IMG_2374

The Secret Society – Down to City Hall Station

I want to get it out of the way and say that nothing out of the ordinary happened while I was in City Hall Station. That’s not to say that I couldn’t feel something down there. Whether it was residual memory, or just residual cold from the snow the night before, there was something down there. If a “well” felt like something, well, I know what it feels like now.

The word “haunted” has a negative connotation, but that’s how it felt down there. Not in a horror movie way, more like a lot has passed below those arches over the centuries, and some things never left.

No, nothing out of the ordinary happened while I was in City Hall Station that would help us further along the events taking place with what we’ve come to call the Secret Society.

It all happened after I left.

The strange sounds in the videos I took, the notification I received nearly 24 hours later on my phone, (one word, “betrayer”) and the picture at the end of this video… the one I found in my camera roll last night.

The one I didn’t take.

Yeah. So something was definitely down there. But I don’t know what, and honestly, I don’t know if it has anything to do with us.

I dreamed about visiting that place for so long. It certainly didn’t disappoint, but we’ve also seen and experienced a lot of wondrous things together over the past few years. Why I still feel so drawn to that place, now almost three days later, I don’t know. Maybe I always will. That photo, the one I didn’t take, it’s a prized possession now. That’s Saberlane there, the one I lost to the storm, still looking up.

Looking for wonder.

No word yet from Woolie, but we’re waiting. I’m worried though. He may be gone already. We’ll keep you all posted.

83 Comments

  1. There’s magiq there, weither of our doing or not. Magiq follows wonder, and that place is full of it. I’m so glad you got to see it, and if even for a second feel that connection to everything before. A stunning video too, gives me tingles just watching!

  2. I did (I always try to remember “WW @Robert D?”) and nothing changed. @Catherine and I are in the office today, completely unable to be productive while we wait for any kind of sign that might tell us what to do next.

    Is a Woolie grounding hex out of the question?

  3. So… @Catherine and I have have pored over the old “AG” posts that were appearing on Ackerly Green’s Instagram account back in the day. Nothing ever came of them, they were just photos of old books with observations about them, signed “A.G.”

    We ended up archiving them because we’d save all the images and captions, and the Mounties had as well.

    You know what we didn’t do?

    We didn’t check the comments.

    That one appeared 26 weeks ago. And this one six weeks later:

    They appeared SIX MONTHS ago. So far, they’re the only two we found. We tried to “unarchive” the posts these were attributed to so you all could see, but the comments then disappeared (thanks to Catherine for taking screenshots.)

    So… it seems the journal Catherine took home belongs to “A.G.” and A.G. is apparently Evelyn Avis Green. And Evelyn Avis Green is someone’s unexpected sibling?

    We’ll keep digging through the Instagram archive.

    Also… “photograms”?

    1. She keeps referring to her nephew. Maybe she is (was? was never?) Sullivan’s Aunt?

      I have to admit I’m way rusty on my Green family tree.

      Edit: That would make her Warner’s (Deeds grandfather) unexpected sibling I guess?

  4. a combining form occurring in loanwords from Greek, where it meant “something written,” “drawing” ( epigram; diagram ); on this model, used in the formation of compound words ( oscillogram ).

    So, a photograph that’s somehow drawn onto paper? I’m leaning more and more to AG being from the Book of The Wild (am I way off base?), so a photogram is either A) What everyone called a photograph there, or B) It’s a magimystic way to take a photograph and “develop” it?

    She (I’m assuming “she” I know) mentions that the photos that were posted on our Instagram account went missing from her journal, so the photos that appeared there were her “photograms”!

    1. I mean, that’s definitely an option, but I will say I’m hesitant to just go scribbling without a clear intent. It feels kind of sacred, like I’d be defiling it in some way? I don’t know, seems a little Riddle’s diary-esque too, and we all know how well that works out…

  5. Maybe pencil so you can at least rub it out should we get nothing back? Also cause I’m not expecting any vanishing/appearing text like Harry Potter, lol

  6. oh. OH. OHH! I might have the answer to the photogram thingy! Photogram – Wikipedia

    this was a super vague topic in high school, for me, but i did actually work with them a little. Perhaps some of the pages are light sensitive in that journal? Try looking at them under darkness or blacklight! Basically, a photogram was an image made from putting a bunch of assorted junk on light sensitive photo paper, usually built for a 35mm camera, and then rapidly exposing it to red or white light and immediately developing it. The longer you left it to develop, the more artifacts and exposure in the image. This is EXTREMELY interesting, i never expected my knowledge of this to ever come in handy.

