Book I: The Remnant of Gregory Fischer, Chapter II: Following The Narrative Chosen
--- Gregory Fischer ---
He put the pen to the page and found his mind drawing a blank, as if all creative muse decided that now was the time to abandon him instead of aiding in his writing as requested.
With a sigh he ran a hand through his hair before reaching for another cigarette, hoping that lighting the stick would light something in his imagination. And lo and behold it did…
Unfortunately, the single muse he’d gotten apparently decided to be something of a smart ass as the only thing he could think to write as he finished off his latest cigarette was the fact that his story would probably end with ‘Death by Cigarettes’.
As he wrote the final letter of that message he watched eldritch script begin to creep and crawl away from the words he’d written, slowly consuming the entire page before spreading out into the very air around him.
He watched the writing cautiously, waiting for it to do something, anything that might help him figure out how he was supposed to get out of this apartment. All around him the cloud of script began to condense into piles of discarded cigarette packs and buds, littering the room in a level of waste that (honestly isn’t as bad as my worst.)
(Okay, so writing something in the book causes something to happen around me.) He realized, waving a hand through the air to try and shoo away the cloud of script that was slowly consuming the illusion of his room. (I just need to figure out how to work this into an escape…)
He inhaled before letting out a cough and covering his mouth with his shirt. (Damn, it’s getting smoky in here…)
Despite some of it being spent to add to the ever growing pile of cigarettes, the cloud of eldritch script seemed to continue growing. Something that he could have dealt with if not for the fact that the cloud almost seemed to be pursuing him as he backed away, making it harder and harder to breathe as he continued to cough.
(What the hell? This isn’t how smoke behaves…) He gasped, unable to help but bend over as the coughing grew bad enough that he ended up dropping both the book and the pen.
In front of him the book didn’t shift a single page even as it bounced twice and the pen went rolling under the bed.
This was how he was reminded that he’d written ‘Death By Cigarettes’ into the book.
“Ah, fu-cah!”
He dropped to his knees, scrabbling for the pen, his breathing grew ever more painful and shallow with every cough that tore through his throat.
Bit by bit his thoughts grew hazy as his hand blindly grasped around for the pen only to grasp onto empty cigarette packs and burned out butts. (Shit, shit, shit! Where is it? Where is it?!)
The world around him grew darker and darker, half because of the ever growing cloud of writing and half because of the ever shrinking air in the room.
His hand wrapped around something cold and hard, and with what strength was still in him he brought the pen to the book and began blindly scribbling away at the page, unable to form a thought coherent enough to actually write anything down.
As the last of his strength left him and he found himself without the strength to hold himself up any longer, the pen slipped out of his hand and he collapsed to the ground.
The eldritch script continued to float through the air for several more minutes, even as it slowly faded away alongside the numerous cigarette packs and butts that littered his room.
It wasn’t until the last of it had finally disappeared into oblivion that he found the strength to once more pick himself up, even if he lacked enough to do much more than fall onto his ass and lean against his bed for support as he simply enjoyed the fact that he could breathe.
He stared up at the ceiling for several moments before deciding. “I’m going to burn that library to the ground. In fact…”
Yet again he took the book and pen in hand, he felt a brief moment of fear because of how close this wretched thing had brought him to death. Something that he’d no doubt be inviting once more if he were to write anything else in this book, his instincts warned.
Rather than listening to those thoughts, he promptly stamped them out before using them to feed the smoldering rage in his chest as he wrote ‘Surviving Death’ underneath Act 1: Depression, followed by ‘An Invitation Arrived’ under Act 2: Opportunity, and finally under Act 3: Rekindling he wrote ‘Burning A Library’.
Once more the eldritch text erupted from the book, this time with far more force than the slowly creeping death that was the cloud of smoke.
All around the room first aid kits and spent bandages appeared alongside bullet holes, blood spatter, burn marks, and dead bodies wearing kevlar, making the whole space look like a war zone shortly after the worst of it. (Really starting to feel like home…)
In spite of the fact that he’d nearly died to them he still pulled a cigarette out and lit it, the chemicals hidden within the burnable stick the only thing keeping him from trying to set this building on fire. Whether from fear or rage he wasn’t sure. (We’ll find out when I snap, I guess.)
Opposite him, the handless door to this room swung open, leading to the rest of the house looking just as torn up as the current room and leaving him with little doubt what he’d find out there.
And so with a reluctance of expected horrors he walked through the building, making his way down to Toni’s workshop where he stopped in front of the door. (So help me if they have a dead clone of Toni in here…)
Knowing what he was probably going to be walking into, he put his current cigarette out on the doorframe before pulling out a special pack of smokes he always kept on him and taking a steeling inhalation of the chems coating the inside of his cigarette.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Not even two breaths later he could feel a warmth filling his lungs as he pushed the door open and stepped inside to find a scene even more out of a horror story than the rest of the house. The entire workshop having been torn apart with bloody tools littering the ground and corpses dead upon the heavier machinery their blood still dripping onto the ground. (Fuck, is this what the book considers ‘surviving death’?)
As luck would have it, despite his worst fears, he didn’t find a copy of Toni’s body anywhere, instead her main workbench had a massive burn mark with a half cremated corpse underneath it. On the wall some of the ashes had been wiped away, leaving behind a very pointed message.
If you want the girl
Come to the Black Briar Library
“Someone is really testing my patience.” He growled, before looking towards the sky. “Just so we’re clear, I’m willing to put up with whatever sick test all of this is, but if you’ve actually taken her I am going to burn all of you- Fuck!” He screamed as a knife embedded itself into his back.
