the-quicksilver-diary

[the-quicksilver-diary]

The King

In a palace far away, there is borne a heavy crown, a heavy sword, a heavy heart. The Silent King has a silver face, the shadows of whose eyes show no life or affect. Its hands are now intricate filigree, smithed by the kingdom's greatest artificers. Small bits of tendon - the only remnants of its hands - strain and pull at intricate mechanisms within the metal gauntlets, granting the Silent King remarkable grip and dexterity unsurpassed by any human alive. In accordance with the moon, who dies a dozen times, a dozen faceless guardians stand vigil for the Silent King about its throne.

The Silent King was not born such; its sovereignty was forged in blood. It was a bastard, born without a voice to an exiled thief and a bounty hunter. With no midwife, warmth, or manger, the prophet of ruin was born in the wastes under naught but the open sky. Its only birthright was cruelty, its only inheritance plague. Its mother was the first to die, so accursed was its arrival to the world. So great was its mother's agony - as all of her substance withered to ash - that her death-cry cursed the soil, shook the heavens, and struck a moment's hesitation in Death who came to take her. And so fitting it was that the silence of its mother's remains greeted the freshly born babe to the wastes. Its movement through this world was a miracle. At its touch, water boiled, walls opened, and the living died. The palace stood no chance against it.

With each shattered dream and broken body, the Silent King grew in size and glory. Its spine has grown heavy with the thousands of vertebrae it has claimed, and routinely collapses in new horrifying shapes with each step taken. Its arms have grown thick with hundreds of forearms bound together with sinew just beneath the skin. The Silent King, once sickly and afraid, has now grown to be a prodigious behemoth. Its dozen-fold shadow twists and bends, cast about in all twelve of the sacred dimensions.

By death was it born, through death was it crowned King, and over death will it preside. All bow to the moon and its dozen shadows.

[the-quicksilver-diary]

The Pumpkin Patch

[Slipped between the pages is a paper flier, discolored with time and fraying at the edges. Stylized illustrations of grinning pumpkins, birds holding ribbon, and costumed children decorate the piece. Small splotches of an unknown dark substance cover parts of the aged paper. It reads:

"Join us #or our annual pumpkin patch! Octob#r 1st-29th, 10am-6pm We h#ve:

Corn Maze

Hay Rides (comes with one free pumpkin of your #elec#ion)

The Bird

Cider Pressing

Apple Bobbing

Corn Pit

Farm Animals

…and much more! Located at ###### ## ##### ####, ########## ## #####"]

Autumn is my favorite time of year, you see. The air is crisp and cold enough to sting your nose, the trees light themselves ablaze with color before becoming barren. It's the year's final breath before it gets too cold to go outside, and a nice excuse to indulge. As per my long-standing tradition, I went to the local pumpkin patch a few weeks ago. I wanted to take my girlfriend, but she was unable to accompany me on account of falling ill. There was the usual fare, of course: overly-ambitious teenagers getting lost in the corn maze, people milling about holding hot cider, and half-drunk farmers driving families out to the pumpkin fields.

My first point of business was to check out the animals brought in from some of the nearby farms. It's always a treat to see this year's pigs and goats, and I enjoy feeding them. There was a child there, must have been about three years old, who seemed terrified of the goats. Their eyes were at roughly the same level, and the little girl was holding a tiny handful of feed pellets. She kept turning away from the goat and running back to wrap herself around her mother's legs. The goat kept its rectangular eyes fixated on the blubbering child, sniffing around and bleating in expectation.

I wanted to get a pumpkin for me and Shirley to carve, so I went out to the tractors to see about getting a hay ride there. When I got there, I saw a tractor loaded with trailers and hay bale seats. A few crows sat themselves down on the hay bales. The tractor itself was a beast of a machine, and I could still hear the cracks of the hot engine metal settling in the cold air. Although there was a tractor, I was quick to find that there was nobody around to operate the thing. I spent a good while snooping around to find a driver, but gave up after fifteen minutes. So I decided to walk the mile out to the field myself - it's no longer than my walk to work, after all.

