Chapter V - Brimstone

[TennyoCeres84]

While father and son talked, Meris glanced Delmar's way and shrugged. "I likely have several branches of my family, Delmar. I had four other siblings who likely had children of their own, plus the numerous descendants from my first son. There's easily been 25 generations between me and Aislinn, Ciaran, and Neasa, so some branch of the family may have eventually led to Aidan. There's probably been human and other non-selkie relatives along the way, so sorting through that much genealogical information would be daunting, to say the least," she explained.

"Even still, Aidan has a high degree of empathy. That's not exclusive to only my family, after all. There may be more to him than we know, but I'd say there's something in Aidan's character that allows him to reach down to an individual's core humanity and bring it out in order for it to be nurtured. Whether that's something familial or training-related, I'd say the origin doesn't so much matter as the fact that he has that quality," she opined.

"Nereus mentioned he's sent dreams to different families to seed their meeting or moving to specific locations-the McConmaras, the Drakes, even Nigel Griffin. Who knows what prompts things to take place? There's so many examples of instigating events, and it's difficult to say what they'll lead to."

[IamLEAM1983]

"For all of our endured hardships, I have to admit I've always enjoyed exploring these unknowns with you," he sent back. "In the end, we won't be able to say we've been lacking in adventures."

As he spoke, Archie took a step forward and focused intently ahead. Where Aidan's alteration of Cuthbert's chunk of the Darkhallow had been accompanied by the groans and creaks of shifting girders, the streets ahead began to move and shift away as partial segments of gigantic cogwheels emerged out of the asphalt, furiously spinning. Block by block, the streets ahead shifted as if they were markers on a city-sized tumbler or combination lock. Meris and Nereus' home and Mertown's docks seemed to be part of the central pivot and didn't move an inch, the projected pedestrians smoothly adapting to the changes in terrain as if none of them were happening. In the end, and almost as if Centennial Park had been the unlocking position for these massive tumblers, Sophia's park came into view as three massive interlocking segments that slid and clicked against one another, the tree's own segment being the farthest one. Something immense, mechanical and ponderous clicked beneath their feet, the now seemingly-unlocked cylinder of Hope's projected urban mechanism performing a full rotation around Meris' literal dream house. The Centennial Tree slipped out of view from the right, then came back in from the left - a sort of system of immense brass tracks dragging what looked like a blown-up scale model of Holden Hall in from the left. When movement ceased, Centennial Park looked like the rather improbable nexus connecting the Centennial Tree to Holden Hall - the park's walkways having multiplied in such a way that twelve spokes seemed to radiate outwards from the core. For now, Holden Hall was at noon, so to speak, and the Tree was at one o'clock. Relative to the others, Meris and Nereus' house was at five o'clock. Fog had quickly swallowed the edges of the massive clock face, indicating that the others' respective sanctums - and their allotted numbers - hadn't been rendered yet.

"Come on, Father," placidly added Archie as he began crossing the street ahead, "let's get you settled for the nonce. I'll feel better knowing you're safe until we can pluck you out of my own noggin - in the hopes that daytime television doesn't simply fry your Kentish synapses...
- I did wonder where I'd heard of one Jerry Springer from," pondered Hiram. "If this place truly is the sum of an entire species' unconscious cogitations, then your modern world must be atrociously rife with disposable entertainment! To think that a working, basic knowledge of it all is part and parcel of this place; it makes me yearn for our old lodge at the Lyceum!"

[TennyoCeres84]

Meris watched as Archibald led his father into the created space with some relief, as she didn't want the elderly man to be in danger. "Once Hiram's settled in, Nereus mentioned that we need to find a figure called the Curator. There's speculation that he's some half-gone librarian, but we need to request the books from the Tenth House of Dawn," she conveyed, then turning to the more confident version of her husband. "Nereus was adamant about getting you to Point Dume, as the version of him there may try to dissuade me from doing so."

[IamLEAM1983]

Delmar frowned for an instant. "But, there's no such thing as-"

He then caught on to Nereus' plan. "Oh, I see. Assuming we look sufficiently corrupted and scholarly, bystanders in the Black Library won't think twice about our asking for a House that doesn't exist. The handy reality of being a Prelate in the Chamberlain's shepherded society is that insane requests are routinely tolerated. The right glint in your eyes and the right tentacle twitches, and you earn access to virtually every nook and cranny of the place."

Vernon frowned. "I couldn't possibly pass for one of your own, could I? Neither could Eirean…
- You'd be surprised," noted the Speaker with a knowing smirk. "The Loyalists have noticed the feral spark of the Unseelie. Dress it up in a bit of portentous-sounding nonsense and you should slip through the cracks easily enough."

