"But how could that be? The last tal block... how did it end up with Miss Capet?"
Jenkins watched in astonishnt as Miss Capet hung the tal block around her neck, wondering if soone had slipped a hallucinogen into his coffee. He was certain that the piece in her hands shared the sa origin as the two he possessed. As an antique store apprentice, he had a keen eye for the luster and texture of such objects.
His mind churned with questions. The more he studied the woman's profile, the more familiar it seed. Soon, it dawned on him—it was a perfect reflection of his own face in the mirror. The sense of familiarity ca not from a stranger, but from himself.
"Miss Capet... could she be my cousin?"
Papa Oliver had once ntioned Miss Capet's past. She was an orphan taken in by the Church of All Things and Nature, growing up within its walls, much like Fini. Barring the unlikely possibility that she had simply found the tal pendant sowhere, the chances of her being a relative of the Williams family were exceedingly high.
It seed that, much like the descendants of the second of the three brothers, the descendants of the eldest had also t with misfortune.
"But how can this be? Miss Capet..."
He couldn't help but press a hand to his forehead, then abruptly let it fall.
"Wait, whether she's a Williams relative or not, what does it have to do with ?"
Upon reflection, it seed to have little bearing on his life, aside from needing to write one more holiday card each year. He flipped the page of his magazine, pretending to continue reading, while his mind raced. Miss Brolignans's booklet would probably have Miss Capet's na in it.
"This is absolutely fascinating. When I get back from Ruen, I have to tell my family. I'm sure they'll be delighted."
Buoyed by this pleasant thought, he drained the last of his coffee, only to be choked by the unstirred sugar at the bottom of the cup.
He coughed several tis, drawing concerned glances from a nearby custor who likely suspected him of having the spring flu. Jenkins hastily apologized to those around him before summoning a waiter to settle his bill.
Seeing that it was still early, he decided to visit the Nolan Post Office before returning to Ruen, hoping to see the wall where the stone slate, the Misfortune Poem, had been discovered. But the wall was gone, demolished during recent renovations, leaving nothing for Jenkins to see.
His curiosity about the slate remained. He ducked into an alley and, using Psychography, conjured an exact replica of the stone, hoping to uncover so new clue.
The mont the slate appeared, however, Jenkins felt sothing was amiss. He stopped walking and frowned at the stone resting in his hand, trying to recapture the fleeting, unusual sensation he had just experienced.
It was a peculiar feeling. As the slate in his hand took shape, mirroring the original, he was overco with a sense of having "completed a creation."
It was like the difference between idly saring paint on a canvas for ten minutes and using those ten minutes to paint a tree. The feeling Jenkins got from making the slate wasn't "I've made sothing aningless," but rather "I've made sothing unique."
"What is this strange feeling?"
He asked himself, then tossed the stone into the air and shattered it with a single punch. He resud his walk and once again used Psychography to create an identical slate. Sure enough, as the stone materialized, the sa strange feeling returned.
"So it wasn't my imagination."
He walked on with his head lowered, trying to grasp that montary, curious sensation. The alley was short, and he soon erged at the other end. The instant he stepped out, the world before him plunged into darkness. He imdiately suspected a nearby gas lamp had malfunctioned, only to rember it was rely noon.
"A solar eclipse?"
Of course not. As he stepped fully out of the alley, a dim, deserted street stretched before him. Heaps of rotting corpses littered the ground, and the shops on either side had their doors and windows sealed with crooked, decaying planks. A broken steam pipe, only half-intact, dripped sewage down a wall covered almost entirely in bizarre, climbing vines.
Cobwebs filled every corner, and spiders the size of Jenkins's fist skittered about, their legs making soft, rustling sounds. The ground was uneven, pocked with craters filled with a mixture of sewage and blood that reflected a stark, yellow light.
Looking east down the street, he saw a five-way intersection. A five-story tower directly ahead was completely stripped of its plaster, its uneven brickwork exposed to the elents.
Behind the tower hung a dim night sky and a colossal yellow moon. It was so enormous it looked as if it were about to plumt to the earth. The moon cast an eerie, jaundiced glow, illuminating the horrific scene before him, and the bewildered cat perched on his shoulder.
"..."
Jenkins stood speechless, staring at the sight before him. He raised a hand and flicked his finger. A pellet of ice, freshly condensed from the humid air, shot forward at high speed. It tore straight through one of the colorful spiders on the adjacent wall, which exploded in a shower of green fluid and a thick, foul stench.
