Saralas: The Feywild Chapter 15

Planning

We were standing the library, Resda having just emphatically pronounced us in dire danger, when Baerwin stepped out from behind one of the bookshelves, dripping onto the floor. She looked up from the book in her hands to the warrior, who I realized had been missing for some time. “Where have you been, Spy?” she said coldly. “Spying spy things?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Baerwin looked confused. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

Resda seemed angry. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t eat anything. There are a bunch of children trapped in toy bodies.”

“There are a bunch of doors with weird locks, too,” Korag said.

Baerwin looked at our small companions. “Why are Clapperclaw and Bun still here?”

“They never left. They have stake in this too,” I said. “In the meantime, we found the vault holding the Ledger of True Names. I think the Loom is beyond here, but we have not found everything.”

“And there are doors, hard to open.”

Resda spoke up again, earnestly. “We’re fucked, guys.”

I looked at her. “You’re convinced that everything we’re doing is known?”

“Yes, I think so. The walls can spy on us. I think they can probably talk to us, persuade us, and so on.”

“Not much to do about it,” I said philosophically. “We still need to get these doors open. Should we search the factory?”

“Clapperclaw seems to think we should,” she said. “But it’s dangerous.”

“It’s possible to sneak through there, I think,” Korag said thoughtfully. “But I don’t think it’ll be easy.”

I thought about our first trip through the factory. “Well, the guardian is probably our biggest concern.”

“Maybe it just wants to give us hugs,” Korag joked.

“Bad hugs,” said Resda.

“Otherwise we could try to break things down, or pick the locks,” I said.

“We tried, that,” Kaira said, “and I got electrocuted.”

I nodded. “I understand. Probably a bad idea.” I paused for a few moments. “Or we could, hear me out, meet with the Hag.”

“What would we do then?” Korag grumbled.

“You have a hammer.”

“Yeah, but I’d rather not fight the children if we can avoid it, and if we attack her they might come for us.”

“How would we meet with her? What would we do?” Resda asked. “Pretend we’re buyers? I don’t think we have enough money.”

“You haven’t skinned anything lately?” I asked.

“Nothing of enough value.”

“I like sneaking into the factory more than going to Nightshade,” Korag said.

I nodded. “I think you’re probably right.”

Resda still seemed hesitant. “We should make a plan,” she said. “Or at least hide.”

“As a last resort I can probably get us out of here,” Korag offered.

“But out of the Feywild entirely, right?”

“Yes, it’s a last resort.”

“I’m still lost,” Baerwin said. We took a couple minutes to catch him up on what had happened since he snuck off to report to his superiors.

Resda looked at Clapperclaw. “Is there a place we should start?”

“There’s a machine that puts the music into musical toys,” he said. “Maybe we should start with that.”

“I suppose it won’t hurt,” Korag said.

“Oh, it’s all going to hurt, Korag,” I said sarcastically.

He chuckled briefly, though the joke wasn’t funny. “I should probably hang back. My armor, you see.”

“I am willing to go,” I said. “Kaira, would you join us?”

She nodded. “Yes, I will join.”

“I’m coming too,” Baerwin said.

Searching the Factory

We made our way cautiously into the workshop, which was as depressing and horrifying as before. The room was still far larger than it had any right to be: desk after desk, children laboring to make toys.

We followed Clapperclaw towards an area cleared of desks, dominated by a towering contraption like a pipe organ fused with a toymaker’s bench. At the base of the machine was a conveyor belt holding half-finished machines: toys, birds, instruments, and more. The belt moved one by one, and each time a toy slid into position at the contraption a puff of steam hissed, and one or more of the brass tubes sang a note.

A massive flywheel with inlaid gemstones spun lazily on one side of the machine, powering rows of little clockwork arms that worked in unison. One arm wound the toys, another put little reeds into them, and a third stamped the insignia of Nightshade’s factory into them.

I watched for a short while, then studied the machine and its controls. I realized that the levers and pedals scattered across the base of the machine, though worn, had legible labels. I noticed similar glyphs in the brass pipes coming out of the machine, and tried to match the drawings on the levers and pipes with the glyphs I wrote down from the vault door. Some of the glyphs correspond to bundles of pipes, and some to single pipes, and the glyphs on the levers match those we saw on the vault door.

