Katalepsis: 2.1-2

At long last, a return to Katalepsis! I'd been planning to continue reading this web serial on my own since finishing my liveblog of its first arc, but...I just don't have the time or brainspace for that amount of recreational reading these days. So, I'm still unspoiled on everything going forward from where the first arc ended.

So, where the first arc ended! Schizophrenic college girl Heather Morell has learned that she's not actually schizophrenic, but rather can see into (and occasionally visit) parallel dimensions filled with alien life that she will one day narrate TV documentaries about. Also, she used to have a twin sister, but no one besides Heather can remember she ever existed after she got snatched away by the giant god-eyeball who also gave Heather her powers, which unlike most magicians she can use without needing to draw...look, she's lesbian Edward Elric, okay? No reason to overcomplicate the summary.

The first arc ended with Heather being accepted as a combination colleague-researchproject by schoolmates Raine and Evelyn, who are also lesbian wizards. Well, Evelyn is the actual wizard. Raine is more just her caretaker and bodyguard. They're both gay though, and that's what's really important. Raine is cool. Evelyn is prickly to an almost personality disorder extent, but with what's been implied about her background it's hard to judge her for it. After some initial unpleasantness and misunderstandings, Heather managed to win Evelyn's trust by rescuing her from a nest of extradimensional flea-monsters that the latter had accidentally'd herself into.

That whole misadventure almost felt like a "Rick & Morty" episode plot, but, like, in the good way.

Heather's life is better than it's been in years, now that she has friends who understand her and knows she isn't crazy. However, that knowledge also comes with a grim determination to rescue her long-lost twin sister from whatever world the Eye of God pulled her into more than a decade ago.

That brings us to the second arc, "Providence, or Atoms." The title comes from a Greek philosophy debate, about whether events are determined by divine plan or arise chaotically from the random interplay of material factors. How that debate intersects with the world of Katalepsis, well...there are definitely godlike entities in this story, but how much control they have is very much up in the air.

In we go!

Providence or Atoms: 2.1

Two weeks and a day after the night which altered my life forever, I did a new and brave thing: I answered my front door at eleven in the morning.

Might not seem like much, unless you're used to seeing monsters around every corner.

A month ago, I wouldn't even have acknowledged the knock. That would risk opening the door to a leering skeletal face, or six hundred pounds of fur and blubber covered in mouths, or inviting a nightmare to spend days gibbering and whispering in the corner of my bedroom. Better not to answer, pretend I wasn't home, hide.

Wait wait wait hold on just a goldang second here.

The From Beyond creatures sometimes knock to be let in?

That kind of behavior was never so much as hinted at in the first arc. With the exception of the ones whose worlds Heather actually entered, none of them seemed like they ever tried to interact with her at all.

Is this a thing that ever actually happened, or just a thing that Heather was always afraid might happen? If the former, that implies some very different things about the critters and to what degree they share the same physical space as humans and human-visible objects.

But now I was safe. Now things made sense, in a limited fashion. I was still adjusting to the fact that I wasn't mentally ill, at least not in the way I'd believed; the world really was demon-haunted.

Someone's been reading Carl Sagan, I see.~

So I left my book and carried my mug of coffee to the door. An unbidden smile tugged at my lips.

The smile froze when I opened the door and found Evelyn waiting there, by herself.

My mouth stalled in a greeting for the wrong person. I was suddenly conscious of my messy hair and my slept-in pajama bottoms and the unmade bed behind me.

"Good morning, Heather?"

"Good … " I took a deep breath and gathered my composure. "I'm sorry, yes. Good morning, Evelyn. You— you surprised me. Being here. On my doorstep. I mean."

Evelyn nodded, as if my loss for words explained everything. "Expecting Raine, were you?"

"Actually, yes, I was. It's okay, I'm sorry. Come in, please."

I stepped aside and closed the door as Evelyn made her way across my tiny flat, her walking stick tapping on the floorboards. My face flushed as I felt her eyes rove across the detritus of my disorganised life. Stacked books all over the place, unwashed dishes piled up in the sink, the mound of laundry at the foot of my bed, notes from class spread out across my desk.

Hey, unlike Evelyn you don't have a maidservant to totter after you and do housework. No need to be self-conscious about this for Evelyn of all people.

"Please, do try to overlook the mess," I said. "If I'd known you were planning on visiting, then I'd have cleaned up a bit. Or a lot."

Evelyn eased herself onto her good leg. "A little mess is nothing. Don't bother yourself over it."

I flopped my arms in defeat. "But there is mess. There's always mess. Even sane and sleeping I'm—" I swallowed back the rest and forced a smile. She didn't want to hear me whine. "Sit down, please. Take my desk chair."

Look at your average college student's living space, Heather. Trust me you're fine.

...granted, she's been so socially isolated for so long that she might actually have no idea what the average college student's living space looks like. :(

Evelyn thanked me and sat down carefully. She put her tote bag on the floor between her feet and did her best to return my smile. Neither of us was very good at that expression, but Evelyn's case was due to a permanent tightness around the eyes. Stone-cold sober came easily to her. Natural and unguarded joy did not.

She looked an awful lot better than the last time I'd seen her. She'd twisted her great mass of hair up into a ponytail, the rest of her wrapped in a huge dark-grey woollen sweater and a thick ankle-length skirt, with cosy ugg boots on her feet. She looked warm and comfortable, her oaken walking stick ready for a hike down a leafy country lane or across some picturesque village green, instead of sitting in a dirty Sharrowford bedsit with the likes of me.

Evelyn frowned and tutted. "Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"Being nervous about me. It might be a rational response, yes, but don't. I would like it very much if you considered me as a … if we could be … " She waved a hand in the air and grunted. "Mm."

I have a feeling you'll be much more than that a few arcs down the line, but for now, sure, "friends" is a reasonable step up from where you were before. Escalating from Raine sandwiches to free mix-and-match layer cakes can come later.

I blinked at her several times. "Evelyn, this isn't nervousness. I feel like a disgusting grease troll right now. It's not doing wonders for my dignity."

"I … don't understand?"

"This is the first time we've seen each other since our unscheduled dimension-hopping accident. I wasn't exactly in top form then, between the vomiting and the bleeding. And now I haven't showered yet this morning. I'm still in the clothes I slept in, my hair is a rat's nest. Not to mention the state of my flat. I can only imagine what you must think. You could have called me before visiting, given me warning. I'm wearing pajama bottoms, for crying out loud."

"Oh … well … so am I." Evelyn tugged up the corner of her skirt to show the ankle of plaid pajama bottoms underneath.

"Yes, but you're clean and well put together. You can get away with that."

Click to shrink...

Awww, was that a compliment? A self-deprecating, not-quite-intentional one, but still?

Even as I spoke I realised that was hardly fair. Evelyn had heavy, dark bags under her eyes. Her hair was clean, but it probably hadn't seen a brush this morning, and certainly no touch of the hairdresser's scissors for many months. Her clothes were fresh but old and well worn, the collar of her sweater darned and mended with different-coloured thread.

Evelyn started to respond, then sighed and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. She drew herself up as straight as she could with her crooked back, and I felt a sudden desire to shrink away, certain she was about to yell at me.

"You're right," she said. She swallowed and looked at the floorboards, shoulders tense, face stiff. "I should have called, I should have acted normal. I've gone and made you uncomfortable."

That made me want to hug her.

I didn't, of course. Sane and sleeping I may have been, but boldness was not in my nature.

Huh. I didn't think about it until this interaction, but Raine may have been more correct than either she or I realized last arc when she said that Heather and Evelyn were "alike."

They both have similar-ish powers acquired by different methods, sure, but they also both have similar-ish social alienation for different reasons. In Heather's case, it's down to trauma, misdiagnosis, and overmedication preventing her from having any kind of social life from preteens onward. In Evelyn's, it's her weirdo family preventing her from so much as inhabiting the same social world as the people who should have been her peers. And also trauma, just slightly different kind of trauma. In the arena of "interacting with normal people like a normal person," they're pretty much equally out of their depths.

Evelyn makes it other people's problem as well, whereas Heather just keeps it her own problem, but it's still essentially the same problem.

"No, I'm sorry," I said, and felt lame. "Forget it, I was rude to mention it. Do you want something to drink? If you don't like coffee I have some tea as well."

Evelyn kept her gaze fixed on the floor. "I am not very good at socialising. Not very good at maintaining friendships."

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Evelyn, neither am I."

She finally looked up. A mote of understanding passed between us, and Evelyn nodded slowly.

I just SAID THAT, goddddddd. :P

I brewed a cup of peppermint tea for her, then left her with the run of my books while I squeezed myself into my flat's tiny bathroom with a clean change of clothes. Only once I was under the shower did I realise that I hadn't asked her why she was here in the first place.

When I returned I was delighted to find Evelyn had made herself quite at home. She'd settled back in the chair, with her cup of tea perched in a clear spot on my desk. A real smile crossed my face as I recognised my copy of Paradise Lost, propped open in her lap.

"Delighted," huh?

I guess it's easy to forget that Heather has like...never...had a casual houseguest before. For her, this could be an important bit of validation. She can invite people over. It can be an enjoyable experience for other people to come visit her.

Anyway, Paradise Lost, good book. One of my favorite premodern works.

"Have you had the pleasure of reading that before?" I asked.

I sat down on the bed to dry my hair and resisted the urge to rub my sternum—to massage the untouchable bruise inside my chest.

That strange bruise had pained me since that night, since Outside, wounded internally in some obscure manner I couldn't pinpoint. Raine had plied me with good food, guilty food, fried chicken and supermarket sushi, fresh fruit and scrambled eggs, but all the protein in the world didn't help the bruise to heal.

