An Indifference of Larks: A GliTch Quest

CW: Implied Suicidal Ideation

[X] JRPGs 🎭

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"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality," Claire intones, a strange admixture of gravitas and mirth in her voice. "Even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Eschaton House," she gestures grandly - or as grandly as she can while holding a casserole in both hands - towards The House, "not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within."

She spins around, her attempt at making her voice be dark or spooky largely ruined by the laughter bubbling in her throat. "It had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Eschaton House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

You just sigh.

If you ever find Claire's 10th grade English teacher, you will destroy them for introducing her to Shirley Jackson, because - regardless of how apt the comparison or how brilliant Shirley's prose - Claire does this every time you two come to The House.

Look, you're not going to dispute that Eschaton House is haunted. It is extremely haunted. Like, to a comically absurd degree. You're not much of an exorcist, but Sagadé is; and she can't shift the assorted spiritual noise that clings to the House like thick fog. Every room, every floorboard, every inch is just drowning in echoes and memories and the general psychic detritus of centuries that simply hasn't abated for whatever reason. Also, a dozen actual ghosts - the legitimate lost-soul kind, hiding from the eyes of Heaven and their divinely-ordained place in Hell.

Nor will you contest that The House is alive. Quite apart from the fact that everything is alive if you get technical about it; their spirits awake and aware and deeply opinionated, in the Border Mythic behind the elaborate lie that is physics and matter -

The House is very, very much alive, even in the Prosaic world. There is a profound malevolence in the creak of every step, in the shaking of the shutters and the oppressive weight of the silence that shrouds every hallway.

Beneath and behind the world? In the Border Mythic, if you peer past the elaborate web of lies Senacherib and Surolam and the Earth herself have propped up to keep humans safe from the searing gaze of Heaven and the truth of reality?

The House unsettles you. You can see it, there, if you unfocus your eyes even just a fraction, let your gaze slip just barely into the truth of things: how it snakes and twines around the wooden bones of its frame, all slate-scales and slick grey flesh. How that decorative line of bricks, that elaborate mullion, that gargoyle on the roof all resolve into a single cohesive form; how what you had thought was part of the building, of the gardens, a slice of sky, two rabbits and some kind of ferret - all of that … was not. Was all part of a single thing, an oozing, amoeboid being lurking just out of sight. Waiting. Hiding. Slowly blinking its glowing window eyes as it lurks, camouflaged by the veil of physics and Prosaic nonsense, for the right moment to strike.

You … you don't entirely know what it is, which in some ways is the most unsettling part. It reminds you of a Divine Imperator, or an Actual, or an Ogdoad; or mayhaps some strange and formless thing from Ninuan's distant shores.

Pelengard Sunnis, you might call it, perhaps, were it of Ninuan, and you feeling whimsical.:

"Soundless, Formless, Nameless I:
a strong-built hall to hold the hilltop heights;
I will not blink, nor look from thee:
I am undefeatable, and cruel."

- but it is none of these things. Not a writhing god, not a bone-puppet, not a spirit monarch; and not a creature of those Far and Sunless Lands beyond the world.

Is it an ally to the Rider-folk of Ninuan? Is it an agent of the Law-beasts or their slave-gods? Is it one of the loom-bones on which this rotten reality is woven, poking through a slub in the weave?

Answers elude you. It just is. A singular, uncategorizable horror; a brooding darkness that perches atop its lonely hill, disdainful for the flash and glitter of the city around, and waits. Never speaking, never moving, always watchful, ever-hating.



So yes, Eschaton House is alive, and malevolent, and haunted. All of these things are true.

There is, however, no need to quote the opening lines of The Haunting of Hill House every damn time you show up to the place.

The House lurks on its lonely hill, and a dozen other cars have parked in the little circular drive thing before the baroque wrought iron gates - many of the cultists arrive early: you're given to understand that there are few opportunities for them to meet and mingle and socialize, given the breakneck pace of mortal life; and the fact that, though the magical girls have largely pivoted to harassing you and your fellow Strategists in the past few months, there have been skirmishes whenever the cult meets in large numbers anywhere easier to find than The House.


You don't see the Coopers' car, though.


Sallarchos lives here at Eschaton House, Sagadé is always late, and you just showed up; so Reccilda is the only one unaccounted for, which is unusual.