A ripping sound filled the air as the knife was torn out of him, pulling several pages of fluttering paper away as it did so. (The hell? Wait, no time.)
He turned to his attacker and found a man in black kevlar facing him with a knife in hand.
“So, you friends with the corpses?” He asked as he rolled his shoulder checking to see how much damage that knife had done to him, only (aside from the pain it doesn’t feel like it actually did anything to me. Is this all part of the illusion?)
The man didn’t say anything before rushing him with the knife once more.
Gregory threw the book at his assailant, causing the man to deflect it with a sweep of the arm at the cost of leaving himself unprotected for an opening strike to the chest and the series of strikes that followed it.
Unlike what he’d expected, the final strike of his combination did not meet flesh, but instead tore through the air as the man erupted into a flurry of pages.
He narrowed his eyes at the pages as he inhaled a lungful of his cigarette, the cherry barely moving as he did so, before opening his mouth and- promptly coughing as he choked on the smoke.
“The hell?” He gasped, eyes wide. “That, that hasn’t happened since boot camp…”
Something slammed into his forehead, sending him stumbling back a step even as he caught the book that had hit him, finding that it was his own book -(of fucking course)- and that it had once more fallen open to the page describing the opening strike he’d just used.
With a frown he turned back to ‘Current Story’ before looking at the five marks that he was guessing described the various abilities he had. Not one of which really made use of his Smoke or his Fire.
“My skills may be… rusty, but there is no way in hell I lost a decades worth of abilities. Especially not ones I know I could use just a week ago.” Admittedly, he hadn’t been using that for combat so much as helping Toni with something, (but still…)
Just to check this he clicked an icon that looked like his cigarette smoking, the thing that he’d thought had represented the skill he’d just tried to use only to find instead of his abilities…
(“Basic Chem Smokes.
Cost: 1 Fantasy or Sci-Fi Page.
Consumable
The culmination of research into creating a combat enhancement formula. Highly addictive, both due to the power and the chemicals within. This is but the simplest of the series.
Quick Read. Increase Power and Speed of the user until their next reading Turn.
Checkout Renewal Fee (1 Fantasy or Sci-Fi Page).”)
He inhaled before exhaling and deciding that while his ‘special smokes’ weren’t common knowledge, they also weren’t something that a group with the Black Briar Library’s apparent resources couldn’t easily find out about. (What is surprising though is the fact that these aren’t the smokes I had on me… Though it would explain why I couldn’t do what I was planning.)
Just to be sure he double checked the pack he had on him and found that they were still the actual mix of Black Cough, Anima Blue, and Red Fury that he usually carried on him. (So why didn’t the one I use work how it was supposed to… Wait…)
He recounted the number of Chem Smokes in the pack. “This is the same amount I had this morning… Then…” He pulled out the cigarette he was currently smoking. “Where did you come from?”
As if to answer this question the burning cigarette came apart, turning into several pages of paper that fell out of his hand before merging into the book he was carrying. (I see…)
Once more he pulled one of his smokes from the pack -this time not doing so blindly- and lit it before inhaling deeply and breaking into another coughing fit, even as a familiar chem filled warmth entered his chest.
“Still not what I was going for…” He gasped, as he checked the pack of cigarettes and yet again found that the one he’d just removed had been returned to its previous place. (Alright, so this library is even more screwy than I already thought it was…)
Flipping back to his Current Story, he checked the remaining three slots that apparently represented not his skills in general but rather the things he was allowed to use for this increasingly annoying test. (Let’s see, all in all I’ve got ‘Opening Strike’, ‘Swift Dodge’, ‘Heated Fist’, ‘Basic Chem Smokes’, and…)
He paused and reread that last one, before checking his arm and frowning when it looked no different than usual. (I’m… I’m just going to ignore that one for now…)
“Either way, none of that included the rest of the strikes I used on that guy.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair as he tried to figure out what exactly was happening here. (I guess if Heated Fist is here then that means it’s only applying restrictions to some of my abilities?) “But what’s deciding what gets restricted and what I’m allowed to do?”
Regardless of anything else, he was fighting with a handicap he didn’t understand (and that’s the kind of thing that can get you killed.)
Then again, he was already planning on burning down the library for putting him through all of this, and given everything it seemed capable of (that might be a suicide mission all it’s own.)
Shaking his head he made his way to the door to the workshop before walking into it as it refused to open for him. “Gah, what is it now?!”
He flipped the book open to Working Draft, trying to figure out what the stupid thing wanted from him now before once more finding the words he’d added to the second act. “An invitation arrived… Right…”
Looking up from the book, his eyes searched the room for wherever the invitation could be hiding, (since apparently it’s not the literal invitation on the wall.) Eventually he found an envelope sitting atop a small pile of pages that he was guessing had once been a part of the construct he’d killed.
After picking the envelope up and finding it to be the exact same one Toni had given him earlier that day, just with more ash and blood on it, he also noticed that the pages underneath the envelope looked familiar for some reason.
He folded and tucked the library invitation into his vest before also picking the pages up and going over them. Idly he noted that the door to the workshop had swung open not when he picked up the library invitation, but instead when he picked the actual pages up. (Meaning this is what they wanted me to actually grab.)
Going over the pages he found that similar to the other ‘Skill Pages’ in the book, these ones described one of the many skills he knew and should’ve been able to perform rust or no rust. More specifically he found that the technique depicted by the pages was a simple [Scene Choice]