Devouring

He shoplifted the cork-board. The string as well.

Shoplifting such items was a victimless crime nowadays. No matter what way you sliced it. You could argue in whatever direction you wanted, but there was no store on earth that would suddenly run dry of cork-boards. Even the smallest of mom and pop shops that no longer existed in the bone-dry reality everyone lived in would end up liquidating a couple of the things.

The artificiality of supply and demand was the original topic of Grant's research paper. He was somewhat of an agitator, and proud of that fact. His professor, a die-hard and self-proclaimed money maker was his latest target, as each of his scrutinized papers were always on topics that the man despised. He was determined to pass the class, but to make it as hard as possible for them both. Grant liked things like that, the path of most resistance.

He'd thought that it was going to be his last self-torturous act in college, but now, even as he shopped about for a new apartment with a cheaper lease; he realized this was something new to him.

He'd started like any college student. Wikipedia, then to other resources that were probably monitored by idiots who didn't want the "wrong" ideas to spread. Passionless pieces that endlessly decried and distracted from the real things he was looking for. In the end, he had to look away from any kind of economic analysis of the topic and change his angle to the historical. For when everyone involved was dead, there were very few that would hide the obvious truths.

It was during his skimming of the Buffalo Massacres of the 1870's that he made the connection. An innocent line in a study done 50 years later by an English botanist concerning the ruination of the American chestnut trees.

"Unfortunately, the devouring plague has escaped the minds of man and emerged, flowering here upon the Earth."

Grant had cross referenced this to seven separate studies. In each, the exact same phrase occurred, a devouring plague, a phenomenon that every environmental scientist, biologist, botanist, marine scientist referred to when discussing the emergence of environmental disasters. The nail in the coffin came in a rather damning opinion piece by Xavier Balthorp, a marine biologist discussing the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone.

"Soon, I fear that no matter what action we take, no matter which way we turn, no matter whom we ask for help, the devouring plague shall shrug free its shackles and rip this planet apart."

He could have chalked it up to the usual flowery language people used to describe climate destruction; after all, it was a fitting metaphor. But something stopped him. This maniacal feeling had overtaken him, and it had not only had him focused away from his feud with his professor; it had slowly devoured his life like a plague.

His studies shifted less to macro and more to the micro as he went further. He looked into clean up efforts by activist groups. He went into Re-population ventures, experimental science, everything he could find on the slow gasps of the planet. It was taxing to his metal health like nothing else. The despair that crept in as he read dissertations on the death of all life and the efforts to postpone what seemed inevitable kept him awake at night.

Yet still, his brain demanded more. More friction to be applied as he pressed on. The cork-board went up, and connections began to form. A spider web of scholars and scientists, leading him backwards in time to old places with little written about them.

His final connection came in the 1200's. There was an effort by the Kings of both France and England to root free dissenting elements; namely the Romani peoples' of Europe, and other fringe groups dubbed as Pagans.

During the height of the Renaissance, there was a group of no surviving name now referred simply as: "The True Pagans".

This was the end of his trail. No matter where he looked, he could find no further information on these people. It maddened him to the point that he was tripping on the street and forgetting to eat some days. It needed to stop. So he made one final, desperate effort of knowledge, and made threads online dropping the name of his lead, and waited.

A man responded. In fact, it was someone Grant probably should have gone to much earlier. Another of his professors, for a class he had originally had no interest in whatsoever.

So it came to be that he was sitting in a small alcove of a library at the man's house, a cup of turmeric tea in his hands as the silver-haired man sat across, the half-moon spectacles loose on his dwarfish nose.

"I must say, of all my students I've had over the years, you now rank as the most surprising, mr...?" He stumbled for a moment, thinking for a name among hundreds. "Mahally, sir. Grant Mahally." He held it out to shake, and the old fellow did so.

"Yes. Well. It isn't every day that I go on the internet, but my grandson, you see, he loves talking to me over it, and I do so love answering questions about my field, you know? It's such a romantic and exciting period of time. So many focused only on one region of the Earth while the Renaissance was underway that many others went unexplored to-"

"Yes, sir, that's actually why I'm here if you remember." Grant interrupted. "What? Oh, yes of course. The Pagans, correct? Well there are many groups you know, pagan is more a catch all term for the non-judeo christian believers of the time. There were druids, Vedic priests, the Romani tribes, the-"

"Yes, but I have a particular group in mind. They are in-" Grant removed his book of a folder, the mushroom gills of the papers flapping. "-here, in the studies by the soldiers of Prague of at the time, referring to something untranslateable. A "True Pagan" of some sort, who died at the hands of the English."

