I have one character who may or may not even be able to die in the traditional sense. And then i have another who can. Many, many times. 

I LOVE writing such lines as:
- "besides, she was only going to kill her the one time." 

- "The cat hadn’t died for weeks."

- "Life doesnt give you nine tries." "It does for me."


already nine chapters in to my second novel: Homunculus and The Cat!

writing habitually

today is my "dedicated writing day." im plugged in to the meager veins of downtown salt lake city, pretending its new york. music blares at high volume as i sit, overlooking a grocery store. this has become my favorite place to write. the new mall across the street for when i need to get out, tons of food below me when i get hungry. and sometimes, if im lucky theyll come around with the free sushi samples.

where do you like to write and how do you psyche yourself to get the most done?

my goal for the day: 3k words (not strenuous but still means a novel in 6 months)

(and now i think i have warmed up)

New logo for the series

Homunculus and The Cat pt. II

The cat does not die in this story. Not again. With only eight lives left, one small step toward prudence, the cat decided not fly into the sky during a dragon fight. She did not try to steal milk offerings from the various temples to the gods and goddesses around the city. And she was especially wary of shadows and purple light.

After pouncing the shikome, the days, mostly the afternoon and evening portions, were consumed securely lounging on her new favorite apartment ledge. She frequently watched the human couple that lived inside argue, always slamming doors and sleeping alone. They would have to have sex sometime, every other couple in Alexandria did. Even most of the singles in the city had guests over for no other apparent purpose.

The cat wasn’t exactly interested in watching, she was just curious about the habits of other creatures. She was still a very young cat and the world, her brand new, unsoiled litter box. She wanted to know what was in the corners, and down at the bottom.

She was alone, and very much at home in the bustle of one of the biggest cities on the Mediterranean. She had come from the east, along the coast, up the Nile, and down from the floating pyramid of Henen-nesut where she was born and given a name. She was a rare creature, a winged cat, and the rest of her litter had all been poached. Her mother had run off and left the kittens for dead. This was not uncommon and it left little to no scar on the cats to whom this happened, even intelligent winged kittens.

A salty sea fog had ambled into the city that evening and wafted around the buildings, even as high as the cat’s perch. All she could think about was seafood, crayfish from the river and eel from the shore. To hell with her mother. To hell with her home, floating pyramid or not, she was a cat. She belonged wherever the hell she pleased. Right now she was pleased by the silence of the couple on who’s patio she sat.

She wiggled her slender body and flexed her feathers out, each apart from the other. Finally the humans had shut up. The cat hadn’t been paying attention to their argument and noticed when it stopped. She didn’t remember anything breaking or slamming and this puzzled her.

The cat pondered diagnosing the situation, but thought better of it. Her threshold for the unknown had been diminished for the past few days. Since dying, she thought of death more and more often. Worried about losing life number seven, she sank a little into herself. That homunculus had warned her that the Japanese death gods, or whatever they were, would be back, for her.

“And here they are!”

The cat hoped they couldn’t fly, as she leapt, body totally stretched, off the towering balcony and away from the scent of death, she had only just noticed. She doubted her luck. She at least hoped that, in the world of the living, the magic of the dead would at least be slow and weak. But was she one step out of the realm of the living having died once? What about that homunculus, who wasn’t even a real human? Was he really alive, or just animated?

Wings fought against the salty warm oasis air. The cat flew over a temple. She considered petitioning the gods. Death was on the menu for everybody sooner or later, asking an immortal to postpone one of hers didn’t seem fitting.  She didn’t even know what god to ask anyway, certainly not a death god, or the god over who’s temple she flew. Serapis; patron of the Great Library. What good would he be? And she had no idea what god in all the world was patron of flying cats. The information felt suddenly important and silly to have never received. She felt flawed, and self-conscious, able to die again.

The cat was a good flyer though, and she thought perhaps she had gotten away. As the wind whirred in her ears and she passed the old city walls, she looked behind her. Nothing. The skies were littered with late night carpet-traffic, gryphons and sphinxes, and Mediterranean dragon, but no shades or wisps or whatever the death gods were.

The cat landed for a drink from the city canal. It wasn’t much farther to the lake. She thought she had heard somewhere that the dead shunned water. Maybe she would be safe there.

Her lungs pumped like bellows in a foundry as she landed on the bowsprit of some sturdy vessel in the lakeside harbor. The harbor was relatively quiet. Foremen shouted obscenities and commands at the other dockworkers. Her head was a mess. Uncertainty teased the corners of her mind. The cat had been chased before, but not by anything that could sense the pungency of each and every one of her seven lives. She must have stunk to the gods of death. The fact that she was living exposed her, it was a beacon to death.

She was exhausted emotionally. The past week had been too much. Something about dying had taken all her strength. She had to stop and hide. And she wanted a nap. Maybe the ship would set sail and she would wake up in the sun, en-route to Babylon or maybe even further. The cat fell asleep on the bowsprit, her unease still gnawing on her mind, a carving of a mermaid beneath her.

The cat woke up falling. A ship’s length away, mast height, she watched as her perch zoomed away. She wasn’t flying in her sleep, but had been thrown. Weightless in mid-air she righted herself and dove ungracefully into the water. The impact was harsh on her sore wings. She hadn’t just strained the muscles in them in her escape. They felt broken. The bones were hollow and brittle, but they would help her float.

With minimal effort in survival, she popped her head above the surface of the lake. Everything was muffled and distant as if she was still underwater, but she wasn’t. She realized what force had removed her from her sleep. Bits of the harbor floated in the lake, on fire. It wasn’t the work of dragon either. Huge chunks of the wooden piers and warehouses were missing altogether. Bucket brigades on their industrial-sized flying carpets had already begun fighting the fire and rescuing the injured.

“Should have gone to Atlantis.”

The cat doggie-paddled her way to the shore and slumped over a rock. Her instinct was to fall back asleep and she would have if it weren’t for the boy who approached her.