    Ah, right, the photograms in her journal went missing…? hm. Uh, that sounds rather interesting. Perhaps those images are still around? Trying having a search. They might be negatives of some rather unique antiquities.

    and one final thing, so we mounties have the resource for the future… Making a Photogram by ILFORD Photo – YouTube Heres how you make em. simple, right?

  7. Guys…I got something.

    I don’t know what’s going on for sure. I need to run home and grab some stuff but then I’m coming right back to the office. I can’t explain it, I just–

    Ok sorry, starting at the beginning.

    Like an hour ago I was in a rush to pack up and get out of the office when in my hurry, I grabbed AG’s journal by the cover and when it fell open I saw something on one of the pages that definitely wasn’t there before. It’s writing, but it’s hard to read. It’s fuzzy and wavering, almost like it’s underwater. The words don’t show up when I take pics of the pages but before they got fuzzier and finally disappeared, I transcribed this:

    “It seems others with magimystic sensitivities have experienced strange occurrences of late, though my nephew isn’t convinced it’s necessarily limited to those with knowledge of the Arcanum, only that they’re more keen to accept disappearing objects and strange sounds as magimystic. But there have been enough observed and recorded instances in a small amount of time that it’s impossible now to believe it’s not a coincidence.

    Fina said I was calling out in my sleep last night, something about [there was no word there, or there was a blur, almost like it was “deeper”, more obscured, than the other words]. I confided that strange things have been happening, and I showed her the journal. She said writing has been so important to me these past few years, to help me work through things, and suggested I should keep writing my journals and book records, even if they disappear. The point, she explained in her never-ending wisdom, isn’t necessarily to preserve, but to express. Things don’t have to exist forever to have mattered–”

    I called @Saberlane and we both agreed that the proximity to AGP might be triggering it. He already went home because he “has a family” and “needs to acknowledge their existence at some point” so it’s just me here right now. I don’t know if more entries are going to appear, but I’m going home for a hot sec because it’s getting late and I’m starving but then I’m coming right back with some snacks and comfier clothes to see what I can make of this.

    Wish me luck, I think I might be here a while.

    1. The most beautiful thing I’ve heard in a while.

      One of our found memories. She owned a little bookshop on the first floor. Second memory. They’re hers, for sure.

  8. Well, this definitely reinforces what we thought about the Instagram posts – it seems that they’re her book records, which honestly makes a lot of sense given the content of those original posts.

    So are these posts disappearing through a hole between our Book and the Book of The Wild, along with other objects? What else has come through, and what caused that link to exist, here and now, of all times? I think the biggest issue is what else could come through, given the chance. Also, who is Fina? What’s the Arcanum? I really don’t know. Any ideas?

    1. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. What’s different about AGP or the community lately? Some thoughts:

      • Mounties are exercising more and listening to some sweet workout playlists this month (probably not, but hey – shameless plug).
      • The dissolution of the Neithernorian spirit we called Woolie. This make sense, for as they say, when one door closes, another opens. A door to Neithernor’s history has closed, and a door to the Book of the Wild has seemingly opened.
      • The unopen-able cabinet arrived after we found the password Vordicriminant.

      Those are the only major changes I can think of. Anything else? Anything seemingly unconnected I’m overlooking?

      1. Perhaps this is one of those bits of someone else that got caught in Woolie’s memories?

        We also had the Vernal/Spring Equinox yesterday, which could have some magiqal significance.

  9. I found more before it vanished. Thankfully I type fast. Looks like it’s going to be a long night. (Luckily, Sabes keeps a sleeping bag in the office because you never know what time magiq might call.)