Hmm. Is she talking about a bruised heart metaphorically, in the emotional sense? On account of realizing that her sister really is real and really has needed rescue for the past decade?

Or is she actually talking about a physical internal chest injury she sustained during the dimension-hopping?

I would normally assume the former, but the last arc did put a lot of emphasis on the toll Heather's body paid. She was outright bleeding out the eyes at one point. Some internal thoracic damage wouldn't be surprising.

Evelyn closed the book. "No. No, I haven't had a lot of time in my life to read for fun."

"Feel free to borrow it if you like. Milton's one of my favourites. I know poetry isn't for everybody, especially old poetry. It's not a popular form anymore, but I love it."

"Mm, perhaps." Evelyn raised an eyebrow at me. "So, I take it you wouldn't have minded if it was Raine at your doorstep this morning, seeing you unshowered and unclean?"

"That's … different."

"Is it really?"

"She's already seen me at my absolute worst. There's not much more for her imagination to fill in."

"I've seen you at your worst," Evelyn said. "Such states are badges of honour, not sources of shame."

I couldn't keep the incredulous frown off my face.

Evelyn sighed and gestured around the room. "This is hardly the worst condition to which a human being can sink. You should be proud of how quickly you've accepted reality. Most people who have to be introduced to magic spend the rest of their lives trying to refute it or forget it, or go mad in the process. You're not smearing your own excrement on the walls, are you?"

A lump formed in my throat. She didn't get it. "Well … no, but—"

"You're doing better than I did."

Huh, damn. Evelyn really did have it bad with her magician parents.

I struggled with a moment of pain and frustration, then pulled a false smile to control myself. "Evelyn, my state has nothing to do with monsters and magic. It's because of Maisie. I'm not struggling to accept reality, I'm grieving for my twin sister."

"Ah, well, hm." Evelyn cleared her throat. "That's different, yes. Yes, of course. I … yes."

"It's fine," I lied.

To grieve would be such a relief.

I'd dealt with Maisie's absence for years by telling myself she was always with me; an imaginary friend plus. Except she'd been real, so now she wasn't here. I was incomplete.

Evelyn raised her chin and assumed an air of importance. "Regardless, I didn't come here to lecture you, Heather. I came here to apologise."

"Whatever for?"

"For the way I spoke to you when we first met. I was an uncharitable ratty bitch. Raine's cried wolf so many times, when she finally brought home a real one I wasn't ready."

I thought she'd already done that? Maybe I'm mixing things up. Anyway, she was a big enough bitch to what she thought was a vulnerable mentally ill girl before that apologizing twice is still warranted.

"You're mixing your metaphors." I almost giggled at the absurdity. "Me, a wolf?"

Evelyn waved a hand. "You get what I mean."

"I do, and thank you. You were … "

"I am a difficult person, I know. You can say it, I won't be offended."

I shook my head. "You don't need to be so formal about this. We already made up, didn't we?"

"Accounting for one's mistakes, one's debts, I find it important. It can be a matter of life and death. And I do not like to make mistakes." Evelyn's voice carried a razor edge I didn't much like, but then she took a deep breath and the feeling passed. "Anyway, there's another reason I'm here. I have the first steps of a possible solution to your unique problem."

I'm guessing she's not talking about rescuing Maisie. She probably means some way to more persistently shut out the Tillinghast rays until such a time as Heather is ready to sign her BBC contract. Or to deal with the medical side effects of using the dimension-hopping spells the Eye taught her.

I perked up, everything else briefly forgotten. "Yes? Go on? I did wonder why you'd come all this way. A solution?"

"Indeed. It's taken a little bit of thought and some questionable research, but I believe I've come up with a place to start. An experiment, to figure out how this 'Eye'—" She waved a hand. Total dismissal, as if the Eye didn't even matter. I liked that. I liked that a lot. "How this thing is contacting your mind. We can go from there."

It is kind of reassuring, yeah. The Eye doesn't strike Evelyn as something that seems *particularly* hard to deal with. It falls within the milieu of problems she's used to solving.

On the other hand, the previous arc made it seem like Evelyn doesn't actually know what she's doing all that well. She DID accidentally herself into a nest of territorial flea monsters, after all, which is very different from intentionallying herself into a nest of territorial flea monsters. So, her optimism might not actually be justified. The Eye might be much harder to deter than she thinks.

Which, again, might itself not necessarily be a bad thing. Like I mused previously, it would be entirely consistent with the text so far if it turned out the Eye is trying to help her find her sister again, and Heather just needs a different approach to processing its instructions. It's not the most likely possibility (I'd rank it well below "the Eye doesn't even notice that its thoughts are hooked up to her little monkey head" and slightly below "the Eye wants to eat her" in terms of probability), but it's not such a terribly unlikely one either.

"How soon can we begin?"

Evelyn inclined her chin. "If you're not busy? Today. We need to visit the library, there's some details I must check before we begin. Then back to my house, to do some real magic."

"The library? For books?"

Evelyn raised an eyebrow. "No, for video games and Chinese food," she said, but not unkindly. "Of course for books."

whynotboth.jpg

...okay, thinking about it a little more you actually probably don't want to spill mapo tofu on the priceless 600 year old occult texts. So yeah, that's why not both.

"Magical books, right, yes." I nodded. "I admit, I'm fascinated. By the prospect, I mean."

My words stalled and stuttered in time with my uncertain excitement. So many questions, no way to phrase them. But books, they would teach me everything.

Evelyn held me with a steady gaze, as if measuring me.

"Evelyn?"

"The books I have do not make easy reading. Real magical grimoires can be … demanding, on the mind. Try, please do, you deserve the chance, but temper your curiosity."

Still probably less demanding on the mind than having the same information beamed directly into your mind by an eyeball monster that thinks "words" are a bunch of time-wasting bullshit that just get between you and the true language of mathematics, and that even mathematics are an annoying crutch when you could be using the even truer language of !̴̾̒*̵̓͑*̸̏#̵̅̌#̷̀̽͐̄<̵̇̋͛, so, um. Yeah. I think Heather can handle this.

"I will, I will. I'll be careful." I nodded.

"Mm, good. Remember that."

"Thank you, Evelyn. Really, thank you."

"Hmm." She grunted and looked away. I detected a hint of embarrassment, almost bashful. I was about to tell her it was okay, but Evelyn continued before I could speak. "Raine tells me the warding sign is on your left arm now. Show me."

I rolled up my sleeve to show off one of the best presents I'd ever received. This version of the Fractal was much larger than the one Raine had drawn on my hand. Thick black lines wrapped around the pale curve of my forearm, a tree of folded angles spilling from a kinked central trunk, clean and precise.

Evelyn leaned forward with a professional frown. She grunted approval and I felt a flush of pride. Raine had dedicated half an hour of delicate work to the Fractal, so intimate with my arm lying across her lap, this little fragment of irrationality which kept my nightmares at bay and the terrors off my doorstep. She'd bought a body-art marker pen for the task, and left it on my desk so I could refresh the design if it started to fade. The ink was supposed to last up to six weeks, but I checked the integrity every night.

Evelyn straightened up and shook her head. "Raine was an idiot to draw it on your hand the first time, out in the open like that. You are keeping it concealed, yes? She was clear about that much, at least?"

"It's always under my sleeve. Nobody's going to see it."

"Get used to that. Doing everything we hoped it would?"

"Absolutely. No more nightmares. I'm sleeping. Real sleep. I even had a couple of actual dreams, normal dreams."

"No lingering effects? Nothing at all?"

"Well, there's a sort of pressure in my head after I wake up, like a distant ringing in my ears. It goes off after an hour or two."

Evelyn stared at me and nodded slowly, as if this made perfect sense.

Hmm. The symbol was implied to create a kind of signal dead zone for stuff that relies on extradimensional communications, but there's evidently some stuff that doesn't rely on those comms and that will react to the sign with hostility.

Granted, it was also stated outright that there are other magicians in the Sharrowford area, and that many of them are violent lunatics. It could be that displaying an actual magical rune publically puts you in the crosshairs of humans who are in the know, rather than the From Beyond creatures or the like.

In that case, though...Raine was really doing a dumb. Of a kind that seems a little out of character from what we've seen of her.

Maybe the risks are a bit less direct and more complicated than that, then.

"Is that supposed to happen?" I asked.

Evelyn laughed, a humourless, dry sound.

"I have no idea," she said. "We're miles beyond precedent here." She looked down at her lap and tapped her fingers on the closed cover of Paradise Lost. "An educated guess says your 'Eye' "—she actually did little air quotes with her good hand—"is probably still trying to get through. It's not discouraged by a firewall. For our purposes, that's a good thing."

"It is?"

"Yes. For now. How about the … " She sighed and gestured with one hand. " … spirits?"

"Oh, no more haunted apartment!" I couldn't keep the smile off my face. "They're keeping their distance like never before. They don't completely ignore me, but I don't feel like a beacon for horrible weird monsters anymore. I can't tell you how much that means to me, how much less messed up the world feels."

Oh wait. Okay, hold on. Damn. Either the author changed some details in her recent round of edits, or I completely misinterpreted something in the first arc.

I thought it said that Heather stopped seeing the From Beyond creatures *at all* while she had the sign on her hand. Implying that contact with the Eye (or some related extradimensional force) was actively stimulating her ESP and letting her see the things.