“Hey,” he called, “you alright?”

The cat meowed.

“Sorry I blew you up. You didn’t lose a life did you?”

“I don’t think so, who are you?”

“Good. Tyro.”

The cat understood Tyro to be his name. Why he would be called the apprentice was anyone’s guess but he seemed genuinely relieved that she hadn’t died.

She couldn’t quite place him. Capriis maybe, or fusang? He was definitely half Asian of some kind, but whether the other half was Atlantean, Viking or Mayan remained a mystery.

“Can I pick you up?” His voice was young but a little scratchy. Maybe the blast had impaired her hearing.

“Not much I could do about it in my condition is there? But I guess so.”

“It’s ok,” he assured her, “I’m trying to help you.”

As soon as he had her in his arms he ran, full sprint down the street, away from the harbor wreckage. She couldn’t help but purr with the soft bounce of his arms.

“Good thing the water here is so protected, or they’d already be out looking for us.”

“Did you-“

“Yep. Didn’t mean to though, I saw some poachers, they wanted your feathers. Had to do something but it got out of hand.”

“My feathers?” the cat was dumbstruck.

“You must be younger than you look.”

“Eight weeks.”

“And you’re already out on your own?”

“Mother disappeared, I fell off the pyramid and hopped on a merchants cart. Next thing I knew I was in Alexandria.”

“It’s a miracle you haven’t been caught already. People would kill for your wings.”

The cat stared up at him. He had slowed down a bit to facilitate the conversation.

“Soon they’ll change. They won’t be grey anymore. They’re magic. They will change colors anytime you want them to, like a chameleon.”

“Chameleon sounds like something I would eat.”

“You should know about this already. I bet your mother was poached. It’s good that found you.”

 “So you can steal my wings too?”

“I’m not going to steal your wings. In fact I promise to protect them, and you.”

The cat was silent. This was new, and she had no instinct for it.

“While we are on the subject, how many lives have you lost?”

“Just one, last week.”

“Damn! I mean seven weeks is way too early to lose your first, but in Alexandria all alone it’s a wonder you haven’t lost more How did you lose it.”

It was a personal question and he shouldn’t have asked but he had saved her from at least another so he ventured the intrusion. The cat had no feelings about it and she had never been taught to guard this information.

“I pounced a shikome.”

Tyro stopped dead. He changed direction and ran up a side street.

“Where are you going?”

“Not to take you back to your pyramid. The shikome…” He said with incredulity. “You can’t go back now. No, I’d better take you with me to Atlantis.”

“That’s what the homunculus said, to find him in Atlantis.”

To this Tyro said nothing, but the cat could see his resolve and he began sprinting again.

The cat purred and fell asleep.

Homunculus and The Cat

This story begins with the death of the cat. This particular feline perished, not peculiarly, by way of curiosity. It was a young cat, barely a year old, by any scale, with an above average intelligence. Specifically one that afforded a heightened awareness of danger as it knowingly pounced Japanese death right in her putrid, sinewy face.

Alexandria. Egypt. A block or so away from the, Great Bibliothek, the cat basked in the nighttime heat. Sulking lazily on a shelf of some brand new apartment building like an aristocratic stray, the cat licked her paws. She disposed of the hairball in the usual way. Fairy was only her second favorite food; the wings always tickled on the way back up. But she had eaten sushi for a week straight and needed a change.

The cat yawned and squinted patronizingly at the human couple inside the apartment arguing over something neither of them could remember. Her coat was solid steel grey and its shine, graphite. A door slammed inside the flat and then another. There was nothing left to see, no dinner and a show combo for her tonight.

She stretched a pair of slightly lighter grey wings and closed her green eyes. The cat yawned again. She didn’t particularly feel like flying. This building was pretty posh and besides, there was always a chance the couple would get over themselves and each come crashing back into the room for some make-up sex.

“They’re probably not the type,” the cat with wings judged. “Neither of them looked very kinky anyway.”

She scanned the sandstone skyline for something else to do. It was a half-hearted and vain attempt. Maybe she’d just have another bloody nap. All the tourists were in bed for the night or else at some nightclub where she couldn’t harass them.

The cat was in the middle of a curse directed at the jackal-bouncers of the Lighthouse, one of Alexandria’s top establishments, if you don’t like dancing with locals, when a shadow seemed to move beneath her.

She loved new things and the smell that drifted from the flat below was a new thing. However unpleasant it was poignant to know about it. Also new was the way her hairs began to stand on end.

“I must investigate,” she whispered spiritedly.

The apartment below had all of its lights put out but something inside was moving. The cat located an open window and watched. It was hard to see in the dark even for her, but there was suspicion growing that had not trouble with it at all. In fact, the more she thought about it the more the darkness seemed somehow artificial, or at least false in some way. It was made or forced upon the room, light and shadows in all, covered with an added layer of tangibility. She’d better make a move or the stagnation of the cloud, as she thought it must be, would get the better of her.

Crouching and calculating she found the opportunity she was looking for. She pounced. All at once her victim screamed, over a dozen glass lamps burst from their repression, and she caught sight of what she had ambushed.

Presently she was ripped from its face of polluted flesh that rotted away and exposed bone and loosened several maggots. She landed on the floor and though made of hardwood it felt soft as a cloud. She retched. Not another hairball this time. Uncontrollable disgust seethed out from her bowels as the last of the wet-mummy’s shadow struggled to cling to her. But an unknown light was prevailing, vanquishing the stench of the unknown. The zombic fiend recoiled from some newly lit lamp and leapt out of the window. A second one followed.

Under an eerie purple haze that grew from the lamp, the cat’s vision blurred and she lost her footing.

“You saved my life!”

The cat could barely see, but whatever was speaking to her didn’t sound right. It sounded distant and as if it was missing something. It was short, humanoid and wheezed a bit like a summoning gone wrong.

The cat couldn’t help close her eyes.

