Paladius - Who do you obey?

Lan - You.

Paladius - Whose orders do you follow?

Lan - Only yours.

Paladius - Totally and completely? Without question or rebellion?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - Do you resent that?

Lan - No.

Paladius - Are you going to be honest with me? This process is useless without honesty.

Lan - I will be honest.

Paladius - That’s good. Do you mind that my apprentice records our conversation?

Lan - No.

(Saverell - Here Paladius looks at me to confirm that I am taking notes. After seeing that I am, he returns to the beast.)

Paladius - No. I don’t suppose there’s much that you would mind, now. No comment to that?

Lan - No.

After several hours of research, the record of the conversation between a visiting Reeve and a gentled Initiate called Lan Beanstringer was the most promising thing I’d found.

The account dated from more than a hundred years ago. An academy Master had died in mysterious circumstances and Paladius had been summoned to investigate.

It was the first thing I’d read that suggested the control imparted by gentling wasn’t complete. It was also my first glimpse into the mind of a gentled subject.

From what I’d been able to put together, the practice of gentling had started about two hundred years ago.

The earliest reference I could find was in a description of a sorcerer sub-sect called the Avowed, which paired every Reeve with a fleshcrafted warbeast. The author had noted how the development of gentling helped ensure the loyalty of fleshcrafted warbeasts, who up until that point had been exclusively volunteers.

It seemed that before gentling, becoming a warbeast had been a kind of alternate path a sorcerer could take, becoming a monster in body instead of just in action. It was a fast route to power, at the sacrifice of their human form. The implication in some of the texts I’d read was that it was an option for less promising students, who lacked skill in magic or the ambition needed to become a Reeve. That might have been how it came to be used in the failure’s fate.

I couldn’t imagine the mind of anyone who willingly chose to have their body twisted into a living weapon, but the evidence was that such people had existed.

The new pacification technique was alternately described as gentling, easing, shrouding, alloying, the gift, the gift of peace, and the gift of Kuhxos, Kuhxos being a figure from Atorxian mythology, not a historic Reeve like I’d first thought.

It wasn’t anything as simple as mind control. It was closer to a constant euphoria, a state that made mortal concerns slip away, leaving the victim careless, directionless, and susceptible to control. Or so the diary of a long-dead medic’s apprentice claimed. To someone in that state, even the monetary return of their ordinary fears and pains would be an unbearable torture, giving their them both an incentive to follow orders and an easily accessible punishment if they didn’t.

There was no concrete information on how it was done. In some references if sounded like a surgical procedure, in others like a magical operation, and in others like a ritual. The truth probably was probably somewhere in between.

With no solid information on the process, there was no way to know if it might be reversed, or how it might be stopped.

I didn’t even know if stopping it was possible.

For all I knew the procedure needed an irreplaceable artifact that one well-informed dedicated lunatic could sell their life to destroy. Or the alternative might be true, that it could be done by anyone with a roasting fork and a sharp knife, in which case stopping it would be out of anyone’s reach.

I continued to read and reread the scroll, hunting for insights.

Paladius - How do you want me to refer to you? Your former keeper called you Fah, but before that your name was Lan. Do you have a preference in what I call you?

Lan - No.

Paladius - What do you call yourself?

Lan - Nothing.

Paladius - I see. Well, I’m going to call you Lan. Do you understand what’s happening here, Lan? Do you know what has been done to you?

Lan - I was given the gift of peace.

Paladius - Is that how it was described to you?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - You have been gentled, Lan. It’s the punishment reserved for our failed apprentices. Normally it ensures loyalty. The procedure removes the capacity for pain. It’s supposed to make you content with a life of service. My task is to find out what went wrong in your case.

Lan - Nothing.

Paladius - Nothing went wrong? You are content?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - Then how do you explain what you did to your former keeper?

Paladius - Lan? What motivated your actions towards Reeve Siredonis?

Paladius - Lan, I notice that you’re smiling.

(Saverell - The beast’s mouth is forming a shape that could be described as a smile.)

The scroll was torn below the last line. The second half was nowhere in sight.

