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fox-guardian · 8 months

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hey guys did you know that um. did you know. first of all did you know i'm losing my mind, secondly, do y'all remember in tma how when someone reads a written statement, they don't really Stop unless they're interrupted? and they read the whole thing easy cheesy, no issues with reading whatever words are there? like. jon literally could read french for a whole statement and was Fine. granted, that's Jon, but like nobody else struggled with pronunciations and whatnot (that i can recall)

presumably, this is an eye thing. either as employees of the institute, or because everyone there is just also eye-aligned in some degree (melanie had the ghost hunting show, the eye is fond of martin, etc)

and then there's tim in season 3 ep 86

[Sigh] Statement of… uh, Benjamin Hatendi… Hateendi? Regarding a… [papers rustling] a blanket. Dead friend. Monster. Regarding his unavoidable and gruesome end. How he tried to hide. He couldn’t. Statement is from… 1983, March 2nd. And I guess… [long sigh] I guess I’m doing this one. Tim Stoker. Archival assistant… Archival prisoner at the Magnus Institute.

correct me if im wrong but i don't recall anyone struggling with pronunciations before this bit. but that's not even the biggest thing here, that's just a lil Taste, a lil Flavor.

note the phrasing there. "Regarding his unavoidable and gruesome end." why would he say this when the written text on the statement says this:

Uh, right. Benjamin Hatendi’s account of… [rustling pages] oh for… a, a strange encounter. Er, statement date, March 2nd, 1983. Melanie King recording. Apparently.

"a strange encounter". that's it. nothing about an unavoidable death, just a "strange encounter". Tim Why Did You Say That.

why would our dear timothy bimothy, who is being pushed to the brink, who is becoming rapidly more depressed and losing hope, say this?

this isn't the only time he's said some weirdly grim shit tho (ep 104)

There was never really any hope for me, though, was there? This was how it was always going to go.

and then there's this bit from elias apparently having Looked into tim (also 104)

TIM All right, hit me with your X-ray eyes then, boss. What do you see? ELIAS Disruption. An unpredictable, angry man with nothing left but the desire to feel in some way revenged. TIM [Sarcastic] Ooh, terrifying! Surely only magic could have let you see so deep inside my very soul.

"nothing left" but the desire to feel revenged. and tim doesn't dispute this, because it's true.

when he first joined the institute he did so in order to look for answers about danny, but then he stopped seriously looking. and now that the circus is back, this is all the drive he has left. not looking for answers, just wanting revenge. closure. an end, if you will.

this is Literally It For Him. a couple lines later he suggests elias kill him, he's At The Breaking Point.

he is so tired, he's lost all hope, and he's saying all this grim shit about "unavoidable death" and "this is how it was always going to go" like hmmmm sounds familiar doesn't it. DOESN'T IT (<- is going insane)

(ep 11) [....] despite the rapid response of the paramedics and how much of his medical history I had immediately to hand, there was nothing I could do to save him. (ep 11) I have no responsibility to try and prevent whatever fate is coming for you. Based on my previous experience, such a thing is likely impossible anyway,[....] (ep 121) There. That was it. That was our fate; where we would always be.

hmmmm sounds a bit like oliver huh? everyone's favorite ex-accountant avatar of the end?? right??

but then there's this last bit i have from ep 86.

why did he stop reading the statement

Statement. “My parents never let me have a nightlight. I was always afraid, but they were ju–” Ugh, this is stupid.

why did he do that. again, correct me if im wrong but when else has someone just Stopped Reading like that without someone or something else interrupting them? why could tim just stop himself?

my theory is this: at this point, tim is completely gone from being aligned with the eye. he no longer seeks to know what happened to danny, he just wants closure. he doesn't wanna do any statement work, and he keeps mentioning these tidbits about hopelessness and the inevitability of terrible events, specifically death.

the eye isn't compelling him to read the statements like it does the others, because it doesn't have as strong a hold anymore. the grip is slipping from him. and by the time the unknowing rolls around, maybe it's lost him for good. maybe he finally fell into a different power he never meant to serve, and yet, he does.

and maybe. just maybe. because i'm so not in denial. but MAYBE. he did die in the unknowing. but maybe he got better.

