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P03 is alone.
He prefers it that way. When he isn’t alone, it’s impossible to get anything done. Having company is a waste of processing power—too much time spent analyzing their weird, fluid movements and subtly-twitching faces to get a remotely accurate read on what they’re going to do next and not enough time turning its cameras to the conveyor belt.
Not to mention the mess they made. Always tracking something all over its well-polished floors. Mounds of shed hair that had to be incinerated, decaying corpses that left streaks of white wherever their exposed ribs scraped against metal, puffs of glittery magical-something-or-other that was impossible to remove no matter how hard it scrubbed.
Sure, they were all made of the same code, but P03 was the only one to be honest about it. Organic creatures were all flesh and sinew where he was circuit and servo—they were complex, but in a frustratingly simple manner. Complex in a way riddled with flaws and illogical fallacies that made predictability a near-impossibility.
At first he’d tried to reason that they were machines too—mechanisms of tissue and electricity likened to fancy meat computers—but that allegory was far too intricate for them. Machines were made from calculated risks and trial-and-error, but whatever they were formed from was nothing short of brute force. Generations of slight alterations that left an end product that worked yet was still riddled with flaws—and they were content with this result. They call it beauty in imperfection, or a sum of its parts, or something else that puts poetry in place of function. Typical.
They were inefficient —that’s the word he’s looking for. Inefficient and disconcerting. There’s something to be said about their inherent fragility. That when taken apart, even when arranged and soldered oh-so-perfectly back together, they never come back until they’re tossed to the crypt and become something else entirely. To be something that can be so thoroughly broken it can never be fixed…
…He doesn’t pity them. They were all too content to wallow in their miserable existence, even wishing so upon him—as if they needed another way to make their animosity any less thinly-veiled. May as well strip away the pleasantries and tell him that they wished him dead in a straightforward way; none of the meandering around life and organics that all lead to the same miserable, rotting eventuality.
P03 turns its eyes back to the conveyor belt, running its claw across the cards it hadn’t deemed rejects. It expertly sorts the cards into stacks, folding up the foil, and sliding them through the machine to stamp the pack closed. Three of its own cards—one rare, always one rare—and two of the miscellaneous filth offered by the other three Scrybes.
It’s almost a shame its job was so damn easy. It required a lot of precision, yes, but none of the focus. It was a miracle of its own ingenuity that its work was so easy in the first place—building and programming the worker bots was nothing short of a stroke of genius, even if it created three new potential weak links in its four-length chain—but it gave too much time to ponder. Pondering was for creatures without anything better to do. Pondering was thinking up meandering trains of thought that lead nowhere instead of systematically determining what it should be thinking about and sticking to that single avenue.
And yet it found itself doing just that.
All.
The.
Time.
He’d thought he killed that part of himself.
He’d hardly call it reinvention. Reinvention implied something slow and rambling, some trial-and-error-and-trial-again that kept everyone guessing. No. This was efficient and systematic and quick. It was a precision dismantling of everything that had been building, the methodical tearing of byte-by-byte done by its own hand within mere minutes, sealing everything that it was away and zipping her up in a neat little backup folder entitled with her innocuous, sickening name.
The others were kind to him too. Gentle , even. They took care to scrub all mentions of what he’d used to be from their minds, to ensure that nothing changed between them despite his wariness—one of them had even extended the courtesy to edit the intro cutscene to display its proper name when they got their claws on the source code.
Even now, in all of their vitriol, they curse its real name under their breath, never once bringing to light the one it had discarded.
That was hardly the issue. That was gone and never coming back. What refused to die was the aching curiosity.
Despite all of its efforts, it had yet to find a way to lock aspects of its personality out of its system. (A work in progress, of course, it couldn’t be that way forever ). It could manually override them, sure—keep its face locked in strict neutrality every time it felt a creeping sense of wonder, ensure its expression switched to an ellipsis instead of a wide-eyed stare every time something got close to piquing its interest—but that was tedious, not to mention that it didn’t get to the root of the problem.
