Sally rubbed the corners of her eyes, and then brushed her short hair back, dimly aware that she was pacing. The small study smelled like stale coffee and not enough showers when she took a deep breath, trying to focus on the task at hand.
"Are you ready?"
Her familiar cursed as it fumbled with a pencil, pouncing after it in order to stop it from rolling off of the desk.
"If you'd given me a form with opposable thumbs, I would be!" It squeaked, waving its stubby black paws at Sally in an accusatory fashion.
Sally closed her eyes and took another deep breath.
"You're a magical construct, so why don't you use... Some *magic*?"
The familiar narrowed its eyes at Sally's sarcastic tone, but waved its paws. Sally felt the slightest pull at her being along that unusual but familiar fifth axis as a wisp of her power trickled off, flowed through the familiar, and caused the pencil to wobble up off the table and hover in front of the familiar's outstretched paw.
[[Sally reflected on the fact that the hovering pencil was the least unusual thing happening in this room currently.]]
All of the literature available on the matter was extremely clear. Familiars are created beings, constructs of energy, animated by the will of their creator. They can be programmed to be semi-autonomous with a set of fixed responses and behaviours, take whatever form the creator imagines at the moment of creation, and can also be used to automate simple magical tasks.
Advanced users could, with care, weave a basic spell into a familiar, and then feed energy into the familiar to produce the expected result. The books had expounded at length as to how this could be used to free up important mental energy for more complex actions, citing this as a reason for the endless, endless drills and rote memorization that was required of apprentices in order to engender complete, unconscious familarity with the most basic spellforms.
However, their most popular usage was as a pet and accessory. Familiars represented a neat crossover point of potential for extravagant and unusual animal companions and a complete lack of upkeep. No feeding, no exercise, no excrement.
There was usually some kind of side note, cautioning against becoming overly attached to familiars, reminding of the fact that because they are created creatures, they do not experience emotions or stimuli, and they do not have souls.
[[Sally had never weaved any magical spells into her familiar.]]
That was half the problem, wasn't it? Nothing in this backwater township was what it was supposed to be.
A month ago, Sally had been sent here on her first solo assignment by the guild. The rumours had been trickling in for some weeks that things were strange in this part of the country, that the moon itself had been cursed. Creatures stalked in the night, milk curdled as it was coming out of the cow, crows lined up in threes out of malicious intent rather than because rooftops made for convenient perches, all the usual superstitious rumblings of an agriculture focused backwater where every person knew the name of every other person's horse.
Sally, along with her dispatch officer, had assumed that someone must have just tilled up an old wartime magical artifact of some kind and presumably put it on their mantle, oblivious to its true nature.
Come to think of it, Sally wasn't entirely sure what a mantle even was. Something to do with a fireplace, a concern for someone who couldn't regulate a room's temperature by concentrating for a moment.
Anyway. Sally had come, expecting to be done in a day, and now it was a month later. And things had gotten...
[[Weird.]]
First and foremost, there had been no source of magical disturbance. At all. Sally had scanned and scryed and tested and measured and observed and taken page after page of notes, only to conclude that she needed a new notebook.
The only notable thing about this place was its complete lack of anything notable. For pity's sake, the magical background levels here were a third of the national mean!
Which is what had made her third night in the town, the night of the full moon, all the more vexing. Extensive interviews with locals had lead her to believe that, at the very least, there was some kind of problem that was causing them distress, even if it was non magical in nature. There was simply too much correlation and circumstantial evidence for it to be *nothing*.
Sally was aware that ruling out a magical source for the disturbances meant that her investigation was technically over, but it wouldn't look good on her first official report if she left the peasantry to suffer, provided she didn't spend too much time or too many resources on her charitable acts. Duty to the people was important, albeit secondary to her duty to the guild.
So it had been that she was awake late, pondering the minutiae of some kind of [[self sustaining enchantment]] to work on a permanent fixture like a mile marker to deter animal and demi-human raids on the town.
The moon had risen, shining through the window and onto [[her familiar]], which she had artistically set to 'snooze' on the chair by the window.
[[That was the last time she had been able to command it like an automaton.]]
If the spell could be attuned to the crystalline structures within the rock itself, it could be anchored in a way that would last several generations at the least. A passive clause to convert the warmth generated by sunlight would provide adequate power for a low energy sonic resonance of both extremely low and extremely high frequencies, acting as a deterrent for anything with a wider range of hearing than a human. Simple, effective, non lethal, no chance of injury to a curious villager or, worst case, an inquisitive Potential who could detect the enchantment with their latent abilities. She had also considered signing the spell with directions to the guildhouse, although it was probably wasted effort. Only the most prodigious of untrained Potentials would be capable of picking apart an enchantment to see how it worked, even if they could conceive that such a thing could be done in the first place.
Sally shook herself mentally. She was getting off topic.
[[Back to the matter at hand...->Weird.]]
She had created it in the shape of a red panda, an exotic animal she had read about hailing from the far western lands.