    Something is happening. Most of the world continues on the rails of mundane life, but those living within the eddies of magic are concerned. Like birds aware of an impending storm before they’ve caught sight of far-off clouds. Magimystic energy is behaving erratically, or so I’m told by my nephew and his coven, who are all aflutter with activity and are currently using the bookstore basement as a central office to investigate it, though I’m unclear why and frankly, haven’t tried to understand. I chose a life free of magic. As much as one can be free of magic knowing the history of our family, and having seen more than most could ever imagine exists. My brother never understood, not entirely, why I chose to live a mostly-mundane life, or more so why I relinquished my part in Ackerly Green Publishing in exchange for my little book shop on the first floor. I contend that there is more that matters in the world than magic and its never-ending pursuit.

    1. We live very strange professional lives. Stay safe. I’m here with the kids tonight but I’ll relieve you as soon as I can. Order whatever you want, on me.

  10. Definitely all one person. Sounds like we may be hearing about the fighting for the oppressed soon.

    It may be one of the sections of time changed by the combining of the two Books.

  11. Definition of irony? A person who chose a life without magic is magically telling us what its like for a world in the process losing its magic.

  12. There may have been more to this one but it faded before I could finish transcribing. I’m so sorry!

    “Sully attempted to explain “wells” to me when I finally asked why he and his rowdy, over-excited friends he calls a coven have set up what they call “basecamp” in the cellar. What I gathered from his rambling was that there are places in the world “touched by magic” in a way that leaves an indelible mark. He and his associates use them as barometers to measure magimystic energy. He says that very recently wells have begun growing deeper, stronger, and behaving more strangely. He says that wells growing deeper might sound like a good thing, but in fact, it may also mean that magic is trying to dig in and take hold as something attempts to take it. Or destroy it. We still know so little about how magic truly works. It is a strange time. Despite everything that’s happened, all that we have experienced and endured, what I would give to have my incorrigible older brother by my side. But he’s gone.”

    1. The original Basecamp 33!!! :scream:

      1. I know, right! Is their basecamp based on the coven that Colby was a part of? What circumstances could have pushed them together and kept them together in the Book of the Wild?

  13. “I can’t sleep. They think I can’t hear, but Sully and his friends whisper about the dark force, once defeated, and their fear that it may have risen again, and these strange events might be warnings of a coming storm. I know our minds are simply running rampant, searching for a cause. But you can’t unring a bell. A name that had almost lost its chill, but now the old familiar cold has returned.”

  14. Goodness there’s a lot to unpack here, but I’d be much more intelligent if it wasn’t 3 am. I’m going to attempt sleep (stupid dream spell messed up my sleep cycle) and maybe come back to it in the morning when I’m smarter. Or afternoon. Early evening maybe? Idk whenever I’m awake next.

  15. Random Friday morning thoughts (Hey it beats working…and I kinda missed posting these.)

    1. If Sully is her nephew, then her brother is the Book of Wild version of Warner Green, who ‘is gone’ according to her. Now lots of people don’t like to say things like ‘deceased’ and use euphemisms, but what if the best way to describe it is actually ‘gone’. Like…to neithernor. Where he was present when the Silver tried to take over and he ended up a ghost trying to get back in touch with his family…at Ackerly Greeen Publishing, except he doesn’t realize that world doesn’t exist anymore.

    2. Here’s a brain buster for you… If Warner fled to Neithernor in the Book of the Wild, and Sullivan entered it from the Book of Kings…are they in the same Neithernor? Are they Father and Son or complete strangers? Of course maybe Neithernor is only a Book of Kings fabrication. No idea.

    3. Is this really the Book of the Wild we’re hearing about? From way back from Fragment 2 the ‘other world’ was described as having people descended from merfolk who turned into fish people when needed. A sailor spontaneously developing telekinesis powerful enough to lift a life raft and all aboard. A boy raised to be a fairy king. If the people who ‘did not die’ were from the Book of the Wild then I expected…I don’t know…more than a handful of people in a basement trying to figure this out over there. Like…wouldn’t magic vanishing from the world be all anyone could talk about in a world all about magic? Is it possible we’re seeing something, or somewhere else? Or is it possible we have no idea what the Book of the Wild really looks like? (Probably the second.)

    4. Seriously…what was up with the phone number from fragment 4?! That question is going on my tombstone.

    Edit: A refresher on the Green family we know about for anyone was curious. I had to dig this up to check my half-baked ideas against.

