Ruinous Truth

You hear a Whisper on the Wind

In the wide world of the Wilde Blue, sometimes stories are left untold. However, they are not lost.
Listen closely, and you will hear them.

Ekrate Picket would not call himself a fanatic. From a certain perspective, that claim seemed hard to explain. After all, he had pristine copies of every single one of Sam Polar’s novels on his shelves. He had a portrait of the late horror author in his office. He had been to the remains of the Polar manor home. And he had spent the better part of four months tracking down an original manuscript, not to mention that he was prepared to spend the better part of a fortune to purchase it. But he was not fanatical. He was not obsessed. No, far from it. There was reason and rational thought behind each of Picket’s actions.

A year ago, Picket was a somewhat accomplished academic. He was a senior adjunct of paraphysics of the Sayles Academy. He had been working on his dissertation when he had found, in a second-hand bookstore, a copy of one of Sam Polar’s novels. The cover had no title, nor did it list the author. All it had was a symbolic depiction of a star that was so well-worn it bore not a single trace of the blue ink that had once decorated it. Inside the pages was more evidence that this was someone’s personal treasure at one point — though at first glance it seemed they had little respect for the words, or the pages. Each page and every page was covered in scrawls and sketches. Some had the decency to stick to the margins, but most paid no heed to the concept of respect. It was a curious thing, and Picket’s curiosity caused him to take the book home with him, to study it further.

The more Picket learned about this book, the more invested he became. Its previous owner seemed deranged at first glance, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that there were scraps of twisted reasoning behind their actions. Some passages are circled, like there was some deeper truth behind the words. Some scrawled drawings are almost woven between the words, like the crude image was hidden underneath the story. The story itself is… difficult to read, on account of the madness inscribed overtop it. Polar’s novels were acclaimed works of horror, all inspired in some way by a skyship accident he survived. This novel, as best as Picket could tell, was about a skyship crew that attempted to venture into the stars, only to find that they are not welcome. There is a certain irony to the insanity inscribed atop the pages while the ink from the printing press describes terrors that drive the fictional crew to madness. But Picket couldn’t help the feeling that there was something more to this. Something he was not yet seeing. He found himself reading it again, and again, night after night. Still the answers eluded him.

His studies suffered. Lack of sleep and lack of focus meant that little progress had been made on his actual research, in favor of scrutinizing the writings of this madman. One evening, after receiving a letter that his project was at risk of being abandoned, he resolved to return to the bookstore. He thought he was going to return the book that had distracted him. He brought it with him, along with a receipt of its purchase. Instead he bought three more Sam Polar novels. Each and every one of them was defaced, in a new and maddeningly complex way. None had the same handwriting, none showed the same signs of wear or age, and yet all of them were filled, cover to cover, with the ravings of lunatics.

Sam Polar became Picket’s new field of study. He found a copy - an untouched copy - of each of his novels. He delved into newspaper reports of the author’s death in his manor home, of the rumors surrounding his later years. He read the unfinished treatise Polar had been working on during his own tenure at the Academy. Picket even went as far as to find a portrait of Sam Polar, to sit across from him while he paced in his study. Very little insight was gleaned into the insanity that had gripped his other fans, save for the lingering feeling that the portrait was watching him. That was when he decided that he must have an original. Letters came for him from the Sayles Academy and piled beside his door.

Original manuscripts of any of Sam Polar’s novels were very hard to come by. Dedicated fans of his works would just about kill to get their hands on a scrap of paper graced by his pen. But Picket was more than just dedicated. He was patient, and he was wealthy. Still, it had taken several months to find a seller. Several months of dust and cobwebs building in the corners of his home. Several months of pacing wearing holes in the carpet before the portrait. The letters from the Sayles Academy had stopped coming.

Picket knew very little about the seller he had found. They had contacted him, with a letter hand-delivered by an extremely untalkative servant. The letter requested several things from him, most chief among them a notarized affidavit from his bank that he was solvent for a frankly obscene amount of money. The letter did not instruct where to send this affidavit, but the morning after he returned from his bank he received another visit from that same mute servant. He handed over what was asked of him, received no answers — or even a grunt of acknowledgment from his visitor, and was left to wait.