basically end!tim truthers rise up, this is how end!tim kayaking with his bf oliver banks can still win, etc etc I'm Going Feral <3

#ramblings with major #the magnus archives #tma #tim stoker #oliver banks #timoliver #lil bit uwu #tim stoker tuesday #end!tim #cursing #tma angst #ig #i hope this is coherent and makes sense im losing my MIIIIND im losing my Mind

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ladydragonkiller · 2 years

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I've been re-listening to some early tma and noticed some interesting lines from episode 2 with everybody's fave Joshua Gillespie.

everyone loves him because he just decided he was going to live with the coffin. improvise adapt overcome. wake up finding you're opening the spooky lock? freeze the key. he got so used to the big ole moaning coffin chilling in the living room that it didn't even freak him out anymore

(image ID: screenshot of the transcript of MAG 002: Do Not Open, reading as follows: I lived like that for almost a year and a half. It’s funny how fear can just become as routine as hunger – at a certain point I just accepted it. My first clue that my time keeping the coffin was coming to an end was when it began to rain and there was silence.)

but as I was chilling along with him, I realized that some of this seemed familiar. in fact, it rung a bell in my head connected to one of the episodes that is generally considered the scariest from tma. that's right - 086: Tucked In

(Image ID: screenshot of the transcript of MAG 086: Tucked In, reading as follows: Last night I woke up like before. I sensed it there, but as I raised the covers over my head, I realized that I wasn’t worried. Fear had given way to routine. I lay there, warm and protected, and simply waited to fall back to sleep. But this time, what I felt instead was a sudden weight pressing down on the end of my bed.)

Benjamin Hatendi handled the situation pretty similarly to Joshua Gillespie! He had a terrifying thing happening to him, slowly got used to it, and there is NO REASON that his circumstances worsened while Josh got off scot-free

and honestly, that just makes things scarier. tma has a big theme of arbitrary things happening that just screw someone right over, with no rhyme or reason to them. it's even just said out-right in 160!

(Image ID: screenshot of the transcript of MAG 160: The Eye Opens, reading as follows: It does tickle me, that in this world of would-be occult dynasties and ageless monsters, the Chosen One is simply that – someone I chose. It’s not in your blood, or your soul, or your destiny. It’s just in your own, rotten luck.)

of course, the web contradicts this imagery somewhat. there isn't a lot less random than "giant metaphysical spider puppeting around all the events to make things go according to plan". but that's only one out of 15 entities, so I think the idea holds

don't really have a meaningful conclusion to all of this, just a bunch of thoughts that I wanted to exorcise from my head.

#new sitcom where joshua benjamin the shadow monster and the coffin are all roommates when #just two normal guys and their eldritch buddies #the coffin and shadow monster don't do anything to fit in with the sitcom format #but there's a laugh track and that's what counts in the end #all made by cane studios #tma #the magnus archives

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lycanlovingvampyre · 1 year

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MAG 118 Relisten

Activity on my first listen: cutting apples. Again...

Ah, I remember very well when I listened to this episode the first time. Texted my sister twice right there at the start about Martin being sassy! ("Statement ends, I guess" and "Sorry, Elias. I can’t hear you. There’s – a door in the way.")

Trying to get the episodes of the burned statements by memory. Ivo Lensik is MAG 8 Burned Out, Harold Silvana is MAG 35 Old Passages. Dylan Anderson... MAG 103 Cruelty Free?

ELIAS: "Martin, I do not have time for this." MARTIN: "Then maybe you should make time." This is exactly what this is though. Stalling.

JON: "There’s no such thing as just cobwebs." Everybody sighs, but he is right. Usually in horror cobwebs are just a way to say "Hey, nobody's really been here in a long time, Oooohooo". In TMA though, it's never just that.

Benjamin Hatendi. MAG 86? Definitely the blanket episode though. God, what's it called... Tucked In?

MARTIN: "Oh, so that’s it, isn’t it. Martin’s just acting out. I mean, Daisy’s a “rabid dog,” and Melanie’s a potential killer, Tim’s a – a rogue element, but Martin, oh Martin’s just acting out. He’ll have a cry, and a lie down, and feel much better." Ah yes. He's not being taken seriously and wholly underestimated.

