Differently Morphous

by Yahtzee Croshaw

  “Chris,” said Mike, stepping between Diablerie and Cockburn and adopting the role of the good cop. “Just be honest with us. Did you film that shog killer video in Doncaster?”

  The lines on Chris’s thick forehead became a six-lane pileup just above his nose. He glanced between Mike’s serious face and Diablerie’s wavering finger. “Well, yeah,” he said. “It was your idea, weren’t it?”

  There was a tense silence. Then Diablerie’s torso rotated mechanically so that his arm was pointing to Mike instead.

  “No, it weren’t my idea!” said Badger, hands tightening around his shotgun. “Why the ’ell would you say that? You tryin’ to stitch me up?”

  “But . . . your Davey said it were your idea.”

  Alison emerged from the crypt, hand in hand with a pale and damp Victor Casin, Adam following closely behind. “Davey?” she said.

  “Where is ’e?” demanded Mike.

  “ ’E were ’ere a while ago,” said Chris, looking around. “ ’E said you said to give the southern poofs a good scare so they stop nosyin’ about.”

  “Forgive and forget, that’s my attitude,” slurred Victor, tottering slightly. “Certainly nothing to get worked up about.”

  “Um, maybe someone could fetch him a towel,” said Adam.

  “And it was he who orchestrated the video?” asked Diablerie, returning to the matter at hand. He hadn’t moved a muscle and was still dramatically pointing at Mike, but his shoulder was shaking and starting to hurt.

  “Yeah,” said Chris, scratching his head. “ ’E said that you said that old Danvers wanted us to make it for their anti-shog club.”

  Mike’s face had turned the color of a ketchup sandwich, in contrast to his knuckles, which were as white as the complementary mayonnaise. “My Davey said that?”

  “Was ’e fibbing?” asked Chris, a cringe developing slowly about his shoulders. “You din’t know about it?”

  Mike grabbed Chris’s collar. “Will ye use yer bloomin’ ’ead? Why would I do it through Davey? I’d’ve told ye meself if I wanted it! Which I didn’t.” The last three words were hastily directed to Diablerie, who had a single skeptical eyebrow stabbing heavenwards.

  “I thought you might’ve been tryin’ to create deniability,” mumbled Chris.

  “So,” said Diablerie, inserting the word into the conversation like a questing snake. “We have a new candidate for the Fluidic Killer.”

  “Davey’s not the shog slayer!” blurted Mike, rounding on him angrily before remembering himself and taking a respectful step back. “ ’E couldn’t be. ’Cos the shog slayer’s smart, and Davey’s an idiot.”

  Alison coughed tactfully. “I think we probably have to bring him to the Department for questioning anyway.”

  Mike threw up his hands and made a few incoherent frustrated noises before throwing his hands back down and releasing a sigh. “Aye. I get that. Don’t ye worry. Right after I get me hands on the little bastard, I’ll bring whatever’s left down to London meself.” He nodded towards Cockburn. “What about ’im? You wanna bring ’im in?”

  Adam and Victor had both removed their coats, and Victor had turned Adam’s inside out to rub himself vigorously with the fabric lining. “I’m not sure we’re in a position to bring anyone in right now,” said Adam.

  Victor shook the last few droplets from his shaggy head, threw Adam’s coat to the ground, and scowled. “Yes, we bloody are. I’m not going home after all this without getting at least one thing done. Diablerie, you’re under arrest.”

  Diablerie didn’t move, but a subtle tightening of all his muscles turned his supercilious pose into an affronted one. “What nonsense is this?”

  “Um. We’re supposed to bring you in,” said Adam sheepishly. “They’ve got evidence back in London that you might be the Fluidic Killer.”

  If there was ever going to be a good time to come forward, thought Alison, this was probably it. But as Diablerie glanced at her for support, face aghast, she instinctively looked away.

  “I?” he bellowed. “Diablerie stands accused? Preposterous! My arcane gifts are leagues above such petty mischief.”

  “Maybe you could explain that to Pegleg,” said Victor, taking a threatening step forward.

