Howl and I are alone on the Owl Bridge, the deimovore seeming to have left us for good this ti. Idly, I wonder where Agatha is, but my frustration with our supposed “guide” is eclipsing any worry I feel for the cute magical girl.
The other witch chuckles to herself and laces her hands behind her head, unbothered by my outburst. “You had it handled. But, hey, if you wanna bla soone, you should bla your boss. She gave the word.”
“Ferromancer?” My anger transmutes into bewildernt.
“Apologies,” my teacher says over comms, “but deceiving you was an unfortunate necessity given the situation. Howl and I had a private discussion after your first encounter with the deimovore. She explained its capabilities and that it would likely try to separate you from the group, and that it was ultimately one of the less dangerous entities our opponent could have sent after you. Between its inability to seriously injure you and Howl’s confidence that she could intervene if sothing went unexpectedly wrong, I deed gathering data on our unknown assailant a higher priority. I needed to know why it chose the deimovore, and you.”
“You let it do that to ?” I… I don’t know how to feel about that. Betrayed, certainly. Uncomfortable. There’s a pit in my stomach that wasn’t there a second ago.
“I trusted you to handle it,” Ferromancer assures . “You have a history of performing well in high stress situations.”
Her praise is cold comfort. I can see the logic, but it still stings. I thought Ferromancer would prioritize my feelings higher than that, but why did I think that way? Just because she was nice to ? I barely know anything about her, even after working together for most of a month. I guess, when I put it like that, it hasn’t been much ti at all. I grit my teeth. “Fine. Get up to speed, then. Tell about our opponent.”
Howl steps away from the railing and motions for to follow. Reluctantly, I do. “Like I said before,” she explains, “there are worse things in this world than deimovores. Soone interfered with our portal and riled up the local beasties, but they didn’t send any of the real threats; no moonspawn, no hunting horrors, no skybreakers. No one got dropped into a shoggoth pit or trapped inside a fracture zone. Our mystery ddler was pulling their punches.”
How was that a pulled punch!? And why does “shoggoth” sound so familiar?
“They were testing us,” Ferromancer elaborates. “Or at least, that’s our current hypothesis. Harlequin and Delilah were put in a purely physical situation they could overco with effort, while Agatha was dropped near you and then exposed to a specific enemy she had the reference base to recognize. Your test was personal and psychological. Howl and myself were not tested, which raises a different set of concerns.”
“Unless I was your test,” I point out.
There’s a pause, and then Howl cackles. “Oh, they got you good. That’s great.”
“I hadn’t considered that angle,” Ferromancer says, sounding annoyed, “and now I’m kicking myself for the blind spot. You’re probably right, which ans I’ve been underestimating whatever it is we’re up against and played right into their hands. Goddamn it.” She sighs into her microphone. “I’ll have to update analytics. For now… how do you feel, Archon? You’re the one who would know best what you got out of that encounter, if anything, or what direction it was ant to push you.”
I get a sliver of vindication from Ferromancer admitting she fucked up, but it’s not enough to part the unease in my chest. How do I feel about my talk with the deimovore? How much do I feel comfortable sharing? Unbidden, a bit of paranoia creeps into mind: what if that still isn’t Ferromancer? What if this is another layer of the deimovore’s ga, and it’s just baiting into vulnerability so it can hurt again?
My stride stutters, hesitation slowing down and then bringing to a sudden halt. Howl looks at and raises an eyebrow. I chew on my words, awkward and nervous. “How do I know,” I ask carefully, “that the deimovore is really gone? How do I know I’m not still hearing what it wants to hear?”
To my surprise, Howl’s expression turns sympathetic. “The long fear is what’ll eat you alive,” she tells gently. “The first ti one of those things bit , I couldn’t sleep for days. I was jumping at shadows, convinced that it had followed ho—or worse, that I had never left the World of Glass. I was a wreck.”
There’s this prickling on the back of my neck, cold and terrible. My face keeps twitching, my eyes unable to stay still. Look behind , check my corners, make sure that nightmare isn’t watching. It feels like a compulsion. “So, what did you do? How did you make it stop?”
Howl shrugs. “I said ‘fuck it,’ got smashed with so drinking buddies in Dusseldorf, and had disappointing sex with an English twink who only thought he liked having his hair pulled. It was an okay night.”
Her response is so left field I burst out laughing, which cuts through so of the fear I was feeling. “And that worked?”
She grins. “Well enough. The next morning I was complaining about his head ga over a cheap, flat, watery cup of coffee, and I thought to myself, ‘if this is a nightmare, it’s the saddest I’ve ever had.’ And that was that.”
More of my tension bleeds out, swept away by Howl’s humor. “Yeah, alright. Thank you. And, uh… you didn’t happen to hear any of what the monster and I were talking about, did you?”