It was an annoyingly frequent problem with ancient scrolls. It only took one careless reader, or for the exposed middle part of the paper to dry out and crack, and the scroll would shatter like stale pastry. Books didn’t have this problem. Even when a book got damp and the pages moldered together, they would at least all stay in the same place. I’d have taken almost anything over a scroll, at that point. Give me a book. Give me a portfolio. Give me a stone tablet. Anything but unstackable, unfilable, dry and fragile scrolls.

I ducked down and reached into the back of the shelf, feeling around for loose paper. Nothing. I started going through the stack of scrolls I’d taken it from, looking for one with only one roller.

Not everything on the bookcase was related to gentling. I picked up and set aside scrolls on possession, soul stealing, adversarial fleshcrafting, even turning the physical body into a creche for spirits. The theme seemed to be sorcerous alterations to the mind and body. They were all light on concrete details, which was reassuring in a way. I didn’t want a book on how to steal someone’s soul sitting where other students could get it, but it was frustrating for my research.

Antonyx’s servitors were still moving silently between the shelves, sometimes carrying misplaced books and scrolls back to their rightful places. It was satisfying to watch, but I didn’t think they’d help me. They acted as if the human students in the library didn’t exist.

They were good at their job, though. If the other part of the scroll still existed, then it would have been filed here.

Fifteen minutes of searching still didn’t get me any closer to finding it. By the end I was checking places I’d already checked twice.

Maybe someone had taken it. Or destroyed it. Maybe it’d contained information someone had wanted suppressed. Or it could have just been lost. It had been over a hundred years.

I spotted a tightly rolled scroll I hadn’t seen before and pulled it out to check. I froze when I saw its author.

Antonyx.

Not Master Antonyx, but Antonyx back when he was only a Reeve.

I untied the leather cord holding it closed and started to read.

Inside was a stumbling but heartfelt deconstruction of the practice of gentling.

Antonyx had been dead against it. Over a couple of hundred paragraphs he argued that the failure’s fate was actually weakening the order. Warbeasts were not an incidental throw-away part of the Reeve order, according to a younger Antonyx. They were a pillar of its strength. Relegating them to an afterthought, with their ranks drawn from the failed students of the academy, produced inferior warbeasts, weakening the order as a whole. He used examples from history; named warbeasts who’d grown more powerful than the Reeves who crafted them. He depicted them as a force of motivated, intelligent, and independent monsters. The warbeasts of today were no more powerful than well-prepared spirit servants, according to Antonyx, and wouldn’t have held a candle to the fleshcrafted volunteers of old.

This was the approach he’d mentioned to me. It was an attempt to litigate the failure’s fate out of existence, speaking directly to the core tenets of the Sovereign’s Path. Obviously it had failed. Either nobody had read it, or there’d been a flaw in his argument, or maybe the Reeves weren’t so dedicated to their Path as he’d thought.

At some point over the years he must have had a change of heart. When I’d spoken to him about it, he’d seemed resigned to the practice. I wondered how long that had taken. Had he forgotten that he used to feel this way?

I returned the scroll to the stack and continued searching.

As I was trying to work out whether a poem about the romance between Kuhxos and Kor had any relevance, I heard movement in the library behind me.

I grabbed my lantern and jumped to my feet, spinning to look in the direction of the noise.

For a second I thought I saw the outline of the vulture spirit, pinched haunches and bald head, then I realized it was actually just a human figure. A tall student with a shaved head stood in the shadows a few feet away. He looked like he might have made his living carrying rocks before coming to the academy, with broad heavily muscled shoulders, but his head was stooped, pushed down by a bend in his back where his spine joined the neck.

“What is that light?” he asked in a thick Antorxian accent.

I turned so my lantern was angled away from him. At Windshriek I couldn’t count on there being such a thing as innocent interest. Any particular focus on an object could easily be a prelude to someone trying to take it.

“It’s just a cantogram light,” I said. Basically true.

The Night’s Welcome cantogram could only amplify light that passed through it, but thirty of them drawn on a cylinder of paper gathered enough light, even in the darkness of the library, to create a candle’s glow of illumination. I’d had to wax a length of paper to get it translucent enough for the cantos to work, and I’d needed to mix a new batch of ink using my own blood as a reagent, but at the end I’d had a light source that I could keep lit with only a little maja.

“May I see it?” he asked.