Now it seems like she can see the critters even *with* the sign, but they're not attracted to her anymore. Which is weird, because most of them didn't seem to be actively DRAWN to her in the first place, as I recall? The way they were described moving around the environment and interacting with each other, it seemed like they were just ubiquitous in the environment and mostly ignoring Heather aside from a few who gave her curious looks now and then. The only exception I can recall was when she was emotionally distraught and that seemed to be causing the creatures to fight, but at the time that looked like it could have just as easily been coincidence.

So yeah. Either there's been changes, or I got that all toooootally wrong. Like, consistently, repeatedly wrong.

Okay. Well. I guess she can see the From Beyond fluffy-puffies with or without the sign, but with the sign they ignore her and without it they cluster around her. I guess.

"Good, good. I didn't know exactly what it would do left on human skin for days on end." Evelyn's eyes took on a distant look.

"Oh yeah, sorry, that symbol can give you cancer if you're around it long enough."

I rubbed the skin around the Fractal and asked one of the questions I'd avoided thinking about these last two weeks.

"What is it? The Fractal, I mean. You call it a warding sign, but what is it, how does it work?"

Evelyn's eyes snapped back to the present and she stared with sudden cold precision. "How much do you want to know, really?"

I couldn't answer that. I took the low road.

"You've been practising that line, haven't you?" I asked.

Evelyn huffed. "I may have done. I find unrehearsed interaction more difficult than most people, and I had considered you might ask that question."

Hmm.

On one hand, Evelyn might just be trying to cover her ass after being called out on indulging in pointless melodrama.

On the other hand, she'd probably just lie in that case. So...I think it's more likely she's telling the truth.

Starting to seem like Evelyn isn't just socially stunted due to isolation from normal society and hyperdefensive due to abuse, but also maybe somewhere on the autistic spectrum as well.

Even all these factors combined don't completely excuse the way she acted before, especially considering that she thought Heather was some poor schizophrenic girl that Raine was roping in, but I think it excuses a decently large chunk of it.

Anyway. Let's hear about the fractal and what it actually does now, because apparently I'm shit at sussing these things out on my own. Also, can it give you cancer?

"It's fine, it's fine. It's actually quite sweet. You have a flair for certain kinds of dramatic delivery, that's all."

Evelyn looked as if she was sucking a lemon. "Well, how much do you want to know?"

"I don't know." My shield of good humour crumpled, and I cast it aside. "I need answers."

"To what?"

I shrugged, at a loss. "Everything. I know, I know, magic is real and unicorns exist and I'm not schizophrenic, but those are facts, not answers. Not the ones I need. Why me? Why Maisie? What happened to us? What should I do now?"

Evelyn nodded and thought for a moment before speaking.

"The warding sign is part of something much larger, my family's … inheritance. My inheritance. The warding sign's particular set of angles generate a kind of repulsion or firewall effect, as far as I can tell. It's one of the very few things I have which works consistently. Which is bloody useful, because otherwise it would be impossible to keep my home shielded, or keep you hidden, or really do much of anything without attracting unwanted attention."

So it isn't a deadzone-generator, so much as a...duck blind? Prevents you from being seen, but not from seeing.

...it destroyed that "servitor" creature when Raine brandished it though, didn't it? That WAS the same symbol, I'm pretty sure. The way that Raine held up the screen toward the servitor, it seemed like she was *expecting* it to be repelled or damaged, rather than just blinded.

Yeah, this doesn't make sense. Unless the servitor IS a manifestation of another entity's perceptions, and blinding it actually makes it stop existing...or...something? Yeah, I'm lost.

As she spoke, Evelyn stared at the exposed Fractal on my arm. I rolled my sleeve back down, feeling protective and self-conscious.

"I think I understand," I said.

I don't.

"I suppose Raine did the actual penwork for you, yes?"

"Uh, yes. She did."

"And she's been visiting you every day, has she? Spending a lot of time together?"

"Not— not every day." I shook my head and forced a laugh.

Just most days; an edge in Evelyn's voice prompted me to edit the truth.

Raine had eased herself into my life with shameless familiarity. She turned up unannounced when she didn't have classes and learnt my schedule so she could find me on campus after lectures. She sent me text messages and silly pictures, and she told me good morning and good night and take care. At first I hadn't known how to respond, but after so long without a friend it felt good to let her take the lead. She took me out to eat greasy burgers and chips, made food on my cramped bedsit oven, and watched movies and cartoons with me on my ancient laptop. I'd lent her my copy of Watership Down and she was trying to get me to read some Kant. We talked about everything and anything—except for magic and spirits and demons.

It would have been nice to see some of this instead of just being told, but on the other hand I can see how that might have ruined the story's pacing. Author probably picked the lesser evil in this case.

Evelyn saw straight through the fake laugh, stony-faced. "She slept with you yet?"

"W-what? Evelyn, excuse me?"

"Well, has she?"

"No! No, we haven't— she hasn't even— we— it's not like that. I don't think it is, anyway."

"With Raine, it always is."

Heh, my reading of Raine was spot-on, at least. Her problem is that she's TOO healthy and TOO lively. Super social, super violent, super sexual, super empathetic. She's like, extra-concentrated human.

"I wouldn't know how to judge that." An old frustration surfaced for the first time in a long time, fed by indignation and a yawning pit of uncertainty. "I don't have any experience with romance. None whatsoever. Maybe you don't appreciate that about me. I spent a significant chunk of my teenage years in psychiatric hospitals, and the rest of it as the weird mentally ill girl who might go catatonic or start screaming at any moment. Not to even mention the whole lesbian thing, that's a minor blip compared to the rest, but it doesn't help my odds. I've never even kissed anybody. Raine is nice, yes. I don't know what that means. We've hugged a few times. That's it, that's all."

I shrugged and looked down at the floorboards, embarrassed more by my loss of control than the intimate details.

"Well," Evelyn said at length, "that makes two of us."

I expected a cruel joke, but lowered my defensive hackles when I saw she was dead serious. "I'm sorry?"

"Yes, Heather. I too am a kissless virgin. What did you expect? Look at me. Nothing wrong with that, especially under the circumstances."

"Kissless virgin?" I echoed. "You shouldn't put yourself down like that."

"It's a meme." Evelyn waved the question away.

" … 'meme'?"

Evelyn cleared her throat. "An internet joke, never mind. Point is, we're not so different, you and I, and that is fine. All the more reason not to let Raine take advantage of you."

I thought she said she and Raine were kinda-sorta exes?

If nothing else, it seems strange that she and hypersexual Raine would be this close for this long without anything happening even just as a one-off. Unless Evelyn was actively against it, I guess.

"I don't feel taken advantage of. If anything, it feels like the opposite. She's been … "

The words too kind died on the way to my lips, blotted out by the memory of Raine's ecstatic grin as she beat a monster to death with a truncheon. She was kind to me. Beyond that, I didn't really know, did I?"

Heather. Honey. Sweety. You really need to get the fuck over this violence-aversion. It's bad for you.

Evelyn did not look impressed. I took a deep breath and steeled myself; may as well get this out of the way.

"Okay, let me put all my cards on the table," I said. "Are you jealous, Evelyn? If I understand correctly, you've been close with Raine for years. Have I intruded on something? I'd rather we be open about this."

"Jealous?" Evelyn's eyebrows climbed in surprise. "No, most certainly not. Whatever Raine has said about me, I'm not interested."

Huh. It was Raine who said they were exes, I think. Was she lying about that?

Either way, Heather, major faux pas there. Implying that you think someone is monogamous? In the year 2019? What the fuck kind of filthy animal do you even think Evelyn is?

"You're not—"

"No."

Final word. I nodded. Okay then.

"Look, Heather, I'd advise you not to get too close to Raine. You're setting yourself up for disappointment."

My turn to raise my eyebrows.

Raine Philomena Haynes. She loved that middle name, and I liked it too, though I did wonder if she'd adopted it herself in a pretentious act of self-creation. It had taken me a long, winding evening to weasel out her family name, which she hated for reasons I didn't understand. Twenty years old to my nineteen, which seemed a more significant gap at that age.

I knew her now—but not enough about her, and I told myself it was subconscious behaviour on her part. She'd happily spend hours extolling the finer points of any book I handed to her, and share her favourite foods—chicken korma and pomegranate—or about where she'd grown up in leafy Suffolk, what she thought of every movie from Dambusters to Shrek, and a growing litany of teenage japes and hijinks, but they were all oddly unconnected to concrete people, her family, or any personal history with Evelyn.

Evelyn put down her tea, steepled her fingers, and gave me a sober look.

"Raine requires a damsel in distress for whom she can play the knight errant. And let's be honest, you do fit the bill. That's why she shows so much interest in you. I used to fill that role, but I changed. If you fail to remain dependent, her attitude toward you will deteriorate."

I struggled to keep a straight face. Maybe Evelyn was jealous after all, even if she didn't know so.

"Did she treat you the same way she treats me now?" I asked.

"Not exactly. With us, the reality-shock was the other way around, or should have been. But she's the same as always. Don't get me wrong, Raine is … " Evelyn gestured, searching for a word. "Once she's made a decision, she will fight in your corner even if it kills her. She is loyal, and she means what she says, and one could not ask for a better ... You get the picture. But she'll hurt you in the long run, if you let her."

This might be true. It might also just be salt on Evelyn's part, thinking they had something that they actually didn't.

I'll have to see more of Raine in the longterm to see how right or wrong Evelyn is about her. Might end up having to revise my reading of Raine, depending.

And...okay, Evelyn can't possibly be a kissless virgin, even just in the meme sense, if she's been through this cycle as she describes it.

I didn't want to think about this. Was I just filling in a role? It didn't feel that way. I chewed my bottom lip.

Then I realised what was wrong with this whole picture; what had been wrong since the moment I'd found Evelyn on my doorstep, alone.

