The Nineteens
Year 1: The Nineteens and the Whispering Shadow
A Story of the World Between
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PRELUDE: IN WHICH WE MEET THE WHISPERING SHADOW
Out of the darkness, over the hiss of the gaslights and the rustle of leaves from the soft midnight breeze, there came a whistling.
Specifically, there came a person whistling. This wasn’t some sort of alarm whistle, or train whistle, or some sort of animal, or one of the Beasts Below.
A figure faded into view out of the shadows of the night, emerging from a crop enshrouded garden between two sets of storefronts. Stepping into the flickering yellow-orange light of one of a row of gas lamps came a young man, his pace unhurried. Brown hair, dark eyes. Ordinary. Unremarkable. Boring. He whistled as he walked.
The gas lamps cast their flickering light over a row of storefronts, clothes and antiques in the windows nearly impossible to see through the reflections of the lamps on the dens-i-glass. Faint electric lights in the depths of some could be glimpsed, but for the most part, the gaslights overpowered any interior illumination.
The young man walked past the storefronts, his form barely reflected in the windows, a dim shadow. He continued whistling, the sound echoing up and down the street. If you were familiar with the tune, you might have recognized it. Maybe. You would not have thought it a good rendition.
He appeared to be carrying something wrapped in dark cloth, nestled in the crook of his right arm, perhaps the size of a loaf of bread. Other than that and the whistling, he was hardly worth noticing.
Truly, he was so unremarkable, boring even, that you would barely have noticed him, even alone out on the lanes at night. Even the bad whistling was boring. Just someone out too late, whistling (one might say foolishly) as he walked, trying to shore up his courage. It was very late, after all.
It was a little weird that he was cradling something like that, but that’d be worth a second glance, a third at most. You’d wonder, briefly, what his story was, then you’d hurry on your way. You, too, would be out much too late. Even the Light Bearers would mostly be inside now.
Say, though, you did notice him. Say that you followed him, and that he didn’t notice you doing so. Or pretended not to. Maybe you’re invisible—I don’t know your life.
Still whistling, he approached a narrow alleyway between two of the brick tower buildings housing the shops. The alleyway was flanked by The Last Hope bookstore and Dante’s Pizzeria. In the alleyway, a dozen meters down, there was a weathered wooden door in the wall of The Last Hope’s tower.
The alley echoed more than the street, and as he dug into a pocket with his free hand, his whistling grew more discordant as a result. He pulled out a pair of old fashioned iron keys, which he used to open the door—one for the deadbolt (with a heavy metal k’thunk), one for the knob’s lock (with almost no noise at all)—as he cradled his package with the other arm. Behind the door, stone stairs led down into darkness.
He locked the door behind him (something the theoretical, invisible you would certainly have had trouble with, had you actually been following him). He lit no lights as he descended. If you were following him still at this point, you would find the echoing of his whistling growing even more potent as you descended into the darkness after him.
He half danced to his own off-key tune as he crossed a dirt floored basement to a granite wall. Upon reaching it, he extended his free hand toward the wall and pushed his finger into the stone, as if it were wet concrete. He carved sharp, angular runes into the wall with his finger, a thin, sickly green light emerging from each rune as he completed it. As he withdrew his hand, the entire wall split apart in front of him, each side flowing away from the other like viscous liquid, leaving a gap that revealed an interior space on the other side and let light pour out into the darkness of the basement.
The gap also let through music that had been playing within, a rock band of some sort: a man singing something about meeting in the garden, the backing instruments the usual—electric guitars, drums, bass, keyboard—and then something unusual—a cello, perhaps. The young man stopped his whistling, immediately burst into singing along with the music, and all but leapt through space between the parted halves of the wall. His voice wasn’t particularly notable, nor was it strong. He showed plenty of enthusiasm, but little talent or skill.
Inside the wall was a narrow corridor, lit by bare incandescent bulbs in fixtures along the ceiling. Bookshelves, loaded with ancient looking texts, mostly bound in dark leather, lined the walls of the corridor. Up ahead, the corridor ended in a T-intersection, the five-foot-wide patch of wall opposite the entrance free of shelves, the wall bare, rough hewn granite. The source of the music suffusing the space was unclear.
Anyone who was not a Light Bearer, a mage, or a damn invisible fool would stop following at this point, as the wall began to close up behind the young man. A Light Bearer would likely have given themself away by now anyway. But for the sake of the telling, let us assume that (the theoretical) you stepped through that wall behind him, before it closed up and trapped you in the dark of the basement.
The young man gave up singing quickly, and began a sort of strutting dance in time to the music. As he danced, he moved over to a small gap between bookshelves on the left wall. This gap housed a narrow pedestal of some sort of black-streaked clear crystal, about a meter tall, with a tumbler of amber liquid waiting on top, quite full. He picked up the tumbler of amber liquid from the pedestal and took a slug from it that was probably three ounces, before placing the glass back down.
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He then continued his odd dance down the corridor, moving with the beat of the music. He swallowed the liquid with all apparent relish when he was about halfway to the end of the corridor and its patch of bare wall. If the hypothetical, invisible you continued to follow, you’d see that the bookshelf-lined corridors each gradually curved away from the T-intersection, each to the left at the same rate, until you couldn’t see further along the curve. Each corridor also had a slight downward slope.
However, rather than following either one, the young man once again stabbed his finger into stone and slashed green runes into the bare patch of wall with it. Once again the stone parted for him. Inside was a narrow, downward sloping, unlit stone corridor into which he strut-danced. The wall closed behind him, leaving him in darkness.