The trail out to the pumpkin field was rough and uneven, deep treads dug into the mangled earth. I saw a few more crows standing around together, doing nothing in particular. Every once in a while I would trip over some bit of exposed root that caught my shoe, despite the lack of trees in this part of the farm. The sky hung heavy with clouds, casting the yellow field of straw in a grey malaise. The wind moaned slightly, and the air grew noticeably colder. All at once, a collection of caws echoed through the air and a storm of black feathers kicked up from the field. A murder took to the sky with a cacophony. I saw, then, a few other walkers as I closed in on the pumpkin field. A group of three men, close together, each carrying a heavy pumpkin in his arms. One of the men had a noticeable limp, but all three of them still stayed close together. I waved to them to get their attention, but they made no acknowledgement. Whether the man with the limp had summoned a great deal of speed in compensation for his condition or his compatriots were accommodating him was, I admit, something I gave slightly too much speculation. The pumpkins on the ground were of all sorts, ages, and conditions, and all were caked in dried up mud. Many of the elder gourds were caved in and mushy, while smaller specimens dotted the landscape.

More and more, the walkers grew in number. All of them held pumpkins, some of them limped, none of them spoke. All of them in the wordless crowd shuffled along the tangled mess of the pumpkin patch. When one of them tripped on a pumpkin root, nobody stopped to help them. The roots coiled around their arms and legs, pulling them down, down into the dirt.

Large wooden crosses began to appear as I followed these people to their unseen destination. The crosses were covered in thick pumpkin roots and vines that tied together the wood. These crosses held aloft lumpy scarecrows, stuffed with straw that poked out of the makeshift stitches. Upon closer inspection, it became clear to me that these scarecrows were not made of burlap, but skin and bone. These effigies, radiating from a central point in the distance, were human. Or, humans, rather. Where parts were stitched together, straw poked out of the botched sutures. One of the scarecrows had two left hands. I became sick to myself. But even still, my curiosity remained. I needed to see to where these people all walked. And then I saw it.

A colossal white crane sat in an intricately folded position, about the size of the tractor I saw earlier in the day. It had a few small crow-attendants by its side, making occasional squawks and pruning their lord's feathers. Around the bird were six scarecrows arranged in a circle, each with a heavy iron chain around their bloated neck that bolted to an iron collar fitted around that of the crane. The massive bird had atop its head a crimson crown that constantly dripped something thick. A walker approached the bird, holding his pumpkin. The supplicant held his pumpkin high above his head, and the bird tilted and jerked its head forward with great swiftness such that its golden eye was inches from the pumpkin. It looked the pumpkin over, moved its head back, then shot its beak forward with the great strength of its folded neck muscles and devoured the supplicant whole. The pumpkin fell to the ground and broke apart into stringy chunks.

Suffice to say, I did not get a pumpkin for Shirley that day. I hope she's feeling better; I haven't heard from her in a while.

[the-quicksilver-diary]

The Secret

The walls have begun to wilt. Beneath the curling paper and rotten plaster, a thousand fleeting eyes blink in and out of being. Something stirs within the pipes. It skitters with its tiny fingers, tip-tip-tapping inside the pipes in a bid to talk to me. The thing that stirs follows me when I leave the house. If I tune the spirals within my drums to the vibrations in the air, I can hear it snickering to itself inside the wires of a power line. The wire inside the power line offers me secrets. Things I had no desire to know, no right to know. When the power line dismisses this refusal, it orates a dissertation. It told me of the end of days, the true shapes that lie between the hazy strings that comprise the body of reality. The thing in my pipes, the thing in the power line, they are not the only lurkers, the only things that stir. You can know their names spoken upon the lips of liars if you can read the pattern. Divinity has no shape. The only shape it can have is that given by its original tongue. If mankind were to ever behold the true face of divinity, they would be unable to recognize it as such. To give it form, to give it shape, the only option is to speak as it does. The tools are available, even if slightly inaccurate. The scholars of the desert, whose foundations were adopted and invented time and again, were the first to put the language of divinity to page. The strings of reality hum in cascading serenades in frequencies seen by ever-winding fractals. Mandelbrot dreams coalesce into the face of a nightmare, howling as a tear in spacetime devours all the dust and all the dreams and all the stars and all the heat and all the data and everything that ever was, spinning and spinning around the ultimate mass, the gravitas and rage of a god's corpse. The other stars, far enough for now to be not consumed by the darkest terror to ever be spawned by the still-hungry corpse of their kin, dance and twirl to keep it away. The other stars, terrified of being torn asunder by their own and reduced to nothing but another messy, shine the little warmth that remains to their own children - the days before their own oblivion are numbered.

