Dodecahedron Journal
The next morning, I knocked on Grace’s door to see if she and Nordom were ready to go. Grace assured me they were, and they both joined me in the hall. Nordom suddenly swiveled, and looked at Grace. “I estimate Fall-From-Grace to be found attractive by the male sex of over 321,423 separate species. Give or take five.” “Oh? Does that include Modrons?” Grace asked. “I am no longer able to answer that question. I do not know.” I indicated to Nordom he should join the others who were waiting for us in the main room of the inn. We watched Nordom move off down the hall. Grace turned and smiled at me. “I must confess, Nordom is quite possibly the cutest little rogue modron I have ever encountered.” I had earlier been told a linguist lived in this ward, and I decided to look him up in the faint hope he might be able to help me decipher the journal I had found. I asked around the Clerk’s Ward for a while, until I found someone who knew of the linguist, named Finam, and where he lived. When I found Finam, he was at first unwilling to help, but I convinced him I solely needed his assistance in his professional capacity. I unfolded the dodecahedron journal to a page with writing on it, and asked if he could translate it. He took the unfolded dodecahedron in his hands and examined it closely. “This language is a long-dead one, known to virtually no-one. I believe my father — a linguist, like myself — knew this language, and may well have been the only man in Sigil at the time that could understand it. I recognize it from his notes, but I cannot translate it.” There had to be some way to translate the journal. With enough work perhaps I could do it, if he had retained his father’s notes. “Do you have those notes, still?” “They'll be of no use to you if you’re looking to translate anything… and the few actual books he had pertaining to that language disappeared around the time of his murder, I believe.” “Your father was murdered?” “Strangled, he was. He had left to tutor someone — he taught various languages to supplement his research income — and was discovered dead in a side-chamber of the Civic Festhall. The killer was never found. This was some… oh… perhaps fifty years ago, now. I was but a child.” “He knew the language, though, and could teach it?” “Surely he did and could, were he alive today. My father was said to be a great teacher.” Finam sighed sadly. “I've his skill with language, but not his patience for others, sadly.” He father might not be entirely out of reach, at least not to me. “Is he… interred at the Mortuary?” “Why, no… his ashes are kept here.” He pointed to a bronze urn sitting atop a cabinet beside a bouquet of purple flowers. “Why?” A wry smile crossed Finam’s lips. “A necroscope, are you? Speak with the dead?” He suddenly frowned. “I have no wish to speak of these things any longer. You'll have to excuse me, sir… farewell.” Finam had been joking, but if only he knew. I hadn’t tried my abilities on a pile of ashes, but I didn’t see why the state of the corpse should matter. Ignoring Finam, I moved over to the urn, blocking sight of it from the rest of the room with my body. I removed the urn’s top, and used my Stories-Bones-Tell on the ashes inside. The ashes seemed to stir faintly as if moved by my breath. A far-away voice whispered up from within the urn. “Why, why have I been summoned to these ashes, cold and grey as the heart of a hag?” “To answer some questions, spirit…” “Ask, then, so that I might return to my most quiet thoughts…” “Who were you?” “I was Fin, a linguist and scholar. I was murdered — murdered! — by a student of mine… murdered so that I could not teach another the language that I taught him. The tongue of the Uyo, it was, one of the rarest in the multiverse. I knew of none who spoke it, save myself and that one, damnable, murderous student…” I described to him the writing from the folding dodecahedron, asking if he knew the language. “I could teach you this language, yes… it would please me to do so, in fact, if only to spite that bloody-handed student of long ago. First, tell me what languages you do speak…” As the spirit spoke to me of the lost language of the Uyo, there was a throbbing sensation in my temples as a memory began to surface… memories of this language. I recalled letters, words, phrases, until — like a Spire-wind blowing away the blanket of poisonous smog over the Great Foundry — the language was once more revealed to me in its entirety. There was another memory, though, bubbling to the surface… a darker one. Its presence troubled me somehow, filled me with unease and unexplained pangs of guilt… At last, I recalled Fin Andlye himself. I remembered his gentle voice, his kind manner, his schooling me in the ancient language of the Uyo. I also remembered my scarred, gnarled hand wrapped around his frail throat, crushing his larynx and thus ensuring that the secret contents of my journal — hidden and thrice-trapped in a dodecahedral puzzle-box and penned in the obscure language of the Uyo — would be forever safe from prying eyes… Another death I was responsible for. There was little I could do now, but that little I owed the spirit to which I was conversing. “Fin… I must tell you… it was me who murdered you.” The spirit was silent for a time, the ashes rustling softly within their urn. When it spoke once more, its voice was full of sorrow. “But… why… and why would come to me once more? Did you forget what you had been taught?” “No… well, yes. It is difficult to explain, but it must have been a former ‘self’ of mine that murdered you. Each time I die, I reawaken, as if from long sleep… but having forgotten everything… who I was, or what I'd done…” “I think I understand… I sense your regret, and would forgive you. May peace be with you, pupil of old, and may you prove kinder in this life than in the one which saw an end to mine…” The spirit, as he must have been in life, was much gentler than I deserved. “Thanks, Fin. Farewell.” I came to myself again, to find Grace spinning an unconvincing tale of temporary paralysis, which failed to explain