Tales of the Library (Patreon)

There Was a Boy- The Tale of Uncle Nicky.

TRIGGER WARNING-

This story includes Body Horror and scenes of Violence.

!PLEASE BE ADVISED!

Full Text:

The Copper elevator of the Center Spiral pinged melodically,

The power of the boundless library flickers uncharacteristically with each level it descends,

A needle finds its groove on a record that hasn’t seen rotation in so very long.

The library knows.

The boundless contracts ever so slightly.

It senses the presence of one who has hurt it,

But it remains calm, though cautious,

18 more pings come and go,

Sliding through the archives,

The Reynard perk as the lift passes,

The Dragonblessed Casters raise hands, sigils glowing jade,

The Children of Timeless Birth all feel an icy breeze,

Forge Bear stops, stares nervously at the Crystal bell upon his desk, and grips his hammer a bit tighter,

And lastly, the Founders stop their eternal dance, hold each other close and look at the central spiral.

All sound has left the library,

All light has dimmed,

As the lift descends down down down, finally coming to sit on the containment level.

The doors slide effortlessly,

A whisper announcing a gravimetric shift that steps off the lift in Manolo Blahniks.

Somewhere He was sure he could hear a cello drag a note so low it made his molars hum

Uncle Nicky had to tap her on the shoulder, urging the bespoke suited predator off the lift,

And so she goes.

The cuffs on her wrists glow with runes the Casters spoke upon them,

Uncle Nicky throws his suit jacket to the right of the lift and it disappears, flying off to place itself in the wardrobe,

She steps with authoritative strut,

Nicky holds a clay effigy in one hand, a wand in the other,

The two of them walk in a way that bows the floor and makes the walls creak, into a hall regularly unoccupied,

Yet Uncle Nicky’s guest has earned this place,

The look of him speaks of uncompromising distrust.

Somewhere the voice of Aurora haunts parts of the library.

They walk until they arrive at Containment 3,

She knew it was where they were going,

She remembered where it was.

The wall of it turns all of the misshaped shards of disorganized stained glass,

parting to make just enough room,

Even the entrance is a threat to she who now holds residency within.

Uncle Nicky nudges,

and she steps in.

The look betwixt them could start a war of a million casualties

Or

End one in a lusty exchange atop a hill overlooking the battlefield

The divide is paperthin

Nicky can feel the chaotic slamming itself into the fractured glass of the magical cell

She simply smirks at him while feeling the mountainous arcane forces that stand unmoving around him

The cuffs fall off of her and melt through the glass floor beneath her

And she brushes her voluminous cascade of red curls over her shoulder and blows him a kiss

They have no words to exchange anymore

The words of the song fill the space between them.

Keeping his composure until he gets in the lift,

Uncle Nicky crumples against the Copper carved cylinder until he’s sitting on the floor,

The ride back up will take mere seconds, but he will remain there until he arrives.

While traveling, however, the library returns to it’s extraordinary normalcy.

Nicky throws the HUD up before him and hits the Communications, All Channels Command,

“ may I have your attention please:

we are on a crimson alert for the containment level.

Lilith is here.

Be sure we have a J33v3s assigned,

If anyone needs me I’ll be in St. Ursus’s .”

Collectively a shiver and snowy breeze pass over those who remember, those who can’t forget, and those who have heard.

She should never come willingly, whatever would make her allow Nicky to bring her in without force….

Tales of the Library proudly presents: There Was a Boy…

The pings of the elevator didn’t move quickly enough for Nicky, finally finding the dark and rainy October lane still where he had left it. Stepping out of the lift, Nicky snapped and the remaining suit components he wore trickled into a t-shirt and jeans, his favorite pair of well worn work boots clomping unaffected by the abundant puddles that formed in the uneven brick road.

Uncle Forge Bear: The Heavy Door of St. Ursus’s pub had not grown in weight, yet the evening made it weigh a ton. He found his way back to the stool, back to the bar, back to that shitty little place and time, and he waited for what would inevitably walk through that door as it had all the times before.

Garrison Harrow: But before we talk about the here and now, I figure it rather prudent to inform you of all the circumstances that led up to Nicky becoming the … being he is today.

A Very Strange, Enchanted Boy…

In the briefest of convergences, I met him once within the field. Smart, cunning, foolish, funny, the man knew how to get through any of it, though each time was by the skin of teeth that had been far too close to pavement numerous times in their existence.

