Jeff Mach's Blog, page 46

A Transversal Evocation

This message is an evocation: as of now, the correct timeline is attracted to you.

I do not mean that in an intimate or erotic way, although your relationship with your timeline is, in that regard, a personal matter, as far as I’m concerned. What I mean is, the act of calling up any part of this message, in any form, makes the correct timeline move closer and closer to you, up to, and including, becoming your timeline.

As with most of the magic that I, personally, find most interesting, this is spell is platform-agnostic, which is to say, it does not matter if you see it as a spell, a metaphor, or a story; and, in fact, even if you are opposed to either personal or general use of magic, that’s okay—this spell is programmed to be in a timeline where it appears in a format you can accept, if you choose.

(Besides, there is a word for a spell which affects you directly, possibly in a way you do not desire, and that word is curse. I have no desire to bring about the repercussions of intentionally cursing other people; even if magic isn’t real, it’s both rude and a bad idea to attempt to control someone’s life in a way to which that person has not agreed. Because a sensible person will, quite reasonably, want to smite you for that. And certainly, if you tried to lay a geas upon me in a manner contrary to my will, I would smite you. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the narrator, after all.)

But let me back up.

Quite a lot of people seem to feel that the intensity of reality destruction comes from some fundamental and recent flaw in the Universe. Why do so many people take actions which are visibly contrary to their best interests? Why are news, individual relationships, personal emotional health, and, hell, everything else, basically surreal?

Therefore, we have the concept that our actual timeline is wrong. Wrong, not necessarily in the sense that it’s necessarily incorrect, but in the sense of “We made a series of decisions based on reality, and that reality simply doesn’t exist anymore.” It’s like deciding to bake a cupcake because you note that you have flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and cupcake pans in your kitchen, and then you go switch on your oven to pre-heat it, and when you turn back to your cupboard, you notice that it’s got flour, strychnine, a live octopus, ten pounds of raw flax, and an angry hornet’s nest in it, and there’s dust on some of those things, and they’ve clearly been there for years, and you go to check the Internet just to look up the recipe again, and you see that the recipe now calls for adding a live hornet’s nest to every kind of dessert, and also, obviously, nobody in their right mind cooks or eats dessert ever.

Anyway, I honestly don’t know how the person in that second world (the “live octopus in the pantry” world) is supposed to make sense of things, but I’d like to assume that they’ve got some way that it all makes sense based on their experience. But it doesn’t make sense based on our experience.

So let me fix that for you.

Here’s what happened:

As of right now this minute, the problem is no longer that the Universe is wrong; it’s that our way of understanding has been wrecked by humans, often unintentionally, simply living out the consequences of having vast information surplus and vast ability to alter that information.

In other words, as of this moment, the ability and temptation to change electronic information is actually a fundamental change in reality which alters how we interact with knowledge fundamentally, not actually unlike the invention of the printing press, the steam engine, or the Internet. And while that is, admittedly, a near-nameless primal horror next to which the most unimaginably hideous terrors of myth and fiction become (in comparison) really small potatoes…

…in a broader sense, it’s a massive improvement.

Because it’s difficult to affect the entire Universe. The Universe is vast in a way which might literally be beyond our comprehension. In contrast, the idea that there are benefits to keeping our records intact, to trying to help identify what actually happened rather than trying to present everything in the best possible light retroactively, and that, in general, we might live in a more comprehensible world if we stopped suppressing every truth we don’t like, why, call me mad (you wouldn’t be the first!)—but that don’t sound too bad.

There’s my evocation: temporary sanity. Do with it what you will.

 

 

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A Brief Rant About The Chosen One(s)

If there’s one thing I’m dedicated to opposin’

It’s fantasy heroes who are Chosen

A trope that I wish frozen and done?

That damned idea of The Chosen One!

The idea that someone’s special for being born

Ain’t no good; ain’t nothin’ but corn

Good plotlines go on vacation

When you bring in predestination.

Are we robots? Automatons?

To have our lives inflicted-upon;

To be helpless tools of Fate?

That’s something to which I can NOT relate.

I’d rather the world be claimed by force,

Than have the stars chart our every course.

The only way to keep Chosen Ones honest

Is to your damnedest, your very doggonest

To kill the bastards with great dispatch

And not allow their schemes to hatch.

The Chosen One is Destined to win?

