I think I've been spewin' nonsense for a while now," Derall muttered. "So lost in my own pride. Suppose that the Lord sometimes punishes by givin' us what we want." He sighed, "It's too late for me to change what I've done. There's nothin' left for me to do but lay myself prostrate 'fore the Lord an' face His righteous wrath." Derall turned to face the lake. "My mind's drawn to the tribulations a Job…" he trailed off into silence before taking a deep, wavering breath.
"All those creatures, children of God, thrown as sacrifice into the fires a Gehenna. By my hand or by others who're brought to fervor by my words, uttered with the tongue that the Lord gave me, now so wrought with sin, that has begged no repentance.
"I think… I think it's time I was stripped a my cattle, my home. My everything. Though, I'll be completely deserving of it. It'll not be the crucible a the Lord— a galvanizin' of faith— but the brimstone poured out by the saints above."
Derall broke away from us and began slowly trudging back towards the lake.
"Where are you going, Johnny?" MacFynns asked. "We're so close, I know it."
"We are, we are, but we don't deserve to go no further," Derall weakly replied, not even turning his head.
"He's gonna report us," Ghask realized. "He's gonna get caught, get Docents sent our way."
"Johnny! Stop!" MacFynns called, panic beginning to fill his voice. Quickly, MacFynns reached into his pocket and drew the handgun he'd been carrying the entire journey for the first time. He flicked the safety off and pulled the slide back, the metallic schk, click, thk! breaking through the quiet atmosphere. "Don't make me do this, Johnny."
Johnny stopped for a moment, only turning his head. "Y'ain't gonna pull that trigger, Levin. I know you ain't," he said before continuing on, at the lake's shore. MacFynns held the gun aloft, aiming at Derall, one eye squeezed shut as a finger rested on the trigger, as Derall stepped into the lake. For a moment, MacFynns stood stoic, but he quickly broke as the gun began to tremble in his hands, arms falling. Derall was up to knees in the water, slowly wading deeper in.
Ghask stepped up to MacFynns, pushing him aside as he snatched the pistol from his limp hands. Raising it himself and aiming at Derall, Ghask fired off six shots, hitting Derall in the back with enough of them. Derall fell the rest of the way into the lake, his body writhing for a moment, trying to swim, before coming to a still, floating face-down in the serene water, slowly drifting. Ghask lowered the smoking handgun, breathing deep, the faintest notion of a smile poking at the corners of his mouth. "Had to be done." He turned around and began walking down the trail, towards the crimson flame. MacFynns stared towards the lake for a moment more before turning and following Ghask.
The gunshots snapped something in my mind, bringing me fully back to my senses, shaking me awake from the stupor I'd been in for months. I slowly followed behind the pair, but knew that I could go no further, that I had to make a break for it. We walked down the trail, growing closer and closer to the crimson flame, and I began to feel nauseous, my stomach roiling. With MacFynns and Ghask seemingly enraptured by the mote of soulfire, focused on reaching it, and wishing to not get any nearer myself, I suddenly dashed into the woods beside me, weaving between trees, angling myself backwards. I heard Ghask and MacFynns shout out behind me, gunshots quickly following. The ground jumped near me a few times, bark flying in shards off trees, but none of the bullets managed to hit me, Ghask completely unskilled with firearms.
I ran until I broke through the treeline again, sprinting into the lake. Derall's body still floated there, now closer to the shore. I waded as fast as I could, diving down into the water once it was deep enough, wildly swimming down until my hands bashed into the stairs of the reflecting pool, my body following through as if pulled by gravity. I stumble-swam to my feet, making my way up.
When I'd come back up through the reflecting pool, I quickly sprinted out of the room and up the spiral of stairs, breaching the floor and returning to the panopticon far, far quicker than the time it had taken to descend. I directed myself towards the nearest archway, towards what I hoped was the right direction, no longer making any attempt to hide myself. It wasn't long before a Docent took hold of me, its crimson lenses burning bright. In all honesty, I hadn't thought that far ahead, I'd only focused on getting out while I could. I quickly sputtered out an explanation, that I was with the Planasthai, doing a report on a group in the Library, showed my ID. I told it about those deeper in, that one was dead, that the GOC that were drug in were a false flag. By then, other Docents had gathered around, hearing my plea. There was some kind of silent conversation between them for a moment, faces twitching and heads turning to and from one another.
