Undying

FUTURE PROJECT:

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When an artist creates something with all their skill, with all their heart, they always end up putting a little bit of their soul into it. Perhaps that was what had happened with the book. It didn’t matter how good or bad the story was—what mattered was that it had been loved. The writer eventually passed on, but a bit of their soul lingered in the book that they’d written....

Over the years, that piece of soul grew. It drew strength from its readers, learned manners and words from them. It grew a heart, a mind....Eventually, it was a living being all on its own. It was only half-alive, however, for while it could sense the world, the rest of the world didn’t know it was there.

That rankled it ever so slightly. It decided it wanted to interact with that world, too. It wanted to become real.

By then, the book had been forgotten. It’d been left atop someone’s desk, among other papers and manuscripts that were beginning to molder. Dust lay thickly upon everything.

The room was forgotten, disused...but not completely dead. Now it was waiting.

Then came a golden afternoon when sunlight streamed in through the broken windows, tracing slanted fingers over the book’s cover. The embossed word, Undying, gleamed upon the leather. And now it radiated a fierce glow of its own.

Light bled through the book, streamed out through the pages. They rustled, flapping wildly in a phantom wind. And then with a great bam! the book snapped open, pouring light into the room. It was there, amidst the dust and the brightness, that its spirit finally took shape. It nearly filled the room, all brilliance and glitter, only the faintest patches of discoloration upon its parchment-pale scales.

And then the book was still, its pages flattening as if letting out an exhausted sigh. The last rays of sunlight slipped below the windowsill at last.

Only the book cover was left, still glowing faintly as the Imperial shut it with a careful paw. The word Undying, shining in the gloom, would eventually become his name.

~ ~ ~
Prior to becoming real, Undying had already learned much about the world. He’d lifted it from readers’ comments, and from their thoughts that had bled onto his pages. (Books are very sensitive to readers’ thoughts. In some older and more knowledgeable manuscripts, the reading goes both ways.)

Using what he’d learned, he was able to masquerade as an actual dragon. The contents of his book heavily referenced the supernatural, and this had drawn in scholars, researchers, and artists. Their borrowed knowledge proved invaluable to Undying—he was able to use what he’d learned to make his way as a scholar well-versed in the unexplainable.

There was one mystery he could never quite grasp, and that was how he had come to life. The “artist’s soul” hypothesis had been thrown around a few times; and there was the possibility of him being an elemental or a tsukumogami, but he didn’t fit the criteria for either, and it also didn’t explain why other books remained inanimate.

Undying did know one thing, though: His life, body and soul, was directly connected to the book he’d been born from. He learned this the hard way one day when, after accidentally dropping his book into a puddle, water suddenly appeared upon his own scales—muddy water like the one in the puddle, even though he hadn’t stepped into it.

He took his book back to his den. Inside, he was dismayed to find that the first few pages were soaked. He blotted the muddy water off and set the book before the fire to dry. As he did, he noticed that the ink had run and some of the text had been erased.

“I shall have to rewrite that,” he thought crossly to himself. “Well, it shouldn’t take too long. I know the text by heart...”

His thoughts trailed off. He sat, staring dumbly at the book.

He couldn’t remember. He’d been born from this book and every single word of it was inscribed into his very soul—except these missing words. He couldn’t recall them anymore.

Frantically, he shuffled through his memory. All the other words of the book leaped to his mind; he checked them in the pages, and they were correct. Why could he remember everything except the text that’d been—

Erased. That had to be it. A cold wave gripped him as he realized: It wasn’t just his body and soul that was tied to the book, but also his mind. Whatever happened to the book would also directly affect him.

He stared at himself in the mirror. He could see dark, muddy blotches staining his scales and knew that they would never come off—not unless he could extract them from the parchment as well. Perhaps he could enlist the help of other dragons. It would probably be best if he kept his true nature secret, but he could present the book as a magical artifact, or better yet an heirloom with sentimental value....

~ ~ ~
“Yes, certainly I can fix your book,” the old Spiral said. He blinked over his glasses at the Imperial. “Are you all right?”