Now that I cannot depart the Library proper, I have access to all that he is, all that he was, and somethings that he may yet become.

Nickolas Vincenzo Kilbane was born 25th of December, 1980 to Maggie Kilbane and Nunzio Giancana. Her family was part of the concrete of the south end of Boston and His family walked upon streets that were swept clean in the north end whenever they could be seen approaching.

Maggs and Nun fell for each other despite the world that would have them at odds, but eventually he weight of the world forced Nunzio to take up arms in the service of the families whose blood he had within him. Nunzio Giancana died 27th of April 1987, the police report read gang related shooting… but we shall return to that little detail in time.

So Maggs became a single mother, and so Nicky was raised behind the bar of St. Ursus, his lego bin a shelf below the bernellit 12 gauge that his mother knew all too well how to use.

Nicky’s story was one of the cement of the city. Fear, Blood, Sweat, and feet fell in those cracked streets. The seasons of a young man’s life were scattered into the Boston harbor winds , he found how to fight and love, friends and lies, he racked up felonies and danced in the streets laughing.

It wasn’t until Nicky was confronted with his mother’s mortality that he started to see the world as something to be taken seriously.

Garr Hallen: He watched. He couldn’t do anything. He watched him squeeze the life out of her. He punched and punched and punched and punched and the wall of the willowy man didn’t move. Have you ever seen someone squeeze a neck like a scroll of parchment. Nicky oh that little frail boy bled his knuckles bare against the man who simply squeezed. She gave it to him and still he squeezed. She told him she wanted no part of it, yet still she squeezed.

Uncle Forge Bear: It’s the reason St. Ursus is Nicky’s whole world in here. Were you to enter his pocket of the library, you would see that bar through the leaf strewn alley that lies before you. Autumn holds eternal rule over that carved out corner of Boston. He returns to the scene of the crime each time he finds himself here. He walks in and saddles up t the bar, ordering a drink from the soft featured woman behind the deeply veined wood. They discuss anything and everything, as they always do. Nicky chats and waits.

Garrison Harrow: Nicky perused power in the wake of his mother’s death. It was his grandmother that took him up, but she would move him outside the city to a house that seemed bare and unlived in, the living room only containing 8 wingback chairs and a couch, the rest of the house always clean and quiet. Nicky’s uncle lived in the basement of the house and was the one that Nicky interacted with the most, “ Ma and the Aunties are busy” his uncle would always tell him.

It wasn’t of any consequence though, because it didn’t stop Nicky from wandering back into the city and seeking out the things he knew were there. He ran grasping at smoke, always close but never quite getting right up next to the things that would enable him to answer the question of his mother’s death.

He dealt drugs and hustled, he moved guns and worked as protection, he boxed and broke knees, and he collected favors more than he asked for money.

Always returning to the house outside the city, riding the rails early in the morning and late at night. Always working, always building, never deterred no matter what threats he faced or enemies he made. Always to the uncle waiting to see him to bed, always told that Grandma and the Aunties were looking for him.

Uncle Forge Bear: He never makes time in his little universe when he is here. People have built whole planets, etched out centuries, even built their own empires in the books within the library. Nicky just has one street on one night, and only stays for an hour or two. Once he leaves he has a look that I remember all too well. He looks like I did when I was naught but the monstrous bear feeding the beast beneath the volcano.

Some people dip a to into magic. Others jump in and live with the regrets. Nicky was held under in the deep end that he had been walking around his entire life and never knew it.

It all became true during an underground boxing tournament.

Nicky found himself up several thousand dollars and in first place. As the crowds rang the old painted glass of the abandoned warehouse, Nicky dropped into the icy cold waters of a tank set up on the loading dock. What he did not know was witching hour was upon him… and with it came something he should not have seen. For his eyes beheld the man who had killed his mother.

Simply there.

He blinked and there he was.

Wearing the exact same thing that he had been wearing upon the very night.

Or at least he thought.

He stopped, his mind clouded by the blows to the head, or maybe the late hour, or the cold water, he got out and shook it all loose, crying out to the man he saw and running barefoot into the streets of November. It wasn’t long until he found what he sought… since the man had heard him and stopped right at the corner at the top of the loading dock ramp.. The man who had killed his mother waited for Nicky to come to him. The brutality that met Nicky was swift and complete. Nicky fought and every attack was broken and punished. He spit blood and felt his bones shatter, he tumbled down the loading dock and favored the cement tearing at his flesh to the man he had gone after. He swung wildly with purple gnarled hands, every move excrutiatng, yet he had to kill him. He roared through split lips and broken teeth in the face of a man who did not even open his scarred mouth out of exertion.