When she opened them again dawn had struck like a hammer on the anvil of the night. The small man was sitting beside her stroking her soft fur and scratching under her wings.

“That was your first life wasn’t it?”

The cat blinked her green eyes.

“eight left.”

‘Great,’ she thought, ‘now I’ve got a pet human.’

“I want you to know I’m forever in your debt,” the midget said to the cats disgust.

“Look,” she started to say, “I didn’t mean-”

“If you ever need anything,” He cut her off. And he wasn’t a midget, or even a man for that matter. She realized now what he was. He was artificial. Manmade. False-human. An alchemist’s atrophy.  He was a homunculus. “look me up, I’ll be in Atlantis, at the homunculus sanctuary.”

The cat just stared at him, like she were an oracle gazing into his soul, except he didn’t have one, he was a homunculus.

“Also in case you are unaware,” would he not shut up? “those things that attacked me were shikome, minions of Japanese afterlife. And they’ll be back. Stick around here and they will find you.”

As the homunculus stood up he handed her the purple lamp that had warded off the Shinto demons.

“Ask for Gregor.”

The cat blinked in acknowledgement.

The door closed on its own behind Gregor, one of the many small luxurious features of the posh apartments the cat had just invaded.

After a moment of silence and pondering the cat decided to find some more sushi.

“Shikome,” she said aloud, “eight lives left, what are the odds?”

Pantheon: Ch 1 - Gaia (old not so final "final draft")

hey, thanks for clicking. this is Chapter 1 of my newly finished novel. this is the most recent re-write and im looking for some final feedback on it as i am getting ready to send the project to agencies. I appreciate your feedback and time. Thanks, hope you enjoy!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nD--zdQYFDcYj_grWqvAlfbsx8270yxFBro4onYUUJM/edit?pli=1

thats a link to googledocs..but here it is below as well

Pantheon

By Nathan Croft

Chapter One: Gaia

‘Keep alive,’ the orphan came with instructions. At five years old Richard was left on the porch as someone doorbell-ditched a Las Vegas City fire station. Everyone who knew him since then, at some point, felt a hot desire to disobey the explicit command.

~

Commotion all around the young teenager couldn’t touch his meditative gaze out the high museum windows. He was comfortably defiant, ignoring the mess he had caused. An arid, rainless tempest flickered in through the window and bounced off the marble floors, casting twisted split-second shadows on the other delinquents as they were searched for contraband. From behind his black cheek-length hair Richard looked past the prison-like bars into the vacant sky. He was waiting for the stranger.

‘Keep alive.’ All his life he wondered what kind of people would leave a note like that. ‘Weird old idiots!’ Despite his unknown parentage the city declared Richard to be Caucasian. He never understood what that meant. No one ever offered a straight answer when he asked where Caucasia was. Adults either scolded his attitude or chuckled and ruffled his pitch hair. By now he had stopped asking questions, but they were always there in the back of his mind. Who was he? Where did he come from? Why was he just abandoned? Most importantly why couldn’t he remember? At fourteen or fifteen he knew he should still have memories of the fire station and before. The answers, like his parents, simply escaped him.

There were only the scattered mental images of constant migration between boy’s ranches and foster homes. Especially unhappy at his current middle-of-nowhere slave labor camp, he considered running away, but it was way too far outside of the city to make it anywhere safely. He hated the remoteness of the place and there were far too few people there. It was easier to cope with being alone in a crowd than to feel like a sore thumb on a guy with one hand. Thankful for the short field trip he was currently watching the windows of some smelly moth-ball museum in the heart of Las Vegas. Right on campus at UNLV, he wondered if it was close-by, the fire station at which he was abandoned.

Repressing disgust for the various exhibits and displays around him, Richard had made himself comfortable in a corner with a particularly nice stone wall on which to lean. Concealing perfectly, coupled with his new hooded sweatshirt, his tan face and the surprisingly snug headphones. He made sure his music was loud enough that he didn’t have to hear the adults arguing.

“Have you questioned Rich-“

“A million and a half times. He said they mentioned the strip but no one will rat him out.”

“Richard had to have had something to do with it. When we get back, those kids are in huge trouble.”

“There’s no way we can make it back in this weather.”

“Yes we can, it’s not even raining and the news reports-”

“But if it starts, the road will be too muddy for this bus and since when has the news ever been right?”

“What are you saying, that we spend the night here?”

“If it comes to it, with the boys and all I’d rather spend the night here than stuck on some dirt road halfway to the ranch.”

The adults’ argument was masked by screeching guitars, drums, and the latest electronic bleeps.

Richard, that was what they named him. Sometimes, the more annoying tried their luck with Richie, but anyone who knew better called him Black. The children often used made up names. It was his favorite color, his dress code and coincidentally his hair was as dark as a moonless midnight. He liked it so much that he went so far as to dye his already black hair just to make it look deliberate.

Black was both Richard’s title and surname as he saw it. He was the black sheep of the lost Vegas boys. No foster family kept him. Valiant couples saw Black as a parenting challenge or as their divine project. Embracing rejection, he never let them tame him. Although he liked the foster homes best, he got sick of them quickly. Sooner or later he always bounced back to the state, and he preferred it that way, not that he liked the state itself, but Nevada nags a lot less than would-be-mothers on a mission. The better they got to know him the more they tried to “help” him. Above all he didn’t like the feeling that he belonged anywhere. He needed to keep moving.

Standing in the corner ignoring the world around him he was simply indifferent like nothing affected him. He thought of himself as a shadow, only frightening if you fear it. Patient and tactful, he was only cutthroat if provoked.

Black turned back towards the window. Tonight was the night he was leaving. He wondered why he hadn’t done it sooner. Free food and scarcity of cash were just excuses. But now he had met someone, someone different from the regular runaway or criminal. This one was smarter.  Richard felt somehow he wouldn’t get killed or caught with him. He continued to watch the window.