The man went pale, for a moment, twitching his fingers. "True Pagans you say?"

Grant paid him no mind. "Yes. Something to do with a sacred pond or something of the sort. It lines up with-"

"I-I am afraid I cannot help you." He stammered. Grant looked up, startled more by the man's appearance. "Professor. Are you alright?"

"I am...I, well that is to say-" He stood up shakily. Then he looked back through his house, as if he was hiding from something. "We cannot say it here. Come with me."

Grant, puzzled, was led back into the den of the house. Nervously, the professor pulled a key out from his pocket and inserted it into a spot in the wall Grant could not see.

The fireplace rumbled, and with the grind of a millstone split open slowly, revealing a wooded path down below the house, roots poking free. Grant was speechless. How had such a thing been built? He looked to the professor. "Not planning to steal my organs, are you?" He joked. The old man did not answer, his stony expression and thin nerves infecting Grant. Still, he entered the tunnel with the old fellow, stooping low as more roots clogged the tunnels, and finally crawling as it became to low to stand entirely.

Grant was debating abandoning the venture when the tunnel ended. The old man emerged into what Grant could only describe as a druidic chamber.

The interior was a circular bulb of roots, fresh leaves poking free. Surrounding them was a thin moat of fresh spring water, circular pebbles resting in soft earth below. There was no light source, save for the book that lay on a preacher's pulpit in the center. Sunlight, warm and fresh, oozed free from the book akin to tree sap, floating free to fill the air with gold. He was so taken aback that he did not care that the old man was speaking.

"Young man. I have no choice but to trust you. As many of our kin are want to do with the younger generations. I understand that this is a lot to take in, but you would not be here unless you discovered enough already."

He shuffled over to the book, resting his hand on it. "This is the Codex of The Wild. It was branded a heretical tome, and its copies were burned. But not this one." He opened the glowing pages, and the room was lit proper. Birdsong filled the air, the water below hummed along with it. The fresh air became suffused with lilac, and Grant snapped free of his stupor.

"Wha-, my god, are you a Mason?" He blurted it more out of curiosity.

The professor laughed. "No, I am not a guilds-man, nor am I any kind of merchant. I fear we need to be more wary of them than any other." He coughed.

"I, is this...magic?" Grant could not understand the glowing book, or the seemingly mystic chamber below this old man's house.

"Yes." He sighed back. "It is. This is an original Codex, its paper created with the bark from a tree of life, which adorns the Gates of Heaven. It allows us a measure of safety. For now."

"Are we in danger?" Grant looked back, but the way they'd come had vanished.

"The Devouring Plague." As he said it, the paper seemed to shudder in the book, sending waves of dark through the golden air. "It has grown too strong for anything else to protect us from it, and you mentioning our orders' name brought it down on us."

"What...is the plague?" Grant licked his lips, looking around for some invisible particulate that could enter and kill him.

"It is Collective force of death on an environmental scale. Made to live through raw power. Our eternal enemy."

"I don't-" He waited for the man to speak more.

"Think of it. In the last millennia, think of the human wrought devastation to the Earth. The creation of coal power, the pollution, the extinction of species. Each leaves a scar, not just in the physical space of the world, but also within the expanse of the outer worlds. The planes of existence that we cannot observe, the souls, the domains and realms by which all things are made. This power has gathered into a living creature. That which we call the Devouring Plague. A nascent god, empowered by the doom of all life."

The old fellow's eyes were lit by the book, the bags beneath a stairway, each step a new terror he'd grown accustomed to. "And now that you are aware of it, it will come for you. I am sorry, but regardless of what I told you here today, disaster would have found you."

Grant needed a seat. Surprisingly, one grew as he fell back, in the shape of a wicker chair rooted through the dirt floor. "I, this is a lot to take in, sir."

"I understand. Though to tell you the truth, I am glad you came. Cancer has found a way into me, and I don't have much longer before it eats me up." He chuckle. "I needed someone to pass this to. Someone tenacious. Like you."

"I-" Grant thought for a moment. This was a revelation beyond anything in his life, but was it unwelcome? Part of him had always longed for a challenge, something to pursue. Perhaps now he'd found it. "Can you teach me? Before...?"

The man nodded. "Of course."

The two shook hands in the chamber. A passing torch, a raging against the dying of the light. Outside, smog clouds gathered into an eye, its lens scorching the planet wherever it touched. Below, men, women, and others scrambled desperately to stop it.

So the battle continued. Poorly, yet they fought all the same.