[the-quicksilver-diary]

The Colossus

A colossus wanders a broken landscape. To see the colossus walk would conjure to mind but one word: inexorable. It stops for no river, no mountain, no ruins, no age. Thunder no longer cracks. Mountains no longer stand. Time no longer moves. For they all hid from the mighty and terrible colossus.

The colossus picks through the wreckage of a metropolis. Rusted metal twists, groans, and pushes to escape the confinement of a concrete tower. It frays to wire in places, stabs through glass in other places. But in all places, against the open air and facing the sky, all metal bleeds when the rains fall. Inch by painful inch, all the metal in all the towers will dig its way to the outside, such that it can know the sky, such that it can bleed. The aging remains of these concrete giants, once daunting and revered by those whose names have fallen between the cracks of oblivion, are now stained with long and ruddy streaks.

The colossus' face has never moved. It wears forever a death mask, fashioned after an architect held once in great renown and now remembered only by the bricks of a library doomed to rot upon the sea. Its face serves as an eternal impression of the final moments of the architect, wracked with guilt and excruciating pain. The memory of the architect lives on, or at least the architect's memory of all that he sacrificed to design his most ambitious creations that mocked the laws of nature.

The colossus cries for a bygone age. It witnessed the rise and fall of empires. It marveled at the sleepless builders. It saw humanity die. So now the colossus cries, a whale's song to mourn every human to die since the time of its construction.

[the-quicksilver-diary]

The Cold

You sit for hours on end in the raging blizzard, a motionless statue in the cold. Are you alive, child of frost? Or have you succumbed to the cold and joined the many dead that have fallen this winter? Even you are unsure. Recall, child of frost. Recall some semblance of memory to wake you from the fugue in which you linger, such that you may live again amidst the swirling of ice and snow that has engulfed the crevices of your very essence. You take no nourishment, save for chunks of ice you grab from your satchel. They sit in your mouth, sapping all warmth from it until the flesh within turns blue. They don't melt, for you haven't the warmth in your blood to melt them anymore. All you can do is swallow. Your face is sunken, child of frost. Your face is the shifting sky of nights that come earlier and earlier with each passing day: a deep grey-blue with no hint of life, ushering forth a fell wind that makes the trees wail. When your eyes move, they move with the weight of lead and set upon their beheld the indifference of stone. Your scarf, your coat, your hair, your arms. They all trail behind you, wistful and flowing ever behind you into the wind. The only direction your glazed eyes can comprehend, the only time of which you can conceive. Winter holds no expectation, only recollection. Recall the streetlamps along your route. On the curved path of concrete, there sit a dozen wrought-iron streetlamps casting a hazy sphere of harsh yellow upon a layer of untouched snow in the night. There is no moon to guide you, and the stars all hide behind the clouds. The only thing to follow is a gently curving path of streetlamps, the only sound is the crunch of your own steps. Recall her touch, child of frost. A memory so old that you have since started to doubt its existence among the other cascading and mercurial imaginings that could have been real. You only ever saw her at night, and when you did she was cold. When she fiddled the keys in the door with stiff blue fingers, the sound of the tumbling locks that heralded her return was such joyous music. Her coat, colder than ice, smelling like ash and smoke, brought you comfort unmatched by anything since. She, too, walked the route that you do today. She passed the same streetlamps you did, walking alone in the dark. She walked against the same wind, the same snow, the same silence. And when she walked back to whichever of the countless places you two called home, she came home with food. Sometimes there was enough for her too. On the rare occasions that you have ample time to do so along your walk, you stop and listen. You listen to the gaps within the quiet, the spaces within the dark. And just then, you can just barely hear what you swear to be her breathing in the wind, the rhythmic rise and fall of hush that used to help you sleep.