Howl waves a hand dismissively. “Wasn’t paying attention, didn’t care. And whatever you talk about with Ferromancer, I also won’t care unless one of you says it’s tactically-relevant information. Your shit is your shit.”
Weirdly, I trust her about that. I trust my teacher less, to my discomfort, but even the worst case for what Ferromancer heard is less of a concern given how much she seems to be part of Striga and the Morrigan’s inner circle. “Okay. Ferro: I’m on edge, and I still feel a little raw, but… I’ve got new resolve. I made a promise to myself while trying to beat the deimovore that I’m still committed to.”
“Interesting,” Ferromancer says. “Thank you for the data, Archon. And… I apologize for my lack of foresight. I will avoid making that mistake again.”
Howl and I fly through the city in amicable silence after that, headed to the downtown skyscraper where Ferromancer has made her base camp. Nothing attacks us this ti, so we make it there in good ti.
Ferromancer constructed her war room on the twelfth floor of an office tower only a few blocks away from the entertainnt district. The floor-to-ceiling windows give a good view of the Visage Spire, the tallest building in the city, and this close I can see more strange seams on the golden orb. The Spire glows beneath the night sky, lit up like a beacon. Looking at it gives a weird feeling that I can’t describe. It’s like… like it’s tugging on , pulling at sothing.
That doesn’t bode well.
This floor used to be an office space full of cubicles, but Ferro’s been busy tearing down separators and ripping open computers for spare parts. The detritus is piled up in a closet, and the new centerpiece of the room is a cluster of machinery I can’t even begin to understand, but which looks familiar from so much ti spent in her workshop. A dozen monitor screens coming off the pillar of technology show readouts and cara feeds, the latter of which depict locations from all over Forks and the surrounding area. She’s been busy. Unless this was the product of a previous expedition, she built this remarkably fast.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The briefcase she brought to the Ossuary is open nearby, and at last I get to learn what Ferromancer ant when she called it “sothing absurd,” because the inside of that briefcase is a wormhole. The Witch of Invention reaches into the wormhole and pulls out another gadget to wire into her technological abomination as she explains that it’s a “dinsional tunneling device” connected to her workshop. She didn’t bring any of her drones with her at the club because she didn’t need to; dozens of robotic servants scurry around the office space assisting their master and spread across alternate reality Forks gathering data.
It’s an impressive setup, and I’m not the only one impressed; Agatha got here ahead of us, having been escorted by Howl before the latter ca to fetch , and she’s currently geeking out over Ferromancer’s tech. I join her, lured by discussion of magic despite my newfound wariness of my teacher.
Harlequin and Delilah are the last to arrive. They co in bickering, which surprises no one. Apparently the two of them were dumped out in the Quillayute Airport to the west, where they had to fight through a small army of painflayers before tangling with a four-ard freak that Howl calls a “sin eater.” Ferro’s pretty sure they both tried to kill each other at least once during the lee.
Ferromancer claps her hands to get everyone’s attention, the clank of tal echoing through the commandeered office room. “We’re all here and we’re burning moonlight, so let’s get straight to the point: our entry into the World of Glass was disrupted by enemy action, but Howl believes that disruption was significantly tar than it could have been. Howl?”
The huntress witch is sipping sothing from a canteen when Ferromancer calls her na, having stolen an office chair and put her feet up on an unoccupied desk. “Right,” she starts, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “Here’s the deal: soone capable of dropping us into danger could have dropped us into much, much worse danger than we got. It was a ssage, though I haven’t the faintest idea what it ans beyond ‘I see you.’ Anyone else get a flash of golden eyes in the transition?”
We all nod, even Delilah. The Syndicate witch crosses her arms, leaning against the window wall, and asks, “Who could have interfered like that with a portal made by the Morrigan? Hey, at-for-brains,” she addresses Harlequin, “think your Lilith could have done it?”
The Coterie witch smiles thinly from their perch atop the trash pile in the storage closet. “More likely than your peers, but still just shy of zero—and with far less motive than your nagerie of nace.” Not to ntion, wrong eye color, though I guess that would be trivial to change with magic.
“Radiance has golden eyes, but no one in Visage has that kind of power,” Agatha adds, seated properly with her hands in her lap. “I don’t think anyone in the region is that powerful, frankly, except maybe Lady Striga—but again, no motive, and that’s purely a guess out of respect.” If she wanted to interfere, she would have simply talked the Morrigan into it.
“I concur,” Ferromancer says. “I suspect our golden-eyed culprit is from this side of the dinsional curtain.”
Howl drums her fingers on the side of her leg. “I can’t disagree, which bothers ; to the beasts of this realm, golden eyes are a sign of royalty. I’ve never been able to get more detail than that, but every creature in this place that talks will tell you that sa detail when pressed.”