As the man reached for Nicky, Nicky spit blood at him. As the man wiped his face clean, Nicky kicked him in the genitals repeatedly. Nicky felt but did not see his right leg get torn off at the knee. The Gallons of pain that were flooding his mouth nearly drowned him so efficiently that he did not notice as the man dug his fingers into Nicky’s abdomen, lifted him up, and plunged him back into the waters of the tank. Fire and Ice combined as he was shoved into depths he didn’t know existed within those waters.

They Say he Wandered Very Far

Uncle Forge Bear: He sits in St. Ursula and talks to the soft eyed woman with tousled hair up in a messy bun and a flannel all too worn out. Orders a Guinness and sips it slow. Waiting for the man to arrive. He usually allows himself two hours to sit and talk with the bar tender, or just sits silently, before the man arrives. The second he does however, Nicky always tells the fright frozen girl to run. After that, Nicky proceeds to create horrors in that little bar that no one should ever witness, as he extracts his revenge on the man who killed him, his mother, and his father alike.

: There was a moment, when Nicky died, when his one remaining eye stopped blinking, and his heart stopped, that his mind saw the silver sands above him instead of the blank faced monster.

But once he reached for it, he felt himself fall deeper into the waters around him.

The man who killed him and his parents grimaced back in Boston, as the boy he had been killing finally fell out of his grip. The reality of the boy being taken through the waters of the world made him so angry that he picked up the full aluminum trough and hauled it into the rundown warehouse that was still lively with the sounds of an illegal boxing match. The trough traveling at such speeds killed many, the water in it caused an electrical short and fire which killed even more. The death toll was not a suitable exchange in the eyes of the man, and so he walked away sullen and disappointed.

Nicky would never have known he was beneath the living room floor, because he didn’t know there was a beneath the living room, but felt what was left of his body hoisted up out of the trapdoor in the living room floor and thrown onto the plastic covered couch that faced those same 8 wing back chairs. He could barely breathe. He could only hear his heart beat His one remaining eye danced a frantic slide over the 8 chairs and the women who resided in them. They spoke but he could not hear them.

Enyo spat upon Nicky’s body, “ Your broken pup returns home, sister Elsabeth.”

Olivia spun her hands as though she fanned food upon the stove, “the fear he feels could feed me for years.”

Katherine spoke through another cigarette sucked complete, “ He is no good to you sister, give him to me.”

Raquel looked up from the knitting she did, “ This will be the one? Really?”

Genevieve leaned forward and looked quizzically at the cadaverous thing, “ He went after Olde Nick.”

Sophia popped a hard candy into her mouth and chuckled, “ He didn’t go after Olde Nick. Olde Nick was after him. He missed the first two times, and nearly got what he came for, so how could we not save the boy.”

Elsabeth covered her mouth and welled with tears, “ he is not my pup, he is ours, sister Enyo. Your grandson, my granddaughter, the poor thing needs help and so we should help him.”

Finally, from the center chair stood Dame, who walked in small soft steps, and in that instant, Nicky’s Uncle cowered in the corner of the room, “ This child is ours. This child is of the Pillars. He shall champion us. We shall rebuild him.”

Enyo growled, “ No putrid failure can satisfy us.”

Olivia blanched, “ How will he ever feed us ?”

Katherine lit another cigarette off the one she finished, “ I cannot be satisfied by this waste of meat.”

Raquel leaned forward while knitting needles clattered, “ I can train him if you will him to be mine.”

Genevieve leaned back and peaked her hands, “ It has been long since we have had one that pleased us.”

Sophia simply cocked her head and smiled at Nicky,” Since Garrison saved us and seated us with you, sister, we have never attempted to have one unified champion. It’s worth trying, isn’t it?”

Elsabeth sat up right in her chair and spoke with authority, “ The 7 sisters shall vote and the balance shall act.”

Dame drew even closer to Nicky as his breathing became shallow and his eye began to cloud, amidst the excruciating pain that never stopped and the blood that still poured even though he should have run out minutes ago, “ You the seven sisters of the seven pillars shall act in accordance with your rights. I shall enact your will as you see fit. As it has been, so shall it be once more.”

Enyo laughed in the key of razorblades and broken glass, “ I vote to make him.”

Olivia looked at Enyo quickly and thought about it, “ I vote to make him as well.”