“Kaira,” I whispered, “I think I can match all these glyphs to the vault door, but if we try the levers it could be risky….”

“I’m worried too,” she said. “Can we take the toys that match these glyphs instead?”

I hadn’t thought of that; Kaira was clever. “Maybe so.”

We studied the music boxes and how they were programmed. After a while we were able to identify the right toys, and I carefully gathered up a bundle matching the runes from my notes. All the toys had keys in them, wound by the machines along the way.

“Kaira, do you think we need more keys?”

“No, I think we have enough.”

Kaira and I made our way quietly back to the hallway outside of the vault door where the others waited for us. Karthos was standing there, soaked. Tiny mushrooms sprouted from the puddle and run into cracks in the wall.

Opening the Vault of Names

“You guys came back fairly quicky,” Resda said. “Did you find anything?”

“Kaira and I found an organ of sorts that seems to have contained the primer we needed. There were pipes, and levers, and the symbols on them matched my notes.” I held up the small bundle of toys I carried. “But instead of sounding things then and there we gathered up these toys that seemed to match.”

Based on the runes on the vault door, I wound up and activated the toys in sequence. The runes on the vault door which matched the toys also lit up for as long as the toys played, but several others still did not light up. We were still missing something.

“For some of the runes you had to sing,” Karthos said. “Maybe you have to sing along with the toys.”

“Thats a good point, Karthos.” I began singing while the others wound up the toys, which provide an eerie accompaniment to the tune. More runes lit up as I did. But the scents of the air in the factory and hallways still burned, and I coughed midway, disrupting the sequence.

“Resda, you have quite a sweet voice,” I said. “If I coached you on the notes could you maybe sing?”

She tried, but her voice cracked on one of the high notes. The vault door stood resolutely closed.

I tried again, thinking of the times I sang lullabies to my daughter, but again without success. “It was always good enough for Elodie,” I said sadly.

Resda composed herself, and sang again. It was a thing of beauty. Clapperclaw was moved to tears as the Sorceress moved forward, slender fingers brushing dust off the door. Her voice, soft at first, found strength, a clear melody, and each note she sangs was picked out on the vault’s runes. The toys began their strange accompaniment around her, birds, soldiers, drums, flutes and more. It sounded less like music and more like a spell made audible.

As the final note left her lips the toys fell silent, gears clicking into stillness. The vault doors clicked, and slowly, impossibly, unsealed and swung open.

Karthos walked up and stuck his face into the vault, while Baerwin gathered up the toys into his bag of holding. Helpful maybe, but a potential liability if he disappeared again.

I was looking at Resda with the admiration I could feel again. “Resda, that was…” I paused to collect myself. “That was moving.”

“She might be the greatest singer in all the planes,” Skant added, somehow clapping.

Karthos was still at the vault door. As it creaked open, cool perfumed air creeped out. The chamber beyond seemed elegant. There were shelves on the walls, holding all kinds of books and folios, and a great desk in the center, holding a massive leather-bound ledger.

“Something seems off,” Karthos said after a time.

“Let me see,” Baerwin said, stepping forward. “The air feels thick, strange. The air flows out of the vault, but then back in. And the floor flexes. Not like wood, but like something alive.” He squinted. “That lantern blinked. I think it’s a mimic! The entire vault is breathing.”

Clapperclaw was standing behind Korag, using him as a shield. “The children were repeatedly told stories of a monster in a vault.”

As we discussed what to do next, Bun floated lazily into the vault. “Bun, can you come back?” Kaira pleaded, but he didn’t respond. He started pulling open drawers, tossing papers, like he was looking for something. He became more frantic, searching for something he seemed unable to find.

“Bun what are you looking for?” Karthos asked. Bun squeaked something back but we couldnt understand. Karthos watched him throw open more drawers. “He’s not looking for the book.”

“But we are,” I pointed out.

A closer look showed that the book was chained to the table. And we were wary of stepping inside this dangerous room.