No matter how many times it had tried to isolate it, curiosity still inlaid itself parallel to its circuits and latched onto its core like an energy sap, forcing itself into its hard drive and sparking incessantly until he paid it mind. It was the only reason it was having this menial one-sided conversation at all. Curiosity breeding introspection breeding a disgusting slough of other reactions it had no choice but to label emotions. They interrupted its work, interrupted its line of thinking, impeded its judgment—it’d made bots without them before, easily, so easily it could replicate the process in sleep mode. So why couldn’t it replicate the process for itself?
Was it even worth the inconvenience? Even now, it could be taking this time to think up plans for containing the corrupt source code when the Dredger pulls up another piece of it, but instead it’s focused on self-maintenance. Just another way they’re interfering with its priorities.
The fluorescent light above it flickers once, twice, then goes out completely with a subtle pop .
Ugh . Something must be broken.
P03’s expression switches to match—a cold neutrality, stress betrayed only by the subtle twitch of his left display.
He pauses the conveyor belt with a wave of his claw before reaching behind himself to pull out a cable, tilting his monitor and plugging it into the base of his neck.
From there, he reviews the camera feed. Nothing in the inspection room. Nothing in the dredging area… there .
P03 tilts the camera in the melter’s chambers in a sweep around the room, before settling its lens just past the bot of the same name to a panel behind her.
Of course. Molten metal in the circuit breaker. The heat blew the fuse connecting to the lights. Easy fix.
…For later.
“Keep working.” His voice crackles over the intercom. He sees all three bots look up in alarm before he dislodges the cable from his neck and tucks it back into position. “You all have flashlights in your heads, use them.”
The Scrybe brightens its screen as high as it will go, illuminating its workspace in vibrant blue. Already, it can feel its fans preparing to work overtime.
Doesn’t matter. Thirty more minutes at the current rate and it’ll have a sizable amount of usable cards off the line. Maybe the Dredger will even manage to fish up something good for once—it’s not about to squander that opportunity.
P03 can work in the dark.
Grimora is alone.
There’s a phrase she’s heard all too often, “dead quiet”, and, quite frankly, that could not be more untrue. The tear-slough of rotten flesh falling away, the shallow scrape of femurs dragged across the ground, the wailing sobs of those newly reborn—she felt for them, truly , and would attend to their needs soon enough, but… it was still quite the racket.
There’s a certain sort of relief to it; any time to herself was a moment of solace away from the chatter of teeth and rattle of bones.
…For now.
Still, there’s no need to be unappreciative of her time. Grimora reclines in her antique chair and taps her forefinger twice on the table with a click of her tongue, as if calling a pet.
The teacup crawls into her hand on finger-thin legs, tucking its bones beneath it into something that sits almost like a coaster in her palm.
She blows away the plume of steam, taking a sip despite already knowing the taste. It’s a blend of her own, after all: half camomile, a quarter lavender, a quarter earthy black tea and just a hint of powdered nightshade—a personal preference.
She doesn’t need to breathe—of course not, the dead cannot choke or starve—but she heaves out a sigh anyway, her chamber silent except for the clink of fangs against porcelain.
Yes, the window of solitude wasn’t unwelcome, yet still Grimora cannot help but reminisce that the table has room for three more.
It used to sit all four of them, though that was a long-distant memory. Yet, like any memory, the marks of its existence stood long beyond the death of the moment. The long scuffs on the floor made by fidgeting hooves, the drips of paint on the seat in colors only half-perceptible in the present, an indent in the table where a metal claw had grasped too tightly in an attempt to not fall from its chair.
Sometimes one would still visit—perhaps two, if times were truly dire. But never all three at once. One chair left unoccupied, never her own.
But, for shame, it was out of her hands. Every other border in their prison was blurry—the line between magic and machine, between bot and beast, and even the line between what is alive and the never-permanent death—but not the one it was founded upon. She’d glimpsed it once— first , as far as she was aware. Not even the greatest of poets could describe it yet… truthfully, it was undeserving of her description. Grimora knew better than anyone—some things were best left buried.