Albrecht von Closen is easy, MAG 23 Schwarzwald.

ELIAS: [TAKES A DEEP BREATH.] "Did Jon put you up to this?" I mean, kind of. In MAG 103 Jon asked Daisy if they could somehow get Elias arrested. Martin was the one, who found a way to actually get to the evidence.

ELIAS: "Please get to the point, Martin." MARTIN: "Maybe there isn’t one. Alright? Maybe –" ELIAS: "Maybe you’re just wasting my time." MARTIN: "Yeah. Yeah, maybe." Haha, exactly that. But Elias knew this already.

JON: "Oh god… Oh god, they’re not waxworks." Haha, classic 2005 House of Wax.

I don't quite understand why Jon suddenly wants to see what's going on in the auditorium though. Is Snoop God sniffing out potential fear if they look at the entire horror of it?

TIM: "Holy –" JON: "Yes. I suppose it is." Ok this... was not a joke on Jon's part I think... I mean, Tim also said that dancing performance Grimaldi and his brother was beautiful. And even if Jon's trying to do his best to keep his humanity, he is still aligned with a terrifying Eldritch entity. He also finds the Mortal Garden beautiful, if I remember correctly (tbh, I also thought that was pretty rad...)

JON: "And I guess you don’t need skin to sing." (shaky breath) "To join the choir." ... Is everyone thinking what I'm thinking... Was Danny in the choir?

MARTIN: "Not even close. Because, I – (composes himself) I’ve been thinking. It’s not like you got this all-seeing thing recently. You’ve had it the whole time. I remember the way you looked at Sasha after the attack. You knew it wasn’t her. And I reckon you knew Prentiss was lurking under the Institute, too, and you did nothing. Why?" On my first listen I thought, okay, when it's being addressed in the show, there's no way these are plotholes...

MARTIN: "Well, I hope you’ve got something better than that pathetic dig at my feelings for Jon." ELIAS: "It’s baffling, really. Such loyalty to someone who really treats you very badly." MARTIN: "Oh, is that supposed to be, what, a revelation?" ELIAS: "You know, I really should have gone for that. Found something that would finally manage to shatter that precious image you have of him. But, as you say I am very busy at the moment. So I suppose I’ll have to go with what I had prepared." Nah, Elias is also rooting for them. And he doesn't need to poke any further, he's got Peter on the job for that. And the bit about "who really treats you very badly"? Yes, Jon did. Past tense. Jon really did a 180 on that front by the end of S2. Still, it's a good way for further manipulation. Sowing seeds of doubt, that Jon still doesn't like him.

ELIAS: "The thing is, though, Martin. If you ever do want to know exactly what your father looked like… All you have to do is look in a mirror. The resemblance is quite uncanny. The face of the man she hates, who destroyed her life, watching over her." This is something I have asked myself, like, how often something like this actually happens in rl. I'm guessing it's a huge taboo. Losing your partner and getting reminded of them everytime you see your child(ren). Doesn't have to be hate, like in this instance. Grief will also do. Or turn it around. Everytime the child sees a photograph of themself, they are reminded of the parent because of their resemblance. There's something similar explored in The Babadook (2014). The father died in a car accident while driving his wife in labor to the hospital. And she resents the child. Blames him for the death of her husband. It's great (I mean, not in rl), I love it when bad relationships get explored in fiction. And especially parent-children structures make it so difficult, because the child is completely dependent on the parent. That just adds another layer to it.

Alex does such a good job at that terrified crying...

I think this was one of the strongest scenes in all TMA. Writing- and acting-wise.

JON: "I knew none of us might be coming back, and I’m not going to let anyone get killed for nothing!" TIM: "Well, except for those people in there." JON: "They’re already dead!" TIM: "Not all of them." Ah yes, TMA and the trolley problem.

JON: (sudden yell, followed by immediate realization of need to whisper) "I am not losing you as well!" T_T

That warped "Aaahh" from the Archives crew. The music picking up. It is absolutely clear what's happening there. Like being hit by a Weirdness Bubble.

