Sign: Snake
Buffs: Serpent’s Kiss (Romance twice as easy)
Debuffs: Curse of the Unspecified (Start the game with no gender, no name, and no other identifying feature)
EXP: 1,338
Alchemy
Coagula (LVL 1, 44 SKP)
Solvé (LVL 1, 19 SKP) Ready to level up!
Theoria (LVL 1, 48 SKP)
Botany
Sowing (LVL 0, 5 SKP)
Tending (LVL 0, 80 SKP) Ready to level up!
?
Cooking
Fire (LVL 1, 28 SKP)
Water (LVL 0, 39 SKP) Ready to level up!
?
Homesteading
Fire Tending (LVL 0, 7 SKP)
Tidying (LVL 1, 124 SKP) Ready to level up!
Mending (LVL 0, 15 SKP)
Speech
Logic (LVL 1, 23 SKP)
Linguistics (LVL 0, 41 SKP) Ready to level up!
Cajoling (LVL 0, 10 SKP)
Total SKP: 441
Inventory:
Auros: 2.65
Cards of Destiny: 5 of ?? Discovered
Names: 4
Evengeline, The Pure Snow (Holly)
Vitas, The Wind Thief (Sparrow)
Gillygad, The Stitched-Up Wonder (Pitchfork)
Zinia, The Serpent’s Caress (Snake)
Anjelica, The Keeper (Ladle)
Passive Skills:
(Theoria LVL 1) Pure Substances: Some metals are especially luminous. Some hands are more precise than others. These hands shall become sharpened scalpels, made of the most luminous Silver. Higher maximum Quality points are possible for all potions.
(Coagula LVL 1) Coalescing Membranes: The membranes of the parts which make up the whole shall be in accordance. Ingredients combine more smoothly, producing higher quality potions.
(Fire LVL 1) Ignited: The Elemental branch of magic lends this Sorcerer the ability to cook faster using fire. Prepare fried or baked meals twice as quickly. Get burnt less.
(Tidying LVL 1) Dirt Buster: The magical branch of Purification lends this Sorcerer the ability to ‘Bust Dirt.’ Dust and grime accumulate at an infinitesimally slow rate on objects you have cleaned.
(Logic LVL 1) Rhetoric: The magical branch of Entreatment lends this Sorcerer the ability of heightened ‘Rhetoric.’ The structure of your arguments is smooth, regular, and orthogonal. Spirits and people are more likely to agree with you.
Active Skills:
(Solvé LVL 1) Dissolving Lines: The understanding of how a menagerie of elements comes together to make common items; skin, bark, atlases, all are building blocks, of building blocks of building blocks. The understanding of how to dissolve the whole into parts, to learn of its nature. Boil or burn an unknown ingredient to discover its essence.
Spells:
Wild and Overwhelming Growth (LVL 1) Accelerate the growth of plants and fungi. Enchanted plants grow ten times faster (Overwhelming Influence), BUT enchanted plants sometimes disregard their original form.
Mated With A Strong Bond, Lesser Baptism (LVL 1) Skill actions performed by the enchanted object grant the Sorcerer one-fifth of their SKP and EXP (Strong Influence) but the objects must be enchanted in identical pairs.
The verdict was returned to me as I sat in the dank cell. Not guilty. The black-robed Guildsmen escorted me outside, into the blinding sunshine. I blinked, letting my eyes get used to the barrage of whiteness, and when I turned around, the guards were already back inside.
I traveled back.
I write this now from my own house, far away from Celine City.
Of course, I knew logically that I would be found innocent. My heart proclaimed my guilt, but my brain knew better.
But the villagers, my neighbors, do not understand. When I returned, every face was turned towards me with a look of naked disgust.
Stefan and Gillespie threw rocks at my house all day. One of those projectiles shattered my front window. I did not come to the street to yell at them. I stayed inside, deep in the bowels of my house, out of view.
I know with the instinctual certainty of a cornered animal they will try again. If no one else, Stefan and Gillespie will try more violent means of getting revenge for what happened to Chère. What will it be next time? Will they try to set my house on fire? Will they break down my door? Will they drag me out of my house, a poor old man, and batter me senseless and bloody on the High Street in view of all the others?
