The Book Upon the Desk

[Danton (DELETED 5283)]

Dated February Third, the year 2016

Entry references events of the evening of January Tenth, the year 2016.

Penning down things that have happened to me has always been a habit that I have kept, since I was but a young lad growing up in London. Most of these tales are private, meant for personal recollection or to help flesh out mine own thoughts as I expound upon the more basic principles of my ideas. This, however, is a most private and most intimate and personal matter. While my other notebooks are left strewn about the library where anyone might find them, this tome shall be kept closely guarded; neatly deposited under lock and key in the safe in my office.

I will know, Nakia, Abigail, if either of you have tampered with either the safe or the book, so if you are reading this, I suggest you stop now, and put the book back. It will go much better for you if you have no need to lie about seeing the pages hereafter.

The first, and quite possibly the most personally trying, horrifying, and difficult entry herein will be my account of the night I first saw my wife die.

Nakia has always been strong. Stronger than I, by far. That much has always been certain. She was bred a fighter, a woman of the body. I am a master of the mind; a scholar; an erudite. The mystery of these following things, then, is only increased with this knowledge. This woman, so small, so soft and gentle to look upon, is a terror in disguise. A wolf in the sheep’s clothing. She is stronger than I; faster, more flexible, more agile. In the flesh, she has me out classed in nearly every aspect. Merely my height can account for a factor in my favor. It raises the question, then, how someone so attuned to violence, so built for handling enemies bodily could possibly have fallen before someone like myself in a battle for family territory.

I, myself, had taken many wounds. Possibly more than even she had taken. I was blasted and burned, shot, broken and bled dry, and yet I still clung to this world with a grip like death itself, while she slipped into that bitter darkness that I cannot begin to attempt to fathom. Everything that I have ever heard of the place has been horrific, terrifying. I have only been once, myself. Most of my time there had been spent in a haze, hidden in the darkness away from the monstrosities that lurked in the murky black. I had been lucky.

It had given me some small comfort to know that she was not alone in the darkness. Keara, the woman that had requested our assistance, the head of our main bloodline, had been vanquished alongside Nakia. Enver, the woman’s husband, possessed a power to cross the veil into that horrific land of nightmares, without the cold touch of death finding him.

I mean to possess this power.

I will not, I can not allow this kind of horror to happen to us again. Nakia, my little cat, my whole life, was gone to me. All I could do was to whisper comfort into her mind, and even that I had been to hysterically lost, too far gone to really know that I could reach her in that place, that land of nightmare. It was a power I seldom touched since the last time I had attempted to reach out and touch her mind. Even then, it had been meant to be reassuring, and had, instead, sent her into a wild, frenzied rage fueled by terror.

It did not take more than once to understand that someone so connected to her own mind would have difficulty under the stress of outside stimuli. The paranoia that runs rampant through her imaginations also played a powerful hand in her reactions to my speech, her unlikely, but palpable fear that she was being bugged, tapped, or controlled. I have done small works against that distrust, chipping away at the thick walls that she had surrounded herself with, until I had found my way into her heart, a place that I don’t hold lightly, and one that I am not likely to abandon.

It was a struggle to see her in the fight, watching as she was assaulted by our foes… it was impossible, watching her fall and still having to dig down and find the strength to continue without her, to step over her very ashes to reach out against those that had harmed her. I will admit, the taste of defeat was on my lips. I could feel it, and almost welcomed my own darkness that I might be with her again. What I hadn’t expected was to survive the rest of that horrible fight, just barely clinging to life by a thread. I knew, that if I had thrown myself into the realm intentionally, she would have been more cross with me than I have ever believed her to be.

Instead, I went home and I patched myself up. I staunched the bleeding and found a quiet, solitary place in which to pass my time in mourning. The library was silence incarnate, the very essence of isolation. I was alone, left mostly to my thoughts after a brief conversation with Kallista and an email, followed by a telepathic message from my sibling, Jersey. Those brief moments of contact aside, I spent the next week in anticipatory loneliness.

It was best for everyone that I kept to myself. I was never the best conversationalist when I had something on my mind, always drifting back to that subject that had broached my focus, or drifting off into thought about the same thing, when the complexities of my considerations grew to outpace the dialogue. This was much worse than the average subject of focus; my wife’s murder was the only thing I seemed to have on my mind, playing the scene in my head time and time again. Even reaching out to speak to her from time to time, I continued to drift into the thoughts of the things that I could have done to change what had happened. The things that I hadn’t done, that I should have. The ways that things should have gone.

The ways that I failed.

In the end, I tried to bury myself in reading material, losing myself in this book or that, though never for long, and never without making the wound fresh each time I came back to gnawing at the old bone. I had never been so thankful for a week to be over, the day I came from the library to finally stretch my legs in preparation for her arrival. She had been the one to find me, as stealthy as always, creeping up to snatch me from the darkness of the caverns where I hunted.

The most difficult trial I had ever endured had come to a close.