In these last moments Jon seems to still have some remaining clarity. While the others are already confused, he still knows who Daisy is for example. And he seems to still have some sense of self ("Daisy, it's me"). So yeah, Elias preparation to See has worked quite well, Jon did have it a bit easier. I mean, this is all or nothing.

@a-mag-a-day

#a-mag-a-day #mag 118 #tma #tma spoilers

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kumihokae · 1 year

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*comfortable in bed with YouTube on auto play*

*oh cool a tma episode*

"Statement of Benjamin Hatendi regarding a dead friend and an unpleasant encounter."

#the blanket never did anything #thanks jonny for nightmares #magpod #tma #mag 86 #the magnus archives

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kalcifers-blog · 6 months

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CW: Eye Contact, Disturbing Imagery

2/15; The Dark

Mag 86- Tucked In.

Statement of Benjamin Hatendi... Hateendi? Regarding... A blanket. Dead friend. Monster. Regarding his unavoidable and gruesome end. How he tried to hide. He couldn't. Statement is from 1983. March 2nd. And I guess... I'm doing this one. Tim Stoker. Archival assistant... Archival prisoner at the Magnus Institute.

And it said, “The blanket never did anything.”

#the magnus archives fanart #the dark tma #fanart #tma fanart #kal draws #kals art #kalcifers blog

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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year

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And Eat It, Too: Chapter Thirteen: Dark

In which Jon encounters monsters in the Dark...

>>> NOW ON AO3!

Dark-typical content. There is scary crap and a good amount of unseen-monster-violence.

Jon gets pretty banged up - but, as Jon does, he will not give up.

Consider yourself warned.

(Masterpost including playlist)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He stumbles, goes still.

The Eye is gone.

It does not feel anything like he thought it would.

Weakness is first, sapping strength from his body and his bones, and he is amazed and breathless at how much pain he is in, absolutely everywhere, as he falls to his knees.

There is a weight to the darkness.

It presses against every inch of his body, drills into his pores, sharp and hungry, and the air is cold and musty and bad, like old towels stuffed in a closet and forgotten.

And… there are fingers, just for a moment, a dozen or more, pattering along his face in search of his eyes.

They do not find his eyes. They go away.

He cannot yet stand.

There are sounds, quick, sharp sounds, like claws on earth, something large, running past him very fast. He knows if he makes noise, they will catch him.

But it’s so much worse than just that.

He hasn’t forgotten anything. He still knows what he knows, who he is, why he’s there—things he could not hold if he were not the Archivist, even cut off.

But he is alone in a way he has never been.

A way that tells him no matter how lonely he thought he was before, as a child, as a teenager, as a miserable adult flying through uni, he was never truly alone.

The Beholding is gone. There is no watching, there is no sharing, there is no enjoyment, there is no curiosity apart from his own, and his heart feels weak, tendons slit.

Hearts don’t have tendons, he tells himself, trying to amuse himself, but it hurts too much.

He has never felt so… less.

He puts his web-kissed hands over his mouth and tries not to cry, not to catch the attention of whatever moves in the dark (rustles and whispers and claws).

There is a weight to the darkness.

Standing is the hardest thing he’s yet had to do; every injury and scar has awakened and hates him.

Something moves, not far away at all.

A small, precious tug.

He is not alone.

He obeys.

Jon thinks, some unknown time later, that if the Web was trying to acclimate him to obeying its calls, this would certainly do it.

Darkness seeps at him, in him, under his clothes and around his tongue. It is not the absence of illumination; it is its own thing, enveloping, ravenous, a thing made to swallow suns and moons and mortal flames.

It makes him feel neutered, somehow, though that isn’t the right word—some secret part of himself, cut off from everything.

The Web’s tugs are infrequent. Twice, they urged him to walk into a freezing cold, viscous something that could never have been water, that came high to his chest, and he could not stop his noisy gasps as he made his way through.

He paid for it.

Something—

Some thing —

Came in the darkness, running toward him, unseen and with too many limbs, and a tiny, tiny tug urged him left just in time so it did not completely knock him down.

But it severed one of the webs. It galloped on, making sounds only nightmares make, a cavernous chortle because it was playing and he was damned and it was going to come back.

That single web is gone, gone, gone. Jon fights with everything he has not to cry out in horror.

