Back under the Directorate, we take libraries seriously. A respectable library is one of the largest buildings in town, well-stocked, well-staffed, well-maintained, well-funded, and even well-defended. They sit in only the starkest of contrasts with mausoleums; furnished grave sites usually bearing one of each of a seat and a shelf, accessible by key to the loved ones of the departed. Whoever is commemorated there is interred with their journals nearby, the self-recorded chronicle of their life, compiled and kept in Maxim tradition. I suppose this counts as my chronicle too, actually. 

Having grown up familiar with both ends of that spectrum and everything in between, I’ll say this library is pretty decent.

Finding the last tome to add to my stack, I slink back to my alcove up on the second floor, and add the new book to the sprawl I've been poring over. Theology, mythology, history, physiology, and whatever else might help me sort out what's up with me because I guess straight answers are top secret according to anyone fit to give them to me.

Getting myself a slip to gain access to the library was the easy part; it's been tucked into a little folder in the back of my ID booklet ever since I laid hands on it, four hours ago. Since then, I've been following a trail of citations and making do with the works present. And unfortunately, there's nothing set in stone about the process that made me like this.

One doesn't simply steal a holy site, let alone mash two of them together, let alone do that without either god involved noticing, so Suraokh's method of sticking someone with a reaper blessing still eludes me.

I figured out who one of those gods was, at least, not that it came as a surprise; even Kyra managed to guess at a glance. Isammet, Lord of the Ethereal. I guess if you need absolute compatibility with someone who is both dead and just filthy with aether, you can't go wrong with him. I found an entire study on his anatomy, too; a nonuple chimera, nine foxes blended into one prior to birth, with only their vertical partitions of fur color to distinguish them, and their nine partitions of brain, operating separately but to the same end, all fronting as a single-bodied council named Isammet.

Oh, and the nine unreasonably long tails diverging from his spine, those are a pretty good indicator of his provenance too, not to mention the aspect of his I physically took on along with his power. They rendered him unable to walk all his life; that level of hip dysplasia just couldn't be compensated for. Am I going to lose my ability to walk too? I don't have an entourage of devoted saints to carry a palanquin for me.

The other god escapes me. I thought Yau Yem at first, who presides over outcasts and the unfortunate; that'd be awfully fitting, he's even a jackal so it's possible his adjustment to me wouldn't be readily apparent since I'm one already, and I already have scary glowing eyes. Well, sometimes. That’d just be by coincidence, so I don't have anything conclusive just yet.

Eventually I put aside the theology volumes and start to bury myself in pages about void-siphoning technology, like my heart. Nothing published in the past twenty years is available here, but there are a handful of theoretical studies, as well as a very, very old mention of the first sustained example of the tech, achieved by one Bailey, no surname given, or indication if she even had one. Maybe there was once, but it's been three Ages since and things tend to get good and muddied in a fraction of that time. Apparently, it was very taxing on the body and she couldn't sustain it without aberrating herself. You would think there'd be more about her, but she's glossed over once and never again in the two hours I spend looking for leads.

No reason to suspect her name will come up later or anything, of course. There’s a name for that phenomenon too, I think, but it’s a shame it seems exempt from the very effect it describes.

I look over at the stack of phasmology texts, as well as an anthropological text on the Spiderfolk of Kiue I'd picked out just for curiosity's sake. Rubbing my eyes tiredly, I realize I've bitten off more than I can chew. Here's what you've intuited and I know; I died, I was out of my body for a little while, and I was put back into it, here I am. That's good enough for today.

Referring to the note I made for myself, I start putting the books back where they go; it didn't occur to me until it got this late that libraries outside of Maxim territory actually close sometimes. If there's just one more thing I can do though…

I attract the sideways glance of a blue dragon as I rest my chin on the desk, as it's all I've got the height to do. He didn't even notice me walk up, but the landing for the next size class down is already occupied and is being seen to by another librarian.

"Can I help you?" he asks, pulling a mounted magnifying lens between his face and mine to get a better look at me.

"Yeah, do you have a chatterer here?" I ask, feeling quite silly in my relative physical position.

He nods. "Sending or receiving?"

"Oh! Um, both if there's anything for me." It hadn't even occurred to me that maybe my family tried reaching out to me.

"Just a moment," the librarian bids, slouching to a nearby console. He doesn't ask for any information but of course he doesn't need it; the chatterer already knows. To my disappointment, he turns back to me with a shake of his head. At the very least, he's got a paper card gripped between clawtips, a pen balancing on it as he passes it to me. "There you go."

"Thank you," I say, taking the materials and finding a table. Now, what to even say?

Pondering that for what feels like far too long, I eventually put myself in motion just by starting with a name.