"Wait a second," I said. "Isn't … isn't Raine supposed to accompany you almost everywhere?"

Evelyn smiled. The first real smile I'd drawn out of her, and it made me deeply uncomfortable. Sharp and devious and smug. "Indeed, indeed she is. I thought it was past time I engaged in some creative disobedience."

"Disobedience?" Weird way to put it.

Weird, and perhaps indicative.

"But— but— you keep implying that Sharrowford is dangerous, that—"

"Heather, I am more than capable of defending myself."

"I saw how Raine reacted, when she couldn't reach you by phone. Genuine fear for you! For your safety." I cast about for my mobile phone. "I have to call her."

"Oh, don't be silly," Evelyn snapped.

I spread my arms, intimidated by her tone but unwilling to bend. "What? You can't seriously expect me to betray her trust."

Evelyn huffed and hunched a little in the chair. "Some things have to be done without Raine hovering over our shoulders all the time. You saw how she reacted, that night. She wants to coddle you. I'd prefer you retain a little independence—and me too, perhaps, dare I bloody well hope. She won't like you getting into the books, the grimoires, if that's what you want. Go ahead, call her if you like, it's your choice."

Um.

UM.

Evelyn. What happened the last time you tried to do magic stuff when Raine wasn't around?

Heather, what do YOU remember happening the last time Evelyn did magic stuff when Raine wasn't around?

Do you think Raine actually is *stifling* or *coddling* by doing what she does, in light of that?

Also, what the fuck does Evelyn mean "creative disobedience?" Is Raine someone who she's obligated to OBEY? I never got that impression.

Maybe these are just my pro-Raine biases coming through, but...Evelyn's judgement is looking more and more questionable to me with every word she says here. In a way that makes me wonder how reliable her recounting of their relationship issues is either.

I hesitated. Just enough.

That smile crept back onto Evelyn's face. "Come on, then, it's past time we went and did some serious work, before she spoils our fun."

Heather don't fucking do it.

She's going to fucking do it, isn't she?

Being completely starved for social interaction will do that to you, I guess. But...Heather. Flea monsters. Remember the flea monsters.

That's the chapter.


I think there's another parallel between Evelyn and Heather coming into view now. They both resent having needs and limitations that not everyone around them shares, and they both try to deny those needs and limitations with self-destructive effect.

With Heather, there was the part in arc 1 where she decided she was strong enough to not need the Elder Sign anymore (that served as a pretty blunt metaphor for getting overconfident after your new medication helps you a little bit and thinking you can go off of it now). Evelyn is doing the same thing, only for her it's more like a handicapped person who knows they need help getting around trying to go out without assistance and not telling anyone.

Frankly...I really don't think Evelyn ever stopped being a damsel in distress. She just resents being one, and would rather deny it than actually try to work on her dangerous habits and end it. I suspect that that's where the issues with her and Raine came from, moreso than Raine getting bored of her like she claims.

Now, if Raine actually does have a thing for damsels to the exclusion of more equitable flings, then that is kind of a creepy tendency on her part. She might not be beyond criticism in this relationship. But like. Even so. Evelyn. You have way more shit to work on than Raine does.


Anyway, that chapter was a bit on the short side. I'll try and do another!

Providence or Atoms 2.2

Between her prosthetic leg and her walking stick, Evelyn put me to shame.

Our route took us along Bluebell Road, a twisty humpbacked residential street on the edge of the student quarter, which led up to University Drive. The name was deceptive—not a single bluebell in sight. Defeated-looking trees lined the pavement, a half-finished attempt at re-greening. The blustery day plucked at my hair and at the hem of Evelyn's skirt. This was the first time I'd seen her walk any real distance, and I was ashamed by my own assumption that she'd be slow or awkward, or have to stop to rest on the way to campus. Her limp was only apparent if you watched closely, and I was too busy keeping up.

And rubbing the base of my ribs.

The urge to rub a bruise is almost universal; pressure and compression feel good. But I couldn't reach the supernatural bruise inside. Walking and breathing harder made it worse, a throb at a deeper level than mere muscle and bone.

Evelyn's physically stronger than she looks. Wonder if she has any kind of spells on her prosthetics or walking stick that help with that? Or maybe just spells on herself, for that matter?

That bruise in Heather's chest is sounding more and more like a literal bruise rather than a metaphor for emotional pain. Maybe with some exotic effect that's also making it heal more slowly than it should.

"I'm fine, really, I'm fine," I said as Evelyn gave me the third questioning look in as many minutes. I forced myself to put my hands in my coat pockets.

"You don't sound fine."

"It's just this ache, since that night, since the … brain-math."

"Mm."

We had to wait at the zebra crossing opposite University Drive. I took the opportunity to lean against the guardrail, taking deep steady breaths and doing my best to will the ache away.

"Look around you," Evelyn said. She was staring at the pigeons perched on an overhead power line.

"At what? What are we looking at?"

"Anything, everything. It's good practice. Who's watching us? Look around."

I did as she asked, feeling silly and sceptical as I glanced up and down the street, like we were little girls playing at spies. Cars passed along the road. A six-limbed beast of bristles and spines lumbered past the end of a side street. A couple of other students plodded up the opposite pavement. A pack of things that were half wolf and half ape picked their way across the suburban rooftops. Pigeons cooed.

I shrugged. "Nobody suspicious around here."

"What about the pneuma-somatic fauna?"

"Quite normal, for a given value of normal. Evelyn, this feels absurd."

"What about them?" She nodded at the pigeons.

I stared at her for a moment and hoped I'd misheard.

"The pigeons," I said.

"Yes, the pigeons."

" … they're watching us. Right. Pigeons."

What...seriously?

Evelyn spoke softly. "We're perfectly safe right now, yes, but this is part of being safe without always relying on Raine. Watchfulness, care, attention. Any of those animals could be carrying a little demonic passenger, bird brain scooped out and replaced, relaying information back to the mage who put it there. I can't tell just by looking at them, any more than you can. You can't, right? No? There you go then. We must be aware of the ever-present possibility of being watched. Like with the servitor following Raine on the morning she found you. We've no way of telling who or what sent that thing. Pay attention. The habit will help."

I sighed a big heavy puff. Evelyn hiked an eyebrow at me as if expecting a challenge.

"You're as bad as Raine," I muttered.

She frowned, perplexed. "What? What does that mean?"

"You don't get it. You can't. I'm trying to unlearn a decade of behaviour based on the incorrect assumption that I had schizophrenia. The last thing I need right now is to suspect I'm being watched by birds."

She stared at me for longer than was comfortable, but I stared back until she grunted.

"Mm. Fair point."

So that's a thing wizards can do then, I guess. Okay. Watch for birds, cats, mice, etc that seem to be paying too much attention to you.

Kind of a fool's errand, honestly. But I guess some effort is better than being oblivious altogether.

On the other hand, the risk of this actually happening seem to be low enough that Evelyn is taking Heather's response there as an acceptable answer, so.

Next scene.

Sharrowford University Library was a hybrid monster, a chimera of Brutalist block tower welded to an aborted neoclassical façade, wrapped around a spun glass kernel of abused Gothic revival, all built on ancient stone foundations. It had begun life as a fortified manor house in 1456, then been pounded into gravel two centuries later by Parliamentarian cannon, gifted to the university and rebuilt, "restored" by arrogant Victorians, wounded by stray Luftwaffe bombs on their way to Manchester, and at long last shored up with practical 1960s concrete.

That is one war-torn university library.

Maybe this kind of history for college buildings is just more common in Europe than it is in anyplace I've lived.

Birds strutted and preened across the rooftops, their nests wedged between air-conditioning units, blissfully unaware of the insectoid leviathans which only I could see, clinging to the library's spires.

oh fuck the pigeons are following them sound the alarm shit shit shit

The interior was a sprawling labyrinth of modern racks rubbing shoulders with carved wooden shelves, vomit-brown carpet rubber-stripped to worn oak floorboards, creaking century-old staircases and concrete stairwells that reeked of industrial cleaner. The Dewey Decimal System fought an endless siege against the privations of Resource Description and Access standards, one that I suspect would degenerate into an insurgency to make any Vietcong commander feel proud. With a catalogue of nearly ten million books, it certainly didn't rival the British Library for size, but more than made up for that with the number of rare books and strange subject areas tucked away in its hidden bowels.

Of course I'd fallen in love with the library. This was the primary reason I'd picked Sharrowford University in the first place.

I refused to tolerate the idea that I'd been influenced by the Eye in this respect. This love was mine.

GodDAMN those turns of phrase Heather spins. It's just fire, fire, and more fire.

Anyway, I'll take it from her choice of descriptions that while she's very fond of the books themselves, she really isn't terribly fond of the building that they're kept in. :P

Thankfully, the library was quiet at this time of morning, at least once Evelyn and I passed the front desks. Few spirits haunted the tangle of the library stacks; a mere handful of lurking multi-armed grazers formed our only supernatural company. At least now I knew they'd keep their distance.

I don't want to come across as presumptuous, Heather, but have you ever tried petting them?

"Down?" I asked once Evelyn and I were alone in the stairwell.

"Where else?"

Evelyn led the way, her gait more awkward on the wide steps.

We descended together into the basement levels, concrete shelters for the rolling stacks stuffed with decades of obscure PhD theses. The long corridor was grafted to a much older hallway panelled in dark polished wood. We passed over that threshold, into the buried strata of previous eras. Our footsteps returned strange echoes.

I'd been down here twice before by myself, just to bask in the glow of all those books and the enclosed silence—despite the modern no-smoking signs and air vents.