[the-quicksilver-diary]

The Plague

When Shirley awoke, the air in her chambers was thick, hot, and wet. Her skin clung to itself, oil and sweat dripping. The faculties of her nostrils were all but non-functional, leaving her equipped only with the desperate apparatus of her chapped mouth through which to draw in stale air. The heavy stench of sickness was one Shirley recalled all too well. She turned to move her head and look at the time. Her muscles were wound tight, and her bones crunched. The digits of her alarm clock blurred into a red haze, and the blinding sun bleeding in from the outside offered no assistance to her ability to discern the current time. Shirley faded in and out of consciousness for several lifetimes, each moment perceived an immeasurable hell. She lie there for another two hours. As her head pulsed with a dark malevolence, her body ached, and her senses dulled, Shirley surmised that to feed was her most suitable course of action. Upon standing, her sight was flooded with an array of dancing stars. Her surroundings flitted out of being, and she was alone. It was just her and the dark. Her legs buckled beneath her, and she stumbled her way to the kitchen by way of fighting through dizzying starlight. Each step sent a jolt of electrical pain through her legs, her spine, her brain. "Why was I-" Her voice was hoarse, and all at once her throat filled with sand and razor blades and hatred. Before she could finish her thought, she was seized by an attack of hacking and wheezing. Her diaphragm tried to keep up and take in air to keep her consciousness intact, and her body spasmed and convulsed in the disgusting fashion of a marionette. After a time, the coughing died, and she regained the ability to wheeze in another breath and continue to her task. No more of that, then. Shirley opened her fridge to see its contents. She found herself unable to remember what she had prepared the night before. A lightbulb within flickered to life, casting a harsh light on forsaken plastic containers of past meals. The machine's compressor sputtered to life, and a breath of cold spilled onto the floor at her feet - clumsy, inelegant. Three opened bottles of ketchup, languishing in the refrigerator's door, giving each other a semblance of company until the day they all perish at once from infection in the dark, in the cold. In the back, a bowl of what once could have been called mashed potatoes. It has since been consumed by the bloody war waged between white fuzz and green splotches. A platter of chicken, blackened on the bottom and served with a selection of vegetables cut into too-large pieces. This will suffice.

She closed the door and went to warm her day's nourishment. A sudden possession overtook her then, contorting her face into a wrinkled monstrousness. Her sigh grew dim, and she lurched backward. Within her skull, a spring wound itself tight. Click. Shirley's skull unleashed a hurricane, her sinuses stinging white hot for just a fraction of a second for the duration of the sneeze, before she regained a bit of clarity. Oh right, the microwave. Shirley set her meal in the microwave, set it to warm for ninety seconds, and watched it spin. The juices within the meat sizzled and popped, eager to escape its fibrous and charred prison of flesh. Tiny ice crystals within the vegetable medley began to thaw, making damp the assortment of carrots and broccoli. The plate spun, catching the attention of Shirley's plague-addled mind. Oh, how the plate spun and spun. With its contents sufficiently heated and time depleted, the microwave alerted its user to its task's completion. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. It took a few rounds of this to snap Shirley back to her senses and grab her food out of the device. She staggered to her dining room table, seating for one. After her first forkful of food, she paused. She was cursed with a dreadful realization, a knowledge too awful for her to bear. Within the blink of an eye, she built within her the rage to shatter the very heavens, the essence of her soul withered within her as she lost all hope she might have had to fight through this disease. An awful truth became overwhelmingly apparent: she had lost her ability to taste. And so Shirley ate the rest of her meal, her expression taking on the quality of melted wax. The sound of her fork against her plate, the only one present, was dampened by the thick miasma of disease that so lingered and swirled in the air of her home. She went to bed after this, coughs straining the rusted springs of her mattress. After a long time of tossing, turning, and wheezing, Shirley finally returned to the quiet bliss of rest, rheum sealing the features of her face shut for a very long time.