Katherine spoke through the smoke of her 9th cigarette, “ I don’t know what he shall do for me, but I shall vote him made as well.”

Raquel smirked, “ He will be made mine…. I mean ours.”

Genevieve smiled towards the boy stuck dying on the couch, “ He will be made and will serve us well.”

Sophia leaned back and laughed, “ He will be made and do so much more than you think.”

Elsabeth clasped two hands on her heart and spoke through the tears, “ He will be made and shall return the balance.”

The Dame got to the edge of the couch and leaned forward, her hand plunging into the river of blood that ran off the couch, “So it is. He shall be made. Woe to the Balance you pray for.”

The Dame grabbed him by the blood. It curled around her hand, and ran back up to swirl around the Dame’s arm and redistribute itself into what was left of Nicky while remaking what had been broken or removed.

Nicky would have screamed, but such was impossible for his vocal cords were deatomized and reassembled. The swirl of purple and crimson took him over, he drowned in it, but noticed it was easier to gasp in the moments soon after.

His head reformed and as his brain healed it was also filled with knowledge and lives of people he did not know.

He saw a woman in armor with a crown and a willowy maniac with a wand as they looked at a child in a bassonette.

He saw a werewolf and a woman wreathed in antlers ruling over the Wildling Woods and their three children standing between them.

Garrison: He saw me and my beloved Sybil and our three glorious mischief makers..

Garrison: Finally he saw his mother as a child to one of mine and a Werewoman with many a curious tail wagging happily behind her. He saw the ages of that lead to him.

The combination of ferocity of the children of the Wildling Goddess and the Mysticism of the Two who walked between the Winds.

He was a child of both houses, a son of both sides of the scale, and he would be something of both, and neither. He screamed finally, emerging from his new memories and with it stretched his newly formed limbs which burned from all the markings that had been placed upon them.

With the final atom replaced and enhanced, Nicky had not a single moment, but instead was thrown back into the trap door beneath the floor of his Grandmother’s house, the Dame closing the trap door, and with it falling shut the room was empty once more, and as clean as it had been before the entire ordeal had occurred. Nicky’s Uncle sat in the darkened corner of the Room and whimpered the oath : “ 7 pillars balance, and the Dame serves the center. 7 pillars balance, and the Dame acts to strike. 7 pillars balance, and the Dame saves those deemed worthy. 7 pillars balance, until the Dame brings it all crashing down.”

Falling into the upward of blackened waters back towards the hand of the man who had killed him,

back towards the surface of the tank.

His remaking had undone the future that had occurred before, and in the moment before Nicky returned to the killer’s hands, he decided he needed to fight. The thought created a hot expansion beneath his skin and rose to the surface with a purple glow from the forms that had been carved into his new flesh. He felt his chest hit the killer’s hand, but also felt his hand touch the killer’s chest. The purple passed through his mind, to his arm, up it to his fingers, and threw the man back into the abandoned building that contained the gaggle of illegal fight observers.

Nicky leapt out of the waters and felt it pulse through him and out. He closed his eyes and felt the waves lap out and curl back. With them came understanding and chaos, control and unintelligible information, it all crashed upon him and still it seemed not to overwhelm. He knew where the murdering vermin was. He could see him without sight, confirmation of his location turning into the unconscious desire to wrap his hands around the neck of the man who killed his mother, and if Granny and the aunties were to be believed, had been responsible of his father’s death as well. The desire to throttle the murderer became a still image in Nicky’s mind, which caused him to raise his arm unconsciously, and with the gesture came the man who flew through a brick exterior wall to place his neck in Nicky’s hand.

Nicky stood looking at the conscious figure, clearly muddled by the debris of his multiple rough collisions, but did not seem to be bleeding. Nicky would rectify that. His mind raced with a gory menu of torture options, deciding all of them sounded good. He had taken too long though. The ragged filth of a man pushed off the ground and sent both he and Nicky cartwheeling back into the ice water tank. Both fell into depths well and beyond the tank on a warehouse dock. The water’s pulled at them individually and eventually Nicky went through one way and the old monster fell away into something deeper and darker.

Ma Wren yanked him free from the puddle behind her Cabin in that moment, not understanding how someone could exit the waters of the worlds that were from a point in time and space they hadn’t entered it.

Nicky felt icy wet lashes of grass from a world he did not know. A world far darker and greener than he had just left. He lay there panting as his eyes gulped up scenery in frantic disassociation.