Lucia,

You've got a better handle on this than Mom and Dad do, so I hope you'll read this soon. And I hope you've all been okay.

I'm fine, I think. There's a lot I can't talk about yet but if I'm right, we'll all see each other again soon. Please don't worry about me.

That should put their minds at ease. I pass the card off to the same librarian as before, who takes it face down and inserts it into a slot, to be delivered to the chatterer's secure vault.

What a fascinating being it must be. I've never seen one or even a depiction of one; details about them are kept under so many wraps due to their importance. The exchange of information across the distances between planets hinges on the relationship they've cultivated with us, though there's debate on whether it's paternalistic or purely selfless. I don't think much would change, either way.

It's something to keep my mind occupied on the ride back to the station near Yhana and Kyra's apartment, other than worrying about the food I picked up on the way back getting cold, but thankfully it's still passably warm by the time I make it to the top of those steps again.

There's a special knock I need to do, right? How did that knock go? I give it a try, and then flinch away, expecting the loud pounding of that battering ram against the strike plate, but nothing happens, I guess I got it wrong. Before I can try it again, I hear the sound of something mechanical disengaging, followed by several on the door, followed by Yhana creaking the door open.

"Merion, welcome back!" she greets, waving me inside.

I heft up the paper bag as I enter, making for the table. "Neither of you have eaten yet, right? I brought a lot."

Together, she, Kyra, and I enjoy a pleasant dinner as I regale them about the goings-on at the palace. Kyra chimes in about her own thoughts on the Admiral, befitting of a dissenter as he identified her. I’m glad the company I’ve come to keep feels similarly about him as I do.

The next morning, I'm up early, taking a more tolerable dose of coagulant this time. Testing my breath on the mirror, it seems to be working; the mist is more naturally humid as opposed to leaving an oily residue. With my health assessed, I leave for the library again, continuing my research.

The first thing I do as I pass the desk is check for any correspondence from my sister, or my parents if she passed the message along. No luck yet, but that's okay, it hasn't been long. Chances are they're still in the middle of a long relocation process; visiting a chatterer probably hasn't been a possibility.

Keeping that in mind, I make for the shelves once again.

It's mostly phasmology this time, so now we can get technical. First off the stack is Shades: Identification & Classification.

Designation, Blackheart; a shade who returned for their own body, creating an imperfect fusion more akin to reanimation than proper resurrection. Though we can occur without a catalyst, that's exceedingly rare. Most, like me, need an anchor that can nourish them enough not to lose their grip on their body. Coming back can also change your radiance compatibility; some people change type, some people gain another type like I did, and some people turn totally antiradiant. For once, I got the best possible outcome out of a bad situation.

In one sense, anyway. There’s nothing in here about evaporating on a physical level, so I move onto some Ulgeng journals, offered in Xemba translation.

Nothing new in them, either. The coagulant was a good move, at least, but the whole reason it's necessary is because of the power source I'm using, according to a tangentially related article I manage to chase down, about the condensation of shade tears.

It makes sense, in a grim sort of way. Shades absorb an abundance of radiance, the energy not the planet (thanks, Prelature), and they bud off the excess, regressed and stabilized in ectoplasm and convertible into myriad energetic modes. What I'm doing is carrying the shit that eventually turns back into radiance, so, operating as any ghost would, I have to offload it as ectoplasm. In short, I'm cannibalizing my own body to literally bleed money. The process is crude; it's not like I'm powering lights outside of my own body or anything so it's not even worth that much, but conceptually, it's just… brilliantly stupid.

I bet I could have heard all this and more from an exorcist in a fraction of the time if Suraokh had let me engage.

Even then, I'm just making extremely educated guesses. I still don't even know who the second god I'm bumming power off of is. I rest my forehead against the desk of my alcove. I wish I knew how to get something concrete about myself. The Archivists make it look so easy.

Holy shit, I know how to get something concrete about myself.

I jerk upright suddenly, and start putting things away. …Except for the book about the Spiderfolk, I'm checking that one out. I will learn about something cool, for all the trouble I'm going to today.

Jen knows a lot more about me than he should. He's probably getting that from the Archivists. Now, if I had my own way of accessing their files…

In a few short minutes, I fire off a message by chatterworks to Nym:

I need your help. Can we meet?

And in the time it takes me to get the book squared away, a reply comes through, to my delight. I wasn't expecting things to move along until tomorrow.

Yes. Come to the palace.

That settles it then. Leaving the library, I get myself a couple changes of outfit as long as I'm in the area to do so, rifting the spares and my old attire for later. I should probably have given the new digs a wash too but I'm in a hurry, wearing a new wide scarf out with its creases still subtly visible.

I spend an embarrassingly long time trying to find my way through the royal junction until I manage purely by accident, or what feels like it, to find the right checkpoint. At least I get through that part without issue.