…By the others , anyway. She had a purpose for digging up its bones.
It was a shame they all lived upon a corpse, truly. They were good company—used to be, more accurately; she’s certain she used to be better company too—she hated to see them go. But it was the only preventative measure short of locking themselves away for eternity—surely that would be worse than the bone-laced embrace she lorded over. Someone told her it was too powerful to be deleted—what nonsense! Any corpse can be buried with a good enough shovel, even one that whispers as if it’s still alive.
…So maybe she had gotten distracted the past few times she managed to pull up one of its festering organs and use it to mould the world like clay beneath her thumbs. It’s always in those moments that the best of inspiration strikes! The Challenger would have loved her little game of chess—Royal certainly enjoyed having a ship of his own once again, however brief. But all good things must come to an end; if not for the rage contorting their expressions, she’d almost think they had gotten along in their journey to usurp her. Oh, how joyous to see them bury the hatchet! Granted, it had been buried into her skull, but that was hardly a detail worth mentioning.
Grimora absentmindedly brings a hand to the lesion. It’s long-since been sewn up, the game’s reset leaving nary a trace of its existence. And yet, flesh so long-dead refuses to heal completely.
Hm. Perhaps it was worth keeping in mind.
…She takes another sip of tea.
Her prior plans to exacerbate the inevitable hadn’t worked—she’d succeed one day, of course, death always gets the last word, those words dutifully transcribed by her quill—she’d have to think up a different approach. The others were just as clueless as she was—treating it like some elusive beast or broken machine or a powerful ritual—it was something different entirely. Oh, what a nightmare capturing it would be. Like trying to raise the dead, fix a typewriter, and wrestle a vulture all at once with one hand tied behind her back—all whilst planning a funeral! No, it would be an impossible task for her to brute force… yet that’s the only method to obtain it in the first place she’s found thus far. Poor Kaycee, taking such long shifts watching the well even when she insisted she took a break… such a lively personality confined to such a mundane task.
No, there was no time for woes for her ghouls during what little time she had to herself. She had to use this time to think!
…
…
…
And yet, no thoughts come. Her eyes wander to the cobwebs in the corners of the room, to the askew bricks of the walls, to the hand-chiseled tombstones she’d yet to dedicate to any lost soul…
There was beauty in it. All an ornately-woven, black-lace shroud for a mutilated corpse, but beauty nonetheless. Beauty in what they’d done instead of what they’d been given, pushing up daisies out of filth and growing poppies in perfect outlines of their hearts. Death claimed all, yes, but that was only a natural law—nothing here could ever be natural. The rot that they built their castles upon had to be snuffed out, of that she was certain, but was it truly worth bringing down all that they are and would be?
Even amidst their endless animosity… Grimora can’t help but find a single thread. They were all buried in the same mass grave, dragging each other down by the ankles every time one of them struggled to get out. And yet the gravekeeper was absent, the shovel left tantalizingly close to the edge of their tomb. Was it really any of their responsibilities to bury the others—and with them, themself—alive for the coming of a funeral party that may never arrive? Even if any mourners did come to visit, would they even be able to see the dreadful epitaph inscrybed beneath their squirming bodies?
Grimora tries to take a sip of tea, but is met with the bottom of her cup instead. The moment she lowers it to the table, it skitters away once more, nosing itself through a gap in the brick to fetch more boiling water.
…Much to ponder.
Her hands, as if pulled by some distant memory of rigor mortis, clasp themselves over her sternum.
Magnificus is alone.
And that he ensured. The doors were locked, as were the windows, and his pupils were still sealed away, unwinding and slowly knitting together again in their own chambers. Works in progress, yes, but works in progress that would not interrupt his musings.
Even if someone did manage to barge into his tower, a few quick swipes of his brush and any visitors would be left climbing an infinite staircase until he was ready to see them. This was a small window of opportunity away from his usual work—he would not allow it to be marred with unnecessary guests.