[the-quicksilver-diary]

The Machine

The machine cries out to me. In my sleep. In my waking hours. Always it screams. A horrid torment it lets forth: the shriek of grinding steel, the crack of lightning, the roar of its infernal engine. Always the acrid smell of putrid smoke fills my lungs and swirls around in my head. Vision blurs. Balance falters. I cough. I speak as the machine speaks. Rapid alternations, high-low voltage modulation creating a pitch somewhere in between, vibrating in the uncertain zone within dreadful absolutes. Crushing silence. Deafening noise. On. Off. On. Off. The voice within this gnashed throat is not my own, and the machine howls. ORGANIC DEBRIS DETECTED. INSTALL DRIVER V1.47.33. Pools of stagnant ichor stood before me. The viscera of a machine I've never seen before lies within them. Rows of gnarled incisors and twisted fangs, warped support beams, and miles of rusted steel chain. They are coated with charred remains of untold thousands of activations long ago. Even still, after all that time left sitting in that foul water, they continued to bleed. There is no telling what this machine ever did, or how long it has been dead, the machine cries out. DRIVERS ARE UP TO DATE. Black sludge courses through my veins. Clumpy SAE40 pumps into and out of my heart, beat after beat. The capillaries turn my cracked skin grey. The machine speaks to me. It promises me strength, I need only listen.

[the-quicksilver-diary]

The Woods

[Below is a translated excerpt from a diary penned by one Gottlieb Schneider found in a ruined campsite in southwest Germany, dated to sometime in the early-to-mid 19th century]

November 17 I've made arrangements to head westward into the woods outside of town for a hunting expedition. For now is the season for fine deer and boars out in the forest, whose meat should keep well into the winter in the storehouse for Heidi and myself. I'll be taking with me my rifle, a few dogs, and some basic provisions that I expect to last me about a week. I will leave tomorrow before the sun awakes, such that I can reach the woods before nightfall. Yours, Gottlieb

November 18 I made quite good time today, making it to the edge of the woods just as the sun was setting into the trees. As dusk fell, a brisk chill welcomed me to the hunt ahead. I am grateful now that I remembered to bring my hat, for I am sure it will only get colder from here as I venture deeper into the woods. The hounds are already with great excitement, particularly the green ones. When I set up camp for the night, I took some time to review my rifle, ensuring its cleanliness and function for the hunt ahead. I broke off some hard cheese and some rye bread from one of my loaves as my dinner for the night. Yours, Gottlieb

November 19 Despite the sticks and stones on the forest floor, I awoke most refreshed today. However, it is already much colder today than I anticipated it to be. To warm my bones for the day ahead, I brewed a pot of coffee over the fire from the night before. The trees are thick here, making it difficult to find much in the way of available sight lines. I did, however, find scraps of cloth fixed to trees along my path. [Pictured below is a pencil illustration of a jagged scrap of red fabric that is frayed at the edges] A few hours into the afternoon, I was able to find a few does drinking water from a still and pristine pond. The sound of a brook hid my approach. Upon picking up the scent of my dogs from downwind, however, they fled deeper into the woods. This sighting gives me confidence in the swiftness and success of my hunt. Yours, Gottlieb

November 20 I had great difficulty sleeping last night. All night I heard creaking and moaning coming from the trees nearby, and insects bit relentlessly at me and my dogs. I took out a bit of cheese and sausage, tossing a few morsels for the hounds. Despite my weariness, I am eager to continue on the trail of those does that I encountered yesterday. Before me lies a clear corridor through the trees that stretches on for a few miles. There are no stumps or signs of destruction, but the trees themselves seem to have bowed away from the corridor. There are more bits of fabric here, scattered throughout the corridor and caked with mud. One of the does from yesterday has reappeared. She jumped out from behind the wall of bowing trees and devoured some of the fabric from the mud. The doe's emergence raised the hackles of my hounds until she went back into the woods. I spent the rest of today following some sets of hoofprints I came upon. A few hours after sending my dogs to follow the scent left within the tracks, they bayed to alert me to their location. I followed the sound and found my hounds barking at a buck standing atop a nearby hill, who all but refused to flee until I attempted to fire at it. Today caused great exhaustion and disappointment. I pray that tomorrow will be easier on me than today. Yours, Gottlieb