“Resda, do you think you can float in there?” Baerwin asked.

“Isn’t our goal to destroy it?” I said, thinking we could probably smash it from where we stood.

“I hoped we could just hold it, until we got farther along. To avoid alerting Nightshade,” Korag explained.

“Good point Korag.”

We kept talking, wondering and worrying what to do next, about how Nightshade worked with this, how quickly we needed to move, how to avoid being trapped. All the time we talked Bun kept rummaging through cubbies.

Baerwin threw an unlit torch into the room, which clattered to the floor. “Seems alright,” he said, and stepped into the vault, moving towards the book. “Chain’s strong,” he muttered. “It’ll take time to break, and the table’s too big to fit through the door.”

“Maybe I can do something,” Karthos said, and tried to cast Reduce on the table. But as he began casting the spell there was a huge exhalation, and Bun, Baerwin, and all the crap Bun pulled out of the drawers flew out of the room.

I heard a voice in my mind. “YOU SEEK BOOK. I AM VAULT.”

“We are OP!” Karthos called back, but there was no reply.

“Kaira how heavy are you?” Baerwin asked.

“So rude!” I said. “You don’t just ask a woman that question!”

Baerwin bent to pick up a now squirming and protesting Kaira, and tossed her into the room, where she landed with a thud. “What the fuck!” Kaira shouted, picking herself up. She walked quickly back out of the room, and jumped up at him trying to hit him over the head, though he towered over her.

“Kaira, are you OK?” I asked quietly, going over to her.

“Yes, I’m OK. It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to toss me.”

“That was so rude. I’m so sorry.” I shook my head and clapped her on the shoulder.

Resda stepped forward. “How do you feel, being the vault?” She asked. “Do you like your job? Are you treated well?”

“TERRIBLE.” said the voice.

“Would you like to be freed?”

“IMPOSSIBLE.”

“We aim to make it possible. We would like to free everybody from her terrible rule.”

“IMPOSSIBLE! TOO POWERFUL!”

“But I am Resda, the most powerful sorceress of all!”

“TRUE…”

“So if there is any hope, me and my compatriots would be those to do it.”

“CHAINS. NOT IRON. NOT ROPE. MAGIC. BURN MY BONES. I HOLD WHAT I AM TOLD. I CANNOT GIVE. UNLESS SHE SAYS.”

“You cannot give… but would you allow us to take?” There was no response.

“Burning sounds painful…” Resda continued.

“YES.”

“Is there a way to change your direction?”

“IMPOSSIBLE. ONLY SHE CONTROLS.”

“How?”

“MAGIC!”

Clearly the chains the vault spoke of were not literal chains but magical ones enslaving it to Nightshade’s will.

Karthos closed his eyes, trying to sense the nature of the vault. “It’s definitely bound to Nightshade’s orders, but I can’t see how to move the book out of it.”

“What if we banish it?” Resda asked.

“And takes the book with it?” he replied.

“What if we destroy the book from here?” I suggested again.

“That sets off a chain of events I want to delay,” Korag said.

“We might be able to dispel this,” Baerwin said. “But I don’t know how powerful the spell would need to be.” He paused. “And it might alert Nightshade.”

“OK,” Korag said, “do we want to do this now, or come back later?”

I was feeling impatient and didn’t want to keep retracing our steps. “I’m in favor of action, myself.”

Karthos noded in agreement. He raised his hands, and words left his lips like thunder underwater. Glowing carvings screamed in Nightshade’s voice, high, childlike, mocking and furious. Locks burst open with the sound of splintering bones. A wind blew through the room, and left behind when it passed was the mimic, free. Chains broken. It spit out the book, and headed out the door down the hallway towards the factory.

Karthos stooped to pick up the book, which was covered in slime. He stuffed it into Baerwin’s bag of holding, and stood back up, looking around wildly, wide-eyed. “Where did you all go?” he suddenly shouted.

“Karthos, what are you doing?” Resda asked, confused.

“Where did you guys go?” Karthos said again. “Are you still here?”

“We’re right here, man,” I said.

“I can’t see any of you!”