Not in any Universe

That I want to live in.

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The Tiny Dragon

Once there was a tiiiiiiiiiiiiny little Dragon, who was ever-so-excited!

She woke up and streeeeetched all the way, batting at the air around her. The wind made little ripples in her water, and she realized she was thirsty. She went and took a very big drink, and then, the cool water enticed her, and she took a long run and LEAPED right in! Water flew everywhere!

The little Dragon was very happy, and splashed around. She splished over this way, and then she splushed over that way, and she had a marvelous time! She played with some itsy-bitsy fishies, but they were scaredy-cats and swam away. That was okay! She had fun anyway.

Then she decided to have a little snack, because she was feeling peckish. It’s always so lovely to have something in your tummy!

Then she stopped by her doll-house. She was just a little Dragon, so she was a little clumsy, and it was hard to play with all the delicate pieces inside. But that’s okay! Sometimes being a small Dragon means smashing things by accident, and that’s perfectly fine.

Then she had another snack, being careful not to eat the stick. She was hungry. Playing is hard work!

Now, she was already just a bit bigger. And not imperceptibly, like a little Human, who might grow an inch over a few months, if she’s really growing fast, but visibly, because Dragons grow very quickly. Soon, the little Dragon might become a big Dragon and join her family in their Dragon’s Nest. But for now, it was time to frolic!

* * *

Floating high above in the atmosphere, enclosed in the biggest ship the Wizards could enchant, enclose, and lift, the remaining members of the Royal Family watched in silence. The few peasants and townspeople they’d been able to save with them were in tears.

The Nest, an object so vast that it had disrupted the planet’s tides, was on the other side of that unfortunate celestial globe; but the Wizards knew perfectly well that eventually it would swing ’round and find them. When they were devoured, it would be without anything Humans might call malice; Dragons float from star to star, acting as they will, but they do need to consume nutrition, and they crave the spark that lies within sentient beings. We know not why; who has survived to do the research?

The Wizardly shell had taken half a decade of magical research; this was approximately half the time which had passed since they’d first detected the coming of the Dragons, and begun their now-clearly-futile attempts at communication, defense, and, eventually, supplication.

They looked down at the wreckage of the Kingdom: the Knights all consumed; the Sea swallowed and splashed into a puddle, unable to hydrate anyone; the great Castle and its ancient furnishings, now a vast wreck.

Small Dragons are, actually, by Human standards, incredibly, unbelievably, inconceivably cyclopean.

Everything is relative, and most things are edible.

So it goes.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Villainpunk Is

Villainpunk is foiling James Bond through your quick wit, your careful tactics, and your sheer lust for money, power, and candy; but, to be fair, Villainpunk is also James Bond; the man’s a stone-cold killer.

Villainpunk is how many rapacious CHOMPS it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll.

Villainpunk is letting the Heroes escape because they think they’ve got what they were after, when in reality, the whole thing was just a ruse to blind them away from your other, more significant, more meaningful plans.

Villainpunk is the third-best reason to wear a cape; and no, we’re certainly not going to tell you what the other two are.

Villainpunk is knowing exactly the cost of a smile.

Villainpunk is where you go when the Heroes kick you out and you realize they’ve just given you the biggest gift of your life.

Villainpunk is waffles. It just is. Waffles are great.

Villainpunk is why we CAN have nice things. And we might even share, depending on how you ask.

Villainpunk is what you can get away with.

Villainpunk is tunneling through to the Center of the Earth because it’s there, and letting all the hot magma cover civilization because, realistically, civilization just looks prettier that way.

Villainpunk is what you can’t get away with, but what you do anyway, because it’s better than listening to the bland moralizing of hypocritical know-it-alls.

Villainpunk is very, very suspicious.

Villainpunk is the basic Vogonity of your favorite poetry.

Villainpunk is slightly cheaper than the alternative, and has “Okay, NOW You Can Panic” written across its metaphorical cover in large, threatening letters.

Villainpunk is totally wrong, and that’s just one of the things we love about it.

 

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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More Villainpunk Toasts

To friendship, which is the very best kind of ship, unless you’re actually trying to get somewhere via sea or space, in which case, it’s actually helpful to have a large, self-contained vessel with appropriate technologies for making sure you can continue to breathe oxygen rather than water or vacuum, so unless the people you like are made out of that sort of thing, choose your ships wisely.