Ms. Cooper insists on being early, and Reccilda is, notionally, the 'leader' of your little chapter of the Chancery. She's certainly the only one really, truly motivated to do things like organize potlucks and meetups. The rest of you are just pulled along in her wake because -


Well -



Part of it is, well, reflex; a memory from your time in the War. You provided logistical support - you and Sallarchos both, actually; it's where you met, and how you eventually ended up staying as a Guest of Eschaton House, before moving in with Claire -

Anyway, you were one of the Riders in charge of keeping Reccilda's armies supplied during her most successful campaign. And while the success of that campaign - the decades that her troops marauded around the upper branches of the Ash, slaughtering Nobles, shattering estates, sending angels fleeing for the safety of the Brightest Realm, severing entire branches of worlds from the World-Tree and casting them into the flames of the Weirding Wall - while the success of that campaign was, you will admit, largely due to Reccilda's dread and terrible charisma, and the sheer crushing weight of her Eide …

You do like to think that maybe having you, Eilind Salmydessa, greatest alchemist there is or that has ever been, brewing miracles and distilling blasphemies for her army might have helped just a little.


So yes, you do think that part of the reason that you and Sallarchos and Sagadé just … tend to do what Reccilda says is you're used to doing it.

And part of it is that she shines like the moon when she puts her mind to it. That, when she has cause to do so, she is possessed of a charismatic presence so beguiling, of an Eide so powerful, that people cannot help but do as she asks; ensnared and enthralled by the gravity of her presented image.

But, well - yes, you do keep showing up to these meetings and potlucks and hang-outs that Reccilda schedules because she's charismatic and compelling and a natural leader that you all have spent quite a bit of time deferring to before; but also -

And maybe more importantly -

Because even if you are all washed-up failures of various descriptions, adrift and unmoored in a world you hate and that hates you -

You do get lonely.

You get lonely, and Claire is a nice girl but she doesn't really understand; and Kaisia understands some of it but is sharp and cutting and cruel; and Lagavi is -

Lagavi is Lagavi.

And the point is …

Sallarchos is an insufferable asshole, but he is also one of the very few people who really, truly gets it. Sagadé is a trial to be around, but she has experienced the same things you have, or something close enough. You find Reccilda to be childish and self-important and terribly annoying at times, but she also works very hard to -

To bring you all together. To make that time and that space. To not let you all suffer alone.

You are refugees all, hiding out in a realm which you have committed unconscionable war crimes against. You are beset at all times by enemy gods and by a fatal, incurable entanglement with the rotting filth of this be-damned Ash. The mortals you spend every day interacting with - no matter how tenuously - do not and cannot fathom the things you have seen, the things you've done, the things you've suffered.

But the Chancery can. Reccilda's little branch of the Riders' Abstinence Society. A group of ex-world-killers who have quit cold turkey and need someone, anyone, to lean on; lest they slide back into just breaking things because they can.



And, well, there are worse foundations for friendships than that.



…where were you?


Oh, right.


"Claire, do you see Ms. Cooper's car anywhere?"

Claire stands on her tip-toes, neck craning, a hand shading her eyes - performatively, mind: the sun's already set - while she braces her casserole in the crook of her arm.

"Oh! That's them turning onto the drive now, I think."

You wait as Ms. Cooper's diminutive blue motorcarriage wends its way from the gates to the … parking … circle thing. It seems the polite thing to do? Rather than go inside.

The car parks. One door opens. Two.

A third, which is the second sign that something has gone wrong.

Ms. Maria Rizalina Cooper steps out of the driver's door. Tall, lanky, somewhere between twenty and thirty - you cannot judge ages to save your life - she reminds you of nothing so much as the cross between a scarecrow and a ceramic doll. She looks harried - maybe just from a bad day at work, futilely attempting to educate the screaming, screeching children of this fair city; but you rather doubt it. Fouler forces are at work here than mere children.

Reccilda Isang Tanry Cooper slumps out of the back seat, clearly exhausted. She looks more or less like she's had as bad a day as you have - streaks of grime and grease and a few scrapes along the dusky skin of her arms; and her jeans been stained with some awful grungy substance, as if she has been forced to crawl around in something unpleasant. She is also openly carrying her sword( bow) , which her mother will not allow her to do without good reason.


And then A Hero steps out from the passenger seat, and all your fears are confirmed. Spiky hair, impractical number of belts, that empty-headed smile -

Claire groans. "Seriously? Is there some sort of horrible void solstice going on today that you didn't mention, Ei?"

