Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“I’m a Callistan,” I said. “I can be anything you want me to be.”

“I know,” she said. “One doesn’t come to a strip joint like this expecting anything else.”

I added: “Just say what you want, and as long as it’s about the same size, I will pour myself into that shape, that color, that form. You’re a paying customer, and I’m your blank canvas.”

“I want you to be yourself,” she said, firmly.”

“W-what?”

“I want you to be yourself. Whatever a Callistan is like when they’re not pretending to be someone else. Explore me like that, and then we’ll see.”

“S-see what?”

“Whether you can truly show me anything new.”

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“This is a list of potential candidates,” Richenda said. She drew close, her body a pale lithe nightmare in the stark light, beautiful and terrible. “Powerful mages, sorcerers, and wizards all. They have all suffered tragedies, and only they have the necessary power to create what I desire.”

The Weaper took the list, scrawled in a delicate and flowing hand. “Why not do it yourself? I don’t need to tell you how powerful you are. A soul transfer should be simple as winking.”

Richenda tossed her head, with a fan of stringy midnight hair splaying across the light. “If it were a mind transfer, or awakening a dead body, or even summoning an Abyssal, it would be,” she said. “But to transfer a soul? That requires not only power, but a deep and abiding love.“

“Hmph,” said the Weaper. “Surely there is someone you feel that for.”

Richenda whirled, a dangerous look in her eye. “Perhaps there was,” she said, sadly. “Perhaps there is,” she added, with a playful note. “Perhaps there will be,” she finished, playing her hand across the Weaper’s chest. “But…”

“But?”

Richenda took hold of the assassin’s belt, hanging crosswise and filled with throwing knives, and lifted. Blood ran from her hand, but she only laughed her stale cannibal breath as the Weaper pitched and moaned, strangled by the belt that held them aloft.

“But I do not care to sacrifice such a person, whether they be past, present or future!” She bellowed. “I have sacrificed enough, wouldn’t you say?”

“Y-yes,” choked the Weaper. “N-no…”

Richenda flung her assassin across the room with a strength that belied her thinness, her paleness. “It doesn’t matter what you say or what you think,” she continued. “I will enter the mistress’s sanctum, and I will have what is inside, if I must devour the Quitch herself to do it! And you will carry out my instructions without another question, or I will do it myself after I have had my fill of you, is that clear?”

The Weaper sat up, choking. “Crystal.”

“Good,” said Richenda. “It needn’t be anything fancy. A human body with a human mind and a nonhuman soul. The crystal I’ve given you will tell you for sure. And when you find them, make sure that they are the sole survivor.”

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But yeah, I spent most of my classes with Jyrus until last year. He wasn’t a Grand Scholar, but he knew his stuff in arcane studies. And arcane studies just happened to be my major! Funny how that works out. Jyrus was this tall, attractive young cleric, crazy hot, but with a gentle heart and healing hands that I totes saw firsthand. A life spent by the sickbeds had marked him with perpetually shadowed, smouldering eyes. Jyrus was such a socially awkward cutie with us, and when he tried to be frienly with me, it always came off as unintentional flirting. Much to his chagrin, poor guy got red as a tomato. But a lot of fun.

Before the…incident…anyway.

Oh, you wanna know about the incident? You sure your tummy is fortified enough? It’s totally not for the squeamish.

So to, like, tell you about the incident, you need to know first about the Ordeal. All students and teachers must eventually undergo the Ordeal order to become Grand Scholars. Queen Nevra doesn’t want a bunch of Grand Scholars resting on their laurels either, so she had a room of nightmares created to test her finest and brightest. We call it the Dark Room, and it deffo earns the name. It’s a mystery that no one’s been able to unravel in, like centuries. And that’s not for lack of trying either, kiddos.

So! Let’s say you wish to become a Grand Scholar, a prized jewel in the crown of the queen. Easy peasy lemon breezy! All you gotta do is survive an hour within the Dark Room. Nobody knows what is in this room, but like hundreds have been killed inside of it. How do I know? Well, for one thing, we students get to see their mangled, fear-petrified corpses get fetched and delivered to Richenda as fodder for her necromancy afterwards. It’s a swell time.