May your Heroes be as doomed as the rest of us.

May the Road rise up to meet you; and may you burrow under it and end up in your enemy’s treasury.

Here’s to those we’ve loved and lost;

thank the Powers they’re gone,

and damn the cost!

Live long, prosper, and steal the Moon.

Let’s hope our hearts are as full of Love as these glasses are full of poison.

May you arrive in Hell about three days after you’ve actually died, which will give the Devil a chance to freshen the guest suite, lay in a stock of good Scotch, and to alert all of your friends, including that one poor sod who ended up in Heaven by accident.

And now, together, we shall drink to a day where no-one in this great nation shall ever call us ‘The Space Cowboy’ again.

May you learn to understand the secret language of terns just in time to uncover their diabolical plot against all of Humanity, but not in time to stop it.

Let’s all drink to whomever installed these handy trapdoors underneath our floors, permitting us to immediately remove anyone who says ‘whomever’ when they ought to say ‘whoever’.

Here’s to givin’ the Devil his due;

for he’ll sure take from me

what he can’t get from you.

No matter what happens, we will always be together, stuck silently screaming in this infinite snapshot wherein time no longer moves and we are like pictures in a painting, our joyous toasts becoming voiceless cries for help as the seconds tick into years which, themselves, surrender into eternity.

…and we hereby promise that we shall love each other forever, or until we run out of booze, whichever comes first, and by the way, is this the last bottle?

May the hinges of Love slide us smoothly through the gates of Happiness and straight down into the depths of the Spirit, at which point, we will enter the alimentary tract, and the rest of the metaphor basically collapses.

Here’s a toast to all those dear friends who have absented themselves from our lives, thereby leaving way more Scotch for us.

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Why I’m Voting For Azathoth

This is not an easy thought to pen. But in these highly politicized times, I believe you have a right to know where my heart lies. When asked where my heart might lie, I’ve often laughed it off with a flippant, “On the desk, in a sealed canopic jar, along with most of the rest of my organs”. But those of you who are close to me know that this is not true. There’s just not room on my desk for that many jars; not if I want to have space for the Dream-Catcher and the Soul-Eater.

No, to be honest, I keep all of my major organs in a dusty broom-closet, and even I don’t always know their true state. But in the past weeks, I’ve gone through this in some detail, and now I know for sure: if I ever had a heart, it’s been missing for countless ages, since long before the puny species Man first took its foolish, hesitant steps onto what it pitifully believed was a globe otherwise uninhabited by thinking beings, never realizing that his own reign had, in fact, been long predated by Those whose very names could tear down every shred of human sanity.

And in my lack-of-heart, my path is clear and true: It’s Azathoth for me.

Like many of those who were formerly proponents of Dread Cthulhu, I have hesitated about speaking these things aloud. In part, this is because speaking that dread word which signifies primordial Chaos is to amplify that unspeakable voice which howls hungrily in the strangest recesses of the Void, and partly because, to be perfectly honest, I was afraid.

It’s true. I am afraid of being judged by my friends, my peers, even by strangers. I hear it on the daily: “Azothoth stands for the destruction of the world!” It’s all I see in the media, and it’s all I hear, living in the Green Bubble. But it’s simply not true.

Azathoth stands for the utter lunatic deconstruction of all things, their essential devolution from coherent forms into a peculiar and unformed inchoate ur-existence. It’s perfectly obvious; you need merely look at her record, her public statements, and her actions, as well as her original Necronomicon references. (I will not even stoop to discuss the distressing tendency on behalf of the Keepers of the Tome to change the online translations in ways which show clear political bias; they keep claiming that the words themselves self-alter in ways incomprehensible to those of us who are adrift in time and space, which is perfectly true, but nowhere in my original text can I find the phrase “VOTE CTHULHU OR WE WILL DISCONNECT YOUR INTERNET”.)

For ageless ages beyond recall, I have voted Cthulhu. My family has voted Cthulhu. My friends have all been Cthulhu supporters.

But I can no longer, in good conscience, follow them. This is partly because, as per the heart, I pretty definitely don’t have a conscience at all; and partly because I must follow the dictates of my, um, whatever it is I actually do have inside, that stuff. I need to listen to that, and be true to myself.