You're not entirely certain how to answer that. 'Time' is an inherently difficult idea to apply to Ninuan; the idea of 'today' in a continuum without a sun is somewhat laughable; 'solstices' are, definitionally, literally in the name, sun-related (though Ninuan does have equinoxes, when the moonlit and starlit portions of a night are the same length); and -

Claire sighs. "Rhetorical question, Ei." She waves, insofar as one can wave while holding a casserole. "Recca! Maria!"

Reccilda lets out a long noise of protest, which trails off into a sigh as she just flops bodily against Claire, presumably as some sort of greeting. "Mmrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghlbehhh. Hi Claire." She twitches an arm in your general direction, and adds, "hi Eiline."

You nod to Ms. Cooper. "Hero trouble?"

She nods back, shoots a venomous glance at the spiky-haired menace - it is saying something; it's just, you're all used to tuning it out by now. Paying attention to it just encourages it to keep talking - and says, "bastard showed up while I was in a staff meeting; and by the time I'd gotten out, Reccilda's homeroom teacher had let him drag her off."

Reccilda, who has evidently decided that she is going to be using Claire as a pillow for the immediate future, chimes in: "did you know that there's an abandoned molasses processing plant by the river? Full of giant rats and insects? And that some concerned citizen is willing to pay adventurers to clear it out?"

Claire winces. You just nod.

"It's okay though!" Reccilda's voice is dripping with sarcasm and false cheer: bright as sunlight, sharp like glass. "Look at this sweet loot we got!"

She rummages in a pocket and pulls out a red hair ribbon.

You're given to understand that, in the games that have poisoned Reccilda's being, such a ribbon might have magical powers or confer some sort of blessing or enhanced ability; but - that's not how this works, no.

It's just a ribbon. A scrap of tatty cloth. No magic, no miracles. Just a worn cotton ribbon in faded, dusty red.

Reccilda smiles that exhausted, bitter smile, and tosses the worthless trinket aside. "Let's get going. I'm hungry."




It hurts, sometimes, to see Reccilda like this.


It's one thing - it's one thing for you to have fallen. For you to be a failure. For you to have broken against the stalwart resistance of the world; to have shattered under the weight of Creation.

It's one thing for Sallarchos to have not been able to carry on. Even Sagadé, for all her radiance - you can accept that the world has forced her to diminish, to linger on as this smoldering ember of what she once was.


But it hurts, it hurts to see Reccilda reduced to this. It is a lance of agony, buried in your heart, every time you see what the world has done to her.



She shone like the moon. She shone with the light of the Fisher's Star cresting the eastern horizon. Fire on her cloak, the dust of far realms on her heels; burning with the silvered radiance of the first gods …

You saw in her, in those days when she was among the foremost generals and war-leaders of the Host; in this child - she was very young, in the days before the world's making; and broke through comparatively recently as well. She will always be a child to you -

You saw someone who had inherited the mantle of the great luminaries of the time before the world.

Someone who carried … not the same light, no; but the same kind of light and glory and destiny as Azbogah, as Narinsha, as N'mosnikttiel.

That assurance, that she knew what she was doing; that she knew who she was, and what she was fighting for. That faith she had, in herself, in you, in the righteousness of your cause. That conviction, that she would finally make things right. Her kind words; her gentle smile; her calm and clarion voice when the time came for the banners, with their sprays of hawthorn and chamomile, to be held aloft for the next charge.

That radiance drew you in, as it drew Sallarchos, as it drew Sagadé, as it drew countless other Riders, and countless children of Creation, moved to turn against the Ash by the beauty and the righteousness and the shine of her.




She was supposed to win.

She was supposed to win.



Not - not to be so beaten down by the world that she can't even bother to fight back. She wasn't supposed to be so utterly vanquished that she just lets this Hero who has infected her life drag her around on these meaningless 'quests'; offers no resistance to these worthless narratives that steal her choices, her agency; that force her to be a side character in her own life.

She hides from it, when it gets to be truly dangerous; retreats to her sanctuary to wait out the worst of it, rather than let her infection kill her in service to the tawdry narrative of this so-called Hero who doesn't even exist outside of Reccilda's torment. She, at least, will offer that much resistance. Just enough that it can't kill her outright.