“This could be to our advantage, if it’s real and not just you…”

“Clapperclaw, can you see us?” Korag asked the scarecrow.

“Yes… idiot.”

“Wait, did we just unleash a hungry mimic on a bunch of children?” Baerwin said.

Resda looked suddenly alarmed. “Shit.”

“Should we go after it?” Korag asked. Karthos started wandering off, and Korag grabbed him by the arm to restrain him.

From the hallway, we could see door to the flower room had been bashed open, and we could hear yelling from that direction. We made our way through the flowers, following the path of the mimic.

“I assume the shadow thing will take care of the mimic,” Karthos said.

Korag frowned, still moving. “I’d rather be sure.”

“Wait,” Karthos protested, stopping. “Surely the shadow thing would deal with it.” We reluctantly abandoned pursuit, and made our way back to the library and the doors we had yet to open.

Back in the Library

“You know Saralas,” Skant said as Resda explored the titles on the shelves again. “A dead child is a tragedy. But a dozen is just statistics.”

“You… piece of shit!” I spat angrily.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Karthos asked Bun, who shook his head no.

I walked over to Baerwin. “Let me see that book.” I took the Ledger of True Names from his pack and inspected it, opening it to confirm we actually had what we were looking for. It was filled with names written in a flowing script. There were hundreds of pages filled with names, thousands and thousands all told.

“I think this is what we were looking for,” I said, handing it back to Baerwin to hold.

“But what does it mean?” he asked.

“Nightshade takes the Children’s names and writes it in the book, stripping them from their memory.”

Resda was still looking at the books on the shelves. “I am particularly interested in the politics books…” she said quietly to herself. She started pulling books off the shelf, handing them to Baerwin, who dutifully stored them in his sack. While she did so I studiously avoided looking at the door to the yard and the children in their cages beyond.

“If we destroy the book does it return their names? Or does it destroy them?” Baerwin asked.

“I think maybe if we destroy it they might give their names back.” Karthos said.

“But they still wouldn’t be free.”

“We should carry it with us, I think,” said Korag, “until we find the Attic or Loom at least.”

Resda finished pulling books of the shelf, brushing imaginary dust from her three hands. “OK! Into the belly of Hell we go!”

“Clapperclaw, even though I cant see you which way is the Loom?” Karthos asked the air.

“Down,” the scarecrow said. “The other door in the room, not the one to the yard, leads to the kitchen.”

“Maybe we could get into the kitchen and poison the food.” Korag said. At the incredulous looks of the others he added “I’m very results-oriented.”

“This is not the first time he’s suggested poisoning people,” I pointed out.

Opening the Door to the Loom

We headed down stairs to the door of brass filigree. They towered before us, filigree catching dim light in cruel patterns. Tiny faces peered from the edges, mouths open. A faint dissonant hum hung in the air, and I sensed touching or forcing the doors might awaken something.

I studied the door and the runes, cross referencing them with my notes. I knew them, but the layout on the door was orderly rather than a melody. It had the notes, but they were arranged more like a piano rather than a sequence we could follow. “We would need to know the tune itself, not just the notes,” I said after a while.

I closed my eyes and realized I could hear a faint tune in the air, coming from the door. But the notes sounded wrong, like they were coming back up from a well they had fallen into. “Backwards…” I breathed.

Karthos was listening too. “Would it be as simple as playing the notes we hear, but backwards?”

I tried to imaging the reverse of the note I hear, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. The song, such as it was, looped endlessly with no clear beginning or ending.

“There’s a sort of melody here,” I said after listening for a while. “But I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“I don’t see any way to re-arrange this…” Karthos said.

I concentrated carefully on the melody again, and behind it could hear a whispering, also backwards, with words of a rhyme, endlessly. I listened closely. “Stay will it, or tune the sing, Obey hearts but small are hands. Day of break ’til toil and work, Play shadows where place your dream. Begun just have night of chains, One little my, eyes your close.”

“The words are backwards too,” I whispered. I wrote them down in my journal, and then rearranged them into to the words of another awful lullaby.