I pulled maja from my core and let it wash out through my body. Aches faded. Muscles that had been stiff suddenly relaxed. Power danced along my fingertips, ready to be aspected into Force.

The other student’s eyes opened wide. He took a step back, glancing behind him.

“Do not fight in here,” he said, quietly but urgently. “If you damage a book, the guardian will punish both of us.”

I looked over in the direction he’d glanced. One of Antonyx’s ghostly servitors was drifing past, a dim blue flame hovering in its palm. I couldn’t imagine the ghostly figure punishing anyone, but they the work of an academy Master. I didn’t doubt Antonyx could make something dangerous look innocuous.

I didn’t let go of my maja, but I didn’t rush to use it.

“It’s just the Night’s Welcome cantogram,” I told him. “You can find it on shelf eighty-six.”

He looked to the side, then back at my lantern.

“I haven’t seen it. This new layout is confusing,” he said.

“Are you serious?” I said. “The old library didn’t even have a layout.”

“But I knew where everything was. Now everything has changed, and the numbers mean nothing.”

It struck me then that he didn’t have an index for the library. I wasn’t actually sure I’d seen anyone else with one. Antonyx had given me a copy for helping him with the Fort Msiesetr records, but I hadn’t actually thought it had any value at the time.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Don’t you have an index for the library?” I asked.

“No. Do you?”

I didn’t answer, just holding tight to my maja.

After a few seconds he seemed to sense that I wouldn’t be an easy mark. He turned and started heading off towards the other side of the library, moving as if the darkness didn’t bother him.

I watched until he was out of sight, then took my lantern apart, rolling the paper more tightly so that less light could make it through to the cantograms. Having a light in the library was obviously asking for trouble, waving a beacon for anyone moving in the dark. Dimming it to a level just above moonlight, I retied it, and turned back to the scrolls.

I found the rest of the broken scroll completely by chance, long after I’d stopped actively looking. It’d’ been wrapped up inside another scroll, in the inner rolls of a lengthy and unpleasantly detailed list of spiritual diseases.

I pulled it out and shuffled around to sit with my back to the shelf. As I made my way through it, I started to wonder if it had been hidden on purpose.

Paladius - Do you mind if we talk about what you did?

Lan - No.

Paladius - Master Siredonis, your keeper, was found burned, blinded, and partially eaten. Can you explain how that happened?

Lan - My jaws. My breath. My heart.

Paladius - You did all of those things yourself?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - How did you do it?

Lan - By chewing, by breathing, and by searing. He gave me my jaws and my breath. My heart’s fire was my own, from before.

(Saverell - I note here that the warbeast once known as Lan has a wolf-like form, with extended jaws and around twenty incisors. The beast possesses knowledge of the Searing aspect from his time as a student. His Corrosion-aspect breath was a spiritual manipulation on the part of Siredonis.)

Paladius - How did you attack your keeper? He would have given you standing orders not to harm him.

Lan - New orders.

Paladius - Whose orders?

Lan - The Companion.

Paladius - The companion?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - Who is that?

(Saverell - The warbeast Lan has taken hold of his maja. Like most warbeasts, it is subdued, with no spikes of direction that would indicate intent. There is a ripple of emotion, which is unusual in the gentled. I feel that the emotion is discomfort.)

Lan - The one who eats that which suffers.

Paladius - I don’t understand. Does this person have a name?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - What is it?

Lan - I cannot say.

Paladius - But you know it?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - Where did you meet them?

Lan - They are always here.

Paladius - Here in the tower?

Lan - Here with me.

Paladius - With you in your kennel?

Lan - With me. Always.

Paladius - Are they with you now?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - In this room?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - Where are they?

Lan - Here.

(Saverell - I note here that the beast has made no movement to indicate where they mean.)

Paladius - Show me where.

(Saverell - The beast is now scratching at their forehead where the mark of the gentling lies.)

Lan - Stop that.

(Saverell - The beast has stopped scratching. They have torn the skin of their head, exposing bone. Reeve Paladius has called a break to treat the injury.)

Paladius - We were talking about the Companion.

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - Is it something that exists in your mind?

Lan - No.

Paladius - You scratched at your forehead. Is that where you meant to point to?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - In your scar?

Lan - Yes.