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No one would help me, if they did. They all despise me now. I despise myself.
I think I must flee from this house, from this village, but I cannot bring myself to it. Here, where my hands gave birth to Ma Chère, I shall finish this book, which is a continuation of her. She shall live forever in these pages, while I, poor Gigert, will only live until I die.
I must work fast. I must finish what I have started. I hope that you, Young Sorcerer, are as eager for the end to this tome of misery as me.
Listen, read, for this is how the end came about.
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I stayed up very late through the night trying to finish Ma Chère.
I was totally engrossed in the story, but I was also disturbed. I had the feeling that every page was leading to some kind of horrifying end, that I did not wish to take into myself. Regardless, I felt like I was trapped in the web of the main character’s mind, and I wanted to see what would happen to the poppet Ma Chère, and why Gigert Giger went to trial.
I hoped against hope that I could find out how to extend the life of my poppets. All I needed was for Gigert to describe how he gave these infusions of pneuma to his poppet. Then, I would do the same for Hansel and Gretel, and they would keep running around my house, and playing the games which made them so happy.
And, I finally had to admit to myself, there was a good chance that I was not a real person, but a molded clay golem, which the Sorceress enchanted into life. It had seemed such a ridiculous theory at first, but as I read the damned book, it began to seem more and more likely.
That scoundrel and villain, Gigert Giger, was always ahead of me.
I came up with reasons why I couldn’t be a poppet, and he disproved them easily, from his book, which was written many years ago.
I came up with inconsistencies, and plot holes, and he neatly sewed them up, as soon as I noticed them.
I had to know the truth, I just had to!
But the book became more and more lurid with every page, and the act of turning each fragile leaf demanded more and more from me. I persisted.
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In the months leading up to that awful conclusion, in which Chère met her end and which I know shall never leave my nightmares, I grew paranoid.
My heart jumped uncomfortably into my throat when I noticed people smiling at Chère. One morning, as we walked along the street to the market, people waved and greeted my poppet, unaware that she was not of human flesh, not born of a mother and father but of my skill and the powers of twilight.
I had brought Chère out to the market simply to have another pair of hands to haul goods back home. I rarely let her out of the house, and always under my own supervision (I thought). So, how did these people know her? Were they being friendly in a general way? Were they greeting Chère as they would any new face in town?
My paranoia was strangling any rational thought.
How did they know her?
As we walked, Mrs. Fontaine waved hello from the other side of the street, and I returned the gesture uneasily. The aging matron crossed the street and beelined for us, and to my surprise, started chatting with my doll!
“Very well, Madame, I hope your day is also bright and wonderful.” The little tart answered, then gave a prim curtsey and Mrs. Fontaine beamed, and went on her way.
I all but dragged the doll back to my house.
More greetings on the way back to my home. Mr. Axelford, the Baker, waved to us both. He knew Chère’s name. He used it.
How did they know her?
Safely inside the shadows of my home, I grabbed her little shoulders and shook her until her head snapped back with a sickening lurch, and she started crying. It did not mollify me.
I screamed my questions at her. ‘How do they know you?’ But she only sobbed, and did not respond.
After episodes such as these, once I’ve had some time to cool off, I always felt the constricting rope of guilt around my heart. I picked Ma Chère up off the ground, where she lay huddled, and cradled her to my chest.
She tried getting away from me, pushing at my chest like an unruly cat, but of course, I was much bigger and stronger, and held her as she sobbed.
As I have mentioned before, Chère began to resist any real closeness. She no longer ran to hug me when I came through the door, as she once did in the first months of her enchanted life. She no longer sat on my knees when I read. She did not give me a kiss on my wrinkled cheek before going to sleep.
I felt my heart rip itself into pieces. She had loved me once, but no longer. And I, the miserable old fool, still loved her as much as when she crawled out of the dirt or spoke her first word.