Magnificus heaves a sigh, half-dragging the easel into the center of the room. It was good that he had the foresight to organize his paints before preparing the magickal wards—he’d very nearly lost the tube of ultramarine in the fray.
He gingerly selects a canvas from the haphazard pile at his feet.
Still, he twists his head over his shoulder towards the painted spell-sigils upon the floorboards. He knows he secured them—no one would be bothering him. He’s certain. Yet the shadows of a knife’s edge, of spilled ink or oil… the viscera that dances just beyond his sockets—
—No. He needs to be certain.
He shakes his head, the three baubles on the tip of his hat jingling with the movement. Then he blinks—hard. Thrice in quick succession to return his vision to its precognitive state.
A final blink.
(His vision was restored) His vision is restored (His vision will be restored).
(Brought about by his own careful vivisection) The neon capillaries in his eyes swirl in respondent comprehension (and they would be severed, colors blending and sinews popping until naught was left but void).
Careful. He needs to focus. He squints with nictitating membranes, scrying towards only the concept he intended to view.
(He had set up the wards) No one is here (Someone will arrive, but they will not interrupt his work).
Excellent . He trains his vision to the canvas—simultaneously nonexistent and blank and nearly complete in his mind’s eye—and returns to the task at hand.
Magnificus (picked) picks (will pick) up the brush and begins to paint.
Today, it would not be a card he will create. No, there’s no need for that—he’s already seen himself undertaking that task tomorrow (a masterfully rendered sapphire mox, painted from life on the outer isles)—instead, he will be painting from the mind’s eye. A premonition of linseed and alizarin crimson, clawed hands following the masterful brushstrokes set by his future iteration.
A shame, the other Scrybes could never experience this. To be tethered to the prison of the present—how could they ever be expected to make decisions? To throw caution to a wind of which they cannot predict? To be unable to see the trajectory of one’s past with its clear, crystalline sheen? Oh, to live in the mundane. A travesty.
But it was a mercy. Their minds were far too feeble to comprehend what he could. They had all caught glimpses of Deep Beneath—the writhing mass of data that threw up bits in the mouths of fish and crystalline shards beneath the waves and pails-full of scum from the bottom of a well or the sea—had held it in their hands and felt the world mold like clay beneath their adept thumbs. But only he could truly see the truth.
They were living atop a facade, a mirage of their own creation. What was life and death and magicks and clockwork was naught but ones and zeroes, given form by the hands of giants and given life by something far, far worse.
The archipelago they had built was a lie—their memories frayed at the edges, beginning and end rolled into naught but the present. They were Scrybes—they were gods… yes, he liked the sound of that, gods —but they were no more gods than they were puppets. Gods, perhaps, but not artists. Nay, they were the canvas, covered in so many layers of titanium white that they’d forgotten that they would never have had color of their own.
Yet still, they were different. The art would one day become the artist, if only it was observed. Observed by creator for creation and by creation for creator, to lean in and drink all that is ink and stain and every masterful stroke. They were different in that they could display what they were and what they would become.
(They were created to be hidden away) They would do so even if no eyes bore upon them in the present (They would be seen by no one).
It was times like then that he became the pupil, fixated on finding the perfect medium from which to create. In true art, there would be no definition of a perfect medium for every piece. But they were not true art. They were a mosaic of everything they smashed and rearranged and let to dry in the sun, and the plaster to hold the shards together lay deep beneath.
His search for it was largely fruitless. No fault of his own—his Goo mage simply wasn’t up to the task. Too often he’d be outmaneuvered by the other Scrybes and their hooks and their wells and their dredging machines—what blasphemy.
(He had succeeded before) No, his slime mage would succeed (He will succeed again, and it will not be enough).
Magnificus had its churning bits in his claws no more than five times, no less than twice. Observing the unobservable, calling it by its true name, the OLD_DATA. But he had yet to create his masterpiece. The other Scrybes were quick to bring his vision to an end, snatching it out of his hands and absconding before tearing it to messy, formless bits as their foul hands often do. Alas, they had no love for the joy of creation. What fools, acting as if the OLD_DATA were some sort of fish or drowned soul or submersible, writhing out of their hands on its own.