Outside, the flash and bangs worsened. It was still dry in the city but the chaperones had no choice but to stay at the museum for the night. The intensified lightning helped Black keep alert, now sitting against a wall in the designated corner of the museum’s entrance hall. Black stayed in that corner all night, after all they boys had returned and been scolded, even after everyone was asleep.

The museum was quiet, closed under care of security guards. Richard didn’t know how the stranger would come, but if he could it would serve as the proof that the stranger was telling the truth. With reservation, Black envisioned the epic jailbreak it would require, but the man seemed to know exactly how he would do it. It was all the same to him, he wasn’t going to challenge. Questions got people like him into trouble, not authority trouble but trouble with trouble itself.

Black waited for what only seemed like a few minutes, but could have been hours. He was too indifferent for time to get to him.

The moment finally came, quietly, unnoticed. The wall behind him began to grow warmer, steadily under the cover of the storm’s humidity. Black shot up to his feet, back sweating. Half expecting to see that he had been sitting against a broken radiator he stepped away annoyed. Looking back, unflinching he stifled disbelief as a section of wall appeared to melt before his eyes. No one seemed to notice as a stranger stood alone in the opening, hair blowing on the edges of a hood. A black coat ran to the strangers’ knees.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I was expecting a professional thief, not some cirque du sideshow.”

The sunken-faced man peeled himself back from the opening, offended.

“The con-artists of your world-” He cut himself off. “I don’t have to prove anything to you. Stay here if you want. I hear you enjoy digging latrines over at that delinquent labor camp.”

Black didn’t trust this guy of course, but he had never trusted anyone in his entire life. Why start now? And whatever might happen sure seemed to beat the alternative.

“Alright, let’s do this!”

The stranger beckoned with a follow-me motion and turned towards the night. The air was filled with a cool storm breeze. Though lightning flashed the sky, still no rain fell in the city, there was only wind and shadow. As they strolled away from the outer walls of the museum, Black saw the wall close up as if nothing had happened. To the rest of the world, that was the night Black disappeared.

Richard left all of his things in his backpack, even a few things he had stolen that looked valuable, he wanted to leave the impression that he simply vanished. He wanted them to wonder why he didn’t take anything with him. He thought about a suicide note but it seemed to him a mystery, the unknown, was more fitting. He just showed up one day and now he was simply gone.

Before returning to that museum that evening, just in case he was searched, he had stashed some of his other newly acquired goods in a hollow tree close by. Wanting to get them he asked the stranger.

“Shut your mouth. You can’t take it where we’re going anyway, and as much as I like practicing my English I’d rather you just shut up.” That seemed to be the end of the conversation.

It was all the same to Black. He was now envisioning walls melting all over the world. Glass display cases, vault doors and even prison bars in his mind disappeared effortlessly with each new imagined caper.

Descending into the deep shoulder of a freeway underpass, the rushing of sixteen wheelers on a four lane highway fazed him back into reality. They stepped down into the ditch stopping at a metal grating guarding a drainage hole. The stranger touched it and it too melted. Black’s arm was grabbed and he was pulled to the hole.

“Get in!”

“Yeah right.”

“Do it or I’ll stuff you down myself.”

Black nearly pulled out his knife but his better judgment took over and he cautiously climbed in. He was no match for a wall melter and whatever else the stranger was, nor did Black think it wise to find out presently. His feet hit a splashy ground that he didn’t know was coming. He landed too soon but still only fell to one knee.

“Not bad kid. A natural faller. You might add up to something.”

“Thanks uh,” Black paused, “What’s your name anyway?”

“I guess you’re going to hear it sooner or later,” the slender man consented. “The name’s Yuki.” A meager offering. He pressed onward.

After a little walk in pure darkness being pushed from behind by Yuki, Black saw a bright flash and instantly felt a sharp pain in his head. He didn’t realize what had happened, nor were there enough seconds between his rapidly falling body and the floor to find out. He was totally unconscious before he even landed.

As if he were dreaming, the evening’s events replayed in his subconscious. He was back in the museum. The still distant storm echoed in the empty halls. They boys were given some free time to wander the museum at their leisure after dinner. Black had conned the other boys’ ranch inmates into running off to the strip during this reprise form supervision to test their luck on slots and cards. He had convinced them that all the fun there was to be had on the Vegas strip would outweigh whatever punishment the staff could come up with. Also he assured them vigorously that once all was said and done, after they had paid the small price in the form of extra manual labor, they would have a trove of smuggled-in contraband. Videogames.

The other delinquents may not have trusted Black, but when he said he could get something in, he meant it. Frankly, videogames appealed to everyone there. Whether or not your style was headshots and claymores, shouting dragons from the sky, endless worlds made of pixilated blocks, zombies, or motion sensor sports, Black was your man. They used to have several handhelds and an outdated console. That was before the great confiscation following Christmas last year. It was high time Black upped the ante.

They had to leave in waves so as not to raise any alarms but Black never had any intention of meeting them at the rendezvous point. Each boy boasted of their future game and glory as they waited for Richard, as promised, at the rendezvous point. Instead with a perfect diversion, he had made his way to the nearby campus to lift electronics off careless coeds and lazy bachelors.

That was the pivotal point in his plan. Get everyone else lost and eventually caught, he would appear to have never left the museum, oblivious to everyone else’s absence. He would pretend to have had some artistic epiphany over some sculpture, or painting or some other crap. That would get their hopes up. Of course he would have to corrupt whatever bogus insights he had with some morbid twist, just for credibility. ‘Maybe there is hope for Richard after all, if we can just get past the psychosis.’

Black wasn’t really psychotic, he was clever. Maybe there was a fine line between them. ‘Well, whatever works.’ All of his peers would take the heat while he became the hero, loaded with hours of against-the-rules electronic entertainment.