My wife was alive; she had returned to me.

I am finally freed from my self imprisonment, and nothing has been so sweet as to hold her again.

Perhaps when my mind is freed of this overwhelming need to speak of nothing but her return to life, I can pen something more here.

Until then.

Dr. Danton Lucius King
Grand Master of the Fourth Circle

[Danton (DELETED 5283)]

Dated February Seventh, the year 2016

Entry References Relationship and Business

Nakia’s homecoming has been a blessing. Her presence has made nearly every aspect of my life return to normal, with the exception of excessive fretting over her well-being. That, I doubt, will ever return to normal. That aside, I have been able to return to the running of my businesses, and am beginning to lay the groundwork for a new establishment. Briar and Bone has been particularly lucrative these past few days, the quality of weapons from the forge have been growing more and more impressive. I am going to have to give Ruby a raise, at this rate. Her crafts are absolutely spectacular.

The Broken Rose has seen a marked improvement since Nakia’s return as well. With the mood improved about the tavern considerably, cheerful staff and pleasantries exchanged over flagons of mead and mulled wine were flowing again, and with them the profits he had begun to enjoy the past few months of the inn’s success. The place was a den of joy again, song and dance and warm, roaring fires filling the air with the sound of merriment, the stomping of boots against the old wooden planks of the floor keeping time with the singers. The place had never felt more genuine.

Wolfwood’s business actually saw a spike while my wife was away, though much of that was my own coin flowing back into the business. I was frantic, looking for spells or summons to bring my wife back from the grave. I spent a fortune in ingredients, in hunting down specialists from every corner of the globe, and not one of them had been the smallest bit of help. Now, however, the business is thriving on others’ needs again.

In conjunction with my existing businesses, my plans moving forward is to open a fourth establishment in the same rustic vein as the first three. An older, more classical service with a dash of the mystical for flare and that true magic that gives everything that little edge. The current evolution of the idea is a theatre, designed around displays of magical ability, both the mundane and the mystic forms of illusion. It is still in the planning stages, but I am fairly pleased with what I have come up with so far. The name of the establishment, I’ve decided, is the Gilded Rose Stage Company.

Already, I am lining up acts and finding performers from all across the world to appear on the stage here in Harper Rock. There are hundreds, right here in town, though I will need an extensive screening process, for fear of putting vampires on stage and making an absolute disaster of the masquerade. I can’t be having that, not with Nakia just newly returned to life. The foolhardy girl would jump into a fight, guns ablaze and without a second thought if I were to find myself in a firefight with that bunch that I saw so much about on the crownet before it all seemed to go quiet.

Maybe they had something to do with that, too.
I can never know with these things.

At any rate, I may have to rethink the idea. Writing the words makes the dangers feel more real; a fire I do not find myself desiring to play with.

I will reflect on these thoughts, and will report back when I have made a decision.

Dr. Danton Lucius King
Grand Master of the Fourth Circle

[Danton (DELETED 5283)]

Dated February Twenty Seventh, the year 2016

Entry references Business and the Veil

I have decided against the theatre. It would only bring unwanted attentions to my doors. I am already playing with magics far darker than anyone has a right to mettle with, but the unknown cries out to me with a siren’s song. I must study these things, these unknowns, for that is my purpose. With the Gift that Kallista has granted me, I realize now that I have been given the highest honor in academia; a chance to study throughout the ages, to live history, even as it happens, for æons to come. I have been given a rare opportunity to reach back as far as I dare, without fear of moving forward in the same instant.

Time no longer has meaning to those like us. It is fluid, shifting and interchangeable. I can dig deep into the past, sifting through the sands of ages long ago lost to the earth, and with the same breath, push forward into a wild and unknown future. Magic and technology are coming to a collision in a way that no one else seems to suspect. The power here is incredible, the forces of dark and light are so intertwined that there seems to be a vortex of energy rushing through the streets, passing through all of us like we were nothing, all rushing to some unseen and cataclysmic focal point. If I could find that focus, if I could find the eye of this storm, who could possibly imagine what I might find there?

There is a tear in the Veil, we all know of it. We know the approximate location of the traverse between worlds. Why has no one sought it out? Can I possibly be the only one interested in finding this tear? Can I possibly be the only one curious about its properties, about its causes? The effects are plain enough, the monsters lurking through what is left behind of the old Gambondale District. Even the humans can see that, with their military posted all around the decaying district, the entire block of the city cordoned off like some kind of prison. There is something to this. I know there is.

There is power here. Far more vast than anything any of us has ever seen. What we have now is just a drop on the tip of our tongue. Our world is parched. We are dry, cracking beneath the heat of the sun, and just at our fingertips, there is an entire reservoir, waiting to be tapped. And yet, I have seen or heard no word of interest in finding this power. There have been no excavations, no excursions into the Quarantine Zone to find this tear, no studies made of this breach in the power. How has no one found interest?

