The Haunting: A Legend of the Artificer Side Story

Chapter 3

The dishes were washed and put away, there was no such thing as leftovers, and Tibalt was finally sitting down with a journal and an idea. The circle for this would be different. Speed and dexterity for mobility, but there needed to be strength, too. Spider for the legs, and metal to join the concept. North, south, east, west to provide full range of motion, since there were no runes for up, down, left, or right. Well, there was ascend and descend, but that didn't really encompass the correct concept, in Tibalt's mind. A few more runes here and there for sturdiness and recovery, and the runes for mind and will, connected to connection, and maybe if he did a little research into memory magic he could figure out how to bridge the gap of connecting willpower and direction... Oh, he probably needed something else, and this was becoming an unfortunately complex piece of work, wasn't it? Should he ask Angel if he could look at his leg and figure out how he commanded it?

"What are you doing?" Elmer's voice asked; Tibalt almost jumped as she loomed over him to look at the list of runes written at the top of the page.

"Working," he replied and she swung a leg over the couch to slide down.

"While you have guests?" she asked and propped her feet up right over the top of the book. "Come on, that's rude."

"It's very important," Tibalt insisted and moved her feet off. There was a new smudge now, not that was anything new. His journals were a hot mess.

"We're going ghost hunting, remember?" she said and looked out the balcony windows at the setting sun in the distance. "I don't have long before I get my fur out. Entertain me."

"You're so demanding," he muttered as he reconsidered where he'd be putting 'strong' for sturdy. "Should I do that? Or should I connect it to... shouldn't it be connected to dexterity to..."

"Ah, your head's already gone," she said and popped up to her feet. "Lost cause. So boring."

"Mhm," he agreed faintly as he turned the journal around to look at it upside-down.

"Angel!" Elmer hollered. "Let's go hunt a ghost!"

Teacher was probably going to have fun with that. Tibalt could probably debate the ethical ramifications of announcing his existence by intentionally scaring the living daylights out of what was essentially a priest of the Goddess of Death via pretending to be a ghost, but, hey. Let the book have its fun. Tibalt wouldn't interfere. He knew better than to get involved in that sort of thing.

In the meantime...

He was chewing on the end of his pencil again, and his sharp teeth were practically shredding the wood. Come to think of it, how were pencils made in this world? Tibalt pulled it out of his mouth to stare at it in fascination. It had to be an automated process, likely with machinery, and he bet he could figure it out if he could remember how pencils were made in the world before. Maybe he should ask Teacher how it was done in the last world...

"Tibalt?" Innes's hesitant voice came from the stairwell, and Tibalt leaned back to look at zim.

"Yes?" he asked, his braid spilling over the back of the sofa.

"I do apologize, but I was wondering if your fairytales were categorized by region or type. I can't make sense of your organization system."

"Region first, and then type," Tibalt replied as Innes floated there, looking uncharacteristically sheepish as ze clutched at a book that looked comically small in zir massive hands. "Were you looking for something specific?"

"Ah... yes, I was looking to investigate the differences in our retellings of sirens," Innes replied as Tibalt stuck the pencil in his mouth again, crunching down and not even wincing when a shard of a splinter got stuck in his tongue.