The return of the other boys cued Black’s volume finger. Drowning out the scene, his music blasted louder than before. He kept the best piece of course for himself, headphones under his shirt and in his hood, out of sight from the ever-searching eyes of the institution. Black did regret that he had not seen their frantic faces when they fruitlessly searched for the escapees on the strip.

The mental movie played out in his mind, the boys found the strip and no Black. They would look for hours before getting caught by angry social workers and dragged back to the museum. Their play time utterly wasted, they were now being tried and sentenced. He had sold them out and in the end they would praise him for it. He would just shrug. He kept the volume up. The mental movie was good enough, and providentially the PSP was absolutely loaded. Most of it was even pretty good.

He smirked as the shaky hand of part-time justice dealt with the other delinquents. After the public reprimand the group was admonished to “go one last time.” It had grown late, and the storm near. There was no chance they could get the massive busses back to the distant ranch in this weather. It still wasn’t raining in the city, but via cell phone the staff was warned that it came down in droves all along the dirt roads leading to the camp. Black continued leaning like a lazy sentinel as the rest of the crew filtered in and out of the bathroom, his legs crossed and arms folded. Some other boys approached him, curious to know of his exploits.

“Dude, they think I’ve been here the whole time. Go away or they’ll figure it out.”

“But”

“Piss off!”

With a particular gesture of his hand Black ushered the other barterer away. In truth, for the first time, he wasn’t able to obtain the requested goods, not all of it anyway. Distracted during his collection run, a skinny long haired and scruffy man at the university had caught him rummaging through backpacks. Instead of capture, the man had approached Black and offered change which he readily accepted.  Life off the grid, and a chance to learn professional thievery, packaged with the promise of never getting caught, ultimate freedom was all the enticing he needed to agree. So he just gave up on lifting small time gadgets, he didn’t even bother finding the freshman dorms. He just took what he had already nicked and went back to the museum even earlier than he had to.

It was late and dark outside. The chaperones scurried about in a worried frenzy over a few missing delinquents and the impending storm. Richard couldn’t help but laugh. He, the alleged “Ring Leader” of the nonconformists, had just been honored for his current presence. Richard smirked again. The other boys hardly pulled a penny slot and he had a brand new PSP playing music in his pocket. As if he was really going to go up against casino security, trying to gamble with stolen wallets and purses. What use were some vacationer’s credit cards anyway? A few chips were nothing to him in the middle of a go-nowhere boys’ ranch compared to eighty gigabytes of memory sticks, loaded with free music, movies and games, courtesy of some unattended backpacks at the nearby computer lab.

Eventually everything had died down and he sat in a corner, against a wall and waited. He must have fallen asleep, because now he was waking up. It wasn’t completely dark but his eyes still hadn’t adjusted. Stupid stranger wasn’t coming. Or wait, he had. ‘No,’ he thought, ‘that was a dream.’

He became suddenly aware of a sewer-like stench. ‘Who farted?’ But as he became more alert he noticed he was wet. He had been lying in some rancid water next to a set of short wide steps. His eyes adjusted to the dim light emanating from something above him, his surroundings were unrecognizable. He started to look around trying not to seem awake.

Soon the darkness past the steps became an archway and there appeared a light. It was jagged and incomplete, obstructed by whatever contained it. As the light drew nearer it grew a pair of arms and then a body, someone was holding a bright object in the palm of their hand. ‘Yuki that backstabber!’

“Sorry kid, it was necessary, would have been mounds of trouble. We’re there now so get up.”

As Black got to his feet he opened his mouth but was cut off.

“Just shut up and listen. I need to know everything you have on you, down to every little hairpin and piece of string. Put it on the table or it’ll be your head.”

“What the-“

“Do it now and don’t make me ask again.”

Black started emptying his pockets and Yuki barked “Everything.”  He didn’t have much, a small stiletto and a big hunting knife. There was a little utility piece that consisted of a miniature compass and a lock pick and a few other little pocket knife type tools. There was a little cash and a lighter. Black wasn’t about to hand over the new mp3 player he had just recently adopted.

“If that’s not everything you’ll be dead or in prison in less than an hour, and believe me you won’t like this sort of prison.”

Black subdued a few nerves that started to perk up, having kept his mp3 player from Yuki’s grasp. A few seconds pause, but minutes calmer, he pulled off his left shoe. He took out the insole and then withdrew a thin piece of metal with a nasty spike on the end. There were a few holes in the piece, a skinny pair of steel knuckles. A butterfly knife came from the hollow sole his right shoe.

“Do you have any necklaces or jewelry?”

“No.”

“Really? No piercings?”

A ring and a bar went from his lip and tongue to the table.

“Happy?”

“Don’t get smart, ant.” Yuki smirked as he pulled something out of a coat pocket. It was a small black and brown box with a square hole in one end. He held it so that the hole faced outwards and took few steps over to the table. Light in one hand, box in the other, he lowered them both to the table. Yuki touched the hole-side of the box to the first knife, the stiletto. It melted and disappeared, then the butterfly. Everything Black had melted and disappeared until the large hunting knife was the only thing on the table. “This is ugly, besides it won’t be much good to you anymore.”

Black stood there with a protest deep in his throat. Not knowing what to say as Yuki seemed to materialize a white chalky disc from nowhere. Yuki picked up the knife and tapped it to the disc. The blade turned to dust and was sucked into the disc. Black stood in awe, that disk was solid no mistake, yet it sucked the dust into it.

“No more questions squirt?”

Black dared, opening his mouth-

“Good, stay shut up, you’ll live longer.”

“No,” Black complained, “I need some information. You choose what you’re going to tell me, it won’t matter what I ask, but you tell me something before you or I make another move.”

With a wide grin Yuki retorted almost sinisterly, “Ok kid, you’ve earned it, but keep your shorts on. I work in a little different line of smuggling than you think. This is a border unlike any you’ve ever seen, and I always have plenty of tricks up my sleeve. This box is a smugglers hole. It can store huge amounts of just about anything, even someone unconscious. How’s your head by the way?”