No matter. It will make my studies easier. I will be unobstructed when I go myself. There is more to this than anyone realizes. There is a tremendous power that no one seems interested in, and that only leaves more for me to find. Perhaps I will start in the graves. Death attracts death; darkness to darkness. The cold places beneath the earth seem the logical places to search. I will need to find a way to detect this power. When I have learned something of use, I will write more.

[Danton (DELETED 5283)]

Dated March Fourth, the year 2016

Entry references Business and the Search for the Veil

I am still undecided on a fourth establishment. The decision has been much harder to make than I had originally anticipated, though there is hardly a rush. I am well equipped for opening another institution, and each passing day only better prepares me. I am not certain, however, of what it is that I am leaning toward anymore.

My initial business ventures have proven profitable, very stable and profitable, even in spite of their novelty and niche markets, they have found a way to thrive in this strange, unusual place. Wolfwood’s has taken quite the turn. The building in which I decided to peddle the unusual and mystical items at my disposal has turned out to be an old temple, lost to time by some forgotten civilization until I unearthed it in the Grecian sands and had it transported here, meticulously, painstakingly careful to right every piece in the manner that it was intended, down to the last detail. I had to see for myself, the effects that this place would have on the powers that inhabited those old stones.

The darkness that has filled that place is testament enough. The tear in the Veil here is more drastic than I had even hoped. Wild, chaotic energies fill the air in the old temple, the darkness all but swallowing the enthusiasm of the patrons and vendors alike, siphoning the energy from them to feed its greed, swelling its influence further. I can sense that it is pleased with the sacrifice, that the dark being that I have brought with me has found an acolyte in me. This nameless, faceless entity holds dominion over the shop, and is delighted with its influence over the patrons. I only fear that, with each passing day, the deity will grow complacent, and will soon seek more than the energies that are given freely by those that pass over the threshold. When that time comes, I will need to find new ways to subtly appease the entity, or it will cause trouble.

The blood sacrifice sort of trouble. Or worse, possession. I hope that this thing, this creature does not get the same ideas. To unleash its darkness upon an already doomed city… well… this would be disastrous. And that is just to the smallest of my thinking. This thing is evil, and it is reacting powerfully to the rip in the veil, as I had assumed that it would. Though, perhaps possession would not be so terrible. Perhaps I can construct a trap of sorts, should the thing decide for itself that it would rather a corporeal body. I should begin research at once.

As for the tear itself, I have had little luck in my search. My initial excursions into the catacombs beneath the old Gambondale District have proven largely fruitless. The rend is there, I know, and it is changing. Though, whether it is growing or receding, I do not know. Not knowing is the worst part, I believe. This tear, this anomaly… it is what makes our existence possible, what makes us all what we are. If it were to close, then what sort of effect would that have on us, the creatures of the Night Realm? Would we die, instantaneous and without resistance? Would we live on as we are, until a time comes that we are vanquished, without any way to return to this world? Would the closing of the veil cause it to collapse on itself, a dividing membrane stretched so thinly across a gaping hole that it can no longer support the weight of itself?

These are important mysteries, things that need to be studied, to be understood. I just need to find a way, to find a process by which I can study the veil itself, a way to test the limits of the divide, to divine the nature of the curtain that shields this world from the world of the dead. The first question in my mind however, is why here? Why, of all places on this planet, Canada? What is here, that has drawn the divide so thin that it would rupture under the manipulations of one of the creatures that owes its very existence to the veil itself?

Moreover, why would someone have noticed the weakness in the space between worlds, without the tear? I believe, as in many other places throughout the world, that the veil is stretched thin along sites of great and powerful magical importance. The temple that I have brought with me, I believe, is an anchor for one of these thin places. I cannot know for certain without a way to observe the veil itself, but I can almost feel the void calling to me when I am near the place. I can hear the whispers in the dark corners of the marble stones, the way the shadows dance in the darkness, when there isn’t a light to cast them. It is a bizarre and frightening experience to behold, and one that drives my curiosity to new limits.

The question I pose myself is, how responsible do I deem myself with this line of thinking, this course of study? How far am I really willing to go, before I put this down and walk away? Am I strong enough to brave the dark, to push the limits of this dividing web between our world and the next, or am I an agent of destruction, unknown even to my own self, tampering with powers beyond my own understanding, at the urging of a being of consciousness far elevated, to bring about the doom prophesied throughout known history upon an unsuspecting and unbelieving world?

The time of magic and supernatural power is beyond us. The resurgence of our kind is likely to be taken as a sign of the coming apocalypse, an event that precludes the end of the known world. How, then, are we to survive what is coming, even with our ties to the darkness itself? How are we to stand, when mankind is so intent on surviving? Because they do not wish to die, it may very well be every single one of us that dies in their place.

I cannot let that happen.

Not with so many people that I care for here, at the epicenter of it all.

I must be careful from this point onward. Precautious.

I will do what I can to learn about how to detect the veil. That is the first step in all of this.