Work Text:
Statement of Calypso, regarding her connection with It Is Not What It Is.
I suppose my fascination with The Spiral started with my interest in philosophy, of all things. Before I had even looked much into actual philosophy, the thought came to me myself- there is no way we can tell that anything is real. We already know from optical illusions that our eyesight can be tricked, We know memories can be forgotten or created. We know from dreams that we can be convinced something is real, even despite warning signs that something is very wrong- warning signs that we can completely miss and seem just as normal as anything else. So if all that’s possible, how can one know that anything’s real? How can you know anything at all, if anything could have been made up by your own brain?
You Eye avatars think you can know everything, and maybe you can, in some way. There is a practicality that comes with treating everything you can See and Know and feel as real. It helps with worldly matters. Hm, never thought I’d be calling Eye avatars practical, but here we are. But you forget that everything seen in the mind, is created in the mind. We can’t be certain that anything exists outside of it.
That feeling followed me throughout my life, the sense that there is no way I can ever know if this is real. Perhaps life is just a dream. Perhaps a story, written by some author god. Perhaps everyone else was imagined by me, and I’m all alone. But I never cared about those other aspects, the manipulation or the Loneliness of it all. Frankly, I didn’t really care whether it was real or not. It didn’t change how I behave. The feeling of this is not real was constantly there, but it didn’t matter because there was nothing I could do to make it real, so why bother? Just treat it as it is.
This was of course what led to my fascination with The Spiral when I listened to The Magnus Archives. It resonated with me. I didn’t care about what may or may not be created in our own minds, but I know many other people do. And I wondered if I could… use that.
But it was just a thought, and I wasn’t particularly skilled at distorting… Well, I wouldn’t quite call it ‘distorting the truth,’ because that implies that there is a truth to be distorted.
A few months after finishing the series- which I won’t spoil for you, of course- I began dreaming of the chase. Every few weeks, I would dream that I was being chased by someone chasing me. No matter how far I ran, how fast, whether I hid, or whether I climbed, it was never enough. They were just behind me, they were at my ankles, they could almost reach me, but I had to get a little farther, I can’t let them catch me, they can’t reach me, they mustn’t-!
It didn’t matter what would happen if they reached me. I didn’t know what would happen. If I were awake, I would have considered that this could just be a game. It wasn’t a game. They wanted to chase me, they wanted to hunt. It wasn’t about the result, just the never-ending chase, the fear that I had to get away.
You know the Institute’s policy, and if it were just the dreams, I wouldn’t consider this anything supernatural. Recurring nightmares are a part of life for many people.
The dreams became nightly. Getting sleep became hard, and soon I stopped sleeping for any more than a couple hours at a time. I won’t get into it too much, but I began to hallucinate. Patterns moving, voices calling my name, a touch on my arm, things like that.
I was out camping with my family one night. They were all asleep, while I was reading in an effort to not fall asleep. I got up at one point- nature called- but as I was coming back, I saw them. All the faces that had ever been in my dreams, and many that hadn’t. They were hiding in the trees. Some of them looked like humans. Most didn't.
I had a few moments to pause and wonder if these were another hallucination, before they at once surged at me. I turned and ran, not caring anymore if they were or not, because they were close behind, and they were going to get me if I didn't run.
I've never been very fit, and while the initial adrenaline gave me a boost of energy and speed, it quickly wore off, and they drew closer, almost upon me. Hisses, snarls, roars; they followed me, always right behind.
I still don't know how long I ran, twisting and weaving through the trees. The forest didn't end, and I had lost all my bearings. Leaves whipped my face and arms. My legs burned, my chest heaved. It felt like I was dying, my joints and muscles ached and swelled like nothing before. I couldn't let them reach me.
Or maybe I could. I didn't know what would happen if they reached me, but surely it couldn't be worse than the chase. The pain, the tear of flesh from flesh and bone from bone as thousands of Hunters descend upon you may hurt, but there is no way it can ever reach the intensity of the fear that they are right behind you and you cannot escape, you can never escape, because at least it ends. At least you're not blindly clinging to the hope that you will escape, that there's still a chance, despite knowing there isn't one and that you're going to be stuck running forever.
But just as I began to consider this, as I felt the urge to stop as their breath panted in my ear and their teeth and claws grazed my feet, I saw it there. A yellow door, conpletely ordinary in everything but location, standing in the middle of the forest.
I remember now that random yellow doors, with no wall or anything around them, do not typically belong in forests. But I didn't think of this at the time. All I could see was a way out.