“Ungh...fine,” Undying growled back. For close to a hundred years, he’d managed to keep his book in good shape, thanks to the help of various wizards and bookbinders. But now it was badly tattered, so it was time for him to seek professional help again.

The old bookbinder examined the tome carefully. “It’s quite old. A family heirloom, perhaps?”

“Aye. From my grandsire’s collection.” And Undying remembered his manners: “Thank you, sir.”

“My pleasure. Come by in a fortnight; it’ll be fully restored by then.”

Undying returned to his den. He always loathed leaving his book in the hands of strangers, but he’d learned it was better that way, to avoid arousing suspicion. In the past, his overzealous attachment to it had attracted unwelcome attention; other dragons had assumed that the book was worth incredible amounts of money and had tried to buy or steal it off him.

“Only two weeks, that’s pretty standard. In a couple of weeks I’ll be feeling much better...”

But only four days later, Undying heard the terrible news: “Javert’s workshop has been broken into. The place has been ransacked! And poor Javert, he’s dead; he was such a lovely old drake too....”

Undying barely heard the last words. He was riveted on that horrible pronouncement: ransacked. Surely his book hadn’t been...?

Frantically, he sought out the town guards. In the chaos surrounding the burglary and Javert’s death, he’d been hard-pressed to gain an appointment with them (particularly since he was only a customer, not a relative). The two Tundras frowned at him. They’d dealt with a lot in the past few days as well; they weren’t particularly sympathetic to him right now.

“Well, it’s just a book, right? Surely you can find another one. There ought to be copies—”

“No, there are no more copies!” Undying groaned. There were, in fact, other copies of the book, but they weren’t his book, and no matter how pristine they were, they wouldn’t help his condition. Only that one particular book could help him—and it’d been stolen from Javert’s workshop.

He pressed, “Do you have any clue as to who could’ve done it? Anything at all?!”

“Some bit-rate thief. Inexperienced by the look of it; a seasoned burglar would’ve gotten out before Javert had spotted him, no killing required.” One of the Tundras shrugged. “An amateur like that’ll be miles away by now. They always flee when things go sideways. We’ve put out word among the surrounding clans; their security’s on the alert, but it ain’t our territory, so it’s out of our paws now...”

“I must find it!” Undying thought desperately. He turned his back on the puzzled Tundras and stormed away from them.

He began searching for his book. It was a long, frustrating journey; there were many times when dragons would say, “Yes, I have that book!” only to present him with an entirely different copy of it. When Undying pressed that he was looking for an old copy, he was looked at as if he were insane.

And indeed, it was starting to seem that way. Whoever had picked up his book was taking care of it for the most part, but it had apparently been stolen before Javert had had time to fix it, and Undying could feel it—and himself—falling apart day by day. His aching back told him that the book’s spine was coming undone; the blotches on his scales said that the pages were getting dirtier; and his ears and mane, hanging ragged—the parchment was being mercilessly dog-eared and folded.

“I have to find my book....I swear that once I find it, I’ll learn to fix it myself. I’ll find other ways. I’ll never let it go again....”

One night, Undying caught a glimpse of his book’s reader’s mind for the first time.

It was a strange mind; whoever they were, previously they’d only flipped idly through the book, not really reading it or even thinking about it. Undying had caught only the faintest impressions of thought from them, nothing more.

Now, however, the thoughts came in fits and starts. They were disconnected, reminding him of fireworks exploding in dissonant brilliance across the sky. Illuminating everything in brief flashes in colors that didn’t make sense.

And then they wrote upon his pages....

It’s a horrible thing, to feel someone else rearranging the thoughts inside your mind. To have someone take your memories and ideas and bury them beneath their own—especially if they aren’t entirely sane.

Undying groaned. He cringed into himself, felt one of his memories change....An image of standing stones silhouetted against the setting sun. But now it was turning into—

“Why, it looks like claws! They should be holding something. Something like—”

“Stop it,” Undying growled. But he was powerless to stop the unseen, mad dragon. He blinked, and suddenly in his mind there was a badly-drawn picture of claws clutching an apple. They had been drawn over...what? He couldn’t remember anymore....