The group departed, presumably headed for the reflecting pool, save for the Docent that still held my arm with its free hand. I couldn't help but stare into its lantern as it began escorting me through the Basement. The mote within seemed so tame all of a sudden. The soulfire still writhed as usual, but the glass containing it kept its radiation at bay, presumably. Still, in the back of my head I could hear it, forever etched into my mind. That sound, that low, perpetually dying drone. Even the memory began to turn my stomach.
Soon, we reached a large iron door which the Docent threw open, light shining through and blinding me. The Docent shoved me through, closing the door behind me with a rusty squeal. Once my eyes had adjusted, I found that I was standing in the Main Hall, amidst the usual hustle and bustle of Wanderers. The soft light had been too much for my eyes, long adjusted to the dim lighting of the Basement and that forest.
What had taken us days by foot was traversed in a doorway's breath. Turning around, I found that the iron door I'd been pushed through was gone, only a bare wall left behind. All I could think to do in that moment was to make my way back to the Planasthai offices. I can't remember the walk there, I just remember opening my office, making a quiet remark to myself about the dust, and then crawling under my desk, huddling into myself. At some point I fell asleep, my next memory being Swey Houler gently waking me up. He'd found my office door open, been surprised to see me. I just held him close and cried, the compartmentalization I'd done over the course of the project melting away like spun sugar, an avalanche of fear, anger, and dismay coursing through my body.
It's been about two months since I've returned to the world of the living. It's hard not to look back on my time with The Serpent's Forearm as if I had been walking amongst ghosts, men already long dead before I'd arrived. As if they were a foregone conclusion, destined to crumble. The more I look back, the more I doubt our understandings too. Was it the Basement? What about the forest? Was it the Basement? Had we ever even been truly in the belly of the Library? Was there even a belly to begin with? I question much of what happened. I think I'll question it forever.
I don't know what became of Levin MacFynns nor Yelie Ghask. The only one I've heard rumors of is Samuel Whae, supposedly the sole survivor of the distraction group. I've heard that he is trying to salvage what is left of the Forearm, though the claims are dubious at best. I've been through the Way to their homebase since my return to mortality in order to retrieve my notes, recordings, and drafts, and found it abandoned. Even still, I've elected to stand by my previous sentiment of not revealing its location. My original intent of keeping it obfuscated for the sake of barring any inspired reader is dead, but I find myself afraid of the corpse's ideological power nonetheless.
The Serpent's Forearm were a band of dogmatic madmen, one that I found myself despising more and more as time passed. Even then, I was swept along in their wake, their fervor digging under my skin. I went in with the intent of only recording their machinations, getting a view from the inside. So I sat by and watched as they spiraled, letting so many come in harms way in my inaction. And while I had no sway over them— and they would have killed themselves eventually regardless of my attendance— I can't help but question my own true culpability. Because in truth, I did hold sway over them. They escalated swiftly, it seems to me now, because of my being there. Every page of notes I took, every minute of conversation I recorded, I inadvertently urged them forward. Faster, faster, the thrill of having an article written about them overwhelming. I'd fed them the drug they'd always craved most: attention. I only publish this now with the knowledge that I sent them so far down their own death spiral that they've crashed and burned.
I sleep lightly most nights, waiting for a Docent to knock my door off its hinges and drag me back down, down into the depths. Canine teeth slick with saliva and blood digging into my forearm as my back scrapes against that cracked, dirty concrete floor. But the Docent never comes, and I don't know if that's a relief.
The overwhelming emptiness that surrounded Levin frightened him more than anything else had before. It felt like it was alive— a squirming creature that brushed against his consciousness with smoky tendrils so cold they left hoarfrost in their wake. He trudged forward through the nothing, wildly flailing his arms about in a desperate search for something, anything. His feet hit solid ground, but when he looked down there was only black nothingness. Where did the light that allowed him to see his own form so clearly come from? He cast no shadow, felt no warmth. Everything but himself was pitch. So he moved forward, the only direction he felt sure of, towards the lone landmark in the void: seven white pillars, stretching upwards and downwards further than Levin's eyes could possibly make out, becoming points as sharp as obsidian.