They headed inside, the place looking very much like the manor they'd left behind in slipping off into slumber. Everything looked slightly fake or oversized, however, as if they'd stepped inside a giant dollhouse and replica of the actual place. Archie and Hiram stepped off to what had been Tom's room, Archie now using his understanding of the Darkhallow to summon folded pants, shirts, spats and more atop his arms and hands. In typically British fashion, Hiram's polite protests did nothing to stop the Clank from being able to line the cupboards and drawers with various essentials. Cuthbert, in the meantime, headed for Jenkins' unused office and recovered the Hall's stash of firearms, which the dreamworld rendered as a stock of Holland & Holland Witchhunter bolt-action rifles. No lasers or microfactories could be found here, only Archie's very personal sense of what a reliable firearm implied. Of course, Anton grimaced as he worked his weapon's bolt.

"You'd figure he would've had time to work out modern guns," he groused.

Three smirked. "AR-15s offend Archie on a personal level. I think one of Jenkins' M18s called him names at one point.
- Smartass."

[TennyoCeres84]

"You can bypass those perceived weaknesses by having unlimited ammo, remember," Meris reminded Anton as she packed a couple pistols and magazines.

"As for attire, Prelates frequently stick to dark robes and sandals," she noted. "The higher the rank, the gaudier the jewelry, so that's something to keep in mind."

Crystal and Neasa also grabbed their own firepower. "What about physical appearances?" the younger selkie asked.

"Void Weavers come in all kinds of body types, different numbers of tentacles, and so on. Use your imagination to create your disguise."

[IamLEAM1983]

Seeing as Archie was busy mothering his father, Delmar took this opportunity to take a few steps throughout the lobby. "I have to admit," he said, "visiting what is effectively a chunk of the world I'll possibly visit in the flesh is… bracing. The Black Books once showed me an arm of this future of ours. I'm alive in it."

Still, Delmar didn't lament his nature or his dependence on Meris. True to himself, he opted to stay positive. "You know, I'm convinced my old friend over there," he said, eyeing Meris, "will have herself a celebratory drink once I'll have vacated the back of her mind!"

Three chuckled at that. "I'm sure you've been a perfect guest, Delmar.
- I've done my best in that department, but privacy still counts for something. It'll be nice to feel like my own mind has finite confines, as well.
- Why don'tcha go Clank?" suggested Bucky, which made the Speaker grimace lightly. He then pinched one of his tentacles. "These things would require several segments and joints, and they're rarely still. Void Weavers haven't fully adopted armatures out of inefficiency concerns. Meris and I have seen Victorian cyborgs of a sort and a few mechanical prostheses for Weaver mouths, but tentacles as a single mechanism aren't as demanding as tentacles and a fully-functioning body prosthesis."


The Okie samurai grunted. "So what're your options, if you can't go for what Hiram and Archie chose?
- Off-world genetic engineering," immediately replied the Speaker. "I've tried to claim bodies of the right type before, while Meris was sleeping. Unfortunately, Amaxi's planned ahead and seeded us all with a sort of return subroutine. When a Void Weaver loyal to the Others dies, the body seeks out the nearest large plane of water - brooks, rivers or lakes, usually. It then dissolves in it."

Three blinked. "I thought Amaxi took your people, somehow.
- She does," explained Delmar, "but bodies aren't much of a concern. Death alters the pH of a Void Weaver's flesh to the point of extreme alkalinity. Water then happens to be sufficiently basal for everything to effectively break down while leaving no trace. This is but one of several genetic alterations that could only be reversed several generations after our being freed from Their influence - or following extensive genetic re-sequencing."

[TennyoCeres84]

"It's been good to have your company, Delmar. There's been many times where I've been on my own, so having a friendly person to talk to has been extremely important to me," Meris commented with a fond smile.

On the matter of the decomposition of Void Weaver bodies, she added, "And you can see why it's been so difficult for any forensic research into Void Weaver-based crimes when their bodies are called back to the water and destroy all evidence. The Flesh Masks they wear become like ephemera once the individual wearing them dies, and they're of no use in identifying the perpetrator. A perfect side effect that keeps them in the dark."

"As for genetically engineering that trait out of your people, that's likely a feat that would goes beyond even the creation of Chimeras like Aspasia. Then again, I think back to the incredibly advanced incubation pod we found harboring Rhadamantus's remains cobbled together with Void Weaver DNA, since the Black Goat got it from somewhere in the distant future. Who knows? He may have been collaborating with an alternate version of Rupert Issacs..."