“You put me…that’s-“

“That’s what, impossible? Or magic? Ha, kid, keep your eyes open.” With that Yuki touched the side of the box, stroked the corner, closed his eyes, and pulled a three foot long sword out of the box. “This, my friend, once belonged to a man named Gilgamesh,” his proud announcement was met with a blank stare. “Don’t know your history eh?” He traced the box, and closing his eyes Yuki then pulled out “something you might have heard of, the staff of Merlin. And this,” he boasted as he pulled a third time, “is the helm of Hades, worn and lost by Perseus.”

Something about the last item rang a bell but the name to which the staff belonged he knew. “So what?”

“So what?” Yuki repeated in disbelief. “These artifacts are hundreds of years old and worth a fortune, but the point is this box can hold just about anything you want. I put you in there. On our way down here in the tunnels I heard voices. There’s never any way to know who a voice in the dark belongs to so I stuffed you in here. It’s easier to defend myself alone, and smuggling extremely rare and expensive artifacts requires serious skill, especially where we’re going, so I don’t need you screwing it up!”

“So where are we going?”

“Nowhere that you would believe. Now, it’s easy to hide anything in the box. It’s the box itself that takes some effort in hiding. There’s a few ways to do it, you can make it appear to be something it’s not.” He illustrated, somehow turning the box into a scarf.  “It doesn’t always last long and there are rarely any options since you can’t take anything with you to this place.” The scarf turned back to a box. “Clothing is a number one suspect for hiding things by the way, so it won’t work here. Or you can try to dilute it into the air,” he did not demonstrate, “an easy thing to do but very unreliable. The chances of finding it are slim, the chances of being able to get it back are slim, and the chances of it being detected are not so slim, but the feat is the easiest to perform.

“A third option, my personal preference; reversing the magic of the box on itself, much the same as melting it into air but a little more specific. With a little magical skill and tolerance for pain you can melt it into yourself.” He stared at the box for a minute or two then jammed two of his fingers in the hole. While saying something under his breath the box began to melt. Yuki pulled his fingers apart and turned the box inside out. Then he clapped his hands together around the box. There was an absorbing silence that followed and he opened his hands to show nothing but air like a magic card trick when the card ended up in your sleeve.

“It’s painful, but they’ll never find it.” That moment Black saw a deep red smear on the palm of Yuki’s hand. Curious, he looked at the other and saw blood seeping out of a cut so deep he expected to see through to the back of the hand. Yuki dressed the wound like it was an involuntary response. Jaw gaping, Black agreed with Yuki’s previous assumption about his disbelief. ‘Ok this guy gets some credit. That was way cool,’ he applauded mentally, which only made him more curious about his destination.

 “Great marring,” Yuki continued, “will stand out under the aegis oculi.  And just so you know kid, very few people know this method even exists and fewer can achieve it,” he paused. “We’ve wasted enough time already, we need to move. I’ll even tell you why. We are in one of many antechambers. This room is where you may purchase a locker,” he directed, pointing at some heavy metal doors on the sides of the walls. Black had not noticed those before. “Almost anything of this sphere cannot be taken to the other, vice versa. I take what I want where I want. With that Yuki went over to a chest next to some lockers opened it and started rummaging.

“You didn’t tell me why.”

“Eh, so I didn’t. Here put these on.” In Yuki’s arms was a bundle of interesting looking cloth.

“No way!”

“You’re going to wish you did.”

“Yeah I’m sure I will big guy.”

“Alright kid,” Yuki chuckled. “You know best. Come on, time to go.”

Pantheon Chapter 13: Wisdom (Great Library of Alexandria excerpt)

Egyptian sun shone down on Black threatening a burn. Black tucked the map away into his box neatly, trying to will Evo’s fun facts out of the air. Perched on an outcropping of volcanic rock they surveyed their landing. They were confined to a ledge, hugged by jagged cliffs on three sides and ocean on the fourth. Making effective use of his cast Black was careful to avoid lacerations from the sharp rock as he poked his head over the top. The promontory revealed itself as an island bearing no prospects of further progress.

Black likened its size to about half of a ‘football field.’ Evo wrinkled his forehead, whinnied, and muttered “Terrene” under his breath. Black heard him perfectly and for brief moment, recalling the untidy sports store in Capriis, he wondered if there was anything like football here.

More pressing riddles begged to be relinquished and they scoured the smallish platform for some way off. It was clearly a manmade ledge carved into the rock but there was no sign of it having any purpose.

There was nowhere to go.

 “Where are we?” groaned Evo. “You were supposed to take us to Alexandria.”

“I did. We are, look.”

Black held the map out to Evo. The marker changed what it said as Evo took it. There, right above the dot where Alexandria was it read Evyndyr.

Shrouded behind igneous formations Evo wasn’t able to lift his neck high enough to see the skyline of Alexandria. The boat-speckled harbor of the golden city could be heard however now that it was at the forefront of his awareness.

 “Well,” Evo joked, “Either we wait for some cruise ship to rescue us or we see what that map can do for us.”

It didn’t work.

“Um,” tried Black, “I didn’t throw away my flying carpet.”

“Yeah, but this is a no-fly zone and Egyptian prison is my second least favorite place to spend a night.”

“No look.” Black had started to say, pointing to a small pile of debris cuddling the serrated shore of their little island. Suddenly curious of what else was on Evo’s list, he wished he hadn’t spoken so soon. Likewise Evo regretted the anecdote and took the conversational back door away from recollecting undesirable memories.

“Oh, I thought for a moment that it was a boat.”

“It is a boat.” Black argued.

A small reed boat was tied to a slender boulder that had been placed on the flat shelf.

“That’s not a boat!” Evo snorted. “It’s a pile of broken reeds wash-“

“Oh shut up, it’s a boat and it’s even got oars. We’ll just have to paddle our way in.”