"I'm going to take a guess," I said. "You hide an occult library in plain sight, in the rolling stacks?"

Evelyn frowned sidelong at me. "If I wanted to invite disaster. Don't be ridiculous."

I thought she kept all the real magic books in the Medieval Metaphysics room that she and Raine have to themselves? Is there just not room in there for all of them at once?

Maybe some of them actually belong to the uni library and she'll get in trouble if she keeps them out too long at a time?

I flushed with embarrassment, but Evelyn didn't seem to notice. We turned a corner and found the corridor terminated by a very solid wooden door, strong enough to withstand a battering ram. A small brass plaque was bolted to the front.

Rare and Restricted books. No student admittance without staff permission.

Evelyn produced a keyring and unlocked the door.

"Are we breaking the rules?" I asked. "Is that key legitimate?"

She gave me the thinnest of satisfied smiles. "Oh, I'm allowed to be here. The wonders of nepotism."

Ceiling lights flickered to life and rolled back the shadows in doorways that led to reading rooms and secure stacks. The air felt dry and cool on my face, conditioned for long term book storage.

Evelyn turned the latch to lock the door behind us, then led the way past a treasure trove of crumbling texts and plastic-wrapped manuscripts. Nothing occult about any of this, but my head was on a swivel. I wanted to ask her to stop and pause, just so I could dip into each of these rooms and read for five minutes, a minute, just one glance. An undergrad never got into places like this. We turned a corner and I opened my mouth to ask if she would let me down here again.

She can tell just by looking that none of these are occult?

Anyway, yeah, sounds like fitting all this stuff in the little MM department room would be a challenge, to say the least. This is definitely a university that's in the pocket of an amoral old money wizard family, heh.

And I slammed to a halt, breath caught in my throat.

Evelyn raised an eyebrow at me. "Oh, I guess you can see it, right?"

I thought I'd be used to this by now.

A monster barred our way.

A glossy black arachnid nightmare hung from the ceiling ahead, big as a horse. Arm-thick glistening spider-silk webbed the upper half of the corridor, leaving just enough space for a tall person to pass beneath.

Far too many legs, body segmented and armoured and wrapped with biomechanical tubes and pipes, vent stacks rising from its back like a miniature nuclear reactor. The head was a solid mass of unblinking crystal eyes. Several giant stingers waved lazily in the air, tipped with points the size of railway spikes.
I felt its stare like a probing searchlight.

Very slowly, as if the slightest twitch would set it scuttling toward me, I turned my eyes and looked at Evelyn. My voice came out in a strangled whisper.

"What do you mean, I can see it? You can see it too?"

"Well, no, of course not, but I know it's there." She waved an arm down the corridor. "You think the most dangerous occult collection outside of the British Library would be unguarded? Hide them among the stacks, really." She rolled her eyes.

"You could have warned me," I hissed. "What on earth is it?"

"I don't know, you tell me. All I know is it's some kind of spider. I'd be fascinated, actually, if you could describe it?"

"Terrifying."

OH WOW THEY HAVE A GUARD THINGY!

Evelyn wasn't kidding when she said her family is a big deal in the occult underworld. Holy shit.

The fact that it's spiderlike and also has actual web is an interesting detail. Seems like it pretty much has to have some kind of actual biological ancestry in common with mundane, physical 3D space arachnids. Although...it also has steam engines built into it, from the sound of things, so maybe it's just purely synthetic and the spider-biomimicry is a choice made by its creators?

Hmm. How do you get a steam engine into the PSF plane of existence? Are there actually materials you can build shit out of in there, or do you need to magically transfer matter from the human plane into that one, or is it weirder and more esoteric than that?

Evelyn blinked several times and cleared her throat. "It's a servitor, like the thing that was following Raine. A sort of artificial pneuma-somatic robot, not a summoned demon or a bound spirit. Though that thing spying on Raine was about as complex and robust as a Roomba, compared to this."

"Artificial? You made this thing?"

"No. No, of course not." Evelyn looked oddly embarrassed. "It's practically a family heirloom. My great grandmother made it and left it here. Look, it's perfectly safe, it can only do what it was programmed to. It triggers off recognition and intent, I think. I'm inherently trusted, along with anybody in my bloodline, as well as those I bring with me. It leaves the library staff alone because they only enter as part of their normal routine, though I don't think anything down here gets cleaned or checked very often. Unless you're planning on knocking me out and stealing the books, it won't pay you the slightest bit of attention."

It also looks a hell of a lot different from that other Servitor. This spider guardian sounds like it's got both pseudo-organic bits AND recognizable machinery. The seaweed monster was way more abstract.

Is that just a matter of effort put in? Like, you can beat the spirit-essence-stuff into shape so it can take on the characteristics of other materials and let you make a more complex construct? Or...man. Makes your head spin.

Anyway, Evelyn is making it sound like this thing can keep out humans as well as pneuma-somatic intruders. So, it's got a method of manipulating the material world. And probably a way of jamming its razor-sharp stingers into said material world.

Hmm. There must be a way of looking at it, for wizards like Evelyn. Her family must have methods of checking on the thing, after all. Maybe she just hasn't yet learned how.

Also, I'm starting to wonder if H.R. Giger was a wizard in this story. Or at least, if he knew a wizard. So many of these critters are so distinctly his aesthetic, and Evelyn says this construct has been in her family since before he was drawing, so the influence would have to be going toward rather than from him.

"It is definitely paying me attention."

Evelyn sighed and strode forward. I fought down an embarrassing urge to grab her by the arm; I didn't want to be alone in front of this monster. She passed under the spider web, stopped by the last door leading off the corridor, and looked back at me as if I was being a fool.

"Oh, for pity's sake," I said, and forced myself to walk, concentrating on my feet.

I almost made it.

On the step which would place me directly under the spider, it moved. A sudden spasm of motion, ratcheting limbs and whirring eyes. It dropped down the webbing and unfurled all those legs, poised like a bear trap. The stingers whip-cracked out to full extension and curved back toward me. I choked down a scream and froze on the spot.

"Heather? What is it doing?" Evelyn asked, her voice suddenly serious and urgent.

"I don't know," I whispered. "It doesn't like me. I think it's angry."

"It can't get angry. It's triggering off something. What is it doing? Describe it."

I could barely form words, let alone follow instructions. Instead, I took a half step back.

Wrong choice.

The spider followed, inching forward with muscles tensed and stingers quivering. I halted again and stood very, very still. My throat clenched tight and cold sweat ran down my back and I was almost on the verge of tears. I wanted to hiccup, but held it down. Light glinted off the clustered crystalline eyes. This close I could see tiny imperfections in the black chitin carapace, bumps and abrasions and rough patches, old scars and deep gouges.

Dunno if that was really the "wrong" choice. Sounds to me like it's trying to back her out of the room again. Giving the "intruder" a chance to leave without having to fight.

As for WHY its reading her as an intruder, well.

Best case scenario is that the Elder Sign on her arm is pinging its IFF, but that seems unlikely because Evelyn says she uses that fractal a lot and so she's probably carried something with it in here before.

Most likely scenario, I think, is that it detects Heather's connection with the Eye, and it's (very sensibly) programmed not to let in the agents of unknown supernatural entities.

Worst case scenario is that it's been hacked. In which case, where the hell is a nightstick when you need one? Or, like, a bazooka?

"Evelyn, call it off," I whispered.

"I shouldn't need to. It's not going to attack you—"

"Call. It. Off."

The terror on my face finally got through to her. Evelyn raised her chin and spoke quickly and confidently. "Discede et agnosce, per auctoritatem de Evelyn Saye."

Nothing happened.

Either it's been hacked, or you need top level clearance to make it stand down in this situation and Evelyn hasn't been granted that.

Also, I still want to know why these things respond to Greek and Latin commands but not English ones, even when they've been created by English-speaking wizards. Maybe it's just too much hassle to translate the basic programming setup from how the Roman wizard who invented them wrote it down, and you need to stick to one language throughout.

On a more critical note...this thing is cool and all, but I feel like it kind of...I dunno...like Evelyn's family owning a pet 90's videogame boss goes against the vibe of this story, just a little? I dunno. It's one thing for monsters like this to exist in the world of the story, but it's another for one of the main characters to have one guarding her book collection. Makes it feel like humanity has already sort of conquered the unknown and made it known.

Maybe it's just me.

I stayed very still.

"Well?" Evelyn prompted.

"I don't think it's listening."

"What? There's no reason it shouldn't." She huffed in exasperation. "Per … termina … Dammit, no, that's not it. Uh … termina et statim redi, per auctoritatem de Evelyn Saye."

The spider-servitor remained exceedingly ready to murder me. I said this to Evelyn, in not so many words. She gritted her teeth and looked frustrated enough to belt the spider over the head with her walking stick.

"Finis, terminus, exitus. Novam rectricem agnosce, god dammit!"

Latin finally worked like actual magic words, or perhaps Evelyn's anger did the trick; the spider surged back into its original position with a flickering of limbs. I felt that cold, mechanical attention switch away from me at last. I scurried beneath the web as fast as I could, shoulder blades itching until I stood safely next to Evelyn again. I let out a long shaking breath and tried to force my muscles to unclench, heart hammering in my chest.

Probably not hacked, then.

Evelyn having so much trouble making it stand down might just be down to her dumb ass mixing up the command words, but that still doesn't explain why it reacted to Heather in the first place. My best guess is still that it detected the Eye.

"I take it that worked?" Evelyn said.

I nodded and leaned against the wall to keep myself on my feet.

"Well, what did it do then?" she asked. "I assume it stood down?"