This time, I have to wait for the train to pull up; it's staffed by constructed aberrations, draped in crimson and gold, more like Leonov than like myself. Given my tendency to imprint, I give them a friendly greeting, but they're not much for conversation. That's okay, it gives me time to read.

The trip is over before I know it, and I commit the page I was on to memory. Platters whirr in my upper spine as they record it; such a little thing to uptake like that but I know damn well I'll forget it in minutes if I don't. They’re not much use aside from snapshots like that anyway, but they can be nice to have.

Walking with a purpose, I ascend to the hall of distressingly nationalistic zeal once again, and realize now that I have no idea where to go from here.

I've never been so glad to be startled before, as I am in the moment that Nym's voice comes through speakers.

"Good, you finally made it," he says, the smug smile he must be wearing practically audible. "Welcome to my… anything-but-humble abode."

"Sorry to keep you waiting," I reply, but then I wonder if he can actually hear that.

"If you're trying to respond, I cannot hear a thing, it only goes one way." Ah. That clears things up, then. "If you just came out of that elevator on the right, go up the nearest set of stairs. If you did not, pretend you did. I'll tell you if you're getting close as you trip the motion sensors along the way."

I wander through the wing of the palace sitting opposite the one I visited yesterday. Gone is that eerie, empty feeling, as I pass the occasional servant, as well as a quartet of vigilants stationed here and there. Any questions they might have raised regarding my presence is answered in short order by the series of "warmer" and "colder" being emitted into the room.

Contrasting Jen even more, Nym's guidance leads me down, through an automated checkpoint, and into a fortified room that could easily serve as a bunker.

"Aaand, warm. Finally." With an electronic buzz, the door unlocks, parting three ways to let me through.

Tangent time, actually. They love their triangles here, you know? If they can put a triangle on it there's a triangle on it. You cannot see, draw, or hear about triangles without thinking about the Dominion. And as I walk into Nym's room?

Gigantic fucking triangle, hanging on the wall, and what’s it embroidered with? More triangles.

We’re going to get off triangles for now though, let’s take a look at the rest of this place. Nym has multiple floors to himself, held up on elegant, permanent scaffolds, mostly separating his standard living space from the workshop that takes up the bottom floor, where he’s tapping away at a terminal now, browsing filaments.

Of other note is the large booth he’s set up, enclosing an unfinished game of forsake, tabs and dice still strewn about the table within. I guess he returns to it irregularly? Not that I could blame him, on a good run you’d need a whole day just to see it through and then put away all the pieces.

“You can come down, you know,” Nym prompts off-mic, motioning me down from my spot by the handrail at the top level.

“Sorry, there’s just a lot to take in,” I say, starting to make my way down.

“So, what brings you my way today?” he asks, swiveling his chair from the terminal to face me. It’s not a typical office chair either, fully made of wood, supported on a five-legged base, though it lacks wheels.

“Well, I’ve been doing some research,” I begin, to which he quickly chimes in with an eager “mhmmmmm?”.

“And the library system isn’t quite doing it for me…”

“Mhmmmmm?” he mhmmmmms again.

“…so I was wondering if you had Archival access.”

“You’d be absolutely, entirely reasonable for figuring that, actually!” he says, practically puffing himself up as he does, but it all comes back out in a theatrical sigh. “But I don’t. Jen made sure of that because I’m ‘technically not an authority figure anymor–’” He shifts quickly back into an upright posture, trying to figure out what he’s doing with his hands as he speaks. “–These are quotation marks, right? You use those in written Siggska?” he asks, holding out both hands close to my face, fingers together and his palms facing one another, cupped at 90 degrees.

“Uhhhhh yeah? …Are you okay?” I ask, taking note of his somewhat manic demeanor. I thought he was just a little energetic today but I’m beginning to feel like something is wrong.

“No yes I’m fine?” he says, intoning it as a question and starting to get to his feet. The rails running down his long ankles project their rims, allowing him to skate a far shorter distance than they warrant, to prop himself against a nearby workbench. “I’ve been trying to research something too, see. Do you remember our encounter with Saint Eren?”

“I’ll be totally honest with you, I do try not to,” I say, “but go on.”

“It’s that gunner she had in her,” he continues, sweeping away clutter as he tries to tidy up, which I hope he isn’t doing solely on my behalf. “The one that got Tsing, who, by the way, I can’t follow up on either!” His hand rises, a single finger extending skyward with an angry shake. “No visitors, you see, not that there’s any record of which hospital or other healer’s care she was admitted to, so all I have to go on is–”

He turns, slamming down a sealed, cylindrical container of metal, the contents briefly clattering against its transparent lid. “–these, right here.”