There are webs left. But it happened so fast.

Tug.

Shaking, Jon follows.

Close calls keep coming.

Can they actually see him? Do they actually want him?

No, they want his fear, and they’re getting that in buckets. They are every closet-beast that ever scared a child, every imagined scrape from underneath a bed, every creak on the stairs that wakes an adult with heart racing, struggling to remember if they locked the front door.

They are the tendrilled, hideous thing that stalked Benjamin Hatendi to his death, that allowed him the falsehood of safety under his covers for months before tearing his flesh and whispering, crisp and clear, the blanket never did anything.

They are everything humanity has feared since peering from fire-filled caves into the unknown night.

Each time a monster reaches him, they snap a web.

And every time, they cause him pain. Not big injuries; nips, swipes, drive-by-nibbles. Teasing.

He knows they will soon take much more.

They are building his fear.

He’s tried not to bring attention to himself. Tried not to make sounds. Discovered it is not natural for him to make no sound. He is, he’s now realizing, a deeply vocal person.

The darkness clings to him, makes his clothing heavy, makes his feet sticky and tired. He is bleeding from a thousand tiny, tiny cuts.

He checks his webs, closes his left hand around them.

He won’t let go.

Something knocks him completely down and it shreds him, claws his back, gouges his shoulders and his spine, and he screams.

When he comes back to himself, his back is burning. He is shaking; gasping. Possibly in shock.

There is blood, gone cold and tacky.

He is not being healed, fed, by the Beholding. He’s being sustained by the Dark, because they keep their victims for years.

For one moment, he fears he cannot stand—that he has no strength left.

Save Michael. Stop the Unknowing. Save everyone.

He has to.

Has to.

Does.

His steps are uneven, and he cannot make them quiet. An unfortunate numbness has taken over his right arm; he feels with his left, and discovers all the webs on that side are gone.

Terror rises; he tries to tamp it down.

There is a deep, blood-scented chuckle, somewhere behind him.

Is that Mister Pitch? He has no idea. He can’t know anything. Whatever it was, it meant him to hear it.

Jon refuses to run.

(Not that he could.)

He wonders how time dilates in here, if it’s an illusion like in Michael’s corridors. Michael apparently kept Tim and Martin in there for two weeks, but when it let them go, they’d hardly been gone any time at all.

Not for the first time, Jon wonders why it let them go.

He wonders if it’s because they’re his friends.

(No. That’s just self-indulgent. The world doesn’t revolve around you, Sims.)

Three webs remain—

And all three tug straight down.

Jon stops.

Hears his clothing dripping, can’t recall if it’s from horrible fluids or his own sweat. Very carefully, kneels.

There is a book at his feet. Innocuous; thin. Nubbly leather, slightly warmer than it should be.

He tries to grip it with his right hand, but that hand no longer obeys him. Jude Perry’s damage has finally taken hold.

Will that hand ever come back? Jon doesn’t know.

Clumsily, he opens his shirt, tucks the book inside, buttons up, all with his left hand. Awkwardly, he tightens his belt so it will be secure.

He knows the web to this book has been severed.

His heavy breathing brings another beast.

Jon wakes with his face in something cold and wet.

He startles, slightly spraying himself as his breath disturbs it, and manages to sit up. He feels ragged; something has gone to town on all of him, everywhere, every inch, even under Michael’s book—everywhere except behind Annabelle’s blindfold.

He wonders if he should have just asked for a damned catsuit of the stuff.

Couture spider-silk, fashionable protection for the worst of fools, he thinks, and almost laughs.

But he does not laugh. He has learned his lesson.

There are two webs left.

The Mother is patient, or Annabelle is. They don’t tug until he begins to move again.

The book bruised his ribs when he fell; he’s going to have a very interesting pattern there, if he lives.

Water splashes on his right side, but every time he tries to shift left, the web tugs him over again.

There must be something worse on the left.

Keep walking, he tells himself.

Keep walking, as he holds his breath so the things roaring far and hissing near will hear neither gasps nor whimpers.

Keep walking, he thinks, as tears slide down his face, and he realizes he has dried, crusted blood all over, and that he has soaked the blindfold through.

He doesn’t take it off, of course. He’s not stupid.