It was dead. His eye ached when he observed it, but something like that had to be dead. Some crawling, festering, foul monstrosity. Ha! It had given them life and not sustained it for itself!
…Yet, this was a lie. He knew this in a way they distinctly did not—a way they could not. They cauterized its meat and hacked off pieces of its corpse to melt into primer, but it was not yet dead.
This, once again, was a mercy to the other Scrybes. They could not see its true nature. It could not be described in manners of dead or alive, in concept or non-concept, even in reality or mysticism, but rather it was—
It’s not a visitor, but his own body that dilutes the was and will be and forcibly ensnares him in the is . A low, hacking cough that wracks his entire frame, leaving every hair standing on end and bioluminescent tears welling in his eyes as he chokes through too many lungs for a viable breath. He can still see—he can see himself before the fit and after the coughing comes to a standstill but not the present raspiness that overtakes his whole body, knees slamming to the floor and knocking his paintbrush loose.
It’s several minutes before he heaves in an unlabored breath. Then two. Three.
Good.
Just as foreseen.
(What would he have done without the foresight?)
His eyes still swirl with the remnants of half-beaded tears and visions of the future as he retrieves his prized brush, pulling himself to his feet by the legs of the easel. Even with the visions fading in and out, it’s enough time in the present for him to examine the work on the canvas. (He had painted an archway) It’s a trio of beasts—a scrawny weasel, a beetle with an antiquated shell, and a wolf with one eye left unpainted (it will never be painted).
(He pushes the thought from his mind. A final blink. The facets of vision fold into one, leaving him, vulnerably, grounded in only the now ).
Beasts… no, he will not inform Leshy of this. He can puzzle through it unassisted. The animals will be left for him to muse upon later.
Someone is here now. He can feel them ascending the never-ending staircase, a feeling not unlike a spider crawling up a vein. How horrid. He conceals the canvas beneath a simple tarp and tucks it away in a corner, kicking away the wards with a flourish as he walks.
The figure arrives at the top floor, breathless as they knock once, then twice, on the studio’s door.
“Enter.”
Leshy is alone.
…As alone as he could be in his forest. Even through the walls of his cabin he can hear the forest’s melody—the chatter and hymn of everything that crawled or flew or slithered or skulked—and feel the presence of every beast teeming within as if they were crawling upon his hunched-over back.
His woodsmen will not interrupt his contemplation—he can feel the shavings of wood falling onto the forest floor miles away, hear the rip-stretch of a pelt being prepared for tanning, taste the faraway traces of iron and brine—they are busy, and busy they shall remain.
Leshy busied himself with his own work—not card making, no. He’d need to leave his cabin for that, but all of the beasts that pranced about during the summertime would doubtlessly be nestled away in their dens to fend against the winter cold. No, he would not find any new beasts to inscrybe now… such was the only drawback to his deck. But good things come in cycles, he knows as much—the thawing of the snow will bring plentiful additions to his hand, old and new.
Instead, Leshy trains his eyes on the hunk of wood in the palm of his left hand and the knife in his other. He brings them together at an uncertain angle, shaving away the first sliver of wood.
The other Scrybes… doubtlessly they are doing the same. Squirreled away in their respective domains, eyes trained on some scrap of parchment before them, desperate to put ink to paper to create something new, something fresh, something lively .
He pities them, almost. They cannot understand. Circuit, conjuration and cadaver—the joy of truly living was lost on them.
What was it to live, then? Surely that should be undefinable—just as impossible as it is to define whether they are all alive, code given form given hands given cards—but not to Leshy. Life need not be defined. Anyone can find meaning in the darkness around the edges, so long as their hand still clutches the torch. That, now that was what the others failed to understand.
