Trail 58 (Pt. 2)- Knowledge Maddening And Demonic
--- Jon ---
“I should’ve known better…” He sighed, sitting in his Ma’s hospital room having had nowhere else to really go after everything that had happened in his apartment. “Because I forgot something so… obvious Ying was hurt, and she nearly hurt me…”
Truthfully he wasn’t actually worried about her hurting him since he’d beaten her while fully Corrupted by Madness and the Beast of Blackwell into- (The dragon roared as lightning struck the ground and thunder tore through the whipping winds around them.)
“I mean I could’ve stopped her but…” (The dragon cried out as the axe bit through her scales, blood quickly washing away under the rain as she tried to throw him off.) “I would’ve hurt her worse doing that…”
The sad part was that he knew if it came down to it that wouldn’t have stopped him.
He shook his head, forcing his head away from that particular train of thought.
“I shouldn’t have forgotten the whole reason we’re as close as we are is because I found her in the build up to-” (Black blood poured from Ying’s eyes as unable to decide whether she should laugh or cry she did both.) “-that the first time.”
Pix landed on his shoulder and hugged him, her sad trilling just barely heard over his Ma’s heart monitor.
After a moment, he came to the same conclusion he had shortly after leaving his home.“I… I have to do better.”
Scene Consequences
-Ma Whitaker is still in a coma.
---
Once back home, and well after Miss Edna had gone to bed, he began to scour through the many dark tomes DeSade had given him in search of anything that could aid him with the Void Core.
Which lead him to a book written by a Russian man with the title ‘the mad prophet’ -An unsurprisingly common title, all things considered.- who essentially summarized a Void Core as a Conceptual Crystal made of raw Madness, with the power of the Core being based on the amount of Madness sealed within.
While this was something he was able to hypothesize for himself via context and what he already knew, what was interesting was the fact that Void Cores were most commonly discovered on the corpse of Boss Creeps. Though the 19th Century Russian man did not call them that, he was fairly certain that was what the man was describing with:
‘Creatures beyond the gaze of the common man, their eyes and whispers following from within every shadow. Their reach beyond the physical as they reach within your mind and twist your thoughts into the darkest depths of insanity as they hunger not for your flesh but for the contents of your very soul.
But even these horrors are the lessers of those who’ve grown so fat off the fear and hunger of man that they have themselves come to hunger for everything that makes a man a man. For these beasts no longer seek to simply sate themselves off of the stolen scraps of your mind but rather intend to devour you in entirety. Consuming you in mind, body, and soul with the madly grinning maws that separate these Arch-Fiends from their lesser compatriots.’
The formation of these Cores was apparently caused by some crossing between the physical to metaphysical nature of the Creeps’ biology meeting Madness in a process that seemed to vary a bit between each Creep going off a number of drawings depicting the Creeps and the attempted dissections of said Creeps. The only shared trait between the various Void Creeps containing a core being the development of a Maw or much more commonly Maws.
From there the mad prophet explained that, ‘These organs, the core of the monster’s being, possess the ability to bend or even rewrite the laws of magic in a manner similar to the philosopher stone’s rewriting of the laws of alchemy. With the stone possibly even being a core somehow acquired and then burned in centuries past, by the famous Nicholas Flamel. Who in turn would’ve only used it for Alchemy and healing rather than its full potential.’
On paper that sounded like a dream come true for any magic user interested in growing their craft, but like with many things power always came at a price.
‘Unfortunately, this bending of magic comes with the degradation of one’s sanity often leaving one with lingering whispers plaguing their minds, whispers that horrifically enough have been known to follow some bloodlines for generations. Driving each afflicted by this curse into insanity, seeing and hearing things that no others can, some even claiming to be able to witness entire worlds beyond that of mortal men.
Normally I’d deem such men Mad, but given my own title perhaps they know more than the layman believes.’
Reaching the end of the page, he couldn’t help but run a hand down his face as he felt a dull throbbing ache in the back of his mind. One he couldn’t figure out if it was due to how long he’d been reading, the fact the sun was starting to rise in spite of his lack of sleep, the stress of the last few days, or more worryingly the Madness drilling its way into his head.
(Honestly, I’m not sure I want to know which it is…)
Scene Consequences
-Gained 2 XP to Occult.
--Currently: Lv. 8 (6/18)
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
---
“Wake up.”
He forced down a groan, as someone decided to keep him from his attempt at taking a nap in a classroom he knew had no class after lunch. (Maybe I should’ve listened to Miss Edna about staying home… No, she’d just be more worried…)
Looking up he found Artemis standing there with a notebook in hand.
“Long night?” She asked him.
“Something like that.” He admitted, running a hand down his face. “Did you… need something?”
“Yes, I’ve found as much as I’m going to about the Horror’s origin, and have put together a list of probable concepts.” Artemis explained, offering him the notebook.
“Already?” He frowned, opening the book and finding some pretty detailed history papers. “It hasn’t even been a week yet.”
“I’m aware.” The other teen grimaced at that before sighing. “My teacher wasn’t as free with things as I was hoping, but I can’t really blame her when she’s sharing her research with the expert they're bringing in to deal with the Horror’s seal.”
“Then why not wait until the seal is- No, wait, Audrey.” He remembered as he glanced at a printout of an old newspaper photo of the city’s founders.
“Not just her… While I wasn’t able to get as much as I was hoping for, Miss Edme was willing to share some of her research with me so that I could better understand the Horror… at least after I reminded her about being one of the ones to face it on Halloween.” Artemis explained, looking a little guilty as she did so.