[IamLEAM1983]

Delmar frowned. "Rhadamantus? The old Greek king?
- The fallen dragon," corrected Three, who briefly focused on one of the lobby's chairs. it dissipated away, leaving its accompanying coffee table behind. The dust-like motes of the chair shifted in color and texture, going from brown and beige to greens, blacks, whites - as well as adopting a few crimson hues. A shade of Hope's recently sworn-in Eldritch judge appeared, stifling a yawn before reaching down with a free hand to lift a coffee cup to his lips. His other one held a book open between thumb and forefinger. Once his coffee-holding hand was freed, it flipped a page on a copy of the same book that was resting on the coffee table, ripped it out, neatly folded it in four and then popped it into the lizardlike being's mouth.

Naturally, Delmar focused on the peculiar choice for locomotive appendages that characterized the demon-cum-Animate. "By the Architect - who tainted this poor man?!
- Not anyone from your kind, if that's what you're worried about," explained Drake. "Like Meris said, we found the base template for the Goat's old Judicator staff. We know Randolph here predates Greece's heyday, and that he was effectively damned following a series of mistakes both he and his friend Minos made. The maturation pod we found in the Spire's vault was different from everything Paradise is known to currently produce; we can't so much as find a socket adaptor for it. We can't tap into its power source or leech power from it…"

He sighed. "With Hauser gone AWOL after Vlastos dropped off the map, we don't have a sufficiently-skilled hacker to figure out how the people involved managed to stitch together dragon and Void Weaver gene sequences. I'm no geneticist, and the only natural cases of hybridization owe it all to your standard via nodules hitching a ride on DNA strands."

Delmar nodded. "I see. Which is why you're pegging future technologies."

Three shrugged. "The only beings we know of that can travel through time are angels and demons. We're still not sure if time is something you can manipulate using obvious means, and if the Loyalists managed to crack Star Trek's Chronaton particles, they aren't talking."

The Speaker sighed wistfully. "Sometimes, I wish all of our problems could be swept away with a nice, tense Bridge Deck drama sequence and one of our own ordering that photon torpedoes be fired at Amaxi…
- I didn't know the Squid Pope could be that much of a geek."

Delmar added an easy laugh for good measure. "I'll have a lot less time to keep up with Pop Culture once Nereus and I find time to tackle our common mandate; I might as well enjoy it while it lasts."

Archie then walked down the second floor's hallway and came down the stairs, his form first appearing to be peculiarly iridescent. Then, judging by the smirk that hid behind his moustache, it'd be obvious he's fallen in with the Darkhallow's impressive self-alteration abilities. As a former spy, it probably felt like a placid pond would to a duck: just like home, in essence. For each click and tap of his cane, his form shifted.

"I can't quite decide if I should call back to that Indian blowhard of yesteryear," said Archie, as copper and wood shifted to pale flesh bearing human skull necklaces, tiger pelts and ringed facial tendrils…

"-grandiose Victorian decay…"

He shifted to something that felt like a more dramatic take on the Buck lineage's gloomy countenance, pale lilac flesh pierced by two massively dark sets of eye bags under rheumy globes, tendrils long and flaccid with drug use or simple spite. The cold sweat of a chronic laudanum user glistened on his forehead, the eyes gleaming with an Edgar Allan Poe-worthy fervent melancholy, the whole of it dressed in once-pristine clothing that now looked rumpled and stained, his ornate Ascot tie pulled askew by drunken hands…

"- or malfunctioning Steam Age eccentricity."

The tendrils shortened, the jacket disappeared, goggles appeared on his forehead, more humanlike flesh wreathing his frame, except for his free hand. Extraneous hydraulic tubes appeared along its length and its tips turned clawlike, the digits twitching and spasming as though one of his arm's camshafts had grown stuck.

"Any preferences? What would best sell both my deeply afflicted nature and my lasting bedrock of lethal cunning?" he asked as he stopped in front of the group, returning to his normal self for the moment.

[TennyoCeres84]

"I'd say merge the latter two. The first one seems a bit in bad taste with regard to Anjali," Meris commented. "The bags sell your fervent nature, such as studying tomes for long hours, and the arm underlies some past fight with a foe while hinting that you've forgotten some basic mechanical upkeep. A Void Weaver's devotional insanity has to be subtle and not over the top; the trick is to blend in."

