S-TWC-007
St. Valentine's Ledger
Patron: Nickels Costigan
Date: Aug 11th, 1923 – The Costochondral Axis
Location: The Ouroboros
Proprietor: Mags
They called me back into the dark.
The summons came as they always do, whispers in my dreams. Slow, sap like, languished words of the ███████████████, the ███████████████, █████████. They wake me up, not in a sweat, but in a total paralyzed stillness. When █████ calls, even the blood remembers to slow in its wake.
So, I went.
What choice did I have?
The Ouroboros is a great and terrible ruin without █████ or ████, held together by the weight of all that could have been. It circles endlessly, coiled in its own irrevocable regrets. The floor is made of broken stone and glass like grass with a missing, empty, void of a sky. Snakes, long, thin, large, and small, slither about the seams of what was once architecture but is now only rubble, rust, and rot.
I found my brothers waiting at the Costochondral Axis. Spires that lurch from the ground humming with a dark, hypnotic resonance. ███████, my oldest brother, was seated on a broken altar, dabbing blood from his wrist like a gentleman dabs sweat. █████, my second oldest brother, stood a little behind him, eyes upturned to the stars he couldn't see, muttering to himself about █████████████████. And ███████…
███████ was sat on the floor, where he has always sat, drawing on the stones with his fingernails.
"They told us," he said without looking up. "They told us, Magdelena. We heard their hisses. The Snakes told us."
"Snakes?" To be fair, in █████████'s Plane, one must specify. "The Order?"
He nodded, fast. "The Eternal Ones. Those born of ████ and Regret. The █████████—"
"The ███████████," ███████ corrected, lightly.
"The other half. It wants up," said █████. "It wants up and out."
I knelt beside ███████, brushing his thick black hair from his eyes. He flinched. He always does. He… he never knows what will be the end of him. I'm sure he's seen death at my hands, and ███████'s, and █████'s, and even █████████'s. He's seen every possible death and destruction that might await him and everyone else.
"Tell me," I said, "How bad is it?"
"It's waking up. It's waking up and it remembers the sins of the Universe before the Universe. It remembers the ████ War. It remembers the ████. It remembers being cast away with the other ███████. It remembers—"
"…The city?"
"Is an Archon. The ████." ███████ said. "Keeper of one of the ███████████████████."
"The ██████████████, actually. The █████ of █████, inaction, dejection, skies, and…" █████ began.
"What's it do?"
"We don't know. ██████████████ burn away reality, among other things. ██████████████ ██████…" ███████ began.
"Could do anything." █████ finished.
"Magdelena, a word?" ███████ said, jutting his chin toward his home away from home in the Ouroboros. The Black Collar.
Unsmudge the Ledger
"Lord of the Gap."
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