“Oh, right… I uh, I actually met Ms. Delacroix.” He told her idly as he skimmed over her notes, his exhausted mind glazing over most of the names of the Hunters responsible for sealing the Horror.
“You… did?” Artemis blinked.
“Apparently we’re in the same cooking club.” He shrugged, before closing the notebook as he once more felt the ache of the migraine he’d been suffering all day. “You know what, you’re good enough that I can trust what you’ve figured out. I can read this later if I need more details for the finer work.”
He wasn’t actually sure about either of those things, but he also knew he wasn’t going to make it through everything Artemis had written given how detailed the girl’s work was and how bad his headache was.
“Oh, o-of course!” The other teen nodded, seemingly caught off guard by something. “So, to reiterate what we already knew, the Horror has the concepts of [Fear] and [Shadow] given the things we witnessed on Halloween. But thanks to Val and Espanta we also learned that Demons can have more… subtle concepts at their disposal, all of which would be available to our projects. One such thing being the Horror’s legend being tied to Halloween has made it so that its magic grows and weakens based on the time of the year. Which is actually why the sooner we use the arm and conceptually break it from the Horror’s legend the better.”
“Meaning we’re on a time limit to use the arm…” He sighed, feeling a knife in his skull.
Artemis’s expression told him she sympathized. “If we want to get the most out of the arm I’d say we have until about… half way through December. Though that might be pushing it a bit, since while the arm might last through Thanksgiving it definitely won’t last once the winter Holidays kick in.”
“Okay… well then, what, uh, what are we working with?” He asked, really wishing he could put this off for when he could think straight.
“Well, we thought that the Horror was connected to insects somehow and this is… partially correct.” Artemis told him. “While there is a weak [Insect] connection, the actual concept is tied into the Horror’s minions. Apparently, the depiction of what we saw was… very different from what the founders saw. Enough so that Miss Edme hypothesized that the Horror’s current form is based in part on the expectations of the Hunters that have fought all of its minions over the years.”
“So it’s not [Insect] so much as [Minions] with the [Insect] being derived from it?” He summarized, trying to recall his lessons on the entire [Heat] family of concepts that had been used as his introduction to the subject.
“Pretty much.” Artemis nodded. “Meaning it could be a powerful catalyst or foci for Contracting purposes.”
“Might want to be wary of anything summoned using a Demon’s corpse.” He warned her. “Though the foci bit might be safe… ish.”
Artemis let out a dry laugh. “Anything involving a Demon won’t be safe, we’re simply deciding which risks we’re willing to take with all of this.”
“Fair enough.” He admitted, knowing he was juggling more than his fair share of risks and danger. “What else is there?”
“Well, minding the fact that a lot of this is just a hypothesis, the next concept of interest would in an ironic twist be [Seal] given how after so many years no one can even think about the Horror without mentioning its own [Seal].” Artemis explained. “If this holds true then the arm can be used to create seals, and while a storage seal is easy to figure out this would be a whole other tier of the art.”
“Okay, that sounds… interesting.” (Even if I have no idea how to use any of that.) He might want to ask Miss Edna about seals at some point just to clarify how they worked.
“Even more so when you realize that the fact that the Horror’s Creeps coming from another dimension will offer a possible avenue into spatial magics by crossing the concepts born from [Seal] and the Minion summoning.” Artemis told him unable to hold back her excitement about whatever ideas she was coming up with.
“I’m not going to lie, spatial magic isn’t my… forte, so you’d be doing most of the work on that unless we want an implosion bomb.” He grimaced, recalling the squelching sound that made.
Artemis winced, before shaking her head. “Uh, right, then let’s move onto the next one… Given what we discovered on Halloween it’s fully possible that the Horror has both a [Regeneration] and [Duplication] concept of some kind thanks to its current state. And while the former is actually fairly common for Demons, the latter could have some useful applications if we use it right, even if they’ll likely suffer some kind of limitation due to the low number of seals.”
“Still even if it’s just three copies that could do… something.” Even with a migraine, he could see that.
“Exactly.” Artemis grinned, before shaking her head and wiping it away. “After that however we’re limited to whatever generic things you can use a Demon arm for. Which is basically an extremely dense Anima battery, unless you know some kind of special use for it?”
He considered it for a moment before remembering his time around Audrey and one of Miss Edna’s stories. “Uh, my teacher once told me it’s good for forcing Anima mutations in plants… She used it for some healing roses and… uh, one other thing…”
“One other thing?” Artemis repeated with a look.
He ran a hand on the back of his neck, because while he was okay hearing some of Miss Edna’s stories he wasn’t blind to some of the… implications of her stories and his second parents disregard for the law after Asylum tried to genocide her. (Well, she is friends with Audrey…) “She and her sister, uh, they apparently mixed it with, uh… weed.”
“Oh, well… there’s an idea for Audrey.” Artemis admitted dryly. “Speaking of, now that we’ve got a decent idea of what we’re working with and the fact that we’ve got a time limit, I think we need to talk about how we’re doing these projects.”
“What do you mean?” He frowned.
“Well, I’ve already agreed to give you my share of the Horror’s arm for agreeing to help me with all of this.” Artemis reminded him with a sigh. “But we need to figure out where we’re going to focus our efforts since we are working on a deadline and just scatter shotting it will leave us with a bunch of unfinished projects.”
“Yeah, that’d be bad.” He agreed.
“Right, so then, who should we focus on first?”