Ink on a Page of Clan Athenaeum

The jungle vines crowded over the lower hanging branches, thronging in on the forests path, shadowing the plant life into a darker green. Soft moss covered the trees so thickly that it was hard to discern the bark beneath and the vegetation littering the ground tightly interweaving with one another, flora creeping in everywhere. The vines didn’t bother Ink as she expertly made her way through them, jumping and sneaking nimbly between the jungle, she took a path up high in the tree branches far away from the ground below.  

The humidity in the air slinking over her dark brown face, producing tiny beads of water that tried to make their way into her large brown eyes. She brushed them away, half noticing, she was used to the hot humid air. Her black tight curling hair was also damp and hung limply against her shoulders barely shifting as she swung on a vine to another set of twisting tree branches. The sluggish moistness of the jungle was as welcome as hugging a warm blanket in winter.  

Ink dexterously maneuvered over the tree boughs, reveling in her body’s athletic movements. The foliage finally opened into a clearing revealing a large stone structure covered with roots and vines, ancient and colossal, towering in the middle of the clearing like a long-lost castle. Half crumbling sentinels of long ancient heroes beleaguered haphazardly around the grounds the forgotten structure desperate to stay significant. The library appeared to outsiders to be a ruin, the jungle taking the structure back into itself, but the indigenous peoples who lived here knew better.  

Bats fluttered in the twilight, the sun slowly sinking towards sleep, as fireflies blinked on and off in their nightly ritual as Ink jumped down from the high trees making her way towards the old library. Her clan had already left for the evening. Gathering around the village tavern for a nightcap or into their homes for supper. Ink had doubled back, melting into the shadowy jungle, and hoped that her parents were too busy with her siblings to notice that she wasn’t with them.  

Ink pushed open the heavy mahogany door, the hinges squeaking in protest at having to be bothered so close to sunset. The smell of old books received her like an old friend, musty and sweet and dusty. She breathed deeply softly smiling. Ink quickly lit a lantern and holding it aloft and made her way through the library stacks, her soft leather shoes padding gently on the marble floor. However, in the empty hallowed halls, her footsteps could not be disguised for what they were. She just hoped that one else had stayed late too engulfed in reading to noticed that everyone had left.    

The stacks drew closer together the further back Ink went, like they were trying to hide a mystery. The books here were mostly crumbling, forgotten by the outside world, their lost voices whispering to her of their hidden secrets, begging her to open them. Ink shook her head thinking, Not now, little ones. I’ve got reading elsewhere… 

 She finally reached the restricted scholar section, which she’d been poking around that morning only to get called away by her father; he’d given her a mundane task of re-shelving “how to” novels, like anyone ever got anything out of those... Only the highest-ranking scholars had access to these books (and she wanted to see why). Luckily for her those academics didn’t travel to The Jungle of Perished Shadows every often. So, really, if it wasn’t for her— all of these poor books would go neglected— most likely for hundreds and hundreds of years and never to be read! It was a travesty! The way she saw it she was actually doing the library a service, nah a courtesy, in sneaking back here to read them.  

A gate barred her from entering. It's black corroded iron menacing, telling her not to cross. Lucky for her it was a short deterrent, honestly, they should make gates larger if they wanted to keep people out. She quickly glanced around then just hop over, the lantern slightly swinging, releasing shadows from the gloom.   

Ink padded over to the farthest bookcase wedged in the corner of the back wall and let the lanterns light glide over the embossed titles. Magical Thinking of a Dying Age, A Brief History of the Dark Dimension, Awakening of the Old Ones, The Road to Celestials, A Hundred and One Ways of Wizardry, Arcane Spells and When to Use Them, Morgal: The Death of Everything.  

“Morgal,” Ink muttered perplexed, her voice echoing off the silent stacks and fading into the silence. “Who’s Morgal?”  

Curiously Ink pulled down the book. At least she tried to pull down the book, it seemed stuck. She tried harder. Suddenly a mechanical grinding noise came from behind the bookcase, and the case swung slowly inwards. Ink gasped as a dark stairway became visible. The darkness of the passage seemed to leap off the wall and crowd itself towards the bottom, a blackness in which her eyes could not penetrate.  