I turned a very unimpressed look on her. "Eventually."

She rolled her eyes. Though I could tell it was mostly to cover her own embarrassment, the gesture still made me bristle with anger.

"It's a good thing you and Raine never went into the attic in my house," she said. "When you were looking for me."

" … there's more of these things?"

"Of course. My family's historical paranoia has to be worth something. God alone knows what triggered it to treat you like a threat, though."

They just have a goddamned factory for these things, I guess.

...is Evelyn implying that she never told Raine that she has one in the attic? Why would she have never told her about that?

Anyway, the gigerspiders seem to be pretty limited in terms of what they can do. "Guard a location from X, stand down if commanded to by Y." If they were more versatile than that, Evelyn would probably just bring one with her and rely on it for protection. Again, unless it's a matter of clearance rather than capability.

"The Fractal?" I gestured with my forearm. "Maybe?"

"No, it's far too robust to be bothered by that. Regardless, it should be calibrated to recognise you now. I had to make it register you as trusted, it didn't want you inside otherwise."

"Evelyn." I tried to keep my voice steady and quiet, to overcome a lifetime of conflict avoidance. "I really do want to be your friend, but you have to warn me in advance when you are going to surprise me with a spring-loaded monster. I am very serious."

She avoided my eyes. "It's never done that before. I … I only know a fraction of the command interface language for it. I can't even make it move to a new post. Trust me, I've tried."

Oh hey, two questions of mine answered back to back. I didn't *think* it was the fractal causing that, but it's nice to have it eliminated conclusively. And, apparently Evelyn's mother etc actually *can* command the family spiderbots to do more than just guard a preset location.

...Evelyn's mother with her spiderbots is going to be a late game boss, isn't she?

She is. She totally, totally is.

Also, this passage clarified how the fractal actually works. Apparently it actually causes minor damage to anything that needs magic to function in its vicinity. It's less of a firewall and more of an electric fence. The wispy spydrone servitor that Raine destroyed with it in the first chapter must have just been *really* flimsy. A single hit point summons, basically. Things like the spiderbots can just shrug it off entirely.

Hmm. And yet, it's effective against the Eye. Despite the Eye being very powerful. Maybe it's more just a matter of the Eye only using tiny, wispy appendages to reach out across the worlds toward Heather's brain, and she's not worth the effort of using its full strength. Maybe? IDK.

Also? If Evelyn's first thought for passive defence is "rune that kills or injures anything magical that comes close to it," then, um. Maaaaaybe her negative impression of the supernatural world is actually partly caused by her walking around constantly poking everything in the eye? That family paranoia of hers might actually be self-justifying, if her precautions are outright antagonizing all the nearby creatures.

...shit. That's exactly the issue with her BEHAVIOR as well. She's constantly hurting everyone around her as an unthinking defence mechanism, which ultimately gives her more actual enemies she needs to defend against.

Okay, yeah, I'm like 90% sure I'm onto something here. It's just too perfectly lined up thematically. Stop using electric fence glyphs, and maybe those fluffy puffies actually will let you pet them sometimes.

An awkward moment of silence passed between us.

"I … I apologise," Evelyn said softly.

I straightened up and gave her the best smile I could muster. She was trying, she really was, and that meant a lot. "Apology accepted."

"Mm."

Evelyn busied herself unlocking the door. It bore another understated brass plaque.

Special Collection and Sensitive Storage Room K-11

"Why do you need such a lethal guard dog?" I asked.

Evelyn snorted a humourless laugh. "At least two cults operate in Sharrowford, that I know of. They'd love to get their hands on my books."

"Cults?"

"Small-time idiots, worshipping things they don't understand." She waved a dismissive hand. "But they're still dangerous. Not to mention my mother's and grandmother's old rivals elsewhere, and any other mages who know about this collection."

Not for the first time, I wondered if I'd be happier and safer in ignorance.

Most merciful thing in the world, island of ignorance, etc.

In this case...eh, I think you're better off knowing, Heather. Even without the Eye situation, these cultists and warlocks and such sound like the types who will grab the occasional muggle to snack on just as a matter of course. Your chances of having to face them as a normal person are small, but nonzero. Better to be prepared for that eventuality, even if knowing about them might make you somewhat more visible to them.

Evelyn led me over the threshold.

What had I been expecting, if only subconsciously? Books bound in human skin and chained to lecterns made of bone? Flickering torches, stone walls, leering gargoyles? A little, I confess.

Going by the security? I'd more peg Evelyn's family as "walls made of ribbed black metal and studded with mixed-up skulls and genitalia" sort of people.

Instead, it was a small, dusty, windowless storage room. Two long fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling flickered on when Evelyn hit the light switch. They illuminated a pair of battered reading desks and a row of plain, functional bookcases—empty bookcases. There was nothing here.

Evelyn closed the door behind us and dumped her tote bag on one of the desks. I looked closer.

Not quite empty, I corrected myself.

Only two of the shelves held anything. One was lined with exactly sixteen books. I counted them twice. Most of them were aged and leather-bound, though a few looked at least twentieth century by their modern hardback covers. Three much older volumes lay flat on the shelf below, packed inside protective transparent plastic, next to a stack of bound photocopies. A cardboard storage box sat at the foot of the occupied bookcase.

No more Gigertech. All things in moderation I suppose.

Now, how many of the objects in this room that aren't books are booby-trapped? I'm guessing all of them. And also some of the books themselves.

"Is this it?" I asked.

Evelyn raised an eyebrow at me in silent question. I shrugged, unsure what more to say, painfully conscious of my silly assumptions. She went over to the books and gently eased one of the modern-looking volumes off the shelf.

"In the right hands, every one of these is more lethal than an atomic bomb," she said. "Personally, I'm glad there's so few of them. And that they're mine."

Okay that's got to be an exaggeration.

"Are you being serious?"

Evelyn cleared her throat. "Sort of. Sit down, if you like. I need to look up some details."

Yeah, thought so. :P

Next scene!

"What is magic?"

I didn't want to distract Evelyn, but I couldn't hold the question back anymore. She'd been making notes and muttering to herself as she read from one of the grimoires propped open on the desk. Her pen paused as she looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

"I've been thinking about it all week," I said. "But I couldn't articulate it until this." I gestured at the books, the tiny occult library, and the incomplete magic circle Evelyn had drawn on a notebook page. "I took it on trust. Magic is magical, but that's a tautology. You did magic with esoteric symbols and circles and books, but I did the same thing by … " I swallowed and fought down a swirl of nausea. Recalling impossible equations was still dangerous. "By thinking maths. I thought the books might give me some answers, some context, but I suppose it's not going to work that way. Is it?"

You see the Eye, you become a spontaneous caster. I didn't make the rules, sorry, take it up with Hiromi Arakawa.

I offered Evelyn an apologetic smile. She sucked on her teeth in thought.

We'd been in the reading room—Special Collection and Sensitive Storage Room K-11—for about thirty minutes. I'd parked myself in a chair and tried to sit still, while nearly bouncing from foot to foot in excitement at these wonderful old books, even if there were so few of them.

Evelyn had noticed and directed me toward one of the less fragile volumes, a huge blank-faced hardback titled The Diaries of Richard Barker and his great working, reprinted with commentary, by one James Oston. Despite the relatively modern binding, the front matter informed me of only the printing date, 1932. No publisher's mark, place of printing, list of editions, nothing.

"Just don't read any Latin or Greek out loud," Evelyn had said. "Even under your breath."

Whoever Mister Richard Barker had been, he was very seventeenth century, and his "diaries" consisted of a lot of magical experiments, summoning demons, communing with "angels"—and, when I read between the lines, several brutal murders.

The symbols he included made my head hurt. They looked wrong.

Looked up Richard Barker and James Oston. Google had nothing, so either they're obscure or they're fictional.

Anyway, serial killer wizard and loquacious serial killer wizard fanboy. Some of the symbols seem to be reminding Heather of stuff she's seen in her dreamspace math homework.

Again with the Greek and Latin.

My fascination had curdled, returned to the cold reality of academic rigour as I'd flicked past pages of regurgitated medieval mythology. The commentary was worse, an unreadable jumble of concepts: somatic-transfer membranes, cellular resonance, the dangers of astral voyaging, whatever all that meant.

I flipped the book shut to illustrate my point. "None of this means anything to me. None of it seems real. What is magic? How does it work?"

Evelyn nodded slowly. She put her pen down and folded her hands together.

"I don't know," she said.

" … you don't know?"

"Is there an echo in here?"

I goggled at her, unsure of her sincerity. "You're the mage, Evelyn. What do you mean, you don't know?"
Evelyn raised her chin and stared at me in silence, like a professor waiting for a bright yet slow student to comprehend a lesson under their own intellectual steam. I felt like I was the butt of a joke I didn't get. I shook my head at her, lost for words.

"I'm not much of a teacher, you understand?" she said. "I'm not going to be good at this, and this is not going to make sense."

A note in Evelyn's voice rang false. She was putting on a role, the wizened master of occult secrets. I never would have noticed the artifice if I'd been my usual sleep-deprived self, but I couldn't fathom why she was acting this way.

"And I'm not an idiot, Evelyn. Please don't treat me as one."

She inclined her head. "I'm not. Here, let's say you're a metalsmith in two thousand five hundred BC."

" … okay?"

"You know how to make iron weapons and armour. You know how to smelt the metal, how to get it from the ore, where the deposits are found underground. Every part of the smelting and smithing process is done by eye, by feel. You know how hot the fire should feel at every stage, what colour the metal should be, and it is by that colour and feel that you judge when to hammer it and when to quench it. But do you know the temperatures involved? Can you put specific numbers to those temperatures? Can you measure them, with Iron Age tools?"