I realize that these feelings are likely to cost me associate and supporters, and cause rifts between myself and many of those I hold dear. I am truly sorry for the hurts this will cause. But I likewise feel, sincerely, that all these slights will be forgotten when we insignificant beings are, at last, torn into bits, either physically or psychologically or both, by the dominion of the Elder Gods.

And that, I think, is a message we can all get behind.

~Jeff Mach

 

The preceding essay was brought to you by Dark Lords For Azathoth, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the being who wrote, edited, posted, and marketed this document.

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

 

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A Villainly Affair

So I confronted her.. What else could I do?

“It was you!” I shouted.. “You were the Villain the whole time.”

“Yes, but it was just to turn you on,” she replied.

I stopped.. And I just stared at her.

“You did all that…you did all those things…you wreaked all that havoc…just so I would date you? What kind of messed-up, misshapen, twisted—”

“And it worked, you know,” she said.. “You’ve always known.. On some level, you have always known, and you’ve found it attractive.”

“I most certainly have not!” I said.

I could tell, by the look on her face, that I hadn’t convinced her, but that was fair.. I hadn’t convinced myself.. The Villain? The beast? The criminal? The lawbreaker, the unrepentant rogue who’d stood atop the highest building in Cityopolis and shouted defiance at the whole damn stupid smug, self-satisfied city?

That was reprehensible.

That was horrible.

That was so hot.

“So,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “you did it all…for me?”

She nodded gravely.. “I did.

“…at first.”

I must have looked puzzled, because she continued.  “It was all for you…or so I thought.. At first.. And then…it started to get to me.. In all the wrong ways.. The beautifully, beautifully wrong ways…” She gazed out the massive glass window of the penthouse suite, at the ruins of the once-proud municipality, far below.

I cut in, perhaps a bit too quickly.. “So you thought I’d find it…desirable?”

She nodded.. “That was my hope.. At first, at least.. That you would finally notice me! Oh, I couldn’t tell you the truth, couldn’t reveal it, not in front of the others, and perhaps not even if we were alone.. But I thought you’d be able to tell that there was something different about me.”

I nodded.. “You became more confident.. You seemed to be taking some kind of new pleasure in the world around you.. You were still fairly untalkative, but instead of being just a loner, you became…”

“I became someone with inner resources.. Someone who was always thinking two steps ahead.. Foiling the team, foiling my rivals, considering the next heist, covering every track, planting decoys.. Oh, I didn’t do all of it all at once.. I had to learn, and there were some fumbles in the beginning…”

“The bank job,” I filled in.. Now it was her turn to give me the nod.. “That was…unfortunate.. Although it did rid me of a particularly annoying teammate.”

I should have been horrified, but, to be honest, I had never liked Maggie in the first place.

“…but I persisted.. And, as you know, I was not simply a killer.. I might have taken advantages of some of the team’s weaknesses, but I never really betrayed its spirit.. The others were simply weak.”

“And I?” I asked.

“You were strong.. And you were everything I wanted.”

My head was pounding with thoughts; it was an explosion in a fireworks factory.

“And what did you think would happen when I found out?” I demanded.. “Did you think I’d still want you? Did you think you could win me over to your side? Do you think I’d ever agree to become complicit with…with…a criminal?”

“I had hoped,” she said.

Images overwhelmed my thoughts; of masks, of escapades, of piles of gold.. And why not? Why not? What had working the other side of the street ever gotten any of us? Sure, having a traitor in our midst was part of it, but she was right: we had too many egos, we thought too highly of ourselves, we were never going to have been a more cohesive or effective team.

“I’m in,” I said.

She looked at me, and sighed.

“Ah, there’s the rub, and this is a bit awkward.

“Villainy is not a full-time job.. Villainy is a way of life.. I’ve realized that now.. It’s everything I want.. Everything.. I don’t have time for love.. I don’t have time for another.. This is who I am, what I am.. There’s nothing left for anyone else.”

And I stared at her for a moment, and then said,

“What if I broke the current timeline? You know, shattered the things that made sense so that old doors close, new ones open, and we shake the world a bit?”

She put her head to one side.

“Go on,” she said.

I’m sorry about the Large Hadron Collider, really I am. But I had to do it.