The Archmage's Void Weaver illusion shifted to that of an aspiring Arbiter, flesh done in shades of gradient blues. Her presented physique was a leaner variation of the usual well-built form, conveying agility but also power. As for attire, she wore a gray suit with a purple shirt and even darker purple tie with a rather gaudy sapphire tie pin and a few rings on the fingers resembling brass knuckles. She glanced back at Delmar and Cuthbert. "Do you think this would work, or is it too much?" she inquired.

[IamLEAM1983]

Cuthbert's tentacles were pushed together, the Void Weaver-based vertical equivalent of someone pursing their lips out of slight distaste. "As much as it rings a bit too true from my perspective, I'd have to say it works fine. You'll have to lower your voice, however," he noted. "Don't forget to sound callous. You've money, possibly armed and indoctrinated followers, and you probably haven't needed to take no for an answer since leaving Dalarath."

He then shrugged lightly. "At least, that happens to be my assessment of this sort of disguise."

The Knight looked down on himself, grimaced lightly and then spoke lightly, as if to someone else. "I know, Hesediel," he said, "it annoys me, too…"

Anjali frowned. "What does?
- Foregoing my faith's symbols," he said. "The only reason I haven't heard anyone here complain about my cross-patterned ties and my crucifix lapel pin is because I haven't been obnoxious about it. I'm confident enough in my beliefs to understand that God won't begrudge me for not wearing the symbols of my office in a place like the Black Library - but still. The thought of removing them… I already did understand how my Sikh and female Muslim colleagues feel when obligated to remove their headdresses or style their hair out of mission-specific requirements, but I'd never felt like it myself."

Delmar nodded. "I felt the same way the first time I was forced to hide my white robes; those that had been weaved to celebrate the Architect and God's covenant… When our Speech was pure and focused, our embroidered sigils used to dance on the cloth, whirling in precise patterns… I remember having to don the black ones for centuries, if only to survive - and each gesture I made with them on felt like a travesty of my office."

He sighed and removed his straw hat, his normally pale clothes flowing into blackness, loose folds and the jagged, golden lines of the Prelacy's mid-tiers.

"Still," he said, "we do what we must."

Cuthbert reflected on this, nodded, and then settled with gesturing as if to fix his tie, only for his hands to carefully sweep down the front of his suit. The fabric turned half a shade darker, the pinstripes half a shade bolder, the tie now a uniform crimson and the crucifix replaced with one of the jagged, impossibly vibrating sigils of the House of Wrath. The edges of the copper pin twitched and danced like a 3D model stuck in a collision detection bug, glowing red in the center and occasionally looking like an open mouth with bared teeth, frozen in a grimace of primal and thoughtless rage. Shadows gathered under Cuthbert's brow, making his normally placid eyes look brooding and menacing. A slight change in posture sold it, as though his suit jacket's shoulders were just a few millimeters short of straining against his trapeze bones, his already athletic physique now pushed to the extreme with how the suit's cut now framed his pectorals and almost cruelly cinched his waist.

Three also looked pensive, in response to this. "Right," he said. "Hatred and self-righteousness. A total lack of care for anyone except those who further my goals. I have to look like winning is all that matters - like I'd sell my Mom to strangers if it benefited the cause."

Aidan then rose his hand to his face and palmed it, then impossibly bunching his own face together in his own fist, and pulling his entire self-image away in one determined gesture. Pink tentacles flared out, along with a white Lacoste polo tee with its collar popped, the latest smartwatch now gleaming on his left wrist; pristine white kicks adorning his feet - made for the gym or the golf course, but seemingly never worn outside of some Ivy League Greek fraternity's poolhouse.

"Do I look like someone out of a Republican youth camp for rich idiots," he asked, "or do I need to add a can of 2019's re-released Zima?"

Around them, a frost-wreathed benthic Victorian horror lightly tapped its cane, looking like the sick lovechild of Chtulhu and Captain Ahab. Eir had masculinized her features, her flame-red hair gone and replaced with far too many tentacles - even for a Void Weaver - that barely allowed for something of a callback to McKinley's attire to show underneath; like a bling-focused, Dixieland-rooted and mind-rending monstrosity. Bucky had gone for the obvious route, going from a mountain of metal to a mound of fat perched atop thick, stubby legs. The suit he'd conjured up barely contained his bulk, his red goatee looking obsessively groomed and tended to in that soft triangle of a face he now sported, copper-toned eyes almost oozing contempt and self-gratification. A nametag on his right breast simply read Manager, vague mumps appearing and disappearing along his cheeks and multiple chins. Obviously, this was supposed to be a face no Flesh Mask could easily contain.

Three couldn't repress a chuckle. "Tom and Aislinn would have a field day in here," he joked.