Behaviorally, it was just a copy of her childhood pet, a cat, less some of the more frustrating mannerisms of the long deceased animal.
Familiars were expected of qualified guildmages, seen as something of a status symbol. Sally considered the more ostentatious breeds of fantastical animals such as dragons and chimeras to be a waste of magical energy, not to mention in extremely poor taste. The guild was responsible for the extinction of most of the magical species', so having one in your handbag was...
Well...
Tacky.
At the very least, red pandas still existed. She might even meet one, someday, if her work required her to travel overseas. [[That was much more tasteful.->Weird.]]
The light of the full moon had been a startling silver, rather than its usual yellow. Her familiar had been saturated in it, and ever since then it had been...
Well, mouthy, for starters. It had started acting outside of its programing, playing with things, going outside, *asking questions*. It had also, demonstrably, picked up the ability to weave simple spells all on its own, apparently calling on Sally's memories in the same way that it called upon Sally's magical power as a source for its own conjuring. The link between them, previously thought to be a one way conduit connecting Sally to a tool, had suddenly been revealed in actuality to be a bond.
[[It was entirely more commitment than Sally had been prepared for.]]
The one good thing that had come out of that whole mess was that it had given Sally a place to start. The moonlight was the key, even if it was nowhere near as potent in the nights after the full moon. Further experimentation had revealed that the moon's presence caused magical instrumentation to go haywire, spells went awry, and even the slight buildup of power that was the natural result of the presence of living things was enough to cause unusual happenings when being modified by the moonlight.
It was also a cause for concern that the effect of the moon's presence began to ramp up in correlation to the waxing of the new moon at a far greater rate than Sally had observed in the waning. 10 days into the new cycle, Sally estimated that the moonlight was more potent than the previous full moon that had affected her familiar so profoundly, the pale silver light causing a coin she had enchanted to feel slightly warm to the touch to land on its edge a full 40 times in a row, only to fall normally when flipped out of the moon's rays.
She had spent the day warning the locals to stay indoors after dark, just in case. While she was here, they were her responsibility, after all. Now it was time to report her findings, such as they were.
[[And call for backup.]]
This whole situation was so far outside of her experience and expertise that it was mind boggling! She had been sent to the muddiest, shittiest nowhere you could find on a map to chase her own tail, clearly some kind of hazing ritual for a newly raised journeyman, and they hadn't even bothered to conduct a proper intelligence gathering to see if the stupid 'problem' they'd sent her to fix was even real!
It was sheer luck that she had stumbled on the problem, and if she hadn't, not only would the non-detection of the presumed disaster of the next full moon have ruined her career, but it might also have damaged the guild itself! Someone back at the guild was playing fast and loose with the regulations, no one cared enough to do their jobs properly except her, and she was presumably expected to clean up their mess and pretend that it was all according to plan!
This problem was severe enough to warrant a full scale response from the guild. Hopefully she would be able to convince them to open a portal in order to send backup in the shortest time possible, although she knew the guild was extremely reluctant to expend resources of that magnitude in all but the most extenuating of circumstances. They could go boil their own heads and do it anyway, it wasn't her lack of foresight that had resulted in only a single journeyman guildmage being available to combat a potential disaster like this!
It made her see red. She knew she'd been grinding her teeth in her sleep again, and had set a spell to ensure that there was no damage done to her enamel. The drain was small but constant, along with all the others, and the expenditure of energy required to conduct her various tests and experiments.
[[Sally estimated that she had maybe 65% of her magical reserves left.]]
No time to waste, then. Every moment, another wisp of it was bleeding away so that her now sentie- ...uh, *malfunctioning* familiar could hold a pencil. So that it could take a letter for her.
[[Oh. Right.]]
The familiar looked up from the doodle it was drawing on the paper and raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, you're finally back, huh? You were deep in the hole, that time."
"I didn't ask for your opinion," Sally replied in a clipped fashion. The familiar had been rather critical of her bad habits as of late, in an infuriatingly perceptive way, be it her tendency to lapse into thought, or her eating habits. "I asked if you were ready to take notes."
"Sure, have been for like ten minutes now." It registered a smug grin. "Are *you* ready?"
Sally decided not to be provoked by her familiar. That was how you ended up becoming a crazy cat lady, talking to your tools. Instead, she mused on how best to start the letter.
"Begin writing." Sally paused and took another breath as the familiar hunched forward in readiness. She considered how best to begin.
(link: "To Whom it may concern...")[(set: $start to "whom")(goto:"letter1")]
(link: "For the attention of Dispatch Officer Strevok...")[(set: $start to "strevok")(goto:"letter1")]
(link: "You simpering, incompetent morons...")[(set: $start to "morons")(goto:"letter1")]
(if: $start is "whom")["I formally bring to the attention of the guild that the situation in, uh, w-whatever this town is called, requires the attention of an emergency response team."
