To say that the first half of the two-thousand-and-twenty-fourth year of the common era has been difficult for me is merely to say that the skin of a three-day-old corpse feels clammy.
I have made no secret of my financial and medical problems, but now I can confidently state one of these has been rectified.
In the waning nights of April, as the moon-backed shadows lengthened across the horror-choked grounds of my estate, I had to endure conversing with my chamberlain, Mr. Caldwell, as he explained how the buoyancy of my coffers would have kept the Titanic afloat. At least, that's how I imagined him explaining our situation as I resisted his vampiric dronings’ attempt to wither my vital essence. I silenced him when it was clear that the disastrous disappearance of the Children of Aion, a potential client, put me in a perilous situation. After carefully weighing the options and risks, I ask Caldwell to propose a restricted budget.
If you have read my early posts, you may recall my engagement with the enigmatic Kallikantzaros of Belasica, who ply their trade in darkness. These minuscule, sightless craftsmen, blind as Fortune herself, are yet able to forge glass so precisely that even those deprived of sight can read dense, palsied cursive in absolute darkness. These delicate optics offer the promise of navigating the timestreams, if properly arranged, about the Discordia Obscura Glass, formed by the transmutation of the philosopher stone, allowing me to further my research and will surely be of value to some potential benefactor; some organization will undoubtedly serve as an adequate replacement for the Children of Aion.
I devoted my attention to developing a proof of concept to impress the Kallikantzaros and any potential patrons. I left all domestic affairs in my Pagelet's hands while working on this project. I was vaguely aware of their attempts to engage my attention on some trivial details of bookkeeping or correspondence, but I kept my focus on the task. I did notice the constant ticking of Mortocquet’s clockwork gears and made a quickly forgotten mental note to discuss what danger justified such a nuisance.
When I finally succeeded in reconstructing a coherent beam from scattered light, I gave myself a respite. My Pagelet immediately scheduled Caldwell to meet with me. As I endured that bog of banality posing as a well-dressed human cascaded a torrent of obfuscating numbers upon me. I gathered that the situation was dire. I confess I was surprised that the austerity measures I adopted did less to steam my hemorrhaging wealth than anticipated. I was further surprised to find that Caldwell’s departure was immediately followed by an appointment with the Estate’s Mistress of Lusus Naturae.
I waited patiently for her to speak. As she sat in silence, it occurred to me that Echo, my Pagelet, must have summoned her. Suspicion immediately entered my mind as I considered the possible reasons, and I ventured something to the effect, “Your staff is managing the tight budget well.” She replied with a frosty tone, “It’s essential to be adept at managing limited resources.” I ignored the implicit insult regarding my current financial predicament. Her response was not enough to be treated as an admission. Still, it was sufficient to increase my suspicion, as well as to annoy me, so I declared that until the Estate’s coffers were replenished, there would be no movement of any estate artifacts for any purpose. I ignored her protest and continued, stating that I was temporarily lifting the prohibition on the head butler’s diet, permitting him to consume anyone who interacted with any of the artifacts for any reason, then dismissed her.
By the first of May, the urgency of my financial woes became a constant companion, shadowing my every decision. As I have written, I had to dismiss some of my least interesting guests and significantly reduce the expense allowance for each service. These decisions were unpopular among the staff, but their discontent was the least of my worries. I had no time for distractions such as writing, art, or children. I consulted extensively with two trusted advisors, Dr. Hyeon-Jin and Xy'aphathra, trying to identify financially endowed parties to exploit. With some anticipation, we made contact with an inhuman cult worshiping a horror from before the eon of mammals. My application of the Kallikantzaros' lenses to the Discordia Obscura Glass intrigued their foul emissary, and an accord was fashioned.
With a potential client willing to invest an ill-earned fortune in the project, I embarked on a journey to Eastern Europe to bring my prototype and engage the Kallikantzaros in this enterprise. With my chauffeur, Sig. Moretti, at the wheel of my sedan, Nera, I felt safe until driving through a particular town; he noted that we passed the same corner dispensary three times. This put us on high alert, but it was too late. Seeing the desolate state of the street and burnt skeletons of the buildings, we realized that we had been swept over to a proximal timestream. Moretti pulled Nera behind an abandoned building. I checked the prototype’s housing and found that one of the protective revmagis nullifier plates had come loose, causing us to tack against time and sending us into a slightly less depressing reality.
As I repaired the housing, I noticed clear signs of tampering. Someone at the estate had purposefully arranged for a disaster. We were fortunate to have transitioned along a standing continuity. After sounding the timestream, we began our treacherous journey through a war-torn North America, approximately two gigalathes from your referential present.
I won’t bore you with details, but both Loyalist and Restorationist forces took an unfortunate interest in our travel westward. Mortocquet's response during our early encounters with these factions must have significantly altered the calculus of their generals as irregular units and nominally independent militias mostly harassed us after making it through Illinois.
Enzo Moretti, ever the adept navigator driving Nera, with her uncanny animal-like instincts, transported me mostly unscathed to a vortex in Sedona where I might summon help. But our arrival was a stressful time. As I prepared for the summoning ritual, we came under fire from a battalion of Dominionist regulars. Mortocquet and Enzo provided a strong incentive to our assailants to give me space, and I was able to call forth a helpful devil who could be persuaded to be helpful. I sent the little abomination on its way with a password and message to my Pagelet. Eventually, the cuplavore returned with Echo’s coded response that my trusted nunciature, Eidolon, would find us near Flagstaff to guide us back to our referential timestream.
I reattached the hellion's tale, and I considered the warning hinted in Echo’s missive. They suspected someone was reaching across time-space to manipulate the warring faction into hunting me. A prize to turn the tide of the war. We prepared Nera for off-road travel and headed north through the desert.