I step closer, taking a look at what’s inside. They seem to be little pieces of bone, which I do have some recollection of. “These were nullifying the spells of casters they hit, right?”

“More than that, ignoring the ones that were already in effect. One doesn’t just have something like this,” he says, sliding them away as I lean in close. “And be careful, as it turns out they’re alarmingly radioactive, I really shouldn’t even be touching the container.”

I quickly step back, reflexively batting away the still air, for all the good it’ll do. Nym cracks open a bottle labeled as heavy water, dousing his palms in it over a nearby sink.

“Does that actually work?” I ask.

“I mean it might,” the fox replies, shaking the droplets off, “but I guess it doesn’t matter as much for me, right? The last time my cells divided on their own, you hadn’t even been born yet; I just don’t want to contaminate people.” 

He pulls over a magnifier mounted on a jointed arm, presenting the container on a screen, held up on a stand in the middle of the cluttered countertop, and gestures at the shards.

“Do you see these markings?”

They’re plainly visible; dark sienna bands snaking unpredictably, like a topographical map with no regard for the actual texture of their medium. “Yeah, what do they mean? Runes?”

“I have no idea! But they sure didn’t look like that a couple hours ago!” Nym exclaims. “And since they’re so violently antimagical and hazardous, I can’t even get close to discerning if they’re possessed, or cursed, or somehow alive. What if they’re alive? What would that mean??”

He pushes himself away from the workbench, skating backwards before quickly pulling the rims up and letting himself fall back into his chair, unprepared to compensate for how much it’s turned, and allowing himself to crumple over one armrest, kicking his legs a bit to try to turn it so he’s perpendicular to me.

“What would it take to get into the Archives?” I ask. I’m not trying to dismiss him of course, but this is a troubling state to see him in and maybe I can lead him to a productive conclusion.

“Written permission from an admin or someone higher, an armed escort to take you to only the sections you’ve been approved for, oh, and you have to know what those sections are in advance…” he says, counting off on his fingers.

“Alright… What about unofficially?”

“Are you thinking of breaking in?” He uprights himself again, momentarily concerned enough to snap himself out of it. “You’ve got an even chance of either getting silently disappeared, or getting publicly microwaved.”

“And what about all those near-death experiences we’ve had in the past few days alone?” I reason. I know it’s shit reasoning but we’re both feeling impassioned here. “Clearly this is killing you to not know, anyway.”

“And what’s so vital that you’d risk your own life as well?”

“My personal file. Jen knows a lot about me that he won’t share, and finding out what I don’t know could be a case of undeath or actual irreversible death.” I hesitate at first, but produce the bottle of coagulant for him, a good volume of it missing already. “For all I know, I’m in a bad spot anyway.”

Nym’s expression indicates a degree of alarm at first, but he settles into one of grim understanding. “Well, here’s something I can do for starters.”

He swivels, and begins to type at the terminal, filaments reading back to him from the array of bulbs. It doesn’t take long for him to finish his string of commands, and then leans back a bit quickly, springs creaking as the chair protests.

“And now we wait.”

“For?”

He turns to me with a smile as wide as one could ever give without showing teeth. “A response to my queries. I might not be able to walk in there, but I’ve still got enough clearance to learn where what I wanted to know would physically be. Awful dangerous thing to let me have, isn’t it?”

I can’t keep the hopeful tone out of my voice as I catch on. “So we’re doing it?”

The fox nods. “Like you said, it’s killing me, and something is for real killing you. I just can’t abide that.”

“Gods, you’re the best, Nym,” I praise through a grin. “How are we gonna do it?”

“Well, I’ll do some recon, make some excuse about visiting tertiary bureaucratic centers; it won’t be a suspicious look for me. I would like to have some help for actually getting inside but as much as I trust the crew while we’re abroad, I don’t trust most of them not to snitch in this case. And those I would trust are too smart to agree to this.”

“I might know someone, actually,” I offer. Or rather, maybe Kyra knows someone who knows someone.

“Let’s hope they come through then.” Nym’s train of thought stalls only to let a new one come blasting past it as the terminal dings, presenting new information on its glowing filaments. “Speaking of coming through…”

He swivels in his chair, looking it over and inputting another command to generate a physical printout, the massive brick of exposed machinery nearby sputtering to life and very slowly beginning to burn a replica into the heat-reactive coating on the page. His fingers fidget as the page slowly whirrs itself out, snatching it up as soon as it starts to produce blank space and looking it over.

Several moments pass and he looks up at me, brow somehow furrowing and arched with concern at the same time.

“Well, at least…”

“At least what?” I ask.

“At least we only have to make one stop for both things.”

Nym swallows hard, turning the page around to show me, and all at once, my expression shifts to match his own.

“How fucked are we, Nym?”