    1. That’s one of the big questions, who made Neithernor, and as always, we only have the mysterious Mr. Wideawake to turn to, who seemed to say that Neithernor was built by those in The Book of The Wild while they were experimenting with the Fray through wells. The prevailing theory is that the ruins the Wool and eventually Silver found in Neithernor were ruins that people from The Book of The Wild built or at least inhabited.

      So our only living relic of The Book of The Wild is Neithernor. And it stands to reason that if Warner Green, or anyone else, escaped the destruction of The Book of The Wild, either accidentally or intentionally, they would most likely be in the same Neithernor that Sullivan, Deirdre, Cole, and some of the more sensitive Mounties have explored.

      :sweat_smile: Right?

      EDIT: This is pretty much my favorite subject, Neithernor and Book Eras 101, but I should probably save my attention and typing strength for the journal. I just can’t help. it.

        1. I got a few hours in!! My brain is so wired thinking about all of this though I can’t stay asleep. And there’s also the small matter of that other part-time job that doesn’t care that I was up all night transcribing lost magical archives :woman_shrugging:

          1. Honestly, after last night I don’t blame AG for just wanting her little book shop. She probably got much more sleep.

          2. I mean, Catherine does work at a book store, at least, right? So like, it is mundane, but still kinda magiq?

            Also, does that last comment recall fighting for the oppressed? I feel like her other references to the memories we collected were much more direct.

          3. Wait could this be the same bookshop as the one we have the number for?

            EDIT: not the one Catherine works at

  16. I DO NOT type as quickly as @Catherine.

    Things are changing rapidly. Even those living their lives in the strictly mundane have begun to experience the alterations. We have far less time that we realized, and yet we still don’t know what’s truly happened, only that our world is changing, and magic is somehow being eradicated. Even the bridges are beginning to falter. If they were to break… I know enough about the magimystic to understand what that possibility portends.

    Those in the greater world of the magimystic with more courage and foresight than I have taken the offensive, on a worldwide hunt for whoever might be responsible, hoping to undo the alterations, or at least stop what’s happening before all is too far gone.

    I did not choose this world, this life, but to think that a universe of hidden wonder, just outside the periphery of the mundane, might cease to exist without anyone learning what is truly possible… To lose that choice without ever having learned it was a choice to make, that is a reason to fight.

    EDIT: Those were three separate entries and I’m not 100% sure I got them all before they disappeared.

    1. :tinfoilhat:time! Is it possible that we’re hearing a live play-by-play of the Book of the Wild being edited into the Book of Kings? That Monarch’s Mountain was wrong, and that event rippling back and forth in time is actually happening now, rather than in the 1990’s? Or maybe on the converse, now that our two Books are “rebound in butterfly wings,” that magic is draining from their Book into our’s?

      1. That’s where my head’s been, but maybe since it’s her journal, we are seeing The Book of The Wild being edited into The Book of Kings, but not live. We’re seeing how it happened back then as posited by Monarch’s Mountain. But my :tinfoilhat: is that this is all possible because of the two books being tenuously “rebound in butterfly wings.”

        1. It’s not like we don’t regularly peer through the mists of time anyway, so I wouldn’t be surprised if your hypothesis is correct.

  17. That was Cumberland Books? If I remember correctly? So no, different stores. Unfortunately.

    Edit based on @Rimor’s edit:

    Before we took it over, the Instagram account used to read “The Ackerly Green Book Shop” so also, I think not the same store.

  18. OMG, I was tinfoiling so hard I almost missed an entry:

    It’s worse than we imagined. It’s not only magic, it’s memory, too. Our minds are being altered. It happened in small ways at first, misplaced things and misremembered plans, but now more and more we are forgetting everything we once knew. It’s also happening more quickly now. What was once a ripple on the surface of the world is now a wave, and we are all soon to be swept up in it if we don’t act in time.

  19. Okay, this is a big one, over two pages and I’m not sure I got it all, it was disappearing behind me as I read and rewrote. I don’t know if I got it 100%.

    My dear nephew is a genius. If the first plan fails, stopping whatever is happening or whoever is responsible, then we will need a second plan to buy more time.

    He and his friends are working on a stopgap spell that I have been asked to help cast when all is ready. He says that my being a Green, and casting it here at Ackerly Green is essential. So despite my reservations, I’ll help.