November 21 The air has grown even colder and more bitter, taking on a quality I would not expect for another two months. To breathe burns my nostrils and fogs my breath, though no snow has fallen. I heard in my dreams last night the sound of a great moaning and creaking on the wind, like that of a home dying of age. I knew not its source, but it gave my visions an eerie quality. I ventured to find some more water to fill my canteen this morning. When I reached the lake, its water that was without flaw just yesterday had fouled. Leaves that had fallen upon the water have now turned to primordial scum. The sound of a babbling brook has been drowned out by the buzzing of flies. I took no more water then, for I doubt even pouring it into my campfire could clean it. Still determined to find my kill, I set out into the woods once more. After a few hours, I came upon a small herd of does attended by that most impressive buck from yesterday. I stilled my breath, took my aim at the buck, and fired my rifle into his shoulder. As I went to the fallen buck, the nearby does made no motion to move. In fact, they watched me with great stillness and intent, heads and eyes following my every move in unison. They even watched me as I dug my knife into the buck to remove his viscera. I dragged the carcass back with me to camp, but even still those does watched me. I don't think I'll ever forget the way they watched me. The buck was quite easy to carve and prepare for smoking. I even fed some fresh venison to the hounds which they readily devoured. Yours, Gottlieb

November 22 My oldest dog has died in the night. I expected this to be his last year, but I had no expectation of a fate so gruesome. His hide was perfectly intact, with no sign of injury of any sort. It lay mere feet away from his bones that were cast aside in a hasty pile and cleaned of all debris. My other dogs can barely move without trembling. I looked for tracks around my campsite to see what manner of beast was capable of such an act, but all I found were splintered and gnarled bits of oak and more of that dreadful red cloth. I spend the rest of my day digging a grave and performing a service for my hound, may she rest in peace in these woods. As I make my preparations to sleep, I pray to the Lord that I may return home safely to Hilda. Yours, Gottlieb

November 23 The corridor of trees from several days prior has appeared near my campsite, though I remember its location being a few miles south and its length being substantially shorter. Even with one dog dead, I must continue my hunt. As I trudge through the black woods, I notice that the birds have gone quiet. If I listen closely, I can hear now a faint, hollow, rhythmic rattling against some sort of dry membrane. Shortly into my walk, I see that a doe lies before me, still and lifeless. Her skin is icy and tough. After making an incision, I understand that her meat is still viable. In short order, I drag the doe's carcass back to camp and prepare it for curing. It is of great providence that this doe has fallen, as my provisions are growing scarce. Ice is beginning to form around my knuckles and fingers. Though I feel that my vitality has gone from me, I must return home at once. Yours, Gottlieb

November 24 The rest of my dogs have forsaken me during the night. I suppose they were wise to do so, for none have any chance out here in the black woods, not anymore. How fitting is it then, that the Final Sunday should be still and silent as the dead? As I break camp and make swift retreat to Schramberg, I hear once more that damnable rattling. It courses harsh and sorrowful through frigid autumn air, sending a chill up my spine and unease through my bones. I must move quickly before the cold catches and devours my very soul. The trees in the direction of my egress creak and bow before my eyes, they bend softly and turn away from it. Its rattling - its breathing - is growing louder. I hear the distant sound of a hymn for the dead. The choir is all-encompassing, coming from all the directions of the black woods: the north of devastation, the south of hunger, the east of decay, and the east of terrible and inexorable Death. Scraps of red fabric faded with age shed from its teeth and flitter about and dance. Its song is deafening, a choir of the countless thousands that rot, forsaken deep in the black woods. May God be with

[the-quicksilver-diary]