I pushed myself further, what I felt was my last ounce of energy, dodging trees until I reached the door. Without a second thought, I flung it open and ran through. I didn't have time to close the door; they were right behind me. I kept running, and they kept chasing.
I'm sure you can guess where I found myself. A series of hallways, twisting in impossible patterns, mirrors and paintings lining the walls. I didn't notice at first, too preoccupied with fleeing from the Hunters. I turned corners at random, hoping to lose some. And I did. The howls grew distant, distorted, refracted. The amount of Hunters dropped down, a couple gone, a few, more.
There were still many following me though, and I still had to run. But they seemed to have grown confused, disoriented, and their chase slowed.
This gave me time to think. And time to count the halls, mapping them out in my head. And as you know, it didn't work. The halls should have crossed over. I should have found one of the Hunters, lost somewhere. The hallways didn't work.
I remembered The Magnus Archives. And I remembered my sleep-deprived hallucinations.
If I had kept running, or if I had been running in an attempt to find the middle and not to escape being prey, maybe I would have found the centre of the Distortion, and become it myself. Instead, I turned and stopped running, slowly walking back. By now, all but one Hunter had vanished. The remaining one crept closer to me, slower now, fangs bared in an animal mouth.
I remembered the dreams and the hallucinations. I was in a place that didn't make sense. I didn't think I was dreaming. In fact, I was certain I was as awake as I had ever been. But maybe I just found the hint that this all is just a dream, just a hallucination.
“You're not real,” I told the Hunter. “This isn't real. None of this is happening, I'm just asleep. I can't wake up, but this isn't real, so why act like it is?”
I stopped, and opened my arms, daring the Hunter to come at me. It didn't, eyes glancing around and snarling.
And then I got an idea.
“No, I'm not real. You're chasing something that doesn't even exist. There's no fear here, no Hunt, because there's no one to chase. You just imagined me, and you're imagining this place. What are you doing here? Where is here? This is nothing. I'm nothing. You're nowhere. How can you trust what you're seeing? This doesn't make sense.”
The Hunter turned in a circle. It snarled, then whimpered. Then it walked off. I watch it leave. It was only a few steps before it had completely vanished into thin air, no trace remaining. The remaining adrenaline left me, and I collapsed to the ground and fell asleep. For the first time in months, I had no dreams. Well, except for a yellow door in the middle of a void.
When I woke up, I was still in the corridors, though it didn't look like the same area I had been. A door, the first one I had seen since entering the halls, was in front of me.
I had neither become the Distortion, nor a victim of it. But I had supplied it with a meal.
I turned the knob. The door creaked as I opened it. It was night, and I found myself back just outside my family's tent.
Apparently it had been a few days since the Hunters had started chasing me, though I managed to convince everyone it hadn't been any time at all. I had never gone, I was always right by them, something must have been up with their memories.
Since then, I've gained a few… abilities, though they weren't strong, essentially being a greater ability to lie and confuse. I provide a few hints of the dream, but never the full picture. Without Es Mentiras, I would still be dreaming of the Hunt. I'd probably be dead, or still being chased. It saved me, and now it feeds me, and I feed it. A sense of confusion, of unease, planted in one's mind. The knowledge that we can never trust our own senses. The Spiral doesn't require too much from me, but I'm happy to provide.
This might be why I like your series so much, Archivist. It's fun to watch your Broadcast, to watch you flounder in confusion, on the edge, questioning what is real and what is not. Your series is blurring the boundary of what is fiction. I can sense the ties of my patron on you, even despite your more obvious connection with the Beholding. But maybe my own watching gives me ties to the Beholding too? We could be opposites in that way.
Watching your Broadcast also gave me context when my powers got stronger after a certain video was released. Beyond simple deception, I can now manipulate the senses, make patterns shift and sounds appear.
I think I want your apocalypse to succeed. I would prefer it to be under The Spiral, of course.
Although, while I suppose you brought about the ritual to bring the Fears to the level of power at the start of Magnus, it doesn't need to be you who fulfills the second ritual. Not if I get there first.
How would you like that, Archivist? A Spiral-pocalypse. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, but that's no matter. You and your friends would all get your own domains- in fact, I would quite like to see what they are, meet you all in person. But can you imagine? A world where nothing makes sense, where you can't trust anything, certainly not yourself, all of it twisting and turning and playing tricks on your mind…
I hope to see you there.
Statement ends.