Vititi Fames

The tide was brash and roaring, as it always was out in the great blue whirlpool where I had found myself a frequenting neighbor. Upstairs, on the deck, I heard the muffled shouting of scraggly men who had wasted away their years forming thick calluses on their hands and thicker hunger for beer and brandy. They paid me mind, sometimes, only when I had to come up from my forsaken little hole of damp barrels and barnacle-infested crates to scrounge for sustenance and drink. The brutes, well… they were a far contrast from those I would have rather conversed with. Alas, academics don't tend to know how to sail. I had been out on the sea for almost 5 months, not out of pleasure, I can assure you, dear reader. No, this had been dreadful in every sense of the word. The indescribable feeling of never having privacy to do your business can be overlooked, though, with a grand enough prize. And this…oh, this was indeed a grand prize. The manuscript of Sir Illipith Thorne, his Vetiti Fames. 

I originally heard tale of this ancient text in my old college library. I was young and had yet to make my mark on the world, so naturally, curiosity was my guiding compass. One of my professors, Dr. Felidae, who was a learned but albeit strange scholar, was hidden in a corner of the library, discussing something in a hushed voice with a stranger. This stranger wore a deep blue trench coat, the type of muddled blue you would find buried deep in the Pacific underneath seaweed and algae. His face was long and square, the features of which were tucked away under folds of wrinkled skin. I remember his eyes, peering out from underneath the flabs of skin like crystalline pearls uncovered by shifting sands, gleaming brilliantly for just a moment before being hidden away forever. I remember his smell… a mixture between rotted fish and cinnamon. I am unsure how long they had been there conversing before I had spotted them, and even more unsure how long they had been there before I had arrived that night. They were talking about knowledge. Secret, destructive and beautiful knowledge that had the ability to crack the minds of profound academics who had spent their entire lives studying the weave of space and time and all manner of things inbetween. They talked about a lost scholar, his name wiped from the annals of history only to be resurrected by the two men who were daring to speak of him. Apparently, this voyager of intellect had discovered this profound knowledge and wrote it all down in a book. "How to overcome the limits of your brain," they said, "How to become more than flesh and see into worlds locked behind our fragile minds." My younger self was enamored. A book that could expand the human mind enough to become a god? How was such knowledge even possible? They spoke far too solemnly about something so incredible.

I ended up spending the rest of my college days stuffing my nose into every dust-covered and moth-eaten book I could get my hands on, scouring feverishly for any information about this so-called "Illipith Thorne" or his infamous creation. I pondered the idea of asking Dr. Felidae himself, but he resigned from the university a few days after his and the stranger's conversation. Perhaps he went off in search of the tome himself. My own search took me all across England and then some, pervading rancid alleyways and rotting bars. The people I had to go through. The things I had seen. Any other woman I had discussed this matter with told me I was going to end up gutted and left out like yesterday's garbage in a street somewhere. There were nights when this caution was fully realized. But my unyielding want- no, need- to unveil this pandora's box lit a fire beneath me that no drunken hobbler could douse. 

Eventually, I ended up gaining the respect of a rather renounced pirate by the name of Gouttermange. He was as strange and disorderly as the rest of the seafaring men I had met on my travels, with his gnarled wood-toothed smile and matted salt and pepper hair. He had a limp, too, due to some sort of sickness he had acquired out at sea that had yet to completely devour him. He was barred from the waters by others like him, a walking wanted poster forged in the blood of his adversaries. However, it seemed like ground-life had stilled his bloodlust, at least, at the time I had met him. He was empathetic towards my decade-long plight, apparently having one of his own that his body had grown too diseased to chase after. "A missing friend," he said. I couldn't really care to expand upon the details. Although he refused to set sail himself, he offered to refer me to some of his very few accomplices. The next week, I got on a boat and sailed North. 

There I was, practically a willing prisoner on a teetering water coffin smelling like rancid flounder. I don't often think of my complexion, but I swear to you my once long golden hair had soured into a muddled brown in those conditions, and my glasses had become clouded and cracked. 

Sundown hit and the waves were quiet enough for me to be able to climb up the stairs and look about the endless black sea. The crew were few, and even fewer still as they conducted their nightly routine of foaming indulgence and playing cards. Two men were on deck, keeping an eye out for whatever might disrupt our voyage, and another was up in the crow's nest, completely hidden by waves of rolling fog. The captain… oh, what was his name… I must assume he was awake, for the light behind his closed cabin door was the only thing illuminating the ship. I don't believe I had actually met the man, as there was always someone else I had to go through to get anything done here and I wasn't usually around in the daylight. My night studies and alley conquests had long since tarnished my sleep schedule…and even so it was impossible to get any sleep on that constantly moving death machine. Perhaps it was better that way. I don't like to ponder on the idea of being the only female on a small, unregistered ship in the middle of nowhere. Even when I did try to make conversation, which I had learned to keep at a minimum, these sailors looked at me a certain way. Something in their eyes… something in the minuscule twitch of their lips… They knew I was funding this journey, but as to why, well… I had gone to great lengths to ensure they didn't know the fortune I sought. Not as though they would have known what they were looking for if it was handed to them. As far as they knew, I was just a well-dressed erudite needing anonymous passage. 