  “Yeah,” said Adam, also advancing, but with hands splayed mollifyingly. “We’ve just got orders to take you in for questioning. They probably only want some things clarified. It’s a formality. Isn’t it, Victor?”

  “Yeah, it’s a formality. So you’ll be all right, won’t you, ’cos you’re already dressed for it.”

  “Hmph,” said Diablerie, raising his nose and planting his feet in place with dignity. “Very well. If the command has come down from our masters, then Diablerie has no choice. Honor and duty demands that cloud of death!”

  He swung his free hand around, and the air was filled with tiny, twinkling sparkles. Victor, Adam, and Alison all flinched, throwing their arms over their faces to protect themselves. By the time Alison plucked up the courage to open her eyes again and discovered that Diablerie had only thrown a handful of glitter, he was gone.

  53

  JuniorAgentArkin: ARE YOU THERE?

  jess: oh hey

  jess: filmings just about done

  JuniorAgentArkin: IS THERE ANY CHANCE THAT REAVER COULD BE SOMEONE FROM YORKSHIRE CALLED DAVID BADGER?

  jess: i dunno

  JuniorAgentArkin: IS THERE ANY WAY YOU COULD FIND OUT?

  jess: hang on

  JuniorAgentArkin: DON’T ASK HIM DIRECTLY!

  JuniorAgentArkin: HELLO?

  jess: he says hes not

  jess: oh sorry

  jess: i asked him directly

  jess: hang on

  jess: i think nita wants to talk to you

  JuniorAgentArkin: WHAT?

  jess: Hi Alison!!

  jess: Just wanted to say the video will be up online tomorrow, so if you could make sure to tweet it and upvote it that’d be great.

  jess: Thanks for all your help so far! It’s finally going to happen!

  JuniorAgentArkin: I DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE A TWITTER.

  jess: Seriously?

  jess: Are you sure you’re younger than me? :)

  jess: Never mind, just make sure to share it to everyone you know on Facebook.

  JuniorAgentArkin: OKAY.

  JuniorAgentArkin: I GUESS MUM AND DAD MIGHT TAKE A LOOK.

  54

  The Hidden Plight of Britain’s Interdimensionally Gifted Youth (MUST WATCH)

  Uploaded by DEDAGovUK

  The video that FINALLY exposes the institutional oppression Britain’s persons of infusion underwent for centuries at the hands of the Ministry of Occultism, and how the Department of Extradimensional Affairs CONTINUES to drag its feet on ending the practice.

  Views: 25,678

  Top Comments

  ███████:

  Thank you so much for making this video. I never knew this sort of thing was still happening. Someone should definitely do something about it.

  ███████:

  yes something should be done

  ███████:

  something should be done by someone yes

  ███████:

  i heard deda are doing something now

  ███████:

  Oh that’s alright then.

  Fluidic killer prime suspect identified and still at large

  Uploaded by larkspit

  Ripped from BBC news

  Views: 56,921,404

  Top Comments

  ███████:

  OMG SHARE THIS RIGHT NOW

  ███████:

  IF YOU SEE DIABLERY IN THE STREET RUN HIM OVER AND BREAK HIS LEGS

  ███████:

  HOW has the government not caught this monster?!! Don’t let them lie to you: THE FLUIDIC HATE IS EVERYWHERE.

  ███████:

  HANG HIM

  55

  The
Department of Extradimensional Affairs had repurposed and remodeled several layers of the new building’s underground car park for its components that needed to be far from prying eyes. The holding cells where Aaron Weatherby had been kept were on the third-lowest level. The lowest level was where Archibald Brooke-Stodgeley had his laboratory, which was the main reason why the second-lowest level was kept permanently clear.

  Brooke-Stodgeley was the Ministry’s—and now the Department’s—official wizard, in the strict definition of the word. A magical scholar rather than a practitioner, devoted to expanding human knowledge of magic through experimentation. He had had an extensive suite of chambers and laboratories in the deepest tunnels of the Ministry bunker, but by the time Alison had joined, over half of these had been permanently abandoned, the doors sealed with a minimum three feet of concrete. Even then, the monks had never gone near those areas in groups of fewer than three.