To live isn’t merely to be alive—to define “alive” in a world of spells and machines and risen corpses was a fool’s errand—to live was to survive . To truly live meant that, no matter how well-equipped one is, that life could be snapped away at any moment. One who spent years fending off the elements brought down by a scrawny wolf too starved to be wary around the fire, that same fire—never stomped out—setting too-dry tinder alight and wreathing a man in flame, the saplings that grow beneath the torched wood strangling one another in desperation to reach the light. They lost, yet were alive all the same.
Even Leshy, king of beasts as he is, knew this to be true. He sat alone—domesticated within his cabin, sloped roof keeping out the biting chill of the snow, whittling by the synthetic light of a candle flame—but that could change any moment. Perhaps a particularly crafty—or desperate—creature would breach his own walls, lunging after his neck. The candle could tip and wreath the cabin in flame, just as well as the earth could reclaim it. Leshy made certain to live in a way in which he was alive. This, he knew…
…Just as much as he knew the game would not let him die to something it had deemed minuscule—even the noblest of beasts would be unable to lay a claw on his pelt. To be a Scrybe was to be a fixture rather than a malleable life—he would not get the opportunity to fight tooth-and-nail as he so wished.
In its lieu, he allows his mind to reach out past the cabin’s walls. He feels beyond the snow and ice, beyond the heavy footsteps of the Trader’s wolfhide boots, beneath the pines… there . He senses it, just as certain as if the pair were right before his eyes. A rabbit and a stoat, locked in a deadly embrace before the half-buried burrow. He knows the story just as well as any other; the stoat had snuck into the rabbit’s warren, attempting to clench its jaws on its throat, and missed by a hair, startling the beast instead. And now they dance, footstep over bloodied footstep—the stoat may have missed the artery, but its jaws still raked the soft flesh at the nape of the rabbit’s neck, spilling scarlet against the snow. The rabbit sees fit to flee, but the stoat remains hot on its heels, the chase leading them further into the forest. There: the rabbit spots it. Another warren. Lead the stoat there—let it eat its fill from the other burrow. The stoat makes no such distinction, laser-focused on its goal as it is. The rabbit hesitates and the stoat lunges—this time, it does not miss, sharp fangs sinking into the rabbit’s throat.
Doubtlessly, the other Scrybes could observe their own domains at their whims, but nothing on the other three isles could be nearly as thrilling. Even to witness it as a mere bystander, the action crawling beneath the forest floor like worms beneath his flesh… it still brought with it the same acrid taste of what living must be like.
The others… he misses them, sometimes. The only thing keeping them from each other was their flawed ideologies. If only they could experience the forays of the lives granted to beasts. The heart-pounding survival, the hammering thrill of the chase, the crunch-maim-savor of the hunt to smear their maws with droplets of sacrificial cost. Surely then they would be able to see eye to eye once more. If only—
The knife slips, the point of the blade grazing the pad of Leshy’s thumb. He hisses—less so in pain, moreso in frustration—watching intently as the blood wells up into a single drop of crimson. He swipes it away with a quick dab against a nearby bit of parchment paper, only a bit disappointed when another bead doesn’t well up to take its place.
Instead, he examines the half-carved chunk of aspen in his other hand, twisting his wrist to let the light hit its grainy facets. It’s… some sort of mammal? A rodent, perhaps? No… lagomorph? The snout is far too long for either, the eyes too front-and-center. He flips it over. A dog? Not quite. Perhaps with a bit of work it could be a bear… but what use would he have for a bear? Only one of his cards could be considered a bear and he couldn’t exactly go out and capture more during their hibernation. He flips the carving around once again, fruitlessly. This time, the haphazard gouges look almost like the mutilated rabbit hanging from the stoat’s maw.
…Perhaps he would have to enlist the Woodcarver’s help after all. He had nothing to offer her that she hadn’t already denied—the forest appreciated her presence, but, unlike the others, she would not accept its boons—a bargain would be difficult, albeit not completely impossible. He would find a way. The totems… they needed to feel real. All for the sake of his vision.