I hope you’ll understand, but if you don’t, to be honest, I don’t really care.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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A Tolerant Tale

One day, the author hit a critical mass of “seeing one too many posts on social media advocating the denial of free speech to ‘intolerant’ people, and narrowly avoided a rant on the challenge of defining ‘intolerance’. However, said author was unable to avoid comment altogether, and thus it is that you get this rant about power, instead.

Lucky you.

We finally solved the problem of defining ‘tolerance’. It wasn’t as hard as you might have thought. We just figured out the difference between those who won’t let you talk because they’re bad, and those who won’t let you talk because they’re good. The former are intolerant, and the latter are helpers.
We’d tell you how we solved the problem, but somebody good told us not to. Sorry.
Anyway, that’s really all there is to this story.
I mean, there are the practical parts, like how we muzzled all the intolerant people. And sure, I bet you think that this is some kind of sarcastic thing where the ‘intolerant’ people turned out to be the good ones after all. But nope! The intolerant people really were the bad people.
Trust me.
No, really. That’s not what this story is about. So get over it.
As we were now in a world where our information came from the good people and not from the bad people, we were able to finally have a government that was Good.
I know. That sounds sarcastic. Please have faith.
(The right faith. But that’s another story, isn’t it?)
So the government that was Good started doing Good things.
But then there was a Revolution and intolerant people came to power and they used the rules against us even though we knew it was wrong, because they had the power to compel us, and we had given them the framework to suppress it, never thinking that power would fall into the wrong hands.
This could have been a very unpleasant story, but fortunately, we overthrew the intolerant people. It was a near thing, to be honest. It turns out that being morally correct does not make your weapons any more powerful than those of your enemy.
But we did prevail, and we put a new Good government back in power.
And they were able to stay in power, and even, eventually, stamp out intolerant people.
This gave them a lot of power. Which they used for Good things.
Only, even in a world where you can tell, absolutely and for sure, what’s Good and Bad (and we didn’t actually know that much)—some decisions involve trying to figure out the lesser of two evils.
And, like I said, we didn’t have quite that much knowledge. So we ran into difficulties. Like:
Sometimes, there aren’t any Good choices.
Or the Good choices aren’t practical. For example, “Fire all Government staff in order to have money to feed hungry people” has multiple problems (won’t the ex-staff get hungry? Are you sure it’s better to fire all those people in the name of something that’s definitely desirable in name, but incredibly nebulous in theory?) –
but even if it IS simply the Good Answer, who, exactly, is going to administer the program?
And sure, that’s a silly example, but we’ve seen sillier government and sillier theories, and to be perfectly honest, they often have quite serious and deeply unfunny consequences.
It turns out that the most Tolerant Government, pressed with the realities of day-to-day governance….ain’t that tolerant.
They were the right arbiters of Tolerance until they got good at it and began labelling everyone who disagreed with them “Intolderan”.
Those who disagreed were taken away.
And none could stand against the joys of Tolerance in that enlightened nation.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Three Short Poems

Unplug that particle accelerator, kid.

I could pull the nether worlds out of your left ear

I could teleport your ass from here to Tau Ceti with the toe

of my boot,

ya ether suckin’ punk.

Listen here, kid:

Smoke the last ray of an age dead sun.

Read the entrails of a protozoa.

Catch for me tomorrow morning a dozen instants fresh from the

Void

and then I will show you the alchemy

of movement from one world to the next

the knowledge that counts

the spaces

between science and dream.

* * *

I wake down.

In the chocolate insanity,

the sweet dark neverland,

I own a small but respectable burger joint.

My fare is decadent and greasy:

the fattening french fries of fantasy

the cholesterolic baconburgers of secret desire

the non lite beer of childhood make believe.

This is what I want to be.

An infiltrator pouring weirdness into the water supply.

A gremlin in the gears.

A toymaker, an eternal space cadet:

a purveyor of rhapsody

a whisperer

of wish.

* * *

Words in motion,

skittering knife booted across slippery pages,

lodging in the eye,

tormenting the cornea with a feather

dipped in battery acid

These are the stories of the coming days,

These are the tales no tongue could release.

These are the Books of Awe,

controller of all human lives,

with the exception of those of us

who are going to wait for the movie.

* * *

[Yes, I clearly can’t count to “three” properly.]

Code Of The Shocking Pink Illuminatus

(To Be Read With Closed Eyes)

Never surrender your Transylvanian soul.

They have the money, the power, the logic; theirs are the

guns, the beer, the air conditioning, and the light of day.