Agatha raises her hand, which gets a snort out of Delilah and a nod from Ferromancer. “Um, about those creatures, actually, there was sothing that stood out to about the jitterhounds we fought: they’re basically the Hounds of Tindalos, aren’t they?”
I’ve been staying quiet and watching everyone else, leaning back in a chair of my own, but at that I frown and ask, “Am I supposed to recognize that na?”
“They’re Lovecraft monsters,” Howl says, and when Agatha opens her mouth to interject she rolls her eyes and clarifies, “Lovecraft-adjacent, whatever. Mythos shit.”
I snap my fingers and sit up. “That’s where I recognized ‘shoggoth’ from! At the Mountains of Madness, it’s the only Lovecraft story M—one of my friends ever got to read.”
Agatha blanches. “How many Mythos monsters are in this dinsion?”
Delilah raises her voice. “Hold on, you’re saying so of the fuckers out there are from books? The hell? How does that even work?”
Harlequin hops off their makeshift throne and skips over to the window, pressing their fingers against the glass and drawing circles. “Do the monsters inspire us,” Harlequin muses, “or do we inspire them?”
Howl takes another sip from her canteen. “Had a few thoughts like that the first ti I recognized one. Borrowed so reading material from a friend way more into the stuff—had to fend off his attempts to get into so roleplaying ga for months after that—but it was chatting with Ferromancer that made realize it goes much further.”
All eyes move to Ferromancer. The Witch of Invention adjusts her cloak, face hidden behind that tal mask, and says, “The na of my power is Daedalus.”
I nearly choke. She’s just saying that out loud??? To everyone??? To Delilah???
“And mine’s Loki,” Howl adds with a smirk. “Though I take bets on how many people I can get to think it’s Odin instead.” Oh my god, they’re just saying it.
But, if they’re being this open about sothing that’s usually a taboo secret, then they must have a reason. And, when I think about it… “My power is Protheus,” I reveal. “That’s a pattern, right?”
Harlequin purses their lips, frowns, but then shrugs and says, “Hydra.”
Agatha, following the room, nervously shares, “My power is Ariadne.”
Everyone turns to look at Delilah, who crosses her arms. “You must think I’m stupid. Why the hell would I share that information?”
“Your power is Arachne,” Ferromancer says calmly. “It’d be my first guess from the spider mask alone, given what I know, but I’m speaking with Striga’s confidence.”
Delilah swears and kicks over an unattended wastebin.
I’m chewing on the list of nas in my head, and as Delilah keeps complaining I start to vocalize my thoughts. “Arachne and Hydra are monsters, Ariadne is the ally of a hero, and everyone but Loki is Greek.” I’ve been reading a lot of Greek myths since first sitting down to research Protheus. Speaking of which… “My power is nad for soone who defied the gods and was punished for it, like Arachne and arguably Daedalus.”
“Allies and enemies—including victims—of the gods, with a mythological basis varying by region,” Ferromancer summarizes. “Striga herself, as many over the years have guessed, is the bearer of Athena. As far as we can confirm, every magic user empowered from California to Canada is given a Greek source. Most of Europe gets Norse.”
“But that’s so arbitrary!” Agatha blurts. “The mythological history of both continents is so much richer than that. That feels so—so artificial!”
“Exactly,” Howl says with feeling. “It’s not a natural system; soone—or sothing—built it. That sa entity carved up the resonant aning of a handful of mythologies and parceled it out as superpowers. Just like they picked out a list of horror monsters to incarnate while ignoring the rest; I’ve never seen an Alien or Predator in this world, no slashers, but plenty of Lovecraft. This realm, it’s connected to human stories, but selectively.”
Sothing clicks. “You think this place is where our powers co from.”
Howl rises. “I have seen great wounds in the landscape from which sothing was ripped out. I have seen the hole in the world where Texas burned and the World of Glass broke. I have walked battlefields that birthed monsters and found the vandalized gravestones of long-forgotten gods. I don’t know what the Jovians really want, but I know that’s it sowhere here, in this world, and our world is just a ans to affect it. They’re using old stories to make new stories, repackaging mythology as superpowers to do sothing to this reality.”
“And do you have any idea what that sothing might be?” Delilah drawls, having recovered from her rage episode.
“I have a clue,” Ferromancer answers. She gestures to her pillar of machinery and its endless readouts and cara feeds. “It was all speculative before, but now I have data. Based on Howl’s experience and my own surveillance equipnt, we know that thoughts and actions in our world create a great deal of conceptual noise in the World of Glass—a kind of magical energy that represents or embodies ‘aning,’ and which entities like the deimovore and the painflayers feed on. A city as large as Forks should be flooding this side of the dinsional barrier with that energy, but alternate Forks’ energy levels are barren. It’s all being absorbed.”
“Absorbed by what?” Agatha asks. I already know the answer.
Ferromancer points out the window at the massive, glowing tower. “By the Visage Spire.”
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