I stared out at the sea, arms folded on the ship's rim and letting the salted breeze gently wash over me. The stars shimmered overhead, glinting on the waves as though some of them had sunken beneath and were calling out to their ethereal brethren from below. My gaze followed these stars, hanging there for what felt like a lifetime. I blinked away, something wet in my eyes. And there… in the stillness… I saw it. A singular silhouetted obelisk protruding from the deep a few thousand meters away. I rubbed my eyes and slapped myself to ensure I wasn't hallucinating. It wasn't the first time. But the thing didn't move aside from its quiet, bobbing motion. Was I to wake the crew? Alert them of my findings? No. My nails dug into the wood, and something in my chest flamed. 

             I looked down, mind racing as my eyes adjusted to every atom of the ship. I could see the lifeboat. The little, pathetic excuse for a waterborne vessel, barely hanging onto the twine ropes as it gently bumped against the hull. I was beside myself for a moment, completely torn by the furious need to reach that obelisk and the hinduring knowledge that I did not know how to swim. You would think after all these years, a fear of water would be a fluttering, nonsensical feeling I could swallow. I turned to the few silhouettes of life that still stalked like ghosts about the ship. I could theoretically cut the rope and try to maneuver that small wooden box to the site, but realistically, one bad wave could be my end, and all of this would have been for naught. I could not have that. "Hey!" My voice croaked, nearly startling me by how gravelly and hoarse it had become, "You there! Come over here!" I pointed to one of the figures, of whom startled just the same. That might have been our first time interacting. "Ma'am" The man sauntered over to me, curiosity etched into his features. He was wiry, arms like bound seaweed and legs stretched like saltwater taffy. Matted brown locks were tucked beneath a checkered bandana, obviously trying to control the amount of sweat from the day's beating sun. I pointed to the distant wreckage, but by the way, his face tangled in confusion, I could tell my gesture was too vague for his thickened skull. "The wreckage. Let us take the lifeboat and go to it." He put a hand on his neck, staring out at the graveyard of protruding iron and damp wood. "Aye… perhaps we'da tell the cap'tin.-" "No." I cut him off, and he recoiled. "No. Just you and me. No one else." 

For a split second, I could see the hint of a smile on his face, as if a crude joke was stirring in his head. That smile evaporated under my gaze. Soon we were in the boat and out in the sea, slowly rocking back and forth in the water. It's strange. I had been out at sea for months, yet I still could feel bile churning in my stomach. 

The wreckage was maybe 4,000 meters away or so, and all the while, the two of us didn't make a sound. The oars pressed us forward, and the mariner was good at gently setting them back down in the water. Over and over. I envisioned the script in my hands. The worn tablet or scroll, detailed in exquisite lettering with perfectly drawn images and ancient runes. The words would come singing to me, a beautiful menagerie of ethereal chords depicting things I could not quite understand in that form. I imagined the taste of that knowledge on my tongue as I tore into the script with the air of a hungry dog, feasting on the arithmetical constellations of time and space all mixed and interwoven together. I could hear it. Calling to me in the darkness. "Eiola." It whispered, "Eiola, come find me. You're so close now." I hardly noticed as the boat bumped into a stray plank of wood, as I must have been so lost in my own thoughts that I didn't even realize how far we had come. 

The scene that laid out before me… I… I'm not sure if any words in the English language could fully depict the sight. Calling it a wreckage, well, almost seemed silly. No, this, this was the ruins of a city, felled under some ancient force. A whirlpool, perhaps? Some sort of monstrum storm? Pillars of blackened cedar grasped at the darkened sky, communities of barnacles clinging to their edges. I looked down into the water, my eyes widening. In the center was… was a light! A warm, yellow pulsating thing no bigger than the lifeboat itself. If I was paranoid I would say it could have swallowed us whole if it decided to rise to the surface. The whispers serenaded me once more as I leaned closer. "Reach out, Eiola. Come to us." It almost seemed alive. Familiar.

Everything from there was a blur. A cold, wet, suffocating blur. I remember that sailor yelling after me, his voice muffled and drowned. I remember closing my eyes but never, never seeing anything more incredible. The darkness broke away for spectrums of color to burst, twisting and dancing and leaping, a painting liquidized and brought to life. The freezing cold I had felt moments before soothed into an unimaginable warmth. It reminded me of my mother when she used to hum to and hold me when I was ill. All around me angelic voices harmonized, their words incomprehensible but comforting. I had never seen such a vivid spectacle. I suppose, in theory, I still haven't. And never will. My euphoria was halted almost as quickly as it came when I found myself somewhere… else… with nothing but this journal that I write in now. 

I am in a dark place. A sick place. I can't feel or see my hands, yet somehow, I know that I am writing. I can't feel the ground beneath me, yet I am not floating. There was never a book, and I doubt there was ever a "Sir Illipith Thorne"… his name always did seem concocted. By who though, I could not ever hope to know. I don't know much, actually, despite this obsession to know everything. I don't know how long I have been like this. I don't know if anyone is looking for me or even remembers who I am. I don't even know what my mother's face looks like. Sadness nor regret plagues me, though, as I know it should. And when I stare up at the moonlit sky dusted with stars, I know I should feel longing. But I am a void. A blackhole that devours endlessly. I feel nothing but insatiable, all-consuming hunger.