Ink peered back over her shoulder at the empty library, biting her lip, then back towards the newly revealed staircase. She breathed in excitedly and began to descend the stairs. She’d never dreamed of fining a secret staircase! The trip downward was a lot longer than she’d expected, and the deeper she went the more questions swirled in her mind and the cooler the air became. She reeled with wonder as she finally got to the end of the flight of steps and found herself in a circular room adorned in human bones. The macabre crypt appeared to have been built long before the library above, old and cold, ancient and alien. There was no jungle here, no humid air, or moist precipitation, only death and rot and a chill that seeped into your bones.  

 A chandler made of spines, femurs, and old skulls leered down at her as she stepped fully into the room. Along the circular walls were deep pits filled with full skeletons laid inside like guardians, their clothing fibers frayed and nearly translucent, each clutching a piece of decaying parchment. She felt that it she touched one it would crumble and turn to dust. She couldn’t read the small script of the clutched parchment. It was too dark and shadowed, and most of the skeletal occupant’s hands obscured the text making it illegible. The smell of old decay languished around the small room oppressively, like a presence, like she wasn’t entirely alone. An involuntary shiver slithered up her spine and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickled as the feeling being watched increased.  

In the center of the room stood a tall pedestal made entirely of grinning skulls, the lantern light flickering over their empty eye-sockets making them appear aware. Atop the pedestal rested a thick black-leather book. On the cover something red glinted in the flickering light of the lantern. Ink stepped further into the room, just enough to see what was on the cover of the book, her curiosity getting the better of her. A red skeletal hand with abnormally long fingernails, graying and pointed, clasping a rolled-up piece of parchment in its grip was printed on the cover.  

Inks own fingers twitched in excitement, itching to open the book. You shouldn't be here, a voice in the back of her mind warned. “This is not a good place—” She shrugged it away. How many secret passages and crypts would she ever come across again? Not many, that's for sure. Ink determinedly crossed the room and stared down at the black book. She caressed the cover of the tome, leather cracking under her fingertips. She opened the tome reverently and peered inquisitively at the first page. Nothing. She flipped through the book. Each page was blank. No mysterious knowledge, no forbidden message, no cultist writings— Nothing. Disappointed Ink was about to shut the book when a script seemed to bleed off the page, coming from inside the book itself. It was like she’d just accidentally split liquid ink and had hurriedly tried to put a towel on top of it, but the black ink was seeping through wetly and was consuming everything.  

Ink jumped back in surprise, her eyes growing round as the script finished its first dark sentence.   

Welcome, Ink on a Page, Scribe of the Athenaeum Clan. I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to uncover my shrine. The writing seemed to grin maliciously. I’ve need of your skill, Ink on a Page. Will you serve me?  

. . .  

Ink didn’t quite remember getting back to her tree-top village. The sky was lightening as she slipped into her bedroom. She’d made a pact with Morgal in the darkness surrounded by the skulls of their followers. A pact with The Dawn at The End of Everything. In return they’d said they’d grant her the power to control the dead. To control the arcane. To be able to do things that she’d never thought possible before. She shivered slightly, remembering, “I will give you what you most desire—” She’d accepted because she was tired of only living through books, of yearning for adventure, and tried of the dull routine she seemed to go through every day.  

People in her life never seemed to escape from their inane lives. The Athenaeum clan, her clan, the keepers of knowledge had the task of guarding and studying. But none of her ancestors had ever left the jungle. Morgal offered an escape and she wasn’t going to miss that opportunity.   

She would leave that night. Morgal had an elite quest for her, a quest that only someone like her could fulfill. She was to collect and inscribe every death that she came across. She was going to assemble the names of the dead and she couldn’t do that here in the Jungle, surrounded by the peaceful community in the trees. She needed to go out into the greater world and seek it out. How hard could it be? she thought. It wasn’t like she would be an active participant. She wasn’t a killer. She was just... an observer—just how she’d always been, but this time she would be able to observe in an active environment.   

She could feel a new awareness within herself. Like how sometimes if you lay quietly you can hear your own heartbeat. It was like that but within her very blood, a hotness at the tips of her fingers. She felt different, like she could do anything!    

