Ch 17

The lights flickered in the darkened conference room, the movie blinking out and back in. In the end, the group had managed to persuade Melmat to suggest a movie, which turned out to be the seventies version of Westworld. They had just finished it, and were getting to the main event of the night, Saber-Tooth Dracula Cat-tastophe III: Satan's Pussy. Melmat had a strong suspicion it was pornography, and that he would not enjoy it very much. The researchers were currently discussing the cover art, when a faint ringing started up at the very edge of Melmat's hearing.

At that moment, Librorum's voice took his full attention.

“We are detecting frequency 8. Please get us to our instruments ASAP.” She repeated the phrase over and over, an automated warning that required his immediate attention. Melmat made some excuse that wouldn't cost him too much socially, and exited the situation.

Frequency 8 was a high pitched signal beyond the normal-human perceptible audio range, but still detected by the unconscious mind. There were several such frequencies which Librorum kept track of, and most of them were benign circumstances. This one, however, indicated the need for immediate attention. This one meant the dungeon was emitting a spike of energy.

Melmat returned to his room and opened his special laptop, logging in, then turning the frequency generator off and checking the latest data from his equipment in Nevada.

“Just like the last one,” he said quietly to himself, grabbing a pen to put between his lips and suck on. “It's bigger, meatier, it's -” Melmat glanced at the pen then put it down, then retook control of his body and voice as Librorum appeared in his vision, a large book flapping open and close in fits of laughter.

“This really isn't the time for that,” he said, frowning as he stared at her. Something about her was off, not just her behavior.

“Hold still,” he said, and from his pack he pulled an antique Polaroid, the kind that had a big flash dome on top of it, and took a picture. There was a flash, bleaching the room white, then the internal mechanisms of the camera began to humm, before spitting out a piece of film. The picture came out black, he grabbed it and began shaking it to help it develop.

Turning his attention back to the computer, he began to make mental calculations. “This is a substantially more powerful event than the last one. What triggered it?”

“Who knows?” Librorum said, transforming from a large book into a woman made of pages. Written across all of them were tiny, text emoticons, each unique and representing some expression of energetic activity. “Who cares!” She shouted, and zipped around the room, knocking over a lamp in the process.

Melmat stared at the lamp, heart rate increasing, then turned his attention to the now developed Polaroid in his hand. It was a picture of his dorm room, a picture that showed a clean and organized room with a giant floating book near the foot of the bed.

Knock Knock Knock.

“Hey, It's Ronnie. I was wondering if you were all right, you left so suddenly. Do you have company?” The doorknob turned, and the door began to open.

Melmat felt himself enter crisis management, Librorum attempted to vanish and the emoticons all changed to exclamation marks when she could not. Ronnie entered the room with a smile, staring at Melmat.

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“Sorry to barge in, college rules man, unlocked door, open invitation . . .” he said, trailing off as his attention went to the floating woman made of paper on the ceiling. “What-”

He never got to finish his question. Melmat sprung from the bed and grabbed both of Ronnie's hands in a vice grip, palm to palm, making eye-contact and speaking in a hypnotic tone of voice.

“The sensation in your palms,” he said, feeling an electrical burn in his palms as he increased nerve activity in his skin to an almost unbearable degree “moves up your arms and into your shoulders,” he continued, watching Ronnie's eyes as he slipped deeper and deeper into a trance, pupils dilating. “And as it moves up your neck and into your eyes and across your forehead and over your scalp and down your spine and into your legs and feet you feel a relaxing, perfect sensation, and all your muscles release their burden,” he said, and Ronnie fell to the ground, Melmat expertly cradling him and guiding his soft fall to the ground.

“Do it now Librorum,” he growled, and she flowed like smoke across Melmat's arms and up his body, entering his ears eyes and mouth. Melmat drifted backwards in his own mind, watching as Librorum took control and spent several hours bringing Ronnie in and out of a hypnotic trance, programming him to forget all the events of the night entirely. He had been given the certainty that the supernatural and the strange, and the occult and most certainly magic were entirely products of an overactive imagination; that the events of the night were nothing more than a vivid dream; that it was no more important than a sandwich he had eaten years ago, who cares what was on it or what kind of bread?

Ronnie shambled out of the room, looking like a victim of a violent, violating crime. He had been given two bottles of vodka, and the burning desire to finish both of them before the end of the night. Melmat re-took control of his body and pulled the third, and final, bottle of vodka from his suitcase and began the pointless, almost masturbatory action of drinking. He wanted to weep, but couldn't do so unless he allowed it to happen, so he didn't. He wanted to get drunk, to forget what had happened, but he would never be drunk again and he would never forget. He would never forget anything.

“Librorum,” Melmat said, body heavy with negative emotion “Don't ever let me forget to lock a door again.”

–

The door was locked, and Melmat continued his work, reviewing the data from the previous hours. He swore, the Dungeon Storm was over, and all he'd accomplished was psychologically damaging a colleague. Melmat decided to check Endchan, and saw that they had indeed noticed the dungeon event, and done their best to take advantage of it. One anon swore up and down he had the jackpot lottery ticket, but literally everybody knew about that scam, and weren't going to hold their breaths until the claim was substantiated, or OP delivered. There was also an attempt to catalog information, when the event started and when it ended, what sort of strange things had happened.

Some reported that the sky looked a little less blue and a little more rainbow tinted, but not enough for them to be sure. Some said that it wasn't the sky, but the edges of the clouds that had the rainbow tint. A couple of people, unhelpfully, claimed that they had seen rainbows yesterday, and they were really impressive rainbows; it took over six anons and a weather-report to convince them that it wasn't related.

Others said they had gotten a feeling of either extreme terror or excitement. The terror bunch said the more afraid they got, the more unsettling their surroundings were, and the more it seemed there really was something in their closet, or under the rug, or between the walls. Those on the extreme excitement scale seemed gripped to go outside, no matter how out of character that was for them. They began a hunt for something, and usually ended up finding a small cache of money, drugs or guns. The drugs anons also reported seeing glimpses of characters from movies they had recently watched, though they couldn't in good conscience say it had been seen sober.

A few said they had been massively productive in their creative work, one anon claiming to have cracked a particularly hairy technical problem, and another posting some stunning images he had created.

As Melmat scanned each thread and cataloged the information, he began to feel a growing swell of warmth inside.

“The mana. . . it wasn't a lie,” he whispered to Librorum. She was floating as though laying on her belly, fingertips on his shoulders, giving him a squeeze. She glanced behind her and kicked at the wall, and seemed relieved when her foot passed through it without resistance.

The next day, Melmat awoke refreshed and ready to work. When he arrived at the lab and saw Ronnie nursing a massive hangover, with tears coming from his eyes, Melmat thought it was a bit of an overreaction. He noticed, very fast, that Ronnie wasn't the only one crying.

“Sarah's dead,” Chad said, keeping it together. “We're still waiting for the police.”

“Where is she?” Melmat said, a spike of icy feeling in his gut. Sarah, he thought to himself, that had been her name, one of the lab techs. Chad led the way, and Melmat saw the body. She had been savaged, beaten, her throat ripped out in a room clean of blood. Sitting atop her unmoving chest was a small, black cat, face and paws covered in blood, little fangs coming from it's mouth. It purred as it cleaned itself off. The only thing that tipped Melmat off it wasn't visible to anyone else was the translucent sheen it had.

“What happened?” Melmat managed to choke out.