Two days later, he was sent a private skiff. It was a luxury model, the kind that often could be spotted clustered around the Trade Union headquarters. Unlike those, the windows had been blacked out on this one. He was taken somewhere up into the mountains of Sayles, though exactly where he had no clue. As he left the skiff, he was struck by the first glimpse of the devotion of this collector. Their manor was a spitting image of Sam Polar’s manor. Not as it was now, fallen into disrepair and hollowed out by debtors and fans alike, but as perfect as the day it was built.

Picket found himself stuck on the doorstep. This was it, this was what he wanted. Surely, there would be answers — at least an answer, just one, then he would be satisfied — in the care of what certainly appeared to be a very wealthy fanatic. But he struggled to lift his hand to the elaborate metal knocker. Fortunately for him, he does not need to. The door opened to reveal a middle-aged woman dressed in the same way as the pilot of the skiff that took him here. She too did not speak a word. She did not even beckon for Picket to follow as she walked away from the open door. Whatever had held him back, it was gone now and he followed without hesitation. The door swung shut behind him on its own.

Picket followed the woman who greeted him, of a sort, deeper into the house. Its hallways were like a maze, with so many sudden turns that it felt more like he was being led down a mineshaft dug by silver-crazed miners than walking through a house meant for living in. Eventually, he came to a sitting room, where he was left alone, again without a single word. Adorning the walls were a number of oil paintings, which all bear the signs of being made by the same artist. Picket recognized some as depicting scenes from Polar’s novels. The others were familiar, but not in any way that he can place. One in particular pulled at him.

The painting stretched across the wall, filling his vision as he approached it. It was of a vibrant sunset, orange golden sunlight flowing over a sky filled with clouds. A winged shape was silhouetted by the light of the setting sun, though the shape of the clouds make it too indistinct to make out the details. Still, it was clearly not any bird that Picket has ever seen before.

“Do you like them?” Picket jumped. A dark-haired woman, younger and shorter than him, was standing next to him. He had not heard her enter the room. “My paintings.” She said, gesturing to the paintings all around them. “It is so rare I get visitors that have the capacity to truly appreciate them.”

“What? Oh. Yes, yes I do.” He responded, “Sorry, are you the collector?”

“What do you think of it?” She asked, ignoring his question and gesturing again at the painting in front of them both. He cannot help but notice she was staring at him. He cannot help but notice the tint of red in her irises.

“The colors of the light are very pleasing…” He began, cautiously, trying to focus on the painting. She scoffed.

“I believe you are wasting your time, Mr. Picket.” She turned to leave, and Picket’s heart sank to the bottom of his stomach.

“Wait! Please. I can’t go back empty-handed, not after-”

“Then tell me what you think of it.” Her tone turned cold. Her unblinking eyes bore into Picket’s. He dragged his gaze back to the painting, wracking his mind for the right thing to say. It felt familiar to him. Why did it feel familiar? Why did it — Oh.

Picket’s head reeled, as he saw the words woven about the painted image. Not on the canvas, but on the desecrated pages he had studied so many times. The scrawls were malformed fragments, and this, this was the whole. “‘Wreathed in fire and blood. Borne on wings of smoke and death.’” He recited, piecing together words gathered from a half-dozen novels. “‘The Eldest shall rise from beneath where they sleep.” As he spoke, a sharp pain grew in his head. But he cannot stop now. He cannot leave the words unspoken. Not while They are watching. “Deliver unto Them Their birthright.” Something wet dripped down from the corners of his eyes. Something metallic coated his lips. Something red splattered on the floor. “And be welcomed into eternity.”

The world around him blurs. The collector stays the same, but he sees more now. He sees the hollow shell of her skin. He sees the threads woven about her, tracing out sigils on her bones. He sees the eye inside her chest, watching him. He sees Them. And he is seen. It is burned into the back of his eyelid, it is written on the inside of his skull. The world is tattered and thin and rotting. But They can make it right. All they need is a few more eyes.

---

One week later, Ekrate Picket visited that same second-hand bookstore. He brought with him a box of his old textbooks, an out-of-date encyclopedia, and one of Sam Polar’s novels. The cover had no title, no author. The only marking on the cover was a symbol of an eye, inked in red.