Saverell - Could it be a spiritual infection?

Paladius - It could be. Or I wonder if it could be an element of the gentling process that Babiass hasn’t shared.

Saverell - Should I prepare a spirit-seeking array?

(Saverell - At this point the beast’s maja has spiked with intention. It seems to be considering a hostile act against me.)

Paladius - Do you feel that? No, Apprentice. We won’t need an array today. We should defer any diagnostics for now.

Paladius (through Thought) - He’s reacting to the possibility of his Companion being discovered. It may be a spirit trying to hide its presence.

Saverell - It could be a spirit of subversion.

Reeve Paladius (through Thought) - I don’t think so. I need to confer with Babiass.

Paladius - Lan, is the Companion speaking to you now?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - What is it saying?

Lan - Calm. Be sooth. Be calm. It eats fear and it eats anger.

Saverell - Those are the functions of gentling.

Paladius - Attend to your notes, Apprentice.

Paladius - How long has the Companion been with you?

Lan - From the beginning. From the Gift.

Paladius - Since you were gentled.

Lan - Yes.

Saverell - That’s informative.

Paladius - Apprentice.

(Saverell - here Reeve Paladius is giving me that look, from which I can tell I probably shouldn’t push the point.)

Paladius - Lan, has the Companion ever given you any other orders?

Lan - Once.

Paladius - When?

Lan - Now.

Paladius - What orders?

Lan - To kill you.

Paladius - Do you know why?

Lan - No.

Paladius - How do you know this impulse comes from the companion, and not from the voice of your own mind?

Lan - It speaks the name.

Paladius - The name you can’t say?

Lan - Yes.

Paladius - Why haven’t you obeyed it?

Lan - I am trying to resist.

Paladius - Did you try to resist attacking Master Siredonis.

Lan - No.

(Saverell - here I note that Lan is smiling again, an upsetting expression on a jaw this shape.)

(Saverell - the beast is becoming increasingly distressed.)

There was a messy ink stain across the scroll, obscuring whatever what was written next, but a few inches down the apprentice’s notes resumed.

Post-script, Apprentice Saverell.

Reeve Paladius was attacked by the beast shortly following the last recorded question. Paladius was able to read the beast’s intent and defuse its attack, subduing it with only minor injury. This occurred yesterday.

Reeve Paladius has since entered into a closed meeting with Master Babiass and Grandmaster Korn, and has only emerged briefly to instruct me to destroy the notes of the interview with the warbeast formerly known as Lan Beanstringer.

I don’t think I will.

It’s clear that this information has value, and it may be advantageous for me to keep the record intact.

I briefly wondered if I could get away with stealing the scroll.

There was something here. A hint to the underlying mechanism of gentling.

In the end, I hid the second part of the scroll back where I’d found it. The chains on the books might be gone, but I couldn’t imagine Antonyx’s librarian spirits would be happy if I tried to check something out.

The amount of maja left in my lantern was my only real way of measuring the passage of time in the library, and it was running low. The fact that the cantograms were only now fading told me I’d been down here for ten hours or more.

I stood, stretching my legs, and started heading back towards the exit.

I spotted the student who’d asked about my lantern on the way back. He was standing in front of a shelf, touching a clay bowl that was one of the random decorative objects scattered through the library. He was just standing motionless, hands on the rim, like he was lost in thought. I wondered if he was thinking about taking it.

I stood there for a while watching him. He almost looked like he’d fallen asleep on his feet.

After a minute he jerked away from the bowl. He shook himself, then looked around like he’d just been caught sleeping at work.

I stepped back into the shadows behind a bookcase.

He turned away and continued on to the staircase.

I waited a few seconds then stepped out and walked towards the bowl.

I crouched down to look at it, then held my hand over it, feeling for maja. Nothing. I breathed deeply. I had no sense there were any spirits around. Finally, I reached out and touched the bowl.

My fingers met dry, unglazed clay. I put both hands on it. I lifted it. It was just a clay bowl.

I put it back down and headed for the stairs.

As easy as it would be, I couldn’t just live in the library. The weekly assignments set a deadly beat the entire academy lived to. I had my assignment, and I had to help the others with theirs. Until those were taken care of I had to put my personal projects aside.