    It’s a multifold spell. A manner of magimystic tripwire that once activated will trigger a spell to cast itself. That’s what they’re working on now, trying to make it work when no one’s been able to make a self-casting spell work before. Like his father, he’s prone to the theater of magic and has named the spell “The Last Figuration.”

    As he explains it, if magic reaches a predetermined nadir, and the memories of those fighting to protect it have continued to degrade, then using the wells as measuring devices, the tripwire will snap, and the spell will theoretically cast itself without the help of a magimystic, using the company as its safest center since it is a powerful well. The spell will use whatever it can reach, the people, places, wells, and objects in its surroundings to protect what’s left of magiq and give those still fighting for it a chance. He says I’m important to creating it but is too busy to explain how right now.

    He and his friends are grimly excited and feverishly working all hours to bring this about. I can do nothing at the moment but tend to the books and be with Fina. My two loves.

          1. My mind is reeling. I always understood that The Council was trying to save magic and bring about a new age, and The Book of Briars was somehow their way of doing that. Their agent of change. What I never understood was how, in the end, tenuously creating an unexplained connection between the two eras would help accomplish that.

            Is this what they were intending?

            Someone please help me and my brain.

          2. Yeah…This won’t help. I don’t get it either.

            Are there’ two distinct eras, like a parallel universe? Or are is there one that’s just been mucked with?

            Is Sullivan who invented the trip wire the same Sullivan who ran around creating this long path for us and Deeds to follow, or are they mirror versions completely separate? (except both good so neither needs to have a goatee.)

            I don’t know. But maybe we don’t have to. Whatever their trip wire did it focused magic on one spot, Ackerly Green Publishing. Whether there are two AGP’s or one, what BoW Sully (I’m getting tired of writing that out every time) and friends did was find a crack (a well) and hammer a piton into it like true Mountainclimbers. And to that Piton they attached everything they could find, so the next climber might have the tools to reascend.

            This bridge, or rope, or whatever we’re pulling on is attached to that piton in the Book of the Wild. it’s a stream we’ve been tapping into all this time. Maybe the Council was using it to fuel the Book of Briars.

            Now that we have the rope, and we know what it’s attached to. What the heck do we do with it?

          3. What I don’t understand, and a key element I think we’re missing, is the concept of the AGP office as a well – as in the physical location of it. If BoW Sully and crew anchored their self-casting spell on the AGP office as a well (which seems crucial based on Evelyn AG’s writing, along with her family lineage), then why are we seeing it now (instead of some random building in Manhattan being haunted by a variety of unsettling apparitions). Our (BoK) AGP offices have seen several iterations. Maybe it’s the spirit of it rather than the physical location that makes it a well? The name of the place?

            I think this fundamentally changes the concept of what we think about as “wells.”

          4. A well as a concept, an idea, instead of just a physical location. That’s a great point. And is AGP the only one of these wells so deep that they stay wells no matter where they go, or what they become?

          5. Or whom is present and operating them, unless you have some secret Green blood you don’t know about or aren’t disclosing. :tinfoilhat:

          6. Haaa, no, I’d say, if anything, it’s Deirdre’s power as a Green refounding it, who then left it in my protection.

      1. Well, the Book of Briars has come to different groups through the ages, so I don’t know if this “tripwire” could be snapped multiple times, but I wonder if the events we’re experiencing now might be connected to this self-casting spell? Is the why, how, and why now? we’ve been asking about Secret Society all along?

  20. Sully has explained the part I am to take in all of this. What he needs me to do. What he needs me to find. If things weren’t so dire, I would refuse, but the world is crumbling around us, and it seems that whoever is to blame if there is anyone to blame, hasn’t yet been discovered. We’re nearly out of time.

    Our world as we know it is coming to a close and we have to act swiftly to save it. The Last Figuration will draw not only objects and people to aid it but also summon the hidden objects required to open Warner’s safe, which I have brought back at Sully’s request, though I swore to never look on [missing word here] again. There are countless combinations to the safe, most of which I never learned, but I know one, and that is where I’ve hidden the object Sullivan has given me to keep and protect. Even holding it… It is an object that could at best, turn the tide of our world’s demise, but at the very least it could buy those who remain in the end extra time, a temporary dam, granting them enough power to keep fighting this scourge.