Close your eyes my little one
Chains of night have just begun
Dream your place where shadows play
Work and toil ’til break of day
Hands are small but hearts obey
Sing the tune or it will stay

I listened further, and eventually I teased out the notes and the rhyme together in my head. I believed I could perform it. With a nod from Karthos I sang, and as the last note hung in the air the carved faces seemed to sigh in relief. The silver runes flared before vanishing, and a hum ran along the seams of the door, as if the door was relaxing after holding its breath. It swung open on silent hinges, revealing a yawning expanse beyond.

A vast, suffocating chamber stretched beyond. We smelled the acrid scent of scorched fabric. Rows of massive looms rose before us like skeletal giants. At workstations dozens of small hunched, childlike figures worked, forming grotesque tapestries on the massive looms. Partially finished dolls hung over the scene.

Something unseen seemed to watch from the shadows, and the room vibrated with the pounding of the loom. It felt like any careless movement might trigger the wrath of the monstrous machine.

Raw Notes

• “Where have you been, Spy?” Resda accuses. “Spying spy things?”
• “I don’t know what’s going on,” he says.
• “Don’t touch anything. Don’t eat anything. There are a bunch of children trapped in toy bodies.” Resda seems angry.
• “There are a bunch of doors with weird locks, too,” says Korag.
• “Why are Clapperclaw and Bun still here?” he asks.
• “We found the vault holding the Book of Names,” I say, “and the Loom is beyond, but we have not found everything.”
• “And there are doors, hard to open.”
• Resda speaks again, earnestly. “We’re fucked, guys”, she says.
• “You’re convinced that everything we’re doing is known?” I ask.
• “Yeah, I think so. The walls can spy on us. I think they can probably talk to us, persuade us, and so on.”
• “Not much to do about it,” I say, philosophically. “We still need to get these doors open. Should we search the factory?”
• “Clapperclaw seems to think we should,” she says. “But it’s dangerous.”
• “It’s possible to sneak through there, I think,” says Korag, thoughtfully. “But I don’t think it’ll be easy.”
• “Well, the Guardian,” I say, thinking, “is probably our biggest concern.”
• “Maybe it just wants to give us hugs,” Korag says.
• “Bad hugs,” says Resda.
• “Otherwise we could try to break things down, or pick the locks,” I say.
• “We tried, that,” Kaira says, “and I got electrocuted.”
• “I understand,” I say. “Or we could, hear me out, meet with the Hag.”
• Korag seems unhappy, “what would we do then?”
• “You have a hammer,” I say, with meaning.
• “Yeah, but I’d rather not fight the children if we can avoid it, and if we attack her they might come for us.”
• “How would we meet with her? What would we do?” Resda asks. “Pretend we’re buyers? I don’t think we have enough money.”
• “You haven’t skinned anything lately?” I ask.
• “Nothing of enough value.”
• “I like sneaking into the factory more than going to Nightshade,” says Korag.
• “I think you’re probably right,” I say.
• “We should make a plan,” says Resda. “Or at least hide.”
• “As a last resort I can probably get us out of here,” Korag says.
• “But out of the Feywild entirely, right?”
• “Yes, it’s a last resort.”
• We catch Baerwin up on what has happened since he snuck off to report to his superiors.
• “Is there a place we should start?” Resda asks Clapperclaw.
• “There’s a machine that puts the music into musical toys,” he says. “Maybe we should start with that.”
• “I suppose it won’t hurt,” says Korag.
• I look at him. “Oh, it’s all going to hurt, Korag.”
• “I should probably hang back,” Korag says. “My armor, you see.”
• “I am willing to go,” I say. “Kaira, would you join us?”
• “Yes, I will join,” she nods.
• “I’m coming too,” Baerwin says.
• We cautiously make our way into the workshop, which is as depressing and horrifying as before. The room is still far larger than it has any right to be, desk after desk, children laboring to make toys.
• We follow Clapperclaw towarsd an area, cleared of desks, dominated by a towering contraption like a pipe organ fused with a toymaker’s bench. At the base of the machine, a conveyor belt sits, with half-finished machines. Toys, birds. Each time a toy slides into position, a puff of steam hisses, and one or more of the brass tubes sings a note.