The more the doll pushed away, the stronger became the urge to pull back. Why did she not understand? Why could she not grasp that her only purpose in life was to keep her old maker company? I would not have created this two-timing, lying little scandal had I known how difficult she would be.
I thought again of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. I have mentioned it before only briefly, but it was this book, which I now cursed, that had set me into these troubled waters. I wish that old Rosicrusian had the presence of mind to warn me of the dangers of the life-like enchantment he taught. I wish he could have warned me of the heartbreak.
So, as the doll pushed away, I pulled back. The more she hated me, the more I loved her. Harder and fiercer, and with directed and piercing cruelty.
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I really wanted to stop reading, but I couldn’t. And the book didn’t get better.
Descriptions of Gigert’s sensual feelings were sparse, however the insinuations and allusions were worse than describing the desires in all their filthy detail. I started skimming and skipping.
The more she hated me, the stronger was the urge to infringe on that hatred, and make her hate me more. Or perhaps, to prove to her that hatred was inconsequential. Or, the hatred simply stoked my own malformed love.
I did not learn anything new. I did not learn anything useful. I still didn’t have a clear idea of how to extend my poppets' lives. And, I was no closer to finding out the truth of my own origins.
The only scrap I could find, which might have some bearing on my own life, was about Teresto:
I found Ma Chère's altar. A simplistic and rustic thing, hidden in the back of the wardrobe. She had some things arranged there. Five candles, the three primary colors as well as one black and one white; a miniature hourglass set in scratched metal (not mine, surely an hourglass not from my own house, where did she get it, did she steal it, did she find it, did someone give it to her?); and a key, which I thought might be mine, but I couldn’t quite place.
There was no doubt she was trying to reach Teresto, of the Crossroads, who is partial to these particular fetishes. But why? What business did my little dear have with the guardian of fate?
“The tick-tock of destiny is suspended, and everything hangs in balance in the presence of Teresto.”
This is how the Name is introduced in the Grimoire. It has been decades since I bothered with Teresto. I have no questions which need his answers. I have no business with Fate, for I make my own, or at least endeavor to. But, apparently, Chère did. What were these questions? Did she follow the Bordered Path to the Crossroads, already? Did she ask the White Donkey, (or perhaps, the spirit spoke as the Old Man, with Chère) about some unknowable quality of the universe? Has she met with Fate, and what did she learn?
Did she find out that she was only a doll?
You must remember, reader, that Chère’s life must have been very confusing. She would have noticed other girls and boys, and seen the wide gulf between herself and them. But, because I never told her of her origins, she would have no way to reconcile this difference to herself. Maybe this is what drove Chère to seek Teresto.
I realized then that she could not have met with Teresto. The only way to the spirit lay at night, and Chère was incapable of staying up. I breathed easier. The Bordered Path, which is to say Midnight, was closed to Chère, as she was forced into the sleep of enchanted things when the sun set each day. She could not reach Fate, and thus, she could not have found out about her nature.
Of course, I burnt her little altar and forbade her from such tricks in the future.
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I was interested in this section, but found it difficult to get through. All this White Donkey and Bordered Path business made my head spin. Gigert assumed that whoever read his book would be more than familiar with the subject matter, but I wasn’t. Nevertheless, I did make an important connection.
It was possible that Teresto could help me find out about my identity. Or, that’s what the enchanted poppet Ma Chère thought. Was she right? I had no way of knowing from Gigert’s book.
In my mind, I filed away the trinkets that Teresto is associated with (five candles, all different colors, an hourglass, a key), and that somehow, the path to him lay at midnight.
I closed the book, and headed to bed. Cheerful was already dozing, and my own poppets had long fallen asleep. I laid down, closed my eyes, and thought about the Sign of the Wheel, and that I should probably try to find more information about him in Tess’s library. It wasn’t much, but at last I got some kind of lead, some clue to follow to arrive at the answers for my own mysteries.
Just before I drifted off, I heard the front door banging open downstairs. I started from bed, rubbing the first waft of sleep from my eyes. I heard voices arguing. Carefully, on numb legs, I crept out of bed.