“Not that I am trying to get out of paddling a dilapidated life raft to shore, cause I’m not,” stammered Evo. “I honestly don’t think I’ll even fit in that thing and keep it afloat at the same time. And we’ve got to row through all the other traffic. It’s suicide. If we tip over we die.”

“What you can’t swim?”

“No, there’s-”

“I spent a summer one time on a boat, just do as I say and we’ll be fine. No sudden moves horsefoot.”

Evo decided not to get into it. They were out of options and camping on that ledge was almost as dangerous anyway. He didn’t see the need though to pressure Black’s nautical knowhow with that information and he conceded.

Evo’s adrenaline rushed through him as he concentrated hard on keeping the boat steady. Rowing to shore through the phalanx of vessels between was certain doom, but swimming was suicide. All the while Black poked fun unknowledgeable of the danger in the water.

Stroke by stroke they rounded the island and faced the commanding skyline of Alexandria. The city was not made of gold as its nickname stated but rather yellowish sandstone. It was impossible magic that kept block after block of tall sandstone skyscrapers standing. Like a mirage, the hot sun reflected off of a mirror sea.

The city shimmered and rippled before them, the great lighthouse beckoning them in. Black stared in awe at a wall of unfathomably tall superstructures that dwarfed it. Even though he had been here many times Evo couldn’t help but join in the reverence when they had passed the breakers. Atop the maritime entrance to the city an enormous statue stood proud, a legendary hero.

A colossus, erected in honor of Gilgamesh, greater even than the original colossus at Rhodes celebrated the champion of the world’s first epic. Evo couldn’t help but explain that the effigy in Rhodes however was the original great colossus and more wondrous because it was built without the aid of magic.

The Alexandrian skyline had not rendered a single holy cow. Their utterly silent awe, broken only by Evo’s tour guide knowledge was a venerable reverence fit for the Manhattan of the Mediterranean. Ancient looking, gravity defying, skyscrapers of heavy yellow stone seemed to pierce the stratosphere. The skyline looked as though the ancient Egyptians had built their version of New York City. Greater than the pyramids or the temple at Carnac, these buildings put to shame any others he had ever seen. Las Vegas certainly didn’t have the tallest building in the world but Black had known them to be grand. Now his memory of them seemed pathetic. Just a few weeks ago modern engineering was king. Now magical superstructures trumped over modern technology.

Black wondered how the tallest of these would measure up against the two towers. Those were the tallest buildings Black could name, but even if they weren’t as tall they certainly were just as imposing. Black nearly lost his balance and tipped the skiff. Evo shrieked like a small child but regained proper footing.

He was now breathing too heavy to reproach Black, who laughed jovially and ignorantly. Evo strained himself working superior levitation magic. He was nearly exhausted and panicked.

Black was absorbed into getting the most out of his oar strokes that he failed to see where he was going. The bow shot up out of the water and sea spray coated their front sides. A fearful moment of near capsizing in the crossing wakes of larger boats Evo pleaded for passage with a nearby by garbage barge. It was empty and on its way toward the city.

‘Watch where you’re going!” Evo roared as the barge slowly approached.

“Me? I’m the one doing all the work.” Black shouted back.

“So, you think you’re the one keeping us afloat?”

“Like you are. You’re the one just standing there complaining.”

“I’ve been levitating this rotting piece of junk the whole way. And all the while keeping the eels distracted.”

“You-” Black stopped short. “Wait, what?”

But before Evo could explain the barge had approached. The solid mass underfoot was welcome despite the reeking stench. They deflected the curious pilot’s puzzlement well enough and slowly floated nearer the shore.

Their argument was dropped and sank like a heavy stone into the harbor just as quickly as their little reed boat had done. In its place Evo put on a false voice and guided their tour.

The barge’s horn hollered a low welcome as they passed around what Evo explained was a massive boat station. Rather than subways they had underground canals with ferrymen guiding long reed boats with poles. It seemed to Black like a cross between a singing and dancing theme park ride and Venice. But Evo didn’t understand a word or what Black was talking about. Black couldn’t help but sing “it’s a small world after all,” the rest of the way in.

"Wow what’s that building?" asked Black after they hopped ashore and thanked the garbage man.

"That,” Evo speculated, “looks like a huge glass, wait a sec. That the new addition to the library. Wow is right. It’s incredible. I heard it was neat but this is amazing."

Towering out of the ocean was a triangular shaped glass wall, pointing to the sky. The entire structure looked solid, like it was one gigantic piece of glass or crystal. The absence of individual panes and supporting crossbeams gave it and unusual and ghostly appearance. Black thought of a giant moon-sized diamond exploding in space and a chunk of it falling and nestling itself into the Alexandrian coast.

"It looks like a-"

"Yeah it's a glass pyramid turned on its side, look you can see inside. There on the far end, there’s where the top of the pyramid would be if it was right side up." Evo pointed to water where it gently lapped against the side of the crystal clear wall. "It goes down just as far.

Through the wall Black could see there were numerous balconies inside stacked with countless shelves and display cases, all glowing slightly of an ethereal sky blue. They followed the boardwalk along the coast towards the building.

“So that’s it then,” exclaimed Evo.

All Black could muster by way of reply was a fairly disjointed double “whoa.”

“That’s the ethereal section. It’s new, just finished about a year or so ago.”

“What’s that mean, ethereal section?”

“It’s a new concept. I read an article about it. It’s supposed to replace all the current library systems. No more damaged, lost or stolen books. No more late fees. No hungry books eating your stuff either.”

The blank stare from Blacks face still had questions written all over it and Evo noticed.

“All the actual books are now kept in sealed glass cases. When you find a book you want you simply touch the case in front of the book and an ethereal copy will emerge for you to take.”

“Sounds cool but what’s ethereal mean?”

“Oh, it’s like, like a ghost only backwards. Typically ghosts are not usually visible or palpable but they’re real, something ethereal is something you can see and touch but it’s not real and will soon fade.”