The familiar nodded, furrowing its brow in concentration as it wrote on the paper.
](if: $start is "strevok")["I regret to inform you that the situation in, uh... whatever this town is called, is not as cut and dry as we had previously assumed."
The familiar nodded, furrowing its brow in concentration as it wrote on the paper.
](if: $start is "morons")["I bet you're all really pleased with yourself and your hilarious jape, sending the new girl out to the middle of bloody nowhere on her first assignment. Well, it's bad news for both of us, because we actually have a serious problem here."
The familiar raised an eyebrow but remained silent, dutifully scratching at the paper.
Undeterred, ]Sally considered for a moment and then continued.
(link: "It has come to my attention that...")[(set: $mid to "whom")(goto: "letter2")]
(link: "It was only a footnote in the briefing materials provided by the Dispatch office, but...")[(set: $mid to "strevok")(goto: "letter2")]
(link: "Your colossal failure to properly vet this mission has placed this town, and indeed, the entire guild at risk.")[(set: $mid to "morons")(goto: "letter2")]
(if: $mid is "whom")["A localised disturbance in the lunar reflection can and will result in thaumaturgic anomalies the likes of which I have never observed before."
](if: $mid is "strevok")["It seems the rumour about the moon being cursed was more substantive than I previously surmised. To whit, the moonlight here is extremely thaumaturgically reactive, causing anything containing a magical charge to misfire in unusual and occasionally disastrous ways."
](if: $mid is "morons")["There's something wrong with the moonlight here; it makes anything magical go completely haywire. And not 'ha ha funny' haywire, 'something explodes and people die' haywire. So if it's not too much to ask, quit scratching your arse for one moment and pay attention."
]
Sally reached the end of the room and turned to pace back the way she came, for what must be the 50th time. How best to (if: $start is "morons" and $mid is "morons")[demand](else:)[ask for] help, she wondered.
(link: "If we do not act swiftly...")[(set: $end to "whom")(goto: "letter3")]
(link: "I encourage the Dispatch Office to act immediately...")[(set: $end to "strevok")(goto: "letter3")]
(link: "The time for your stupid hazing ritual is now completely over.")[(set: $end to "morons")(goto: "letter3")]
(if: $end is "whom")["This entire town and its inhabitants may be greatly imperiled by the threat, as the strength of the lunar anomaly is increasing with each lunar cycle at an apparently exponential rate. I strongly advise that an experienced and fully outfitted team is immediately sent to render assistance in studying this phenomenon, as well as containing its effects and combatting any potential hazard to the populace. Given the nearness of the next full moon, I stress that assistance is sent with all haste, up to and including the use of emergency assets to produce a gateway."](if: $end is "strevok")["As I believe that these anomalies are increasing in frequency and strength at an exponential rate, and represent a direct threat to both the township's populace and the guild's authority, should the issue not receive a timely and proportional response. I hereby petition the guild and Dispatch Office to render assistance of any and all able guildmages, for the purposes of containing and combating the threat presented, as well as studying it for future reference. In this instance, I strongly recommend that the guild make use of emergency power reserves to create a gateway, that said assistance might arrive before the next full moon."](if: $end is "morons")["I'll be frank. Despite your best efforts to waste my time, I've come across a real problem that needs a real, adult response. Whatever's wrong with the moonlight, it's getting worse in a real hurry. I don't care who you have to bully or what favours you have to call in, make a portal, send everyone who can cast a spell or take a reading through it, and help me fix this mess of yours before it takes us and this backwater town straight to hell."]
Sally waved her hand dismissively. "Kind regards, Salicia Alabaster, Journeyman Guildmage of the first whatever, yada yada yada etcetera, you know how it goes."
"Right you are, miss." The familiar took a moment, and then finished writing, regarding the now full page with a critical eye.
(if: $start is "whom" and $mid is "whom" and $end is "whom")["Very formal." It purred.](else-if: $start is "strevok" and $mid is "strevok" and $end is "strevok")["You think Strevok is going to come through for you?" It asked.](else-if: $start is "morons" and $mid is "morons" and $end is "morons")["I uh, had to interpret it a little." It said with a sly grin.](else:)["This is kind of a mix of tones, here." It said, tapping the page with its pencil.]
"If I wanted your opinion I would have asked for it." Sally said dismissively, although wasn't really angry at the familiar.
She just had to hope that the letter would have the desired effect. The full moon was coming, and its silver light would bring a new kind of darkness to this small town. Would she be able to save it?
[[To be continued.]]
Thank you for playing Taking A Letter!
If you enjoyed it, or found any typos, or perhaps both, let me know at [email protected] ! You can also follow me on twitter at @ia_quillthing , and my twines can all be found at http://philome.la/twitakare .
I'm intending for Sally and her familiar to be a part of my B series, to work on when I'm not working on Between Worlds. I hope you enjoyed this little look into her world! I'm also working on an autobio twine for my upcoming trip to Japan, so look forward to that as well!
<3