We were able to cover the fifty or so kilometers in less than three hours and found Eidolon in the next two. With her experience traveling the great, unseen universe, we made our journey back to this reality. What would have been an impossible task of transversing several trillion kilometers of heteroclite discontinuity was only a few months of hard travel through cascading contingent singularities under her guidance.
We finally entered this referential timestream on the Antalya Plains only a week after we departed from the estate. Relieved to be back on schedule, we made our way northwest to my destination. Deep within the Belasica Mountains, the Kallikantzaros toiled in their hidden forges, planning solstice mischief against the sunlit world.
Knowing that working with my new partners would be treacherous, I had prepared as best I could. I relied on my solicitor, Screwtape Esq., to ensure that the agreement I entered into was sound. To my chagrin, they would not concede to allow any of my agents’ prying eyes to watch over me. It was suspicious that they knew of many of my secret surveillance methods, and as such, I had to settle for my agents to keep as close an eye on the region as possible without breaching the contract.
By early June, deep in the Belasica Mountains, I found myself immersed in the world of these master lens makers. The princeling who sponsored me proved to be a shrewd fellow. He encouraged me to organize the work of his clan while subtly plotting my downfall through channels he thought I did not know of. His curiosity about my secrets for transmuting the Philosopher's Stone was insatiable, and he desired those secrets to remain hidden within the mountain's depths.
One peculiarity of dealing with these folk. In their natural state they are miniscule, smaller than ants. To harass the human world, they applied the principles put forth in H. M. Wogglebug, T. E.’s scholarly works on size augmentation and heteroclimaka research to their magnificent lenses. They used them to hugely magnify themselves to approximately human size. This technique allowed several to help me with my macroscale work while many hundreds chiseled and shaped lenses, and a few tried to remain unnoticed while watching me, undoubtedly hoping for a glimpse of my notes or methods.
During the next few weeks, I toiled to find an arrangement of their amazing lenses that would allow me to harness the full potential of The Glass. It became painfully apparent that no mere combination of physical accidents nor transubstantal adjustment would be sufficient. I needed to manipulate deeper reality. I needed to include the transmogrification of the essence of the construct. Only through a lost primal actor could such a thing be accomplished.
After long research and divination, I identified a method to unlock the potential of my creation. I took advantage of the political machinations of the aristocracy of these little fiends to slowly draw forth their secrets so as to deduce the essence of the lenses and calculate the dyssynchronicity of the system. From that analysis, I realized that a celestial cow, not worshiped since the time of the Aurignacian peoples, was the key to the transessentialization of the system.
By late June, arrangements were made for a meeting between the Kallikantzaros King and a prophet of that unnamed god. During this meeting, I was able to engage the King's brother in a plot to usurp his sibling. I indicated that I would need to be secreted out of the mountains to find a particular cave of the Ithdza people, a people among the Aurignacian whose name can only be properly expressed by placing the right palm against the underside of the jaw and sliding it forward with the phonetic component.
I digress.
It was a dangerous gambit and certainly unpopular with my sponsor. Yet, I struck a deal and ventured out of the mountains, miniaturized, via a passage known only to a select few, shared with me by my conspirator. The short journey was hard with my reduced height, and time dragged on as a consequence of my dangerously accelerated miniature metabolism. I found Eidolon waiting for me and traveled in her pocket to a small crevice in a location that I will not disclose.
Much of what I did shall have to remain obscure, but I secured the skull of the celestial cow, long deceased. My miniature size and the corresponding temporal contraction enhanced the challenges of my journey. But at last I was able to transport the relatively massive skull back to the crevice I entered through.
In the endless night that formed that skull, I extracted the primordial sigils needed to align the gradient of the revmagis with the lens system and alter its essence. I trusted Eidolon to secret away the skull and journeyed back to the Kallikantzaros.
Upon my return to those eternally dark tunnels, I found my associates in a state of civil war. My co-conspirator had been executed, and his allies revolted lest they suffer the same fate. I made my way to the workshop I had used, only to be captured by my old sponsor and his loyal guard. I was still miniaturized and only slightly larger than my host, and unable to offer much resistance.
The princeling hoped to turn me over to the King to secure his position. I gambled on the uncertainty of the conflict's outcome and suggested that such a gesture on his part would be ill-advised if the king fell. I coaxed his curiosity until finally revealing I had gained the secret knowledge to make our instrument work.
The princeling allowed my spies access to the tunnels. While I worked on the setting for The Glass and my sponsor oversaw the creation of the required lenses, Xy'aphathra arranged a second visit from followers of that unwholesome deity. We finally had the instrument working. My sponsor secured an audience with the king and his war council. We demonstrated the instrument by placing a rotted mushroom into the chamber and reversing its decay. The king's tasters gorged on it and declared it good. He agreed that when the prophet would return, we would be able to secure funding that would allow him to end the conflict.
It is now mid-July, and I have returned to the Blytmoast Estate with one of the two Discordia Obscura Glasses in a proper setting. The other resides in the Belasica Mountains with my sponsor. I have deposited enough items of value in the Estate's treasury to secure our finances for the foreseeable future.
As I sit here, reflecting on these tumultuous months, I had a moment of anticipation of having the liberty to research whatever captures my interest or write as ideas come to me, only to be cacophonously reminded of the nuisance of raving children, uninvited interlopers, and menacing intrigue. I shall secure moments for my sanity even as the fallout from these events demands my vigilance and life continues to pour surprises down upon me.
And so, dear reader, I invite you to journey with me further into the dark recesses of both mind and matter, where the veil of reality thins and the unknown beckons with its cold, inescapable grasp.
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