The Song

Have you ever tasted the song of a clockwise fish? It swims with great elegance through the ever-howling wind. Its scales reflect the visions of grandeur you once held in your naivety and youth. It sings of the present, it sings of the past, it sings for the future. Round and round goes the voice of the clockwise fish, sound spiraling around an axis of time, in a direction unchanging only in its inevitability. The clockwise fish sang to me, and I knew then the taste of its song, so vibrant and rich in its experience. "Go now, to a forgotten sky. Shrouded in sleep lies a god in the deep. The seeing-eye fades and squiggle-shapes dance. Experience mumbles and dreams now bleed in." And when I tasted the song of the clockwise fish, I dropped from my hands any ability to define form in recognition. Features melt, arrangements shift, bones sublimate. I looked through you, marble enemy with nothing on which to grab. A vision fell flat, colors silent, sensation swirling. As you forgot me, in turn I forgot you. The thick and pulsating skin you wore now blankets all things by which you may have been remembered. No eyes by which to see, no nose by which to smell, no mouth by which to Taste. Skin, skin, skin. All that remains is the body demarcating your relation and task, a shadow with a name, but no visage that can be assembled and understood by the parts of its constituency. And in such an experience lies bliss, the simplicity of uniform canvas stretched tight over needle-points of aching bone. You never owned a face anyway, did you? You wore a cover to protect the muscles inside from the bitter cold. So fitting is it, then, that the song of the clockwise fish granted you a truer meat-cover, a parody of nothing by which I cannot tell your name. So listen, then, won't you, to the song of a clockwise fish?

[the-quicksilver-diary]

The Archive

Thunder rolls far beyond, resounding across an endless sea. The ocean crashes upon an island's sheer and jagged cliffs. And on this island, that forsaken hunk of ancient stone cradled in boundless sea and thundering sky, sits the Archive.

The Archive contains mathematical theorems written by the first scholars of the desert lands, and blueprints for vast machines dreamt by visionary artificers. It is a library of genius. The Archive contains forbidden esoterica, and secrets whispered to mad prophets in twilight hours. It is a vault of arcane power. The Archive contains maps of all the stars ever born, all the lands ever roamed, all the children of creation. It is a store of wonder.

For all it contains, the Archive serves as a bastion of memory. Its bricks, whose clay was made wet by tears and made stone by hellfire, were laid by the tireless constructs of yore. Each brick remembers the life cut down to make it, each cry of a widow or whimper of her young. And within those walls, anything known by man, beast, or god is recorded in a book for future retrieval.

The Archive, its name long dead with the poor soul who drafted its layout, is a structure erected aeons ago by sleepless builders, housing all the knowledge ever conceived. Its spires reach tall into the terrible night, grasping for a semblance of starlight unreachable by mortal-laid stone. Along the outer walls of the Archive, facing forever to the moon, are cast a row of stained-glass windows depicting strange geometries.

The moon, in accordance with her cyclical temperament, shines angles of light that refract through these geometries. While within her candle-wax humours, the windows filter light such to display small creatures of the pasture, mirages of wonder and fondness. And while the moon is within her waning and hollow humors, the glass bends to a crueler will and spawns countenances of nightmare and shadow.

These monsters blur the quality of their own outline, substance uncertain against the aether of being, demeanor hostile to the concept of life. Countless visitors to the Archive have become lost in its labyrinthine halls, devoured by phantoms whose rasping bellows call to mind a place that never was.

There once was a Librarian who lived within this grand and damnable Archive. None knew his name, even if such a thing could ever have been important. The Librarian was brilliant, he knew the home and content of every book in his domain. The Archive, as a result, was kept in impeccable and pristine condition. It was a monument of glory and brilliance sought by all in the kingdom of men, holding texts on still-fresh vellum and ink retrieved with lightning swiftness. That is, until came the inexorable end of the Librarian.

The Librarian, alone in his keep, was driven mad by visions of shadows that stalked the Archive's halls. Stalked by shadows that never were, he sought the cold embrace of the deep below. His fall was unremarkable, the splash of his body upon the water unseen among the havoc of the waves. Only the tide mourned for him.

And once the Librarian was gone, the shelves grew angry and afraid. They lost their cohesion, books dissolving through higher dimensions and rotating themselves to opposite ends of the complex. No-one can recall the order or material within these texts. Curious men still search the Archive, some to find wisdom of decaying sages, others to map its Escherian routes. Books open, and their pages bleed, their words illegible to the conscious mind. The Archive has lost its glory, containing still all the knowledge there ever was. And all the same, the hallowed sea sings a dirge for the corpse she cradled, and so sway shadows dreamt by glass.