reading_rainstorm | Stephanie's Heart: The Archive

In your dreams you are in a thick and foggy forest. It could be mistaken for the woods around Tributary if you don’t know your plants. You are on a trail leading into a clearing, in the center of which is a simple, concrete structure with a single door. A chaos star has been spray painted on it with a stencil.

You approach the structure. Looking over your shoulder you see a large shape lurking in the fog, obscured by the foliage. Two shining Feline eyes peer at you from the brush. You feel your heart rate spike as you turn the knob and find an old fashioned elevator tucked neatly inside with an accordion grate standing between you and the ornate, gilded interior. It creaks open as the presence behind you steps into the clearing. It is a sphinx, an eight foot tall lioness with the face of a woman and the large brown wings of an eagle on her back . The feminine face and olive skin tone of a Greek woman from antiquity smiles as she readies herself to to pounce, the wings on her back stretching and give a few readying flaps.You back into the elevator and close the gate with shaking hands as the sphinx leaps at the elevator. Her claws twisting and shearing the metal of the grate slowly, but she is too late. The elevator springs to life and you descend.

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A small light above flickers on as it illuminates your view outside the exposed elevator as you sink into the concrete structure. You descend for a few moments before an opening in the concrete gives you the view of an observation deck on a hill, looking down on the sprawling suburbs and campus of a college town. The elevator continues downward. The concrete gives way to old, dusty marble as you continue sinking. You see a vast maze stretch far and away that gets nearer and nearer. This has to be it, right? Your destination? No. You plunge further down, past the walls of the maze and the marble is replaced again by well polished wood. Beautiful stained mahogany rises past you as your descent finally starts to slow. You are greeted by another grate that creaks open for you. Entreating you to enter.

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From:

misenplaits

Marcille's hand hovers over the bell. She is really tempted to go upstairs and look at the books, but she doesn't want to mess up this heart either. Assistance would be good.

She rings the bell.

From:

reading_rainstorm

“Just a moment please!”

There is a sound of papers being rustled and a drawer closing before a figure rounds the corner of the card catalog drawers.

It is a woman carved entirely from wood wearing a brightly colored paisley dress. She shares a striking resemblance to Stephanie. Her brows are thinner and her lips rest in an easy smile. She moves strangely, like she is at a lower framerate than a living person, like she is being animated by stop motion.

“Good day Marcille, welcome to the Archives of High Priestess Spiros. How can I aid you?”

From:

misenplaits

"I think I'm in her heart," Marcille says bluntly. "And I don't know how to help her with things in here, so I'm hoping for advice on where to go first?"

From:

reading_rainstorm

She blinks at you a few times, a quizzical look you've seen from Stephanie before.

"You've got the right of it. Unfortunately, we are a bit out of sorts, some renovation and reorganizing going on, and...Well we've lost the cards that open the Hall of Fate."

She points toward the large arched doors.

"If you could be on the lookout for any cards like these..."

She offers Marcille The Tower card

"That would be of great help."

From:

misenplaits

She regards it thoughtfully after taking it. "The same picture? Or just a matching art style?"

From:

reading_rainstorm

"Just the art style. They are called tarot cards, typically used for fortune telling."

From:

misenplaits

"Right. I'll keep my eye out. Can I look for them anywhere?" She glances towards the spiral stairs.

From:

reading_rainstorm

"The whole of the Archives are available for your exploration...what's finished and unlocked at least."

From:

misenplaits

"And I can help with that part with the cards. Sure." Starts heading to the stairs. "I'll check in later if I need more help," she calls back.

From:

reading_rainstorm

"Of course dear! Feel free to ask any of the librarians for assistance as well!"

Where's everyone's favorite half elf headed?

From:

misenplaits

To the books! Either magic books or epic romances.

... so I guess not up the stairs at all because bii got confused about the layout of this heart. Or maybe she was going to go up the stairs but got distracted by the books. Oops.

Edited Date: 2025-01-13 01:19 am (UTC)

From:

reading_rainstorm

Luckily for Marcille, she approaches the books and a magic book comes to her.

"Liber Null" and "Psychonaut" appear on the shelf, older books with official printings. Alongside them are "Treatise on Syncrotism and Sigilization" and "Spirits and Divination" which appear hand bound and without authors.

From:

misenplaits

Ooooh. Marcille is going to look through all of them. What are they about?

From:

reading_rainstorm

Liber Null and the Psychonaut are is a text establishing the philosophy of Chaos Magick as opposed to older magical practices that were entrenched in secret and hierarchical teaching methods. It envisions the teaching and learning of magic as a thing that should be open to all with the will and patience to pursue it. It then starts going into the power of the human mind as a vector enacting their will on the world through magickal pratice...a few pages in it gets into sex magic, a note in the margin asks: "How necessary is all this? Certainly there has to be a better way to transfer energy into the sigils."

The other two texts seem to be in Stephanie's own hand. "Treatise on Syncretism and Sigilization" seems to be a debate with herself about the ethics of using tradition and icons from outside cultures to help power magical practice. "Spirits and Divination" lays out a theory of divinatory practice that imagines symbolism and art as a way to establish communication between spirits that might know the future or be able to shape it.

From:

misenplaits

When she gets to the section on sex magic Marcille IMMEDIATELY SHUTS THE BOOK, her face suddenly red.

From:

reading_rainstorm

Fair and valid. The things people have resorted to in worlds without proper knowledge of mana am I right?

From:

misenplaits

If all the books are going to be like that, maybe she's going to go up those stairs after all.

From:

reading_rainstorm

Not all the books...but if Marcille looks for romance, Steph's taste leans a bit steamier than she might be used to.

From:

misenplaits

She has noticed that!!! And she is in a public library!!!

Okay. Stairs it is. Let's go to the Remembered Rooms.

From:

reading_rainstorm

The hall of Remembered rooms is well lit and has more of the bookcases like the main hall, but between the cases are doors that do not match with the rest of the decor of this place. There is a simple rectangular door with a cheery blue coat of paint on it, the door to the Sun House shrine room, a rotting, decrepit door that could easily be broken apart, and a plain metal door painted white with a small slit window in it. There is a man here, much like the woman at the front desk, wooden and stop motion animated and a familial resemblance to Stephanie. He looks a bit nervous and pretends not to notice Marcille.

From:

misenplaits

Marcille is going with the Sun House door. Might as well start with something familiar.

From:

reading_rainstorm

It's the Sun House Shrine Room alright, almost exactly as you know it. Someone is tucked comfortably into the four mattress high bed, loom, spinning wheel are all exactly where they ought to be. There's something else here as well though, one of the bookshelves from the reading room is along the wall and there's a chair from the reading room as well. Sitting in the chair is...Stephanie? No, another wooden reproduction of Stephanie sits reading a book, unlike the other wooden people you've seen so far this one isn't self animated though, she seems to be puppeted by a figure made of pitch black smoke and eyes with large black pupils. The figure and the puppet look up at you at the same time. She speaks with a soft, whispery voice.

“Oh, Marcille... I wasn't expecting to see you here...”

Edited Date: 2025-01-29 06:44 am (UTC)