The shadows in the corners of my room were stretching, a good reflection of my mind. Even the candles seemed to give up, burning through their wax twice as fast just to keep the dark from swallowing my desk. Hours passed since I got back here, but my steamy, sensationalist book stayed untouched on my bedside table. A mountain of paperwork—souvenirs from that afternoon's lobotomizing presentation—waited on my desk, taunted me, demanding my approval. My assistant's final gift for the day. The gloom made my head ache. I focused my will into a silent prayer and the world turned from dark yellow to a clear grey. The blessings of night vision were easier to use than a pile of candles. A couple hundred files in, I found my rhythm. My signature was a repetitive short thing, almost a dash. Anthony's reports were, as always, too efficient to ignore, while Phillis's latest budget was a sprawling work of fiction destined for the 'Rewrite' pile. I didn't have the stomach for his dreams tonight; I barely had the stomach for my own. My book kept tempting me.
I was in the last few parchments, eager to get my hands on The Ice Wizard and the Flame Sorceress.The goddess, cackling at me through my holy book, made the flames shiver. She always did enjoy watching me drown in red tape. Her sadistic streak made me question why I followed such deity for the thousandth time. My hope was short-lived. A knock on the door broke the silence of my concentration. My favorite quill snapped in my hands and I walked slowly to the door. Damian, that damned ghost, met me in the entrance, the white light from the hall flew in and over my altar, creating a bright pillar in an otherwise barely lit room. "What do you seek from me, Damian? Justify yourself before I banish you." The specter took a moment to focus his eyes on me, his mind finally catching up to his situation. "Miss Morwen, yes, sorry, I had an encounter with the Pale King…" Raising a hand, I interrupted him "I know how traumatic he can be, and I would love to offer you tea, but my duties are unending, and-" I gestured to his intangible form. "the liquid would pass through you, ruining the last carpet from the Temple of the Forgotten". His form became more translucent as I spoke. "I brought your Sanctity's request for updates on the Eldoria Republic investigation". I turned to rekindle the incense that the sudden breeze put out "Continue, Damian". Smoke began to coil through the air, from the censer, now lit from an unseen fire.
"More of the mortal… staff went missing, from the guild in the capital" the apparition said slowly, choosing each word as its life depended on it. Great, another weight to balance against my sanity. "Sit" I gestured to a chair, and he did as best he could. "All human women between twenty and forty years, last seen at night," he used ectoplasm to create images of mist, showing feminine faces of all kinds," but the last known locations are all over the place, from the heart of the Mud-Walks to the high district of Gula." He clapped, turning the mist to a map "We are unable to confirm if the only ones to disappear are from the guild, since the government is sorely lacking bureaucratic structure, to put it mildly." I sighed. "And if you were to put it less mildly?" Damian strengthened his posture, half phasing through the chair "Honestly, their magistrates can't differentiate between horse and pig, and most officials barely count to ten." I strangled a chuckle, but Nox'thule made her amusement apparent. "Did you find anything concrete?" My aide seemed to brighten: "Yes, ma'am, I used my psychometry to follow them, the stones were nothing but screaming and the air felt thick as oil, an aura of paranoia stretched through the alleyways. Clear traces of abduction, but no supernatural creatures matched the circumstances. Not enough blood for a Werewolf attack, no chilling cold of Wraiths and vampires wouldn't enter the holy places some of the trails led to… I've hit a wall, my Lady. Nothing fits, and even my abilities reached their limits." If no creature could do it, maybe a human? No, if it were a human, the trail would be easy for Damian to follow. "Good work, Damian." I said, opening a drawer, grabbing parchment and my next favorite quill. "Take this," I motioned for the pile of signed and delayed documents "and give it to Aurorah, along with this" I added, placing my new, and very much wet, document with instructions over the mountain now on an enchanted platter, then shoved it in his hands. The ghost seemed shocked, but didn't argue. His transparent finger gripped the handles as if it would fall, but it didn't. Thanks Morthos. "Then take a team to the capital of Eldoria, I need you to tail every female member of the guild until further notice. Go. Now!" I shooed him out the door.
Damian's verbal report was a stain on my evening. Double digits in weeks. If a single one of those missing women talks, the Republic will be at our gates before the ink on my next report dries. The patterns of the harvest were a riddle I didn't want to solve. Why women? Why that age? Whether it was soul-harvesting or something more carnal, it smelled of a design that didn't involve the undead. A thud behind me broke the silence. One of the forbidden scrolls lay unrolled on the floor, its ancient parchment sprawling like a tongue. It shouldn't have survived the fall—it was older than my Order—yet it lay there, supple and mocking. The scent of ozone and rot filled the air, the unmistakable musk of Nox'thule's attention. My pet project. My failure. The images of the 'Gods from the Outside' stared back at me, their many-angled limbs suddenly looking far too much like the abduction patterns Damian had described. I've spent decades working on this piece of… paper. Returning to it now, I wasn't exactly ecstatic. The smoke curdled into jagged runes—a celestial insult that made my skin crawl. It wasn't a suggestion; it was a shove. I dug my nails into the parchment, the ancient ink staining my cuticles like dried blood.