So one time, we tricked Jyrus into going in there. We were bored, so one night me and the girls decided to throw this socially hopeless but smokin’ hot fellow a bone, and invited him to drink with us. He was a bashful and oddly charming diversion from our usual shenanigans. The night took a nasty turn, though, when the Ordeal was brought up.

By Missy of course, before she was a marmoset. And dead. “Why don’t you try it Professor?” she said. “How can we respect you if you always act like a coward?”

Jyrus laughed it off at first. “I just wish to continue teaching at the academy. I have no desire of proving myself by going through the Ordeal. I have nothing to prove.” Pretty sure he didn’t drink too often, and everything we said kinda struck him as charming and funny when he was buzzed. Plus, we were always fixated on the Dark Room. Cuz when a teacher, beloved or not, got their butt taken by the Ordeal, it would mean canceled classes for weeks until Nevra could find a sub.

But then the girls came up with an idea while I was out on the balcony. Had to make room, you know? So when I came back, the girls were kindly offering to escort Jyrus back to his room, since the castle was rather dark at night and he was clearly soused off his butt. He walked arm in arm with the girls on either side. I followed along, feeling kinda silly, plus I was totally just-this-side of drunk myself. Two sheets to the wind, I guess.

Anyway, it was far too late for me to be able to do anything by the time I started realizing the direction we were being led. All I remember is Jyrus suddenly going totally pale and his eyes becoming just these big round discs as the door to the Dark Room was shut on him. I made the mistake of looking. The other girls knew to look away but she I tardy to the proverbial party. I hadn’t been in on the “joke.” So I saw what was inside the Dark Room. I totally had the chilling privilege of watching the room devour my professor.

What did I see? Hell if I know. I could’ve sworn she saw a disembodied head floating in the doorway behind him. Was it my own head that was smiling at me? What was it? Why did-

No, I’m not thinking about that anymore. Nope.

The whole castle was woken by the manic screams and pounding at the door. Jyrus was rescued from the room by Harper the Annihilator, who just came sweeping down the hallway as fast as a storm wind. He burst open the door and retrieved Jyrus’s convulsing body. He survived, somehow, but his life is a haunting imitation of what it once was. Ever since, Jyrus is too frightened to look me, or any of the students, in the eye. He’s haunted by ghosts that we students could never comprehend.

Yeah, so I know all about the Dark Room and, for now, I totally avoid it. It feels like a far-off monster that lurks beyond the horizon, but in the furthest corners of my heart I know that my academic career at the Mercura Academy will eventually lead me to the Dark Room. The room awaits everyone that sets foot in the Academy. But the thing that keeps me up at night isn’t the fate of poor hot Jyrus. No, it’s the things that I think I saw inside the Dark Room. I have no interest in trifling with it again. The Dark Room isn’t for me. Nevra’s love and favor aren’t the things I’m after.

No, beauty eternal and everlasting, the kind that leaves men and women breathless, flushed and longing, is my dearest dream. I totally bide my time quietly within the castle walls, surrounded by backstabbers and walking ghosts. It will all be mine one day; the wealth, the youth, the power of the Witch Queen.

I can wait out all of them.

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Um, who am I? You’ve never heard of Lissa Bidethory, the total star pupil of Mercura Academy? Well, then, I’m glad you asked! I’m totes down to give you the deets.

I’ve been here about five years! Five of my best years, the flower of my youth. When the other girls were out there working it to get on the husband gravy train, I was nose-deep in books and classes. But that’s okay! It’s all part of my plan. Like, in a thousand years, they’ll be tomb dust and I’ll be slamming back ouzo with my peeps like not a day’s gone by. That’s the total power of arcane mastery. It’s why I do what I do.