"Ah." I nodded, following along. "Of course you can't."

"You don't know what iron atoms are, or how they reform and bond during the smelting process. You don't know the chemical composition of metal. You just know how to get the results." She rummaged in her tote bag and produced the lump of white quartz, the fade stone, the one she'd used on me, and held it up. "A result. I don't know how it works. I don't know how magic works. I suspect nobody does."

Very well-put metaphor.

Evelyn has told us that she rehearses things before she expects to have to say them to other people, but I don't think this is one of those things. I think this is a repetition of a speech that someone else gave to her. Probably a family member, and probably when she was pretty young.

"Nobody at all?" I asked, but Evelyn shook her head. "Surely somebody has tried," I went on. "You say there's more mages out there, there's a whole magical ecosystem, cults, people, correct?"

"Yes, but it's not straightforward."

"Then someone must have tried to apply modern science, done systematic experiments, come up with some first principles. This isn't the Dark Ages, this is the twenty-first century." I glanced over at the books, frowning now, my mind chewing on issues I'd ignored. "Why is this stuff hidden down here in the first place? How could an entire branch of reality, physics, whatever you want to call it, go hidden for centuries? The more I think about this the less sense it makes."

Evelyn levelled a very cold gaze at me, and started to speak.

"Imagine a field of study in which too much progress, too fast, results in one's madness or death; in which any attempt to contact one's peers risks them murdering you to steal what secrets and power you've amassed; in which the best way to experiment is to commit unimaginable atrocities; in which, for hundreds of years, any public attention would have you burned at the stake, and in modern times would see you locked in a mental asylum. There is no pipeline of talent. No safe harbour. No peer review. No civilian applications."

Some good points here. But also some questions remain unanswered, and a couple of new ones raised.

Why would the wizards all murder each other for their secrets instead of exchanging them for mutual benefit?

Why does magical research always require atrocities, when much of what we've seen in practice is so innocuous?

And also...if wizards have real power that's really anywhere close to the same league as a nuclear weapon, why are they at risk of being burned at the stake or thrown in asylums no matter how crazy they are? Shouldn't they be ruling the world with an iron fist and demanding sacrificial victims for their experiments by the trainload while normal people like in mud huts and hide under their beds from monsters all night? They're evidently functional enough to be rich university investors, so what's been stopping them from going the next few steps at any point in the last few centuries?

These questions may all have good answers. I suspect that at least some of said answers will end up coming down to "Evelyn learned all this from her family, and she knows that her family is super paranoid, but she never quite put two and two together."

...

Now, granted, this is starting to touch against the big suspension of disbelief hurdle that's inherent to the urban fantasy genre (or at least, the "masquerade" subset of it). "Why and how did this all remain secret throughout the entire goddamned world?" Some stories in this genre try to answer that question, but in my experience the answers rarely hold up to even mild scrutiny. Some stories just don't mention it at all, and expect the reader to take the genre convention in stride without asking questions. There are masquerade stories that I really enjoy, but this essential worldbuilding premise has always bugged me.

Heck, it bugged me while writing my own damned JoJo fanfic. My cowriter and I included a fig leaf in-universe justification for the secrecy, but...well, it doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

So, in the grand scheme of things, I think Katalepsis does a better job than most. "Magic drives you insane, so wizards are all too crazy to change the world much less rule it." It works, even if it also comes with the downside of "if the wizards are all crazy, how are they able to keep such an effective lid on stuff?" It's fine. But in having Heather ask all these questions and press the subject as hard as she is, the story is also calling more attention to it than most stories in its genre, which, well, like I said: you don't want the reader's scrutiny to be directed there.

Unless Katalepsis is about to REALLY drop some big worldbuilding game changer that justifies everything and stands up to serious examination, this was probably a bad move. Which, I mean, maybe it WILL do that. I'd be thrilled if it did. I'd steal it for every urban fantasy story that I ever get inspired to write for the rest of my life. And also do everything I can to try and get Katalepsis nominated for a Nebula.

...

Anyway. I guess we'll see over the course of the story how much of this is true, and how much of this is skewed by the perspective of Evelyn's clan.

"That speech sounded very well rehearsed."

Evelyn's whole act fell apart.

She shrugged and hunched her shoulders. Her air of superiority dropped away. Suddenly she seemed very small and weak, curled up to protect herself from the world. I felt mortified by the impact of my words, didn't know what to say. I wanted to reach over and take her hand, cross the table and hug her.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't—"

Evelyn waved a hand. "You're right, completely right. It's just a version of what I got drummed into me as a child. Except I had it less as a warning, more a justification."

Heh. Knew it.

Also, "justification." Either for their paranoia, or for the atrocities they themselves commit in the process of conducting magical research. Depends on how fucked up they are exactly; just a little, or a lot.

"That's okay, I didn't mean to knock you off your flow. You just seemed so … "

"Fake," she sighed. "Pretending to be somebody I'm not. Forget it. Better to call me out on it than let it fester."

"Well, okay, if you say so."

Yeah. The more that's hinted about Evelyn's background, the harder it is to hold this stuff against her.

I sketched a smile and hoped it looked reassuring, accepting, kind—instead of shaken and insecure. Was I supposed to reassure her, or would that be weird? I'd touched a nerve of personal history and wasn't sure I should dig any deeper.

Evelyn didn't seem bothered. She tapped a finger against the tabletop, lost in real thought, no longer playing the role.

"I meant all that," she said. "Even if my delivery was bloody awful. I really don't know how magic works." Evelyn sighed and gestured awkwardly, as if trying to summon an idea she'd shooed away. "What I do have are various working theories, things I learnt as a child, and the scraps my mother left in her notebooks."

"Your mother?"

"Yes." Evelyn shifted uncomfortably. "She never put anything in print. No reason to. But I have most of her notebooks. I can share what little I know."

"Please. Please do. I can't express how hungry I am to understand. Please, anything you have."

Now, see, THAT line sounds rehearsed and practiced to me.

Heather sounds like that a lot, honestly.

Hmm. Yeah. She and Evelyn really are similar for different reasons.

"Don't beg." Evelyn shot a strange frown at me. "You're better than that."

I blinked at her in surprise, but she continued before I could say anything.

"Magic," Evelyn began, wetting her lips. "Magic is manipulation of the underlying structure of reality, via the directed application of human willpower. That willpower requires shaping, it needs conduits to flow through, tools to access the controls—magic circles, symbols, bits of Latin and Ancient Greek, or other languages with heavy historical imprint and cultural currency with magical practice.

"Heavy historical imprint and cultural currency with magical practice."

Aramaic should be up there too, no? And also...I don't even know what prevailing beliefs about magic and languages thereof there are (and have historically been) in places like India or China, but if we're doing a noosphere thing then it seems like their populations should give them a lot of pull.

Maybe it's less noosphere and more noo-region? Drawing on whatever cultural background the practitioner personally fits into? Eh...that would start getting us dangerously close to the fucked up racist side of occultism though, so I doubt the story is going to go in that direction.

For now, I'll just assume that either a) Greek and Latin work best because of some specific historical incidents involving the actions of ancient wizards who spoke those languages, or b) Evelyn's family's model of how this works is woefully incomplete at best and downright wrong at worst.

Which, to be fair...Evelyn did just TELL Heather that no one actually knows how it works, and that everyone's been hoarding knowledge instead of sharing it. So, right up front, she admits that everything that she thinks she knows should be taken with a grain of salt, and she's aware that her library only gives her access to a small part of the picture. So, that's both wise and humble of her.

You can break the laws of thermodynamics, for example, in limited, local ways, but they always reassert themselves. Physical effects are more difficult the larger they are. Psychological effects are possible but much more difficult, hypnosis or mind control or implanting ideas, things like that. The human mind is largely tamper-proof to direct magic. Summon things from Outside, though, and all bets are off. They break all the rules. That's the basics, as best I can do."

"That's … surprisingly straightforward, but it doesn't really explain anything. Somebody would know about magic. There would be a … I don't know, a secret government department. Ministry for mages?"

Evelyn half-smiled, a minimalist laugh. "That would make life easier." She spread her hands, hesitated, then seemed to withdraw into her thoughts, resigned to something she didn't want to face.

-____-

Heather.

If it's a secret government department.

Then it's existence would be.

A secret.

"Evelyn? Evelyn? … Evee?"

That made her look up. Our eyes met and I flushed with embarrassment at using the diminutive version of her name.

"I'm sorry," I said. "You looked like you needed snapping out of that."

She nodded and shrugged. "Call me Evee if you want. It's fine."

"I will then. Thank you."

"Our reality is auto-correcting and self-enforcing." Evelyn paused and sighed. "Those are my mother's words, for what they're worth. I don't have a better way to phrase it. Think of reality like a big rubber sheet. You can deform it for a second by throwing a bowling ball against it, but it springs back right away. You can break the laws of thermodynamics, to a point, or bend light, or do a million other things, but reality always snaps back." She clicked her fingers. The sound echoed off the empty reading room shelves. "Sometimes right in your face."

"What goes up must come down?"

"To a point, yes. Self-enforcement applies most strongly up here." She tapped her temple.

" … meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning I need an example. Let's say I draw a magic circle on the floor right here, do a lot of things I shouldn't do, and summon a monster from Outside. Let's say it goes upstairs into the library and kills a couple of people. What do you think happens afterward?"

"Um, mass panic? It would be on the evening news. Everywhere."