"Is this an illusion...?"
He couldn't be sure. He picked his way across the pools of stagnant water, found a relatively clean spot on the other side of the street, and sat down. Then, he projected his consciousness to Ruen.
The process was seamless. He appeared in the living room of the manor, where the view from the window revealed a bright, sunny spring day. The city of Ruen sparkled in the distance. A pair of maids entered to clean the floor and, seeing Jenkins, imdiately curtsied in greeting.
Nothing had changed in Ruen. Everything was perfectly normal.
He returned to Nolan. The dim, decaying streetscape and the massive yellow moon hanging in the sky remained unchanged. Chocolate stood beside him, disdainfully kicking away a spider that lay dead without any visible injury, then affectionately rubbed against Jenkins's hand.
"So, what on earth is going on?"
The yellow moon should have vanished in an ancient epoch, and Nolan should never have fallen into such a state of decay. He gazed at the scene, speechless, until a beast-like roar from behind jolted him back to his senses.
He turned to see a humanoid creature of indescribable grotesqueness shambling toward him from the other end of the street. It was at least twice Jenkins's height, horribly emaciated, and its skin was entirely black. Tattered black gauze was wrapped around its body, so of it fused directly to its flesh.
Its body was tall, but its head was small. Its left arm hung limply at its side, while its right clutched a rusty scimitar. It lurched toward Jenkins, emitting a low, threatening growl. When it was five paces away, it made a distinct feint backward before lunging forward, bringing the scimitar down with imnse force toward Jenkins's head.
Clang!
He raised the white holy sword above his head, and it collided with the rusty black scimitar. The impact sent a jolt through his arms, and he nearly lost his grip; the creature's strength was astounding.
The creature seed to freeze for a second, stunned that its blow had been blocked. Jenkins seized the opportunity, flicking his sword upward to send the scimitar flying. He dropped his center of gravity, stepped back with his right leg, and lunged forward with a two-handed thrust.
The blow failed to pierce the creature's skin, but the force sent it stumbling backward until it fell. Jenkins took a deep breath, recalling the rudintary swordsmanship he had learned in Miss Bevanna's combat lessons. Still gripping his sword with both hands, he straightened up, twisted at the waist, and spun a full one hundred and eighty degrees. As his montum peaked, he brought the blade down with all his might.
With a thunderous crash, his sword cleaved halfway through the fallen creature's body, biting deep into the ground beneath it.
The thing on the ground, whatever it was, had been dealt a fatal blow. But its "death" was no ordinary one. It convulsed on the ground for a mont, then disintegrated into a pile of fine, black ash and vanished.
"What is going on? Where am I? And what was that monster?"
Jenkins watched the body disappear, then glanced in the direction it had co from, but there were no clues to be found. He stood there for a mont, thinking, then summoned his unicorn.
The small creature appeared by his side without issue, but it was clearly terrified by the grueso scene. It trembled as it knelt to let Jenkins mount, but when it flapped its wings to take flight, it only glanced warily at the sky. It paced back and forth impatiently, unable to get off the ground.
"What's wrong?"
Jenkins asked, but he understood unicorn no better than he understood cat. After several more failed attempts, he reluctantly sent the unicorn away. He used his sword to carve a deep mark into the wall of a nearby building as a landmark, then set off down the street with his curious cat.
From the city's layout and the faintly legible signs on the shops, this was still Nolan, only much older, much more decayed. Under the yellow moonlight, the entire city was eerily silent. Jenkins walked down the street to a bend in the road without encountering any further trouble. As he rounded the corner and left the confines of that street, sunlight suddenly stread down from above, and the boisterous sounds of the city flooded his ears.
In an instant, the dark, dilapidated city vanished, replaced once more by Nolan, the most famous port on the west coast. Jenkins found himself standing behind a mailbox, sword still in hand. He quickly sheathed the blade and looked around. The sewage-filled craters were gone, as was the ominous yellow moon.
It was as if the whole experience had been a hallucination. When Jenkins retraced his steps, trying to re-enter the decaying city, he found that the strange phenonon was gone.
The wall he had gouged with his sword was now the side of a bustling tobacco shop. A small display window beside it showcased expensive ceramic snuff bottles, their surfaces adorned with intricate enal wirework.
And, of course, there was no sword mark.
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