Something is coming.

Something taking its time, walking barely faster than he, practically pacing him, gaining just a little, and whatever it is, it is singing some horrible tune in a voice so low it makes his nerves ache, an eager and jaunty thing that Jon knows (not knows, but is told by his fear) has something to do with butchering.

It’s Mister Pitch, because Jon has the book.

If they knew who he was, they’d already have killed him.

If he draws attention to the webs, they will both be gone.

Mister Pitch is catching up, an inevitable reckoning.

Jon cannot stop his fear. He cannot be unafraid; he does not want to suffer, to die.

If he fails, everyone will pay for it—they need him at the Unknowing.

Don’t they?

He realizes he’s beginning to wheeze, his lungs betraying his location.

(They already knew where he was, but now he knows they know, and that is enough.)

Something stabs him from behind.

Sharp, going in, right where he thinks his kidney might be, and then vanishes like smoke.

Hurts. So much.

More than he ever thought anything could.

Jon shakes, seizes. The pain short-circuits him, sends him into brief disconnection.

Burning inside; bleeding internally. He would be dead, if the Dark did not want him alive for his fear.

The book is warm, and he clutches it against his skin, relishing the solidity of it, the other-ness.

It is not of the Dark, this book. It is a reminder that there is life outside of this world. That he hadn’t dreamed it.

He is the Archivist. He will not forget.

There is one web left.

Jon almost laughs. It’s like all those shows, bombs counting down and stopped on the last second, but this is not a show, and if this web snaps, he does not think he can find his way out.

How long has it been?

He is hungry. He is thirsty.

And suddenly, he realizes this place has changed.

There is something like sand under his feet. He bends down (wobbles), touches it.

Sand?

Oh, no.

He knows what realm he’s in.

Der Sandmann, the thing that drove Algernon Moss to blind himself to escape it. A tall being, edges invisible in the darkness it brings with it like living shadow, spewing coarse black sand from its mouth as it comes. In the original German tale, it would throw that sand in the eyes of naughty children, which would then bleed, and it would take those eyes away for food.

In reality, Moss knew it had come for him (nevermind that he was grown and married), and believed it had put him in its sack and was carrying him away.

It must have been, because Moss had blinded himself with its sand, and been set free. He’d written that it hurt, worse than anything in the world.

Jon reaches up, touches the blindfold. It is still there, still secure.

Surely, Jon’s eyes are safe.

There is a sound coming toward him, a gentle hiss, the falling of sand along the floor.

Tug.

Jon moves.

Faster than he dared before, not foolish enough to run, but too afraid to keep his cool, driven by the sound of falling sand and the imagery Moss put in his head, though he hadn’t even read the damned statement—just listened to Martin’s recording.

Faster.

Tug—

His legs are cut out from under him.

A dog? A wolf? A monster pig? Who knows? It was hot and fast and bit at him as it went by, sweeping him off his feet and down hard.

It knocks him out, for a minute or two.

And the single web is still there.

It’s a miracle, a damned miracle, and he cradles that hand to his chest—it’s the one connected to his mutilated left pinky.

He is grateful that the Spider, aware of his less than optimal fingertip, made this single strand a little more secure.

Tug.

Please don’t break, he begs it, elbow pressing the book to his skin, right hand useless and dangling. Don’t break, don’t break, don’t break—

His foot goes through a crust of ice into the shock of snow, and he falls.

Jon tumbles down an icy slope. It is deep snow, but light, absolutely fluffy, and though he is cut by the icy crust he breaks through, he hardly feels it at all.

He feels only joy.

The Eye has him.

Jon lands on his back, gasping, not from pain but from a floodworks unleashed, power channeling through him and tutting at all his new wounds, getting to work on his stabbings and scrapings and tears, and he lies there, in a him-shaped, sharp-edged hole, getting very wet as his clothes soak up the snow.

But that’s not the big thing.

He feels like him again. So much more complete. So much more, period.

Also not dying, not chased, at least not by anything that could hurt him that way again.

He feels his kidney reforming, and it is a weird, uncomfortable sensation.