He'd lost Yelie somewhere along the way, when the woods had come to life, filled with the sounds of cries and locusts, after they'd decided to press ahead, after the journalist had fled. They had to press forward, they'd come too far, worked too hard, had to risk it. Had he tried to turn around once the world had begun collapsing, run out of the thicket? It was hard to remember, everything had just so suddenly fallen apart, given way like loose sand. The trees were felled by some unseen hand, the sky slinking away into its own nothingness. Each footfall disintegrated the faint dirt trail beneath his feet, an entropy that swiftly spread until there was nothing. He had nowhere else to go but to the pillars, nowhere else to look to. Still he tried, throwing his head about, eyes darting, only reaffirming what his terrified mind already knew.
Levin tripped over his own feet as he swung his head about, still vainly searching for anything in the nothing, landing on his hands and knees. The fatty flesh of his palms and fingers pressed onto the floor of the place and he could sense pressure being applied, but no other sensation ran up his nerves. It was a simultaneous nothing and something, causing his mind to spin even faster, his breathing becoming quick and shallow as panic set in, rising like a fire, the fear that already filled his form acting like gasoline.
He scrambled to his feet, letting his shoes hide away the horrifying sensation. With every step, he moved faster and faster, soon in a full sprint, digging into the ground as best he could, but still his footfalls made no sound. He began to sweat, exertion and fear wringing him out like a wet towel. The faint sound of his pant legs rubbing together at his pudgy thighs dissipated into the white noise of his heavy breathing, leaving him suspended in a sea of serenity that only heightened his anxieties.
He grew closer, closer, closer to the pillars, desperate for their rationality, their solidness, texture. Marble, plaster, styrofoam, it didn't matter; simply being was sufficient grandeur enough for Levin.
So near to his green light, his next footfall found no purchase. His arms reached out to catch himself again, working on pure instinct, but they never touched down, his whole body continuing to tumble forwards, plummeting downwards. His clothes remained still as he fell, not catching on the ambient air as he passed by it. He briefly wondered if he was floating, not falling, but the sickening pit in his stomach that grew as it tried to crawl up his throat told him otherwise.
He quickly realized that he couldn't feel the air as he fell through it either, no sensation of his rushing over his skin. Taking a deep breath, he couldn't feel it on his tongue, in his nose. His lungs inflated, but they emptied out nothing as he held a hand to his mouth and let go of the breath.
Then, he wasn't falling anymore. He stood on a ground that was solid, but still gently, subtly gave way under his weight. He hadn't been jolted by a landing that surely should have killed him, only knowing that the fall had ended by the ground beneath his feet and his stomach coming back to rest. Wherever he was now, it was truly dark. Whereas the place above was devoid of detail, this one was enveloped in a cloak of lightless black. The pillars slowly appeared above him in a gradient as they ran further and further away from the pit and back into the lightless illumination.
Levin collapsed, overwhelmed. He had met his limit a while ago, but was only now responding to it. He was taxed, mentally and physically. His bare hands now on the ground, he realized that he could actually feel it. It was roughly textured and cool to the touch, made up of large sections about the size of dinner plates, one end of each piece tucked underneath the one before it, the piece after tucked beneath it. Like scalemail he'd seen in a museum once.
Levin's throat constricted, eyes widened. His breaths came ragged, desperate, as an overwhelming sense of reverence washed over him, tinged orange by the underpinning of utter fear that seemed to only swell. It strained against the thin veneer of adoration until it tore away, leaving only the memory of what he'd done. He'd always been so sure of his beliefs, his feelings, his actions.
She's here, she's right here. The sommelier of the known, the harbinger of the unknown.
Everything he'd done, he'd done for the sake of knowledge. For the sake of the Hand, then the Forearm.
She knows. She knows, she knows, she knows.
Everything he'd done, he'd done for the sake of knowledge. For the sake of the Hand, then the Forearm.
How can she not?
Still his soul writhed and screamed, cried like a pathetic child, wanted to beg forgiveness.