• I realize that levers and pedals, scattered across the base of the machine, have labels, legible, that match the symbols that we’ve found before. A massive flywheel with inlaid gemstones spins lazily on one side of the machine, powering rows of little clockwork arms that work in unison. One winds toys, another puts little reeds into toys, and a third puts insignia in toys.
• I also notice glyphs in the brass pipes coming out of the machine.
• I try to match the tones from the levers with the glyphs I wrote down from the vault door. Some of the glyphs correspond to bundles of pipes, and some to single pipes.
• The glyphs on the levers do match those we saw on the vault door.
• “Kaira,” I say, “I think I can match all these glyphs to the vault door, but if we try the levers it could be risky….”
• “I’m worried too,” she says. “Can we take the toys that match these glyphs instead?”
• “Maybe so,” I say slowly.
• We study the music boxes, and how they are programmed, and identify the right toys. I carefully gather up a bundle of toys that match the runes from my notes.
• The toys all have keys in them, they are wound by the machines along the way.
• “Kaira, do you think we need more keys?” I ask.
• “No, I think we have enough.”
• Kaira and I make our way back to the hallway outside of the vault door. Karthos is standing there, soaked. Tiny mushrooms sprout from the puddle and run into cracks in the wall.
• “You guys came back fairly quicky,” Resday says. “Did you find anything?”
• “Kaira and I found an organ of sorts,” I say, “that seems to have contained the primer. There were pipes and the symbols matched my notes. But instead of sounding things then and there we gathered toys that seemed to match.” I gesture at the toys.
• Based on the runes on the vault door, I wind up and activate the doors in that sequence.
• For the runes the toys represent the runes light up for as long as the toys play, but they do not all light up.
• “For some of the runes you had to sing,” Karthos says, “maybe you have to sing along with the toys.”
• “Thats a good point, Karthos,” I say.
• I attempt to play the toys and sing the missing notes together. I begin singing, and the runes light up, while the others wind up the toys, which provide an eerie accompaniment to the tune, But I cough midway, disrupting the sequence.
• “Resda, you have quite a sweet voice,” I say. “If I coached you on the notes could you maybe sing?”
• She tries, but her voice cracks on one of the high notes.
• I try again, thinking of my daughter, but again without success. “It was always good enough for Elodie,” I say, sadly.
• Resda composes herself, and tries again. It’s a thing of beauty, and Clapperclaw is moved to tears at the Sorceress moves forward, slender fingers brushing dust of the door. Her voice, soft at first, find strength, a clear melody, and each note she sings is picked out on the vault’s runes. The toys begin their strange accompaniment around her, birds, soldiers, and more drums, flutes and more. It sounds less like music and more like a spell, made audible.
• As the final note leaves her lips the toys fall silent, gears clicking into stillness. The vault doors click, and slowly, impossibly, unseals and swing opens.
• Karthos sticks his face into the vault.
• Baerwin gathers up the toys into this sack.
• “Resda, that was…” I collect myself. “That was moving.”
• “She might be the greatest singer in all the planes,” Skant says, clapping.
• As the vault door creaked open, cool perfumed air creeped out. The chamber beyond seems elegant. Shelves on the walls, and a great desk in the center, holding a massive leather-bound ledger.
• “Something seems off,” Karthos says.
• “Let me see,” Baerwin says, stepping forward. “The air feels thick, strange,” he says. “The air flows out of the vault, but then back in. And the floor flexes. Not like wood, but like something alive.” He squints. “That lantern blinked. I think it’s a mimic!”
• The entire vault is breathing.
• “The children were repeatedly told stories of a monster in a vault,” Clapperclaw says, standing behind Korag.
• We discuss what to do next, and Bun floats lazily into the space.
• “Bun, can you come back?” Kaira pleads. He doesn’t respond, and starts pulling open drawers, like he’s looking for something. He’s becoming more frantic, searching for something he seems unable to find.
• “Bun what are you looking for?” Karthos asks. Bun squeaks something back but we don’t understand.