“ Ay -Yo, kiddo,” Ma Wren squatted next to Nicky as he slowly returned his breathing to normal, “ Ya seem…lost.”

“ I where I,” it was between gulps and confusion, “ I don’t”

“ Just take it slow, “ Ma Wren patted his bare chest, “ you’ll get it-“ her hand stopped when the deep runes responded to her hand with a ripple of light from the point of impact out over his entire body and back to where her hand was, “ 7 hells, your a Trickster of the pillars, aintcha?”

“ I-i - I my name is Nicky Kilbane. I was-“ His head swam with all of it and more, “ Where did he go?”

“ Was someone else in the water with you?” Ma stood up and walked back to the puddle, stuck her hand in to see if she could find the other and immediately felt the gnashing teeth of a trillion voidlings coming to devour her, “ - Never mind that whooey. Who ever he was is gone now, kid. So why don’t I take you in and get you a nice cup of soup?”

“ But I had him,” Nicky finally started to override his fear and confusion, his feet scrambling to stop and return to the water himself, “ I gotta get that sonnuvabitch !”

“ If I can’t find him Nicky, he isn’t there to find,” Ma went to put her hand on the kid but knew what would happen if she touched him too often, “ what you need to do is take the time to understand who you are now.”

“ I don’t,” Nicky felt like he was slowly tumbling in mind and body, a zero gravity loss of control, “ I’m Nicky. I’m the same fuckup I’ve always been… it’s just now…” His hands traced the indented runes of his arms, he knew without feeling or seeing that they nearly covered all of him now.

“ Now you’re part of something larger than you ever have been,” Ma chuckled and nodded over Nicky’s shoulder, who turned slightly to see a something hovering in the air near him.

“ What in the hell,” Nicky reached out to confirm it’s reality and felt it slide into his hand and seem to stick to his palm.

“ Not of the Hells we know,” Ma Chuckled as she raised a mug to her lips, “ Or of the Paradises with names more varied than the stars. The Wand is of the World and the balance you now serve.”

There was a tingle and a tug, his fingers found it sitting flawlessly against his hand, and it would not move unless he wished it to. In that moment, he could hear it. It spoke its name, Archimedes, and of those who had held it before him. It spoke of the feats it was capable of, and the care it would take, but it also told Nicky that it would come and go as it pleased, but always return to him when he needed it, but it would not fall into the wrong hands, and it’s presence would never linger long enough to allow either side to track it. Nicky asked it what it was, to which the wand simply said that they two, as a symbiotic collective, would be the undoing of schemes and the trickery of old. In each others care, greatness was nearly inescapable.

Uncle Forge Bear: That was the day he became something stranger. That was the night he would discover the spiral stair. He would go down into the library and find his room, lead by the pull of purpose. The same way he goes down there even now, after imprisoning the goddess who fell in love with him.

Garr Hallen: He’s still out there. Still Seeking them out. Still wishing for another to pass past his scarred lips. They don’t even burn anymore when he does. They have no tongue to eat away any longer. They fight to not be devoured. He wears the scars beneath that thorn bush of a beard. But he will NEVER STOP. He will eat them all. They shall become him. Like the ones he took from the Glass Spire. Like the ones he was offered by the kneeling Acolytes of the Seperetorai. Just like the one he took from Nicky’s whisp of a mother. Just like all the other pearls he’s devoured. He won’t stop until he devours life in its entirety.

Garrison: That poor boy. That very strange enchanted boy. He goes back into that bar. The cradle of his civilization. He sits and talks with his mother until the ghost of Olde Nick walks in, and then he portions out his pain until he leaves that place, remembering why he does it. Why he will until he dies fighting it.

The night he put Lilith in that cell however, he waited for the Olde Eldritch Singularity to walk in and simply snapped his neck. That night it changed. That night he looked at the ghost of his mother and simply told her he was gonna sit and have another.

His weary body fell into the booth and welcomed the drink but was unprepared for when his mother sat down next to him.

On a beach within her own prison paradise, Lilith sat in her four piece suit and waited for the Martini she ordered . She set the jukebox with her mind and listened for the flute of a voice start singing about A Boy… Nat King Cole did so well with it. She would have been able to enjoy, if she was not swept up in the crackling chords of his whimpers and sobs.

Infinities below her, he wept on the shoulder of the mother he lost. His heart tore and withered, and in solidarity her’s made her tremble and drop the glass into the sand.

They were doomed, these two. A dance of two lovers different from the Founders, but no less beautiful.