But we have the Mad Science.

We draw the blood of destiny. We autograph madness. We

scribble in the margins of the books of Fate.

We are the professionals.

We are the grand meddlers.

We hum thoughtcrime in barbershop quartets; we throw open the

vast doomgate of Things Best Left Unknown; we penetrate the great

telepathic obscenities of salad (if you use Russian Dressing, you

are one of THEM! Be warned: we know where you hide your tuba.)

We are concealed, but we are by no means gone; subtle, but

strong.

Let them control What Is.

We are the caretakers of What Might Be.

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

 

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The Book-Battle

Susan, The Self-Chosen, gave the Keeper of Tomes a hard look. It was the sort of look which says, “Are you messing with me? Because I think you’re messing with me, and that’s just not a path towards longterm happiness.”

Being a self-taught savior is not all it’s cracked up to be. Susan was learning one of the great and terrible lessons of life: working in customer service is one of the surest ways to realize that being crushed under the ruthless boots of a ruthless Dark Lord is way more than most of humanity deserves.

“I said,” repeated the Keeper of Tomes, “that if you want to access the Forbidden Books, you must first defeat me in single combat.”

Susan examined the Keeper of Tomes closely. He was not a very tall man, though he was taller than Susan; that wasn’t hard to do, as Susan was extremely small.

“I. am. a. child,” she said. “Adults aren’t supposed to hit children.”

“And children aren’t supposed to be in the Forbidden Library. Yet here you are.”

Susan sighed. It was a sigh which was meant to emanate from someone about fifty years older. “Look, I had to get past a Dragon to get here. A Dragon. Now I just want to read some stuff, and then I’ll go away. Don’t give me a hard time.”

The Keeper of Tomes shook her head. “You need to learn how to get past me. That’s how it works.”

“Why? Who says? Why does being the Chosen One involve jumping through a series of seemingly-arbitrary hoops?”

The Keeper of Tomes looked down at the child. “Have you always talked like that?”

Susan shrugged expansively. “I spent half a year with a Dragon. And came through unscathed, thank you.”

The Keeper of Tomes looked pointedly at her left foot.

Susan flushed. “Almost unscathed! I made one mistake! You would have been eaten; don’t you criticize me.” And then. “…and that was a lucky guess.”

“I could tell by your walk.”

“There’s nothing wrong with how I walk!”

“I didn’t say it was wrong. I said I could tell.”

“You can’t see that in a walk.”

“No, you can’t. Which is why you won’t defeat me.”

Susan’s voice rose. “I won’t defeat you because you’re twice my age and size! And also because, apparently, despite being surrounded by books and seeing almost no people, in an actual hidden stash of books at the end of a cursed forest, you appear to have wasted part of your life learning how to beat people up.”

The Keeper of Tomes smiled. And no matter how infuriating you might imagine that smile to be, particularly coming from an adult in a position of authority, directed towards a teenage human in a position of asking for assistance, I can assure you: it was worse than that, at least for Susan.

With a very passable yell and not-unreasonable form (Susan watched everything, including the training of troops who were out looking for her; granted, she sometimes watched in unmitigated horror and had nightmares, but such are the trade-offs we make)—the self-proclaimed Chosen One launched herself at the book-hoarder.

As with the smile: no matter how rapidly you imagined Susan’s attack being brushed aside, and Susan immediately flying through the air, let me likewise inform you: this happened much, much faster than one would guess.

The Chosen-ish One flew in much the manner a bird might, if that bird were an ostrich, which is to say, very, very briefly. This part was more pleasant than the bit where she landed, ungraciously, undamaged, but not unbruised, upon her butt. She did not have sufficient knowledge to understand, at that time, that it took both skill and care to insure that the untrained girl wouldn’t, say, land on her head and break her neck; and if she did, she wouldn’t have appreciated it.

From the ground, the little ball of Susanic rage said, “What, in the name of Hells seven through nineteen inclusive, possibly leaving out fifteen because you might enjoy it, what, exactly, was that?”

“That was an adult, treating you like a human, and not like a fragile toy. It’s called ‘respect’.”

“This is stupid!” Susan shouted. She realized she couldn’t get a good head of steam going while supine, and slowly got to her feet, wincing all the while. “Do you think I’m going to get into a fistfight with the Dark Lord?”