Just as I remembered, the scroll didn't want to be read. The more I focused, the more the glyphs seemed to shift, mimicking the many-angled limbs of the creatures drawn in the margins. I reached for a fresh sheet of parchment, my quill scratching a frantic rhythm against the silence of the room as I cross-referenced the Outside dialect with my old notes. Even with my blessing of sight, my eyes burned, like a million ants marched inside my orbits. I looked away, trying to focus on anything that could numb this feeling.
I got up to make tea, but the room began to twist. The distance warped as I reached the kettle, at least tried to. The floor shifted beneath my feet, like drifting snakes. I felt something warm rolling through my cheeks. Wiping away with my fingers, an inky black oozed from my eyes. I fell to my knees, my strength failing."Goddess, help me", I managed through gritted teeth. Now I remembered why I stopped translating centuries ago. My Lady was swift and the pain subsided, but not completely. Any other reader would have died, or worse, but my situation as an undead and the blessings I received kept me mostly intact.
I crawled to the scroll once more, regaining strength with every second. I climbed my chair, pulling myself up. Reviewing my notes, something didn't add up. Parts of the scroll told of conjurations of the beyond, of creatures of many eyes and many limbs. The description matched the Demons of Old. Maybe this is the way of bringing them here? I ran to the shelves, grabbing a volume about the Demons. I lunged for the shelves, my fingers finding the pebbled-skin spine of the 'Maleficarium.' I tore through the pages, hunting for the familiar chaotic ruptures of the demonic. But the demons of history were accidents—cracks in a poorly made window. This... this was a needle. No… Something is missing. I turned to the scroll again. One glyph stood out to me, it meant bridge, or anchor. "Suture," I whispered, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. Suture is not about making a cut in space, it is about bonding. But bonding what? Using this moment of stability, I brew some tea. Something to ease the double vision.
I poured some hot water, using all my strength to keep my hands from shaking. I watched the leaves dance in the boiling water—a miniature storm trapped in porcelain. They weren't just floating; they were tethered to the center of the swirl, a forced orbit. It reminded me of a ritual. The heat of the cup seeped into my cold palms as I paced back to the desk, the last bitter sip coating my tongue in the taste of wet earth. The wet leaves stuck to the walls. What could these Eldritch Gods want with those people? People. Person. Personal. Phillis' budget report was for expanding manpower. If powerful entities like lichs needed thralls for getting things done, and the gods could only manifest miracles through priests, maybe those outer gods did too. The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow, it's not suturing the space, but humans. Diving back to the scroll and there it was, something to support my theory.
After scavenging the chest in the corner of my room, scattering maps all over the place, there it was, the capital of Eldoria. Unrolling it on the floor, I placed markers on the places where Damian showed the abductions. Nothing. No magic circle, no arcane rune. It must be something. From the scroll, the Many Armed Demon stared at me. My tired sight was making me see after images. I sighed, rubbing my eyes. The madness was getting to me, it almost seemed like the arms matched the… I connected the slums to the market with an inky line, the high district to the first church of the city. It doesn't match, maybe the other way around. I redrew the lines and kept going. Every crime scene made was a dot to connect. Finally, it matched. Drawing lines between the locations and it was exactly the same as the drawing. So maybe a demon was hunting them? It matched the mysterious circumstances. But what would an Ancient Demon want with those women? The scroll still held more secrets.
My fingers traced a line from a depiction of a weeping star down to a crude drawing of a human form. It wasn't a map of a journey; it was a blueprint for a bridge. These 'Gods' weren't drifting through our world like ghosts—they needed to be tethered. To reach our realm, they didn't need prayers; they needed weight. They needed living, breathing vessels to pull them across the veil and hold them here. Mortals. But why women? And why that age group? They had enough vital energy to bend the world, but it would kill them, making them unfit for a host. Even using the life of one to bind another, it wasn't certain, and a single theater would be too flimsy a bond.
My night vision flickered, a warning that my will was flagging. Five hours of chasing shadows through dead syntax had left my mind frayed, but the truth remained, staring back at me from the floor. Time was short, so I had to gamble. Aurorah would have to finish the golem in the capital, and I... I would have to beg a cackling goddess for a miracle I likely couldn't afford.
But not for now. Now, I have a meeting with the hottest sorcerer in literature.