Inside, there was only the music for a time, until the green runes appeared some distance further down, revealing him as he slashed his finger out again. He carved more runes, their green glow lighting up his unexceptional face, the radiance making him look sick. Dead.
The rock parted, and he stepped out into another bookshelf and book-lined corridor that intersected at a 40-degree angle with the secret path he moved upon. On the other side of the corridor, another gap between bookshelves, another patch of bare rock wall. Out and into stone his finger stabbed. He hummed along to the music, which had moved on to another song that sounded like it was by the same band.
Another song followed as he strolled down a baker’s dozen of hidden, dark paths that led between lit curving corridors lined with books. When he was lit, though that wasn’t often, the theoretical you that followed would be able to see that he moved in time to the music.
When he reached the end of the thirteenth dark passage, the parting stone revealed not another book lined hallway, but a vast circular room of polished gray granite, lined with railless balconies which were in turn lined with stone chairs. Stark electric lights glinted off almost every surface. In the center of the room, drawing the eye, there were three objects.
The first was a solid granite table, shaped very much like an operating table, crisscrossed with stains even darker than the stone. It emerged from a three-foot-wide granite column, which in turn emerged from the ashen granite floor. Indeed, upon closer inspection, the theoretical you would see that the entire room—the ceiling, walls, balconies, chairs, floor, and table—all seemed to have been carved out of a single solid block of granite, hollowed out by some mad, austere mason. The music echoed repeatedly off the hard surfaces, blending with itself until it was discordant, maddening.
The second object, to the left of the table, was a four-foot high mahogany cabinet, its top appearing to be a workbench of some sort. The left door of the cabinet had been replaced or removed—instead some sort of electronic console took up the top half of that side, below which were shelves which held rows of CD cases.
Across from the young man’s entrance was another entrance, exposing a book-lined hallway stretching out and splitting into two curving passages. Flanking that entrance were two steep stairways, leading up to the stone-chair lined balconies that encircled the room.
To the left of the young man’s entrance stood another crystal pedestal. On it sat another glass of amber liquid. He paused, lifted it to his lips, took a gulp, and then replaced it and strode toward the table, humming along to the music again.
When he reached it, the young man gently placed the parcel he’d been carrying on the table, shifting the cloth—now identifiable as a blanket—and revealing the face of the baby he had been carrying the whole time. It was asleep, somehow, despite the young man’s whistling, his loud music, his bad singing, his terrible dancing.
He turned to the mahogany cabinet. Opening the remaining door, he pulled out an elaborate wooden case. He opened the case, revealing its contents: a number of small jars, a black feather quill, tiny tongs, and a small brush, not dissimilar to a paint or calligraphy brush. He spent a couple of moments removing objects from the case, arranging them on the bench, flipping open metal clasps on several small glass jars full of unidentifiable liquids, and lifting their lids up to provide access to their contents.
Then the young man turned his attention back to the baby. He gently unwrapped it from its blanket. Its skin tone was nearly the same as his. Or, wait. His skin matched the baby’s, almost exactly. The theoretical you would realize you couldn’t recall noting the tone of his skin before this moment. The baby stirred, flopped its head over, sighed, but did not awaken.
The young man turned back to the bench. He first plucked up a black feather quill, placed the point of the quill into one of the jars, and left it there. Around him, empty chairs peered down upon the scene, the music rebounding around the strange granite space.
The young man reached down and laid three fingers on a touchpad-like surface on the electronics console. “Give me ‘Locked in the Trunk of a Motor-Car,’” he said. The music changed, beginning a new song. It seemed to be the same song he’d been whistling outside, though again, his whistling had been a poor rendition. As he began singing along, he plucked the quill out of the jar and dipped it into several other jars. Then he turned to the baby and bent over to trace the quill in a perfect circle across the baby’s chest. As he did, a trail of flickering blackness, like the shadow of a flame, was left in the wake of its point on the baby’s skin.
When he completed the circle, a… well, a hole appeared in the baby’s chest, filled with nothing but darkness, extending down into the baby’s torso. The young man moved his lips along to the music as he set down the quill and picked up the tongs, inserting them into that dark hole. He didn’t lower them far before he pinched them and brought them back out. Their ends emerged clutching a tiny, beating heart. He once again started dancing poorly to the music as he turned to the top of the cabinet and popped the baby’s still-beating heart into an empty glass jar, which was just large enough for it to fit. He flipped the jar’s cap back onto it and sealed it with a flick of the metal clasp. Inside, the heart beat in time to the music.
He then used the tongs to remove a marble-sized black crystal, all jags and blades, from another jar. It looked like onyx, but if that’s what it was, it was some fucked up onyx, formed into spikey ball in a way that would be impossible to accomplish with real onyx without shattering it into bits. As he moved the crystal, its many points seemed to drag black scratches into the air itself, which faded into nothing after a few beats. The young man, oh so gently, placed the crystal down into the flickering shadow cavity in the baby’s chest, singing along again to the music, about how it’d be better for him if ‘you don’t understand.'
He returned the tongs to the case, and closed and sealed the crystal’s jar. Next, the young man picked up the small brush out of the case. He dipped the brush into one of the open glass jars, coating its bristles with a viscous black substance. He leaned back over the baby and swept the brush through the flickering flame shadows. They vanished in its wake.
Soon, the flame shadows were gone, and the hole simply disappeared, leaving the infant’s flesh smooth and unmarred, no sign of the black substance that smothered the flame shadows, no sign remaining that anything had been done to the baby at all. “Alright, kiddo,” the young man said, smiling at the child as he gently picked it up. “Let us get you home. Let us see how this goes. Let us see if you can still the hell that’s in that heart.”