Mercura Academy’s got all sorts of cool profs. There’s Harper the Annihilator, who’s deffo teaching me how to soothsay. But the only thing I can really see coming in his lectures is that he looooves the sound of his own voice, kay? Richenda the Undying has a lot to teach me, but she’s also got a lot to learn. Like, the entire class knows she has a cadaver under the lectern for a snack. She’s not fooling anybody. But that stuff about life force and eternal enduring? Now that’s what I’m down for. I even get to be in the practicum that Nevra the Witch Queen holds. This one time, I saw Missy McBride call her ‘Quitch’ to her face. Yeah, they carried her out as a dead marmoset after that one.

But yeah, I know all of the Grand Scholars of Mercura Academy on, like a personal level. My teachers and peeps are always giving me shoutouts in the halls. Once I was in the library, and Queen Nevra totally came up behind me. “The sight of young Lissa pouring over my clerical books while tugging thoughtfully on her hair never ceases to bring an affectionate smile to my face,” she said. I was high on that vibe for like a week. But it’s not just fun and games, you know? I know some of the most powerful people in Mercura. Like, I have totally made it my business to stay informed. You may think I’m just a bubblehead with nothing behind this big old smile, but this mind is like a steel trap, my friend. I can tell you all about the side-eye the Quitch has been getting from her Grand Scholars lately, what brand of polish Lectra uses on her armor, and where all the bodies are buried.

Just kidding about that last one. We don’t bury bodies, they usually get cremated. Or devoured, because Richenda will totes snarf them up if she gets there first.

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They arise where neighborhoods have been destroyed. People driven away, sometimes. Often buildings brought down, flaming, atop their inhabitants. Anywhere a conglomeration of people have lived out the hundred tiny dramas of daily life, and then that place has been extinguished.

The crucible of psychic energy must be strong enough to coalesce into a gestalt, of course. It must be particularly strong to give rise to any sort of intelligence. But whether it be a brutish creature of pure instinct or a being capable of speech and reason, the slum golem will build itself a body from the rubble of its dead city.

Stone or iron, adobe or wood, even ashes and earth–perhaps all intermingled. It will then set out, animated by what was lost, looking for purpose or perhaps simply a target for its rage. If they are strong of intellect and body, slum golems may seek to right the wrongs of their creation, or serve in a variety of noble purposes. If not, they will become wanton raiders, destroying what they cannot understand–vengeful howls made substance in the world.

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Lectra walked up to the cage, her long blond hair trailing behind her. “I had thought, sir goblin, to use you in experiments,” she said in her lilting singsongy voice. “But this is, I think, a much better use of your maturity and talent for meditation.”

“What…have you done to me?”

“Why, saved you from the Swamp of Wastes, of course. A goblin hermit there is no use to anyone. But with the new form I’ve blessed you with, you may be a useful bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard?”

“There are worse things than goblins in the wastes, especially as I’ve been using them for my studies,” Lectra laughed. “If the resurrection of the dead were easy, everyone would be doing it.”

“But…but why a tiefling?”

“Were you expecting an aasimar? With the magicks I am commanding, some demonic taint is to be expected. But they are resilient and useful, as I hope you will be. Now, let’s get those memories suppressed…!”

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Gash Nosebrass looked at the pieces of flesh before him, as delicately pointed as they were savagely maimed. Elf ears, so soft and supple that they could only have come from a noble of some means. The orc warchieftain jabbed a finger at them. “Tell me of this, girl. How came you by these trophies?”

“In battle, of course!” laughed Thundra. “I told him that if he surrendered all of his valuables, that he would not be harmed. He declined my generous offer, so I took them anyway. He gave me an earful about it.”

“Well-put!” Gash laughed. “What do you say, boys, do we allow this slave-girl to keep her trophies and join in our revelry?”

There was a resounding round of cheers from the orcs and half-orcs in the tent, to which Gash raised his own stein in approval. “Who am I to argue with such a crowd?” he said. “Tell me, girl, you look familiar. Did I perhaps kill your father?”

“You might be my father for all I know,” said Thundra. “But I know for sure that you’re screwing my sister Stormy.”

More raucous laughter from Gash’s fighters, and the warchieftain himself displayed a wan yet dangerous smile. “Ah yes,” he said. “One of the fairest slaves we’ve taken on in some time. Hopefully she’ll bear me some handsome sons for the troop, eh?