"Exactly. Except that doesn't happen, does it? Instead of an unimaginable demon, witnesses will remember a madman with an axe, or a crazed homeless person, or whatever else their prejudices and assumptions provide. Unless a person is already broken in by exposure to magic, or Outside, or worse, then their mind self-edits, reality cushions the blow, though often they still get scarred by the experience."

"People would film it on their mobile phones, there'd be evidence."

Evelyn gave me a knowing smile. "Would you believe it was real?"

" … I … I can't … Evelyn, I don't like this idea about the 'self-editing' mind." I swallowed, struggling to find a way to say this, to make her understand why that concept made my guts churn. "I can't go from ten years of distrusting my senses, to being told I'm not crazy to … to back again. How can I trust my own memories, if that's accurate?"

Evelyn shook her head. "Once you're in, you're in. You've been exposed, and you didn't deny it or go mad."

This makes zero sense.

"Your mind will reject the existence of magic if you are exposed to it. Also, once you're exposed to magic, your mind will stop rejecting it."

The way that Evelyn is conflating "reality" as in the laws of physics, and "reality" as in the human consensus about how the world is supposed to work, well...I'm going to talk about this at the end, because it'll call back a bunch of other details from throughout the recent chapters.

I understood what she was getting at, and I suspected that my "exposure"—to the Eye—was more than enough to acclimate my soul to anything. But the notion still sat heavy in my stomach.

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," I muttered under my breath.

Evelyn frowned at me. "Pardon?"

"Misquoting Shakespeare." I gave her an embarrassed smile. "Just a line I've always liked, from Hamlet. The concept helps."

"Mm. If that's what you need."

"I still don't get it, how do you deform reality in the first place? If the laws of thermodynamics are breakable then nothing around us should work."

Evelyn nodded slowly. "Yes, you're a child of the post-Enlightenment age. The scientific method, causality, the heliocentric model, they're all still correct. I'm not going to ask you to believe in magical particles or spirit energy or that the Earth is flat."

What Evelyn did ask me to believe in was the parable of the castle.

It didn't resonate with me, over that long slow hour beneath the dull fluorescent lights in that secret reading room.

Evelyn wove a complex metaphor, one I suspected she'd been fed as a little girl, a child's fairy tale to make sense of an impossible universe for an impressionable, frightened mind. I didn't mention that feeling; it seemed cruel to point out how she slipped into a child's cadence as she related the tale. I just let her run through it, for whatever comfort it gave her.

Over time, I built my own version of Evelyn's metaphor, far less charitable than what Evelyn's family had left her.

Okay, maybe I won't need to get back to this at the end after all. Let's see if Heather's version of Evelyn's traditional analogy squares this circle on its own.

Not sure what Heather means by "less charitable," though. Less charitable to whom?

Imagine you live in a castle.

Kay.

You were born enclosed by walls so thick and so high that they seem to be the limit of the world. No gate or drawbridge or window leads out. Nobody has ever been outside. Those who suggest such a feat is even possible are dismissed as madmen or charlatans or dangerous zealots.

Kay.

Inside the castle, life makes sense. Rooms connect to each other at proper ninety-degree angles. The grass and trees of the inner courtyards are neat and orderly, regularly cut and trimmed. If you throw a ball up, it will come down. If you do not eat, you will starve. Human behaviour is explicable, if not always kind. If you observe a physical law, and test it, you can create a theory to accurately describe and predict how it works.

Then, one day, you find a way up onto the walls. A secret way, hidden in a place nobody goes. You are curious, so you step inside, and the door slams shut behind you. It will not open, no matter how much you pound on it, how long or loud you scream, how hot your tears run down your cheeks. There is no way out.

Except up.

You climb the stairs. They are dark and cramped and you hear horrible sounds from above. For the first time in your life, perhaps for the first time in any life, you emerge into the daylight on the battlements.

What you see ruins you forever.

The castle is not all. The walls do not demarcate the edge of the world. Your castle is merely a tiny keep, set in the middle of a much larger curtain wall. In the gap between the keep and the curtain wall live such inhuman things. They do not obey the laws that govern inside the castle; they bend them into impossible shapes. They caper and dance and go about their bizarre alien business, and sometimes they look up at you and make eye contact, or hoot strange sounds to you. They watch you and follow you and surround the base of the wall down below you.

Perhaps you do your best to ignore them.

But they—the pneuma-somatic life just beyond our comfortable castle of reality—are not the worst thing you see from atop the battlements. Oh no. Because your sight is inevitably dragged upward, beyond the outer curtain wall, to outside the castle entirely.

To Outside.

I feel like I have to point out that the only really bizarre pneuma-somatic entities we've seen so far have been artificial constructs. The rest are (aside from a couple of baffling-but-still-consistent traits, like the way they seem to be acted upon by the same physical terrain we inhabit but unable to act upon it, or the way their footsteps create vibrations that Heather can actually hear but other people with their ears exposed to the same air can't) pretty much just regular animals doing regular animal things afaict.

Well. They might also be sensitive to Heather's emotions, potentially. But that honestly seems more like a weird Heather trait than a weird PSF trait.

Out there the laws of the castle are naught but a whispered suggestion. Giant shapes move on the horizon, in their own domains, with different laws, other rules, rules that produce only screaming insanity for a human being, rules that will break you if you try to comprehend them, rules which once understood cannot be forgotten, and will worm their way inside your soul and wreck you for knowing them.

Let's say you manage to get back down, back inside the castle. Maybe you try to forget what you saw. Maybe you pretend to be normal.

But then you discover you're not the only one. Others have been up on the battlements.

Some have found cracks in the walls.

Been Outside.

Brought things back.

And those things they bring back—magic—can break the laws of reality inside the castle, make it more like Outside, if only for brief moments before the laws reassert themselves, before the human mind rebels against what it witnesses, before the mob tears them apart in sheer outrage.

This part just feels like Lovecraft Protagonist Disease. Why is the knowledge that things work differently elsewhere in the universe so offensive to human sensibilities? I can get "humans just can't understand, because our brains run in a certain environment and are only meant to process that type of environment." That makes sense. But where is this hostility coming from?

Sure, some people might hate these other realms just because they're different and frustrating to try to learn about. But, like. That's a them problem.

To do this they need tools, protection from the searing truth of the Outside, a framework through which the fragile human mind can operate: magic circles and symbols, dead languages, rituals, bloody knives and stained altars. And these things do not always work, do not always perfectly protect.

This phrasing makes it seem like these local systems of physical laws are each living things. They have signs and signals that they can LEARN TO recognize, but not all that reliably.

That's close enough to Lovecraft with his Outer Gods, I guess.

Actually...put that way, it sounds like human unwillingness to believe in magic outside of certain poorly-explained exceptions might be like...hmm. If each cluster of physical laws is alive, and the one we live in at least is self-correcting, then...maybe I was looking at this backward. It's not a consensus reality thing. It's our local Outer God compelling people to act against the things it doesn't want inside its body.

It's a fascinating idea, if I'm right. Although it potentially also runs into some character agency issues when trying to write a story set in such a world. Hmm.

And then, last and most terrible of all, you realise that you are unique. That you alone can bring things back from Outside merely by thinking them.

Obviously, this last bit isn't part of Evelyn's version. Heather's got a "castle breach" inside of her mind that she has partial control over. Probably because of the Eye, but frankly...the incident that Maisie disappeared in was so inexplicable that it might be the other way around. There was something special about the twins, and that's what attracted the Eye or associated entities to...

...

......

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.

Twin telepathy.

That's how the Eye is communicating with Heather, I'll bet. It's talking to her through Maisie. Maybe that's why it took one of them and sent the other back to Earth? It's trying to set up a two-way communication system between our dimension and another one?

Well, maybe. The way it's showing up in Heather's mind still could be unintentional. But whether or not the Eye intends to be in contact with Heather, I suspect that twin telepathy is the reason it is in contact with Heather.

That's the chapter.


I like what this is doing character-wise. Evelyn definitely coming into her own after an inauspicious start, now that we're getting to know her and (perhaps more importantly) to know what led to her.

For the story as a whole, I feel like there's a little bit of conceptual dissonance though. The metaphysics may justify it in-story, but Doylistically it's kind of a bumpy ride.

Basically, the way I see it, there are two "attitudes" that supernatural fiction can take. The first is what I might call the Humanocentric Paradigm. Magic comes from belief, or at least is shaped by belief. Supernatural beings are cultured from the human collective unconscious, or are symbols brought to life through human usage, or are posthumans turned into their present state by magic used by themselves or other (post)humans. In extreme cases, such stories go to the Buddhist extreme and posit that all of reality is an illusion dreamed into existence by ourselves.

Then, there's the opposite. Call it the Cosmicist Paradigm. Put simply, humans ain't shit. Magic and supernatural entities don't need humanity to exist, and never needed humanity to exist (aside from perhaps individual cases who have unique circumstances within the larger framework). Reality is a rolling boulder, and human beliefs and understanding are a sheet of tissue paper. If it turns out that reality is being dreamed into existence by someone in such a story, then that someone isn't anything like ourselves; they are cosmically important, and we are not.

Katalepsis seems like it's sort of trying to do both. There's the "Outside," but then there's also the whole thing about application of human willpower moulding the universe, and humanity as a whole having a kind of collective reality-defence against intrusions. Magic is unreliable and perilous, but there are also magic spider robots that Evelyn's family can repeatably, mostly-consistently create and control. There are ways to square this circle (like my aforementioned "humanity is being at least partly controlled by our local Outer God" hypothesis), but they present issues of their own.

I'm still very excited to continue Katalepsis. But I'm also having some conceptual misgivings that the story will hopefully lay to rest rather than validating.