“So it’s like a hologram then?”

“A hollow what?”

“A hologram you know, as in an illusion.”

“I thought you were talking about crackers, isn’t that what a graham is?”

“Not hollow, holo, h-o-l-o. And a different kind of gram, not like, oh never mind, just forget it.”

“Ok, easy enough, you weren’t making any sense. Anyway when you take an ethereal book you can have it as long as you want, or well as long as it lasts. They die after a while you know.”

“I thought you said they weren’t real, how can they die?”

“Fine they don’t die they disappear, run out of chi, whatever, everyone calls it dying, like your music thingy. They fade after time or if you take them far enough away from the library, away from their source of power. Ah here we are,” Evo happily announced and ended the conversation before any more questions could be raised.

They stood on the pier, the glass pyramid towering above them. It was unlike any glass Black had ever seen. It looked so thin and clear and astonishingly it was made of one solid piece, not just each side but the whole structure was solid and seamless. The building was remarkable but partly due to its transparency, subtracted nothing from the many other buildings on the site. As they walked around the ethereal section they saw it was connected to the back end of the central edifice, the library proper.

Evo explained that the original word for the library, bibliotheca, referred to the collection of scrolls itself not to the buildings housing them but in Atlantean and most other modern Gaiean languages the word was like the English library. He went on to tell Black that over time the library had grown as a center for learning and the arts of magic and thus became more of a university than a just a house for books. It was now also sometimes known as the great university of Alexandria.

 “In fact,” he continued, “it’s got a lot more names depending on where in the world you are, but they’re all more or less the same thing. Most of the world’s greatest thinkers have once studied here.”

The entrance to the library was more inland and the turned off the boardwalk. Evo led Black onto the complex and around the corner of an archaic sandstone building and under a great hallway of columns. They entered an open courtyard, the ancient library façade on the north. Another colonnade like the one they had just passed through was opposite them on the far end. That left a huge circular building or cistern of some kind occupying the remaining side of the square.

Black was sure Evo was about to spit out another interesting fact but for the moment the grandeur of the original structure, the Great Library of Alexandria had the floor. The library, like most of the city was built primarily of the yellowish stone. Various other stones used in the carvings, inlays and reliefs gave it a high level of detail. It was ancient but sturdy.

“Not bad eh?” chirped Evo.

Crowning the steps that led up to the entrance, Black gazed at the white marble artfully set into the threshold. The stone looked as if it were spilled milk, leaking out from inside the library. Large twin statues of Atlas stood on raised platforms on either side of the stairs. Instead of the celestial sphere on the titan’s shoulders Atlas held big brass braziers blazing with pure white flame.

“They symbolize that the weight of the heavens is lifted by knowledge. Don’t tell Atlas though.” Evo laughed. “Those braziers still look plenty heavy.”

“Not bad at all,” Black proposed as they moved up the steps. “I mean for a library.”

Monstrous doors gaping wide were open and inviting. They had been coated with gold leaf giving way to the white floors inside. It probably had some sort of symbolic tie in to Atlas’s heavenly flames. Black rushed in, nearly leaping. He considered for a brief moment becoming an architect. At this he shuddered, made the kind of face one makes when biting into a fruit that’s entirely unripe and stripped himself of the thought. He let himself become distracted by all the people there.

Most people moved lazily around a vast circular entrance hall taking it all in. It was bright and had the scent of any old museum. The musty waft of old deteriorating parchment and preservative ointments dominated the air. Streams of incense and other fragrances mingled delightfully with the ancient book smell and the breeze from the sea would come in periodically like waves to freshen the senses temporarily.

It was like all particles in the air were laden with an aroma, every one of them had somewhere to be. Mixing perfectly in a grand chaos, like ants when you kick their hill. But there were also bits of space in the library void and sterile. Like spears barring down into the nest, rays of light shone from a focal point above to the floor. What portion of the air that wasn’t occupied by one scent or another was inhabited by these near tangible lights beaming down from the domed ceiling.

Black made to swipe his hand through one and was surprised. Minutely the air was different, it was thicker. Tenderly he ran his fingers along the edges of the light. He could easily pass hid hand through it but he could feel a surface. It reminded him of holding his hand out of a car window and feeling in his cupped hand like he is holding an invisible ball.

Nestled in the crest of the circular ceiling smothered by a circular fresco adorned every inch of the cupola was a diamond or some other crystal larger than any Black had ever seen. The mural was definitely a grand myth or epic of some kind, one Black didn’t recognize off hand. It reminded Black of one of those ninja turtle named renaissance artists, except instead of naked babies everywhere there were pegasi and mermaids.

. From the elephantine jewel projected the pillars of light that illuminated the spacious rotunda. Black moved around and fondled the 3D image that they cast onto the ground.

“The world’s largest crystallight calendar.” Although Evo was in no way responsible for its existence his voice carried an air of pride.

The rays from the gem created translucent statues of light arranged in several rings on the marble floor. Displaying the Date, time, season, month, moon phase, and a few other things Black didn’t understand.

It was spectacular.

 Black began to mentally compare it to every image of any library or museum he had seen, none of which could measure up to the grandiose of Alexandria’s great library. This was majestic, it was amazing. The ceiling seemed to be ridiculously taller than it had been on the outside, a building quality that he was getting used to. The stonework was intricate and detailed beyond normal human ability. The materials were exquisite and perfect. Black had no doubt that the magic enchanting the buildings’ size and the great crystallight calendar, were world class. Black found out it was the year 1467 after the rule of the thirteen houses. The moon was somewhere close to the first quarter and Libra was the current zodiac being passed by the sun.

“Well let’s get you a library card shall we?” Evo suggested.

“All this magic and you use library cards? Wait, how’s that work without technology?”

“Well we don’t actually have library cards in Gaia. I’m kidding, I just always thought they were cool.”

“Oh, well what do you have?”

“Permission from the gods.”