…if it weren't for the Chancery, for the rest of you sorry rejects; if it weren't for her mom, for Ms. Cooper and her love and her support and Reccilda's unwillingness to let her down; if she didn't have people to worry about …



She wasn't supposed to give up.
The world wasn't supposed to break her.

Not her.


Let the world have broken you. You're a pathetic disgrace. That's fine.

But it wasn't supposed to drag Reccilda down too.



And so you … you can't just leave it there. Reccilda and Claire and Ms Cooper all head inside, but you block the Hero's path when it tries to follow.


"Excuse me, but are you the Hero?" You're not as good at putting up a false face as you once were, not as good at lying through your teeth, but it doesn't matter all that much - the Hero is neither perceptive nor cunning. Anything even approximating a sincere and earnest tone will work on it.

There's no point in - in listening to it; in bothering to even process its words. It is a creature of pattern, a wraith acting out its story-pattern endlessly and without care. It smiles that empty smile, and there is nothing behind its bright eyes.

So you continue.

The Hero reacts better to certain kinds of prompts coming from certain kinds of people; and, well - you are an alchemist.

You make and sell potions for a living. You're a shopkeeper.

No one is more qualified to be a quest-giving NPC to this abominable story-pattern than you.

You put on the best fake smile you can manage, marshal all the false cheer you can dig up. "I'm terribly sorry to bother you, but I'm running ever-so low on some rare herbs I need to brew potions. Could you gather some for me, Hero? I'll be sure to repay you!"

Killing this abomination … you can. Reccilda can't, just as your powers avail you nothing against lemon-lime soda even though it should be trivial to annihilate - but you can. It would be trivial. It's just -

This thing - not the Hero, but the thing behind it; the narrative that has Reccilda in chains - it escalates in response, if its Hero is slain. And you're not the one who would pay the price for that escalation. Reccilda is. Ms Cooper is. Her handful of mortal friends are.

Better, then; safer, then; to … to engage this Hero on the story's terms. To deal with it through the lens of its imaginary protagonism. If you play it right, you can buy Reccilda some time. A fleeting reprieve; always too short, but better than nothing.

So the Hero nods, and babbles assent; and you keep smiling.

"Oh, thank you!" These lies, at least, sit sweetly on your tongue, and flow smoothly. "There's a hidden garden that, hmm…" today is Monday, so … the easiest way to get to your garden is probably … "you can find in the alley behind the coffee shop on Mountain, between 35th and Lead. I need you to go there and bring me five widow-roses and five milkmays, if you could?"

You pause for a breath, then, as if just remembering, add, "Oh, but I'm afraid you'll have to go alone. The path only shows up if you're by yourself." This is false, but in your experience, it usually works, for at least a little while - offer the Hero a quest, and an excuse for why Reccilda can't come, and at least in the early stages of her infection, the narrative will accept it.

The Hero says something affirmative, and you clap your hands in mock-glee. "Good luck, Hero!"

It insists on shaking your hand, gives you another of those empty-eyed, vacant smiles, and runs off, impractically large sword slung over its shoulder. You discreetly wipe your hand on your skirt; and wait; and watch; until the Hero slips out the gates of Eschaton House, and into the night, and vanishes from sight.

Only then do you relax, and head off in the direction of food and company.

---

Eily is not a terribly social person, but a potluck is a terribly social environment, and she will at least be tangentially entangled in some conversations. Which, and with whom?

Vote for any number. The top two will win.

[ ] [Conversation] Gacha Games As An Investigation Into The Ethical Philosophy of Villainy: A Lecture (Reccilda, Sallarchos, Cultists Whose Names You Should Maybe Know)
[ ] [Conversation] On The Importance Of An Adventurous Palate (Ms Cooper, Claire)
[ ] [Conversation] The Doom Of All Things And You (Claire, a Cultist You Don't Recognize)
[ ] [Conversation] Who Even Takes Cash Anymore??!? (Cultists Whose Names You Should Probably Know)
[ ] [Conversation] The Dark Generals Convene To Plan (Claire, The Boss of the Cultists Whose Name You Should Definitely Know But Don't)

Afterwards, the cultists will go off to conduct their ritual at the basalt and obsidian altar out in the gardens, and Eily will be busy attending the meeting of the local branch of the Chancery. What is the biggest issue on the agenda?

Vote for one.

[ ] [Chancery] A Visitor 🔥
[ ] [Chancery] A Party 🌺
[ ] [Chancery] A Job 🥄