Turn 1: Epilogue--The Book, the Book
The hand turned the pages, one by one, and there was a flash. A camera, again and again, page after page. Captured, bound, confined. Of course, it could be that it was the words that held the power to corrupt minds, and for that there was a plan.
The room was dark, and it wasn't Cora's hands that turned the pages.
No human hands at all turned the pages, and no Goblin's either.
A device, a machine, turned the pages. A Hedgespun automaton purchased from an artist in Thousand Trods. It was frustrating to owe this in part to Asha Ashblood, but the woman had all but written the book on security in these sorts of circumstances.
Of course, this wasn't the first time she'd been in the same room as the Book. She'd listened to it for a while, ranting and promising immortality, promising all sorts of things. Tempting things.
"Your son," the voice called in her head, "He can be made as you. He can live forever."
Cora smiled softly, looking at the book. It talked like a person did, in her head, it aped a person quite well, but there was something savage and inhuman beneath it, fury and malice in equal measures and she knew that if she looked, if she peeled back the pages of its mind, beneath it she would find something maddening.
Something mad, in the human definitions.
The next phase would be goblins. An allied goblin reading it, and in addition to reading it, they would write a summary of what it said. Not the symbols, not the words, the meaning. They would then be monitored for several months for signs of differences. Of course, goblins were different than people, but it would make a good enough start, and if it was proven that the images of the words were no dangers, she would read them herself.
If not, she'd have read the summaries already, and she could begin to move onto her more complex means of extracting more meaning.
The Book itself, well.
"Book. There are two choices," Cora said, in her head. "I lock you in this box. I lock you in it for a long time. You will be trapped, you will be nothing. You shall get nothing, you will be trapped with your own thoughts."
"You...you...mean it," it thought.
Of course she did. The box was already proven to have been powerful enough to seal in its psychic emanations, this would merely be a longer term test of it. Now, now the thing attacked, raged. She felt the psychic power glance off of her. She'd prepared for just this assault, and the hatred and power behind it was enough that she was glad that she'd known it was coming, or it might have been a threat.
She was shielding her thoughts now, and so suddenly all the Book could see was what she wanted it to see.
She watched the book impassively, as it raged against her for quite some time, until the book had been photographed. Then the automaton tossed the Book in the box.
"Other option."
"Yess...yess…"
The book's hiss was more pathetic than unnerving. A lot more pathetic than unnerving. Of course, the initial guess--soon to be confirmed via DNA sampling, she suspected--was that the book was bound in human skin. So it was best not to underestimate the menace this object had.
"I ask you a question. If you answer it, I lock you in that box."
"What?" it groaned in her mind.
"If you don't, I burn you. I have the photographs. You want to continue existing, think about that." She opened her mind, let it see the facts. And the fact was simple: she'd do it. In a heartbeat, without a blink. Despite its words about its great power.
It had told her about a Gate, a gate beyond which his people were unfairly trapped, and that all they wanted was to escape from their prison, a prison that powerful and immortal beings had forced them in. There had been more, and it'd been almost cute, the way the story was perfectly framed to fit her Changeling biases.
"What question?"
"One question. Then I lock the box for two weeks. Then we stand here again, and again you either answer what I ask, or I burn you and you stop existing. I've seen that you're bound by the book, it is you. Do you pledge it, to tell the truth to the one question, or be destroyed?"
"Yess…" it said, moping.
"You have mentioned knights before," Cora said, though of course that could be a lie. "IF this wasn't a lie, then what is the name of one of these great knights: If it was a lie, then remain silent?"
"The Ever-Dancer," it said immediately.
"Is that so?"
"Yes, she is a great being whose power--"
"Clever attempt," Cora said, bored, "But only your first answer has to be true. I'll see you in two weeks."
The being screamed and tried to attack her, but the black box slammed shut, and the voice cut off. The box was buried deep in the secret secondary lair of Cora Graves, in a room that could be destroyed if need be, should anyone try to enter without acting in the right manner.
It was a start to the sort of security she was going to be putting on this location.
Cora Graves left, stepping out into the sun of some small town in the American Southwest.
She'd be back to check in a week, and back to ask another question in two weeks.
She was all but immortal.
She could afford to be patient.
*****
A/N: So yeah. You have a book. You ask it questions. You'll be able to vote on what to ask it...in two weeks.