“Excellent! Now I’ll work on these spidery, awful words. Yes, a spider, crawling across the page. Once there was...”

“No, leave my words alone!” howled Undying. His roar disturbed his neighbors, and dimly he heard them muttering through the walls of the boarding house. The corridor trembled as the owner trudged over to check on him.

“Oh, this page, it’s so dirty! Have to get it clean. Rub and scrub—”

And then pain seared, blinding-hot, through Undying’s head. The page had torn.

His scream woke up the entire house. The owner cursed and then rammed through the door. She breathed a wisp of light into the air and confronted the Imperial—

“NO! Get away!” He was a horrible sight, his golden eyes wide with madness, his mane flying wildly around his face. As the Guardian watched in disbelief, Undying turned. He flung himself through the window and out into the night.

The stars reeled. The moon sank down. Nighttime turned into morning, and the story continued to change....

~ ~ ~
Long years, wandering. Many moons, many suns. Undying was lost—in his own mind as much as in the world. He drifted like a ragged ghost from clan to clan, always searching for his book.

He did have his moments of lucidity, but they were far between. In these rare cases, he was gruff, rough-mannered. His book had been a thing of beauty, and so had his behavior—but the mad drake’s destruction of it, their own unschooled words stamped chaotically all over the pages, had similarly reduced Undying to an incoherent wreck.

He didn’t notice how, over time, his back straightened out and his hide began to glow brighter. Someone, somewhere, was repairing the book again—but the pages, and therefore his mind, remained besmirched. Deep inside the incoherence, though, remained Undying’s sense of self. It was connected to the book, if only by a thread. And without realizing it, he managed to follow that thread. The book had found itself in a place of magic, and now it could guide him there....

Ardaline found the stranger in her library one day. She did not like unannounced visitors and was about to yell at him, but paused when she noticed he already had a book in his claws. He bowed his head over the ruined pages, and his shoulders shook with some great emotion. “Finally. I’ve found it. It’s here,” he rasped.

Ardaline came up behind him and clucked disapprovingly at the book. “That was found in some mad old coot’s hoard. Absolute idiot...It took us weeks to fix that tome.”

The Imperial turned sharply. His teeth were bared, and he looked ready to challenge her, but then with great, obvious effort, he relaxed.

“So it was this clan that repaired my book....Very well, very well. I owe you an apology, then. Maybe an explanation...” His words were disjointed, his eyes flicking to and fro. Ardaline got the strong sense that he was trying to stay steady.

“Teach me,” he croaked suddenly, and now his eyes were firmly pinned on her. “I need to fix this book....The pages, they’re ruined. But I must repair them. I must!”

“Dunno if we can find undamaged copies of that one. It’s a pretty old story.” And a light flared in Undying’s head even as Ardaline growled, “But let me take you to the clan leaders first. Then we’ll see if we can get you settled in.”

It was from the dragons of this Hidden Haven that Undying learned to repair books. Occasionally, when he knows Ardaline isn’t looking, he filches pages from other manuscripts, binds them to his own book. He knows it won’t get rid of the damage wrought by the mad writer, but it has helped fill up the gaps in his knowledge.

Yet his mind remains unstable, and while he initially managed to restore his appearance, time continues encroaching on him, and his scales grow yellower day by day. His ears become more tattered, his mane hangs ragged and lank....Mad writer or not, nothing can keep the ravages of time from what is, after all, only a book. Deep in his fragmented mind, he knows that all the rebindings and new pages won’t keep him immortal.

There must be another way. He knows this is so. The books have told him, so it must be true. Can’t trust other dragons, but Undying can trust books; he knows where he is with books.

There must be another way. There must...

~ written by Disillusionist (254672)
all edits by other users

(The answer you seek is right beneath your feet...)



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Kyorinrin
Old knowledge has a way of taking on a life of its own.

starmap
constellation
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