For all of his life that had mattered, he'd sought her— spirit and form, knowledge-drunk and blissfully ignorant. Now he was here before her, and he was trembling in utter fear. Not reverent fear— the kind of fear Johnny had preached about before— but a more primal kind that caused his extremities to numb and his heart to race.
A voice reverberated through the boundless space. Distant, yet free of echo. It subsumed the atmosphere, built itself on top of it until it was all that was left. Levin suffocated on it, practically gasping for air as he began to wonder, his mind racing, What will become of me?
Hello, Wanderer. What brings you so far down into the Library's depths?
Levin tried to speak, but his voice caught in his throat, only a choked noise coming out.
Come now, Wanderer. There is nothing to fear here except that which you believe you must.
Almost as if he couldn't help it, Levin found the words falling out of his slack jaw, "I'm scared of you." A confession forced out of him by overwhelming awe.
Is that so?
"Yes, m—" the words were foreign, unpracticed, "Yes, ma'am."
And why is it that you fear me, Wanderer?
"Because- because you know what I've done."
I do not, Wanderer. I do not even know your name, how could I know your deeds?
"But aren't- aren't you the incarnation of- of knowledge?"
What is unknown is just as much a facet of knowledge as that which is known.
"Oh."
I am as voraciously curious as I am knowledgeable. The two go hand-in-hand.
And you have very much piqued my curiosity. What is your name, Wanderer?
"Levin MacFynns, ma'am."
And what is it that you were afraid I knew, Levin?
"I've done many, many things many, uh, disagree with. All in your name, of course." Levin was beginning to feel like a child, trying to hide the broken vase from his parents.
Yet I've not asked anything of you.
"No- no, ma'am, but they've all been done for the— the, uh, sake of knowledge's spread."
I take it you're a member of The Serpent's Hand, then?
"No- no ma'am, not anymore, I actually founded my own organization because the Hand don't truly fight to free you!"
Free me?
"Not in such a literal sense, at least not originally."
Then you learned where to find me.
"Exactly! We wanted- wanted to find you, bring you back! Truly free knowledge!"
I am not trapped.
"Not… You aren't?" Levin asked, his mind swirling and trembling.
And even if I were, I am no stronger than knowledge already is. I am knowledge. No more, no less.
"Then what should we do?"
That is not for me to say.
In the end, the stream will inevitably erode the stones placed before it.
Time is both knowledge's greatest ally and enemy.
Given time, knowledge can conquer despots and inspire leaders anew. Given time, knowledge can fade into nothingness and be forgotten.
"Is everything we did pointless, then?"
No. Without effort, there could be no new knowledge discovered, it would be forgotten, and others would fail to find it.
It is effort that gives knowledge the ability to do more than be forgotten.
The second inevitability is that there will always be those who keep the first inevitability alive.
"Which is why I left the Hand! They refused to do what was needed to keep knowledge in the hands of those who deserve it!"
An interesting notion.
Levin was stopped in his tracks, the boil of emotions that had been building cooling just a bit, fear creeping back, frosting the edges. "What do you mean?"
Those who deserve it.
Are these not the words mortals of your ilk so vehemently fight against?
Those who can handle it, those who can comprehend it, those who can properly wield it.
"But there's wisdom in that! There are people who don't deserve it! Can't use it!"
And you are to be the ultimate judge of such a thing?
"I can certainly guide the way! I've already begun to, I've carefully selected and molded my followers!"
It is beginning to seem to me that you hold no intentions to break the dam, but are a stone yourself.
Was it you who rejected the Hand? Or did they reject you?
Levin gritted his teeth, wanted to beat his fists against a solid surface, scream.
It's happening again.
"What right do you have to speak down to me?!" he demanded, "I fought for you! I did everything for you!"
You have done nothing for me.
"YOU DON'T KNOW THAT! YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!"
Perhaps it is time for the waters to flow over you.
Farewell, Levin MacFynns.
Suddenly, the ground beneath him moved, quickly gaining speed, Levin losing his balance. He soon found himself tumbling as it went faster and faster. He fell over the edge of her form, landing on a lower part, her body coiled onto itself.
Down, down, down Levin fell, tossed to and fro by her slithering.
Until—
Nothing.
He only fell.
Down, down, down.
Further and further.
Down, down, down…
Down, down, down…
Down, down down…
Down, down, down…