  Upon Archibald’s transfer to the Department, he had been very firmly advised to focus more on forensics and archiving than on research, but he was still permitted to have some apparatus. This included some diagnostic machines, a collection of cages and bell jars containing infused animals in varying stages of death, torpor, and violent fury, and six workbenches distributed evenly around the large concrete chamber. As Alison passed between these on her way across the room, she couldn’t help noticing that one of them was partially melted.

  “Mr. Brooke-Stodgeley?” she said timidly to the figure hunched behind the small avalanche of detritus on the furthest workbench.

  He glanced up. Archibald was quite a large man, but his posture was poor, as if the weight of his round paunch was pulling his shoulders forward. He wore large, plastic-framed spectacles, and only a few wisps of hair remained on his head, making him look like a potato that still had roots clinging to it. He had abandoned the traditional wizard’s robe even before the fall of the Hand of Merlin, and now tended to favor a wool cardigan. “Mm?” he said, before taking in Alison’s appearance and breaking into a smile. “Are you lost, young lady?”

  “Hi, I’m Alison, Elizabeth’s assistant?” said Alison, having to talk quite loudly over the noise from the animal cages, which was somewhere between a growl and a gurgle. “She said you had a report for her? About the Fluidic Killer crime scene?”

  “Oh, yes, don’t you worry, my dear.” He moved a few feet down the workbench, took a moment to relocate a few aging yellow scrolls with reverent care, then thoughtlessly shoved aside the remaining clutter, which mainly consisted of food wrappers and file folders. Finally, he offered a single sheet of paper. “Pass this on for me. There’s not much she shouldn’t already know, but I can definitely say there was magic in use. The salt crystals from the mine were definitely magically conjured. Got that?”

  Alison examined what she hoped was the relevant section of the poorly typed technical language in front of her. “You can create salt with magic?”

  Archibald’s smile widened further. He folded his arms and perched on the workbench, crushing a half-eaten muesli bar beneath his ample behind. “Oh yes, manifestation powers can create virtually any form of simple matter,” he said authoritatively. “That’s what elementalism is. Except for fire, ice, and electricity elementalism. Those fall under energy manipulation.”

  Alison cocked her head. “There are salt elementals?”

  “Oh, yes. We had a feces elemental go through the school once.” He chuckled to himself and leaned forwards with a subtle sound of crushed muesli. “Actually, you’ll like this. We first identified that power because—”

  “Erm, actually, Mr. Brooke-Stodgeley, there was something else I was hoping you could tell me about,” said Alison, reaching for her coat pocket.

  “Oh?” He saw what she was offering and added, “Oooooh.”

  It was the loop of string that Diablerie had left behind in the Danvers cemetery before his hasty exit from the scene. It was less than a half centimeter thick, but the runes were quite clearly defined, each spaced a couple of inches apart.

  “What’s a nice young girl like you messing around with something like this?” breathed Archibald, running it through his fingers, eyebrows rising higher with each symbol he examined. “Where did you find it?”

  “It’s Doctor Diablerie’s,” said Alison. “It’s a rune circle, isn’t it?”

  “Certainly is! Well done. Freshly written one, too.” He glanced up. “Diablerie. Didn’t I hear his name recently?”

  “He’s, um.” Alison looked at the floor. “He’s the prime suspect in the fluidic killings. There’s a nationwide manhunt going on.”

  “Oh, of course,” said Archibald happily, still staring at the string. “I’d quite like to hunt him down myself and ask him how he got these made.”

  “Because it’s impossible to write runes?”

  “Well. Not impossible.” He caught her gaze. “Tell you what. I’ll show you something special. Come look at this.”

  He walked with a permanent totter, as if he was constantly trying to catch up with his own gut. She followed him as he jiggled down the aisle of workbenches to the elevator doors, then stopped at a row of jagged stones that were leaning against the nearby wall. Each one bore a runic symbol, and they went all around the perimeter of the room.

  Alison recognized the sequence. “That’s the dispel, isn’t it? It stops magic from working.”