“First off,” said the Keeper of Tomes, “You might, at that—and then, what would you do?”

Susan gave a world-class glower, which, considering the level of competition at that age, was no small feat.

“Secondly,” continued the biobliomonger, “I wouldn’t say that I don’t care if you defeat the Dark Lord, but I don’t care much. I care about my library. And before you get righteous on me, bear in mind: the Dark Lord is a reader, and loves our reference section.”

“The Dragon—”

“Half a year, and you don’t call it by its name?”

“No, I don’t,” snapped Susan. “Especially not to strangers. Do I look stupid because I’m small?”

“It has nothing to do with size,” replied the Wardress of Manuscripts.

It would be nice to say that Susan’s second attack fared a half-second better than the first, at least, but that just wouldn’t be true, and I’d hate to break the trust we’ve established by voicing a lie. It was, however, impressive even (however much the feeling was hidden behind uncountable rage) to Susan, the way she ended up in the exact same place, landing on exactly the same bruises. Over Susan’s howls of (rage? Pain? Determination to exact revenge?), the Defender of Scrolls said, calmly, “I don’t think you’re stupid at all. And I’d apologize for giving you little tests; but you don’t seem to enjoy the big test, either.”

“I didn’t come here to learn how to punch things,” Susan spat. “I assumed the Dragon sent me here because this was the next part of my quest.”

“Oh.” The Document-Defender looked abashed. “Oh, it didn’t give you that lesson yet?”

Too tired to respond with much heat, Susan replied. “We spent the first four months just learning how to communicate. The Dragon said I wasn’t worth talking to until I could formulate interesting thoughts.”

“And since that treatment was rude and unkind, you left.”

“No! I stuck around to learn. Because I was going to learn useful things from a Dragon. Listen: the idiot kids of my village did not like me. We got into a lot of fights, and no, I did not win. They were bigger and stronger. Just stupid; but that didn’t help me any.”

“It would,” said the Librarianess placidly, “if you knew what I know.”

“How is this supposed to help me defeat the Dark Lord?”

“Don’t you want to read the forbidden books?”

Susan looked at the Book Guardian as if she were a special kind of nitwit, grown expressly for the purpose of making Susan annoyed.

“Let me tell you what’s going on here,” said the Keeper. “It’s entirely possible that your Draconian friend knows something about this that I do not, but the likeliest explanation is that it wanted to send you wherever it thought might be most helpful. I’ve never lived with a Dragon, but their ideas of ‘most helpful’ have somewhat less regard for survivability than ours might.

“I doubt there’s some convenient series of steps for defeating the Dark Lord—”

“Don’t I need to fulfill the Prophecy?”

The librarian looked sidelong at Susan. “Do you know what it is?”

“…no,” Susan replied.

“Then hopefully not.” The Tome-Keeper resumed: “This is a place of considerable power and knowledge and, I will note, it’s only the forbidden knowledge that requires defeating the guardian. As long as one can survive getting here—I won’t ask what you did with the basilisk, by the way, but congratulations; I’d really hoped that beast would keep things quiet for several more years, and now I’ve got to find something new to put in its place—if you can get here, you can learn quite a lot. And all you need to do is knock me down in a relatively fair fight.”

“Fair?!?” exclaimed Susan.

“In a situation where I’m reasonably ready,” replied the librum-sentinel wearily. “I mean, you can’t just trip me sometime when I’m tired and expect to get away with it. That’s just common sense.”

“Why do I have to go through anything at all? If this is NOT part of some plan, why are you placing arbitrary barriers in my way?”

“It’s not all about you.”

“I’m the Chosen One!”

“First, you want to be the Chosen One. Wanting something doesn’t make it real, kid.”

Susan’s right foot ached, specifically, the place where she had a reminder of several lessons in adulthood from a vast lizard. So rather than an angry retort, she just nodded. “Point taken.”

“But secondly, to me, you’re just a tiny part of the Tale of the Library, of which I am a slightly larger but still a very, very small part. It’s difficult because we’d like to restrict the number of people who can gain access to knowledge. There are a limited number of Golems, agreeable Giants, walking sharks, and other needful beasts to guard this place. All you’ve done for me so far is make my job harder.