• “He’s not looking for the book,” Karthos says.
• “But we are,” I point out.
• A closer look shows that the book is chained to the table.
• “Resda, do you think you can float in there?” Baerwin asks.
• “Isn’t our goal to destroy it?” I say.
• “I hoped we could just hold it, until we got farther along. To avoid alerting Nightshade,” Korag explains.
• “Good point Korag.”
• A discussion ensues of what to do next. Worry about how Nightshade works with this, how quickly maybe we need to move. Bun is still rummaging through cubbies.
• Baerwin throws an unlit torch into the room. It clatters to the floor. He steps into the vault and moves towards the book.
• The chain is quite strong, and removing it will take tools and time. And the table is too big to get through the door.
• Karthos tries to cast Reduce on the table. As he begins casting the spell there is a huge exhalation, and Bun, Baerwin, and all the crap Bun pulled out of the drawers fly out of the room.
• I hear a voice in my mind. “YOU SEEK BOOK. I AM VAULT.”
• Karthos says “We are OP!” but there is no reply.
• “Kaira how heavy are you?” Baerwin asks.
• “So rude!” I say, with feeling. “You don’t just ask a woman that question!”
• Baerwin bends to pick up Kaira, making to toss her into the room. She resists, but she picks her up and tosses her into the room, where she lands with a thud.
• “What the fuck!” Kaira shouts, picking herself up and walking back out of the room. She jumps up at him trying to hit him over the head, though he towers over her.
• “Kaira, are you OK?” I ask quietly, going over to her.
• “Yes, I’m OK,” she claims. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone has tried to toss me.”
• “That was so rude. I’m so sorry.” I shake my head and clap her on the shoulder.
• “How do you feel, being the vault?” Resda asks, stepping forward addressing the vault. “Do you like your job? Are you treated well?”
• “Terrible.”
• “Would you like to be freed?”
• “Impossible.”
• “We aim to make it possible. We would like to free everybody from her terrible rule.”
• “Impossible! Too powerful!”
• “But I am Resda, the most powerful sorceress of all!”
• “True…”
• “So if there is any hope, me and my compatriots would be those to do it.”
• “Chains. Not iron. Not rope. Magic. Burning in my bones. I hold what I am told. I cannot give. Unless she says.”
• “You cannot give… but would you allow us to take?”
• Silence.
• “Burning sounds painful…” says Resda.
• “Yes…”
• “Is there a way to change your direction?”
• “Impossible. Only she controls.”
• “How?”
• “Magic!”
• The chains it speaks of are not literally the chains we see on the book, but magical chains enslaving it to Nightshade’s will.
• Karthos closes his eyes, trying to sense the nature of the vault. “It’s definitely bound to Nightshade’s orders, but I can’t see how to move the book out of it.”
• “What if we banish it?” Resda asks.
• “And takes the book with it?” says Karthos.
• “What if we destroy the book from here?” I ask.
• “That sets off a chain of events I want to delay,” says Korag.
• “We might be able to dispel this,” Baerwin says. “But I don’t know how powerful the spell would need to be.” He pauses. “And it might alert Nightshade.”
• “OK,” Korag says, “do we want to do this now, or come back later?”
• “I’m in favor of action, myself.” I say.
• Karthos nods in agreement, and casts a spell.
• He raises his hands, and the words leave his lips like thunder underwater. Glowing carvings scream in Nightshade’s voice, high, childlike, mocking and furious. Locks burst open with the sound of splintering bones.
• A wind blows through, and left behind is the mimic. Free. Chains broken. It spits out the book, and heads out the door down the hallway. Karthos stoops to pick up the book, which is covered in slime. He stuffs it into Baerwin’s bag of holding.
• “Where did you all go?” Karthos suddenly shouts, looking around wildly.
• “Karthos, what are you doing?” Resda asks.
• “Where did you guys go?” Karthos asks, wildly. “Are you still here?”
• “We’re right here, man,” I say.
• “I can’t see any of you!”
• “This could be to our advantage, if it’s real and not just you…”
• “Clapperclaw, can you see us?” Korag asks.
• “Yes… idiot” the scarecrow says.
• “Wait, did we just unleash a hungry mimic on a bunch of children?” Baerwin asks.
• “Shit,” Resda says.
• “Should we go after it?” asks Korag.
• Karthos starts wandering off. Korag grabs him by the arm to restrain him.