why the lid was off the urn. No doubt Finam would have called the Harmonium guard if not for her charismatic manner. I was too full of what I had just learned to pay much attention to Finam, and left his house without a word. I sat down against a wall in an alley adjacent to his house, and pulled out the dodecahedron journal. I hefted the cold, gray dodecahedron up to examine it carefully, now aware of the various deadly traps it held for the incautious user and how to avoid them entirely. Having learned the dead language of the Uyo, I was at last able to decipher its contents… The tablet turned out to be a journal of sorts… one kept by some prior incarnation of myself, it would seem — and not an altogether sane one, either. I thought it must have been kept by I what I thought of as the ‘paranoid’ incarnation. There were only a handful of completely coherent sections, as I browsed through it. The whispers are not the shadows moving. They are speaking plotting talking to each other. I can understand some of what they say. More about the shadows that dogged my steps. I read on in the journal. The book tells me things, whispers things. It tells me to avoid the ghost girl, avoid her. i dont know her and she torments me. Deionarra, obviously. And so I swallowed it, hoping it'd catch in my bowels. I can make someone remove it when I need to. I had already removed that ring, hard to believe it had stayed put for fifty years. I have learned that my life is not my own. I will not allow you have my life… you will have to pull my life from my broken body if you want it… It’s you who will die, if I cannot have it neither will you. you are responsible for this treason of flesh, you will not live to live my life. I had already encountered the results of this paranoid incarnation’s life several times, especially the traps he had left for his other ‘traitor’ selves. The accursed tattoos will not leave my skin! I have tried to burn them off of my skin — failed, failed! I try and cloak myself, but I always feel that people are reading my flesh, reading me like a book. Whenever they look at me I want to tear their eyes out pluck them from their sockets and crush them beneath my heel… More paranoid ranting. why can’t i dream?! I used the Goblet of Semir to force a waking dream. I saw a hag. She tempted me, threatened me with shadows! I have never seen her, but she came when I dreamt. I must not dream again. I must always be aware. i destroyed the goblet. She says she is someone of power, and that she will have me, will find me. Get away, hag! Stay far from me! Leave me in peace! I want nothing to do with you! Her voice reeked of evil’s talons, talons like spiders, they burrowed into my gray matter, and I needed her out of my mind. out! out, hag! She was a myth, a fairy tale who alone challenged the lady of pain! How can one fight someone who is a myth? I don’t have the weapons. I need weapons that will kill her should she find me. I need a strategy so she cannot defeat me when she comes for me. I must devise, and think — I shall beat her. So Ravel had been trying to reach me for at least fifty years. I hoped she hadn’t gotten too impatient. Fear names. names have power in identity. names can be used as weapons by others. They are a hook that can be used to track you find you hunt you across the Planes. Remain nameless, and you shall be safe. A passage that was the same as one written on the wall in the tomb I found in the Drowned Nations. I went to the Festhall, looking for the path of my false self in its halls. So glaring was it, that those I did not know, the false ones, welcomed me into their confidence, treated me as a friend, showed me my room, attended to my needs. I had to restrain myself from launching out against them. That would have been premature. First, I needed to protect my identity. I found one who knew the exclusive language of the Uyo, learned it as I could, then killed him. Then I went to the sensorium and prepared to end the matter. Soon, soon… I already knew of the murder of Fin, and the trapped sensory stone; for that matter, I had found this journal in ‘my’ room in the Festhall. There is nothing he can do. Memories are gone, he says, never to return. He says/lies and tells me this is what he told me! lies! He says my mind is weakening from every death! lies! He sat there, betraying my confidence with every turn. He says that only after three more deaths, three more lives will I gain the benefit of keeping my memories, but that I, myself, I will die when I die. die! How can one be immortal and still die?! He could not answer, so he was of no use. i butchered him so that no other incarnation will ever benefit from his uselessness. Could this explain why I retained my memories even when I died? If so, then in a sense, this ‘paranoid’ incarnation was responsible for my life. So the ghastly heads said: you have been divided. you are one of many men. (One in many men?) You bear many names; each has left their scars on your flesh… lost one immortal one incarnation’s end man of a thousand deaths the one doomed to life restless one one of many the one whom life holds prisoner the bringer of shadows the wounded one misery-bringer yemeth you are silvered glass that has cracked and the pieces scattered across history only one piece is of import. Regain that, and your life will be yours again. There will be a price. This price will buy you a chance. Without the chance, you are doomed… you have lost that which is never meant to be separated from man. your mortality has been stripped from you. lost. it exists, but you must find it before your mind is lost to you as well. My mortality stripped from me? What could that mean? A legacy, the note read, ‘ forget not to collect your legacy,’ and a small code scratched beside it: 51-AA… A trap, no doubt, set by yet another of my false selves. I'll see it destroyed, I will. A legacy. I already knew of another one left by Deionarra. There was still a chance they were available. That was the last coherent journal entry.
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