  “Yes!” said Archibald, thrilled. “You’re a clever young thing, aren’t you? Emergency shutdown system. They were carved into the floor of my old workshop over a century ago. I had to have them hacked out and brought here because we can’t make new ones, you know.” He hurried to one of the nearby workbenches and cleared a space around an ancient gramophone. “And here we have the chant. It’s recorded on wax cylinders. They’ve been passed down from Scrollkeeper to Scrollkeeper since the runes were carved.”

  Alison was still by the elevator, crouched on her haunches, brushing one of the carved runes with her fingertips. “How were they made in the first place?”

  “A team of ten monks, I believe. Every man jack of them ended up in Bedlam. The ones that were still recognizably human, anyway.” He gave a little snort when he saw Alison’s change of expression. “Oh, don’t you worry. No one in the government would do something like that here in the twentieth century.”

  Alison decided not to correct him. “Could this be why Diablerie . . . is the way he is?”

  “That’s a very interesting question,” said Archibald, folding his arms again and rocking back and forth in thought. “I believe I’ve met the man. Unless he’s started ranting gibberish and trying to climb into the floor, I’d say almost certainly not.”

  “Right.” Alison thought of the exercise book that Elizabeth had showed her, and the insane scribbles that were alleged to be a telepath’s report on the interior of Diablerie’s mind.

  “Push . . . project?” muttered Archibald, examining the runes on the string again. “Upwards. One, two . . . nine feet tall. Ah, I see. Unless I’m mistaken, this would be for creating an invisible wall.”

  “I think so,” said Alison. Cockburn had mentioned it before the congregation in the Danvers cemetery had entirely broken up. “How does runecrafting work, exactly?”

  “Oh, I think it might be a little bit complicated for you, my dear,” said Archibald, patting his palm with a wax cylinder. “All right, let’s see if you can keep up. You know that magic comes from the Ancients?”

  “Yes, I know that much.”

  “Each Ancient leaves a kind of signature on the magic particles they emit, right? That’s basically what a rune is—it’s the signature of a specific Ancient. So when we draw the rune, all the nearby particles that associate with that Ancient congregate around it. Chanting the sound that the particles recognize as their name activates them, and their combined power exerts a specific effect upon the surrounding universe. This is how magic infusions work, too, actually. An infused person has an instinctive ability to direct particles that share a sign
ature with the one they have in their brain.”

  Alison nodded slowly. “So when you try to write runes . . .”

  “If you try to write a rune, the particles, and therefore the Ancient, will invade your mind. You see, it’s not the thing you’re writing or what you’re writing with. It’s the image you’re holding in your mind that the particles are attracted to, not the page. As long as you have the intention to write down the rune, they’ll find you, I’m afraid.”

  “What if you write one without intending to?”

  Archibald beamed. “Mm. We’ll make a wizard out of you yet, my girl. Random runes appear all the time. I mean, look.” He waved the length of string. “Most of them are just a couple of lines, a dot if you’re lucky. In, let’s say, a wild forest, you’ve got sticks and leaves and things on the ground randomly forming all kinds of runes, and every now and again the wind or a bird will make a sound that’s enough like a chant, and you’ll get these undirected magic spikes. That’s why there’s always been an association between magic and nature.”

  “Don’t suppose there’s any way those were written by accident,” said Alison, nodding towards Diablerie’s rune circle.

  Archibald laughed more heartily than the comment warranted. He made a vague beckoning gesture and returned to his laptop. “Probably not. But unintentional runecrafting is a very exciting field of research. I have a computer program downloaded that simulates a forest floor, randomly generating a page of lines and dots, and there’s usually at least one part of it that’s enough like a rune to be functional.”

  “So . . .”

  “Of course, the moment you try to cut it out or crop out the rest, the magic figures out what you’re trying to do, and . . .” He made a finger-gun gesture to his temple. “Still, breakthroughs are being made all the time. Open source is a wonderful concept, you know.”

  Alison took a deep breath. It was time to ask the big question. “Mr. Brooke-Stodgeley. The salt-creating power we were talking about earlier—could that be done with runes?”