“I’ve always found her to be unbearable myself,” said Thundra.

“Tell me something else, Stormy’s Sister,” continued Gash, still with that dangerous half-smile. “My boys tell me that elf was wearing heavy armor. How did you kill him?”

“With this, of course,” Thundra said. She took the great axe out of the oiled rucksack in which it had been lying and displayed it to the warchieftain. “I call her Samaxetha.”

Only about half of the assembled band got the joke, but those who did chortled at it mightily. “And where,” said Gash softly,”did you acquire Samaxetha? Slave recruits are sent into battle with spears, no? Less to lose if you’re killed.”

“I stole it from one of these louts,” said Thundra proudly, encompassing the whole party with a sweep of her hand. “I forget which one.”

“Then, aren’t you tempted to use it on me, your enslaver?” said Gash. “Surely the thought must have crossed your mind.”

“My plan is to bide my time, work my way up within your ranks, until I’m strong and untouchable. I’ll work so that I never have wobbly knees from going hungry, the way I was before. When I’m that strong and useful to you, I won’t need to kill you to get my freedom. You’ll give it to me yourself.”

“Oh, will I?” said Gash.

“Because you know that eing strong and having large amounts of gold is the answer to living a good life, just like me,” finished Thundra proudly.

“Ha! Very well then.” Gash broke into a more genuine smile now, apparently satisfied. “Boys, whoever owned that axe before, it now belongs to Sister-of-Stormy here. Go on then, slave-girl, have merry and revel in your victory. Take those ears and wear them proudly around your neck. And when the revels wind down tonight, Mugh,” the warchieftain gestured at one of the men beside him at the head of the feast, “see that Sister-of-Stormy finds her way to my tent. She lacks the supple fairness of her sibling, surely, but she has piqued my interest and will do for the night.”

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“You’re the strongest and toughest out of all of us,” said Thundra. “A strong slave can work their way up in the ranks to eventually become a soldier if they find ways to prove themselves. But you’re just sitting around harvesting potatoes or carrying loads on your back.”

Thundra’s elder sister approached her with a growl. “Let me make this perfectly clear, sister,” said she. “I. DO. NOT. WORK. WILLINGLY. FOR. SLAVEDRIVERS!”

Lightning always shouted; she had since Thundra was in swaddling wrap. But that outburst was something new; a deep nerve had been touched upon. Zeffir and Stormy had made themselves as small as they could in the hut, pressing themselves against the thin canvas walls, so as not to be caught up in their sister’s wrath.

Wiping Lightning’s foamy spittle from her face, Thundra set her heels firmly on the ground and looked her sister in her burning eyes. “Fine,” she said. “You do as you want, sister. But you know what? This lot isn’t as terrible as you think. You know what I like about Gash’s horde? There’s no hypocrisy here.”

“HA!” said Lightning. “Tell me where you see that, Thundra. From where I’m standing, with a forced load on my back and potatoes in my hands I’m surrendering to folks that didn’t grow them, it looks like an insecure orc forcing others to do the dirty work to keep him in comfort.”

“Gash has worked for what he has. So have all of his fighters,” said Thundra. “If you’re strong, you have the chance to exel. You can make something of yourself swinging a sword–or, I suppose, digging out potatoes as you prefer. And if you’re weak then you find something else to do.”

“All I see is the weak being trampled and cannibalized to help the strong,” Lightning growled. “You’d praise that, along with the lot that will see you in bondage to the end of your days?

“This about what we saw back home. The poor suffered and died so that the rich could live good lives. It’s no different in Gash’s horde, except that the strong can advance themselves here. And if you’re not strong, well…just look at Stormy, who’s small but fair, and who has Gash’s eye? Or Zeffir, who’s quick and sneaky and comes at you from the side when you’re not looking? We’ve all found places here that we never could have had at Mother’s.”

“Someday, I think, you’ll see just how wrong you are about this place, little sister,” said Lightning. “I just hope the rest of us are around to protect you then.”

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