“For your reference, we have some, though not total, discretion in the nature of the trial. I need combat practice. You’re here. I’m willing to settle for a takedown. You’re lucky. When the Dark Lord was here, it was a battle of psychic wills. It took three weeks, our physical bodies died and had to be brought back by clever machines, and I was a quivering jelly of madness at the end. You? Like I said, you just gotta knock me down. Take me down once, fair and square—not with a trick alone, but with the kind of insight you need in order to go from a sloppy kid to someone who’s grasped the basics of combat—and the world’s hidden knowledge is yours to read.

“And in the meantime, you’ll find the “open library” has a very reasonable selection of works on, among other things, ‘martial arts’. You’ll want to start with your footwork.”

“…is that a reference to my toes?”

“First, footwork where I would start anyone, but also: yes. Turn your weakness into a strength; learn how.”

“And what’s second?”

“I’ll show you later.”

The Tome-Keeper shrugged. Then she indicated the forbidden books, slightly behind her and darkly misted with peculiar air molecules. “And this awaits you.”

Susan looked at the books, then at the librum-hoarder. She sighed.

“What do I need to do?”

“Fight me.”

The Chosen One (in potentia) assumed something closer to fighting stance. She looked the Tome-Keeper in the eye, then looked at her waist, instead. (she had read at least one book), and adopted what was (if you were quite inexperienced) a passable fighting stance.

She launched herself the Book-Guardian, throwing a knee into the other’s chest.

The librarian sidestepped the knee, not leaving too much room, staying in close and tight, turned sideways, put her leg behind Susan’s leg, and just let her arm sweep down on Susan’s collarbone, at a moderate pace. Minimal bruising at best.

Susan hit the dirt.

“We’ll have to teach you to fall,” the Tome-Keeper said.

Susan gritted her teeth, and got up.

“How do you expect me to defeat you?” Without waiting for an answer, she put her head down and bulled straight towards her insistent opponent, who had the kindness to turn the attack with her forward hand and bring an elbow down on the thoracic vertebra, which was quite painful for the young girl, but meant that the charge ended in a collapsed heap, rather than a headlong crash into yonder wall. .

“Easy,” said the librarian, as the Chosen One (hypothetical) lay on the ground, catching her breath.

“Do I just keep coming at you, day after day?”

“That’s recommended. I also suggest reading some of the very fine books we have on the subject.”

“….and even if all I have to do is knock you down, you’re going to sprawl me on my butt—”

“—or worse.”

“—or worse, dozens…hundreds of times.”

“That’s right.”

Susan looked at her.

“So I become slowly, slowly better at fighting you, at the cost of knowing that every day will be at least one more fight, several more bruises, and humiliating defeat?”

“Correct.”

Susan thought back to her time with the Dragon. She thought farther back, to her time at the butter-churn and the household chores.

“So this isn’t just a test of combat. It’s a test of persistence.”

“It tests combat, persistence, courage, ability to take pain, ability to learn, persistence, martial spirit, persistence, and, if I have not mentioned, it is an intense and helpful learning process, so long as you are willing to ‘eat bitter’—to work hard, to hurt every day, and to keep going.”

“Is this some kind of metaphor?”

“No,” said the Librarian, taking, for the first time, a real fighting position, front leg bent and out, left leg firm.

“Metaphors exist to describe what you’re doing now. This is an actuality. You fail, you fail harder, you fail faster, and you keep failing, getting better, until you succeed.”

“And if I quit?”

“Then you leave, completely free, with the knowledge that you weren’t what you think you are, and aren’t what you hope to be.”

Susan put up her hands. “How many tries do I get in a day?”

The Tome-Keeper put up her own hands. “You have until I need to do chores, or until you bore me.”

This time, Susan threw an almost-reputable straight punch. Again, the Esoteric Bibliographer sidestepped, this time putting her forearms against Susan’s lead arm, and this time, she struck Susan very lightly in the floating rib, the back of the knee, and (much less gently) the femoral artery. Susan staggered.

Susan turned. They looked at each other.

“Want to leave?” asked the Guardian?

“Hell. No.” said Susan.

“Very well. I’d be much obliged if you head over to the “Mythical Beasts” sector of our library. We’ve got a monster to replace, and that’ll take research.

Limping, Susan trudged towards the section on Myths. She had a dozen bruises, and she’d barely gotten started.

She smiled a small, feral smile.

This wasn’t going to be easy. But she could tell, even now, that it was going to be good.

 

~Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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