That night she snuck out of the tree-house, leaving a letter for her family. She explained everything she could in the letter (leaving out the secret room and her pact Morgal). She made it sound like she was bored with life and needed a change. She told them that she loved them with all her heart and that she would come back, eventually. It was too hard to say goodbye face to face and she was afraid that if she did that they’d try to stop her and if they did she’d tell them about what had truly happened. Then they would try to talk her out of her pact with Morgal. Her mother would be furious that she’d made a deal with—what, her soul? —in exchange for the extraordinary. It didn’t feel like she had sold anything… She didn’t get that sense. But she knew her family wouldn’t see it that way.  

 First, she snuck into the village armory and stole a longbow and as many arrows that would fit into her rucksack. Which was already stuffed full of ink, notebooks, quills, a small bag of sand, clothes, food, torches and rope, with a few other things. It was all very heavy and bulged out in awkward places. Her bedroll was tied to the outside of the pack and stuck out father than she would have liked because of how stuffed her rucksack was. For one thing: none of the adventures that she’d read about talked about how heavy a rucksack was, and another thing—something sharp was uncomfortably poking into her lower back.  

Next, she took a small mahogany shield that was laying haphazardly on top of other larger and more formidable shields, and a lethal looking rapier. Then, she left, like the thief she was into the night and embarked south towards the city of Cogrove. Excitement welling up in the pit of her stomach, entering the shadows of her jungle’s namesake.  

                         . . .  

As the day drew closer to dusk it was as if Morgal ’s presence followed her through the gloom of the forest, murmuring things into her ear that she never believed was possible for her. Yes, she’d read about spells, hexes, and incantations; she’d also read about the humanoids that could wield them, but she’d never thought it would be her. She was fast realizing that being a Cleric of Morgal was incredibly rewarding. She knew that she should feel ashamed...but she didn't. Being able to wield the arcane was something that she had always desired and now she had it. 

Ink ran into trouble sooner than she’d expected. She was about to make camp, taking out the flint and tinderbox to light the fire when a giant silhouette loomed over her. Legs, lots and lots of black hairy legs. Ink inwardly called to Morgal and the power to give death consumed her.  

“Chill touch,” she uttered quietly. 

A milky mist spun and grew before her then diffused revealing a skeletal hand with long black fingernails. She spun and managed to dodge just in time as a web flew towards where she’d just been. She sent the skeletal hand at the menacing giant spider scuttling towards her, its pincers salivating dripping saliva, and then pulled out her rapier from its scabbard. A wickedness that she never knew she possessed filled her as her hand touched the spider assailing the creature with the chill of the grave. Ink laughed maliciously and attacked with her sword, drawing blood from a hairy limb.  

She disappeared her hand and cast Ray of Sickness at the creature as it tried to bite her. The spell hit the spider in its eyes, shrieking, it began to weaken wobbling on its legs, however still fearsome enough to try to skewer her with one of its thick appendages. Ink ducked just in time and came back up with another swing of her sword. Malevolent energy surge into her fingers and a black beam of energy sprang into the opening mouth of the spider, as she pointed at it. It quivered snapping its pincers, allowing for Ink to jump up and sink her rapier into one of its many eyes. 

The giant spider cried out, then keeled over, jerking. Soon it lay still in the blooming moonlight. Breathing hard, Ink pulled her sword out of the spider’s carcass, whipping its blood on its grotesquely hairy body. Paper rustled behind her. She knew that sound. Ink turned and gaped. She hadn't brought it out. It had been packed near to bottom of her bag. 

The pages of the Inks diary flapped in an unseen wind drawing her back to her half-made fire. As ink move to pick up the journal the pages stopped on a plank page and red ink oozed onto the sheet forming words.  

Good, Ink! Let the undead arcane move through your spirit. You are now wholly mine. Scribe for me the death of this creature for all things die eventually and are brought to my gates at the end of everything. With the killing of this creature you are helping me advance death in the world. Help me organize my list and take notes, for in a year we will be one step closer… The inked words seemed to gloat.  

Ink watched as the words slowly melted away leaving a plank page. Taking a deep breath, she pulled out her ink and quill, and in the shadow of the dead spider she began her record.