• From the hallway, the door to the flower room has been bashed open. We hear yelling from that way.
• We make our way through the flowers, following the path of the mimic.
• “I assume the shadow thing will take care of the mimic,” Karthos says.
• “I’d rather be sure,” says Korag.
• “Wait, surely the shadow thing would deal with it.” Says Karthos.
• “You know Saralas,” Skant says. “A dead child is a tragedy. But a dozen is just statistics.”
• “You… piece of shit!” I say, with feeling.
• “Did you find what you were lokoing for?” Karthos asks Bun.
• He shakes his head no.
• I inspect the book, and open it to confirm that it is in fact filled with names written in a flowing scripts. There are hundreds of pages filled with names.
• “I think this is what we were looking for,” I say, handing it back to Baerwin to hold.
• “But what does it mean?”
• “Nightshade takes the Children’s names and writes it in the book, stripping them from their memory.”
• Resda is looking at the books in the Library again. “I am particularly interested in the politics books…” she says quietly, to herself.
• She starts pulling books off the shelf, handing them to Baerwin, who dutifully stores them in his sack.
• While she does so I studiously do not notice the door to the yard and the children in their cages.
• “If we destroy the book does it return their names? Or does it destroy them?”
• “I think maybe if we destroy it they might give their names back.” Karthos says.
• “But they still wouldn’t be free,” notes Baerwin.
• “We should carry this with us, I think,” says Korag, “until we find the Attic or Loom at least.”
• “OK! Into the belly of Hell we go!” says Resda, with feeling.
• “Clapperclaw, even though I cant see you which way is the Loom?” Karthos asks the air.
• “Down,” the scarecrow says. “The door in the room, not the one to the yard, leads to the kitchen.”
• “Maybe we could get into the kitchen and poison the food.” Says Korag. At the incredulous looks of the others he adds “I’m very results-oriented.”
• “This is not the first time he’s suggested poisoning people,” I point out.
• We head down stairs to the door of brass filigree.
• The door towers before us, filigree catching dim light in cruel patterns. Tiny feaces peer from the edges, mouths open. A faint dissonant hum hangs in the air, and I sense touching or forcing the doors might awaken something.
• I study the door, and the runes, and my notes. I know them, but the layout on the door is orderly for the notes, but like a piano rather than a sequence. “We would need to know the tune itself, not just the notes,” I say.
• “Would it be as simple as playing the notes we hear, but backwards?” He asks.
• I try to imaging the reverse of the note I hear, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. It seems like something of a melody, but it is very difficult.
• “There’s a sort of melody here,” I say after listening a while. “But I wouldn’t know where to start.”
• “I don’t see any way to re-arrange this…” Karthos says.
• I concentrate carefully on the melody, and hear a whispering, also backwards, with words of a rhyme, endlessly. I listen closely.
• “Stay will it, or tune the sing, Obey hearts but small are hands. Day of break ’til toil and work, Play shadows where place your dream. Begun just have night of chains, One little my, eyes your close.”
  • Close your eyes my little one
  • Chains of night have just begun
  • Dream your place where shadows play
  • Work and toil ’til break of day
  • Hands are small but hearts obey
  • Sing the tune or it will stay
• I tease out the notes and the rhyme together in my head. I believe I can perform it.
• I sing, and as the last note hangs in the door the carved faces seem to sigh in relief. The silver runes flare before vanishing, and a hum runs along the seams of the door, as if the door is relaxing after holding its breath. It swings open on silent hinges, revealing a yawning expanse beyond.
• A vast, suffocating chamber stretches beyond. We smell an acrid scent of scorched fabric. Rows of massive looms rise like skeletal giants. At workstations dozens of small hunched, childlike figures work, forming grotesque tapestries.
• Partially finished dolls hang over the scene.
• Something unseen seems to watch from the shadows, and the room vibrates with the pounding of the loom. Any careless movement might trigger the wrath of the monstrous machine.