He can remove the blindfold now. He knows. Shaking (and with a right hand that finally obeys him), he slides it up. It is stiff with blood and damp with tears, but it did its job, and he stuffs it into his pocket.

He’s out. Out of the Dark, and into someplace very cold. Funny, how even the middle of the night can seem so bright after such a terrible darkness. Green sky, washed with black.…

Jon sits up in ice-crusted snow, shivering, his mind coming online slowly as if recovering from catastrophic failure.

He takes out the book.

How the hell does he use this?

The final web is gone. He knows it was removed on the other end, rather than by his fall.

The Mother kept her word. He’s completely free.

He clutches the book. It is warmer than he is, now.

Leitner books are never stable, never safe, rarely easy to understand. If he reads it, he could be sucked in. If he opens it, it could do nothing, or it could erase the one trapped inside. There’s no way to know how to use it without knowing how to use it, and—

Why doesn’t he know how to use it?

Oh, good, it’s one of those objects.

Salesa probably sold it to Elias and told him how. That would figure.

Jon will not risk Michael’s survival, so he keeps the book tucked in his shirt.

Against his skin. Which he doubts Michael can feel, but Jon needs the contact. He suspects his own dreams will take on some fun new components tonight.

He stands, slowly. Unsteadily; he’s still tired, hungry, thirsty. It’s taking a lot of power to heal him, and the bill always comes due. He’s hungry in other ways, too.

There are no city lights.

There is an aurora borealis.

“What?” He says, his booting-up brain finally realizing what all that green is.

Jon squints, focuses, and the Eye tells him where he is: Norway.

Fucking Norway. Because why would any part of this be easy?

Jon checks his pockets. The phone is there.

It is badly cracked, has no signal, and works just long enough to inform him that it is now eleven AM back home.

He was definitely in the Dark longer than an hour.

Also, Elias will probably want him for lunch.

He laughs. “Too bad,” he says. A lot of people are going to be disappointed today.

Jon starts walking.

It is frighteningly cold, and deeply unpleasant, but he doesn’t feel like it’s harming him. He can move and feel his toes; he’s breathing all right, and his face doesn’t feel like it’s cracking.

Though his clothing is going stiff with ice, still carrying whatever liquid that was in the Dark.

He never wants to go back. “It was awful,” he informs the book, though Michael probably can’t hear him, but it doesn’t matter.

The Beholding flows through him.

Did it miss him?

He can’t tell. He also can’t care right now.

But he does listen.

Wait. This wasn't just Norway.

It is an island, Spitsbergen.

It is also half a mile from a research station in a small, currently unoccupied town called Ny-Ålesund.

The Spider got Jon out half a mile from the Dark’s chosen ritual location.

“Why would it do that?” he mutters, secretly glad to be verbal again.

But the ritual failed, hadn’t it?

Why was he here?

He knows which way the research facility is, but… it’s hazy.

Not hidden. Just… obscured.

Their ritual failed, but the Eye helpfully reminds him what Manuela Dominguez was working on for that ritual—a dark sun, an impossibility, a masterpiece of ridiculous physics that should not work and only did because she had help from the Lonely and the Vast to power it.

His heart sinks. If it’s still there…

He can’t leave it. It’s like a nuclear bomb, waiting to be used.

“So much for one apocalypse at a time,” he tells the book, still too happy to have found it to feel embarrassed.

He’s not going back into the Dark. It shouldn’t do any harm to just… look.

Their ritual failed. Their prophet, Maxwell Rayner, is dead. Basira’s people killed Rayner—with Jon’s advice as key. He’s very glad that they did.

The People's Church of the Divine Host was just in London, when Rayner was trying to raise up a new prophet and transfer his consciousness to a child. How guarded can this place be?

“I may be doing another stupid thing,” he tells Book Michael, and then hits on a solid excuse: he needs a phone.

There should be one in Ny-Ålesund. Somewhere.

“I think Elias might really shoot me after this,” says Jon, so happy to have the book that he isn’t thinking clearly.

All he can see is the green of the night sky and the dark line of the horizon, but that’s okay. He knows which way the facility is, and begins to trudge through the snow.

(part fourteen)

#tma: au #tw: violent #tma fic #tma au #jonathan sims #johnathan sims #psychological horror #and eat it too

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