    The box, the “vault” is the other Warner Green’s magimystic safe.

    And there’s something inside we could use to fight the death of magic.

    1. So, we need AG (or Woolie if he is indeed BoW Warner) to tell us what the combination is…and we open your magic box of many drawers and we save the universe.

      Sweet. We have a plan. I like plans. Even more when I go back and read them and they make no sense to me. That’s how you know it’s a good plan.

  21. I can only imagine how my brother would feel if he were to see me now, fighting for everything he believed in. I turned my back on him, and will always regret it, but now I can do something to fight for the world he loved so much, and perhaps after, do what I can to protect it. Continue it. I was never proud of my name. Not like Warner. But I am a Green. And I will fight for the world of magic.

  22. What white light awaits us in the end. Nothing but fractured thought and light. Nothing and everything. Serafina is lost to me in the blinding. There was far less time than we imagined. It happened too fast to fix. Too fast for our spell to work. We failed. In the light there is a new world emerging. Gray and without wonder, washing us away. But a last imagining comes to me. One last chance to save magic. I will try and cross the broken bridge, to enter the fray or follow my brother on to

    That was the end of the entry. I’ll wait to see if there’s more, but… yeah.

  23. My Goss, the poor Greens have been through so much.

    If they failed, does that mean that there is nothing within the Vault? If so, I wonder how or why it found its way to us now of all times.

    1. Well we know from the shipping record I “found” in that basement that the safe was shipped away from the book shop, so she seemed to have finished her part.

  24. Been through so much, but dang if they don’t keep fighting with every fiber of their being.

    She said she put it in the vault. My guess is she never had time to use it? Maybe?

  25. Goodness there’s even more today. I’m going to start somewhere in the middle.

    My theory about time is maybe not new in the world of science fiction. I believe that all of time, all points in history, while appearing distant in our natural, linear view, may actually be happening all at once. Or in the least, over a relatively short period of time.

    Instead of one long strip of paper detailing all of history, the strip is layered over itself, in a stack. (Maybe a book?) usually, what happens in the past affects the present, and we can’t look back and alter things in the other direction. But say we poke a hole in one of the pages.

    Now we can see a glimpse of the page before our own. Maybe sometimes the connection is strong enough that we can communicate, as was the case with Knatz and past-Saberlane, but perhaps this time all we have is a pinprick and we can just barely see what’s happening on the other side of the page.

    That’s the way I like to think of it, anyhow. I’d like to see our interaction with Knatz as proof of my theory, but acknowledge that I may just be choosing the most convenient facts to confirm my bias. I’ll go put my inner sci-fi nerd away now.

  26. What if we are that chance? Maybe she can see a glimpse of us through the pinprick too? I want to open that vault. To me, that feels like it may be the key to everything. To save her, or perhaps to pull her from her timeline into our own. I’m not sure tbh, but that’s where my instincts lead me.

  27. I’ve been wrapped up in studying this all day. Additional dimensions are nothing new to me, but I can’t seem to visualize how string theory works. Maybe if I could build a physical model I could wrap my mind around it. That helped me understand tesseracts when I was 9 years old and confused.

  28. :neutral_face:

    It’s kind of amazing that because of all you’ve all been through you can read journal entries from a previous version of our world detailing how it ended and be like :sob: but also :muscle:t3: “let’s get to work.” You guys are the best.

    I’m trying to get my head around the reality of the “era books” and who lived when and how… maybe I’ll come up with something, a primer or a diagram or something, and you can punch holes in it based on experience or pure conjecture? I think it might be helpful for those coming in to all this fresh who want to help but don’t know where to start?

    I’m just eager to help climb the :mountain: and this seems, as an outsider, a good place for me to start? Especially considering that a lot of the Low’s theoretical view of all this also deals with some form of “alternate history” so I’m at least versed in what others on the outside see this as possibly being?

  29. Huh. I suppose “we just got a revelation from an alternate timeline let’s hurry and sort this out” isn’t quite a normal response to this sort of thing come to think of it. Goodness, being a Mountie has changed me.

Leave a Reply

[bbp-topic-form]