I Loaded the Occult Panel

By mid-December, three stacks of paper had accumulated on Richard’s desk.

The stack on the left was his manuscript for the Collection of Strange Tales.

The middle stack was the first draft of his essay for the next issue of the Northern Literary Review.

He had written beginnings only to cross them out, crossed them out only to rewrite them. Crumpled wads of paper had piled into a crooked white mountain in the wastebasket.

Pinned down by itself on the right was a flyer torn from the department office bulletin board.

Issued by the Empire’s Cultural Promotion Committee, the flyer spent three whole paragraphs saying one thing: the Empire wanted civilian writers to write.

The theme for the call for submissions was ”Our Island.”

The submission deadline was the end of January next year. The selected winner would receive fifty pounds in prize money, plus an honorary gold-plated badge from the Cultural Promotion Committee.

And the qualification for ”public distribution nationwide upon recommendation by the Imperial Publishing Administration.”

Richard stared at that line of fine print.Fifty pounds wasn’t that much; ”public distribution nationwide” was where the true value lay.

The reach of the Northern Literary Review was limited. Covering a few northern industrial cities and a handful of insiders in the Imperial Capital, it maxed out at two or three thousand readers.

The Collection of Strange Tales went through newsboys, which meant a wide reach, but it was classified under the ”one-penny leisure reading” tier.

Crammed into the same baskets as astrology pamphlets, it wouldn’t even earn a passing glance from respectable folks on the street.

If selected, the Cultural Promotion Committee submission would be publicly distributed through official publishing channels.

Bookstores, libraries, school reading rooms, and even the mobile book crates in military camps... Its reach would stretch ten times further than a newsboy’s footsteps.

Richard set down his pen and laced his fingers behind his head.

He knew very well that these three avenues each had their own audience.

The Collection of Strange Tales was written for the bottom rung.

Miners, washerwomen, dockworkers, female textile workers on the night shift... These people didn’t read newspapers or browse bookstores.

They would only casually flip through a pamphlet at the tavern counter, reading while they drank their beer.

The illiterate ones would have someone who could read recount it to them.

The stories would linger in their heads, suddenly bubbling up in the dead of night.

The Northern Literary Review was written for the middle tier; what the editor-in-chief wanted was ”authenticity.”

Engineers, factory foremen, high school teachers, small shop owners... They weren’t the bottom rung, nor could they reach the top, but the words they spoke at the dinner table would sway the opinions of everyone around them.

The contest submission was for the top tier.

Gentlemen flipping through newspapers on leather club sofas, and the civilian officers in the Department of Internal Affairs and the War Office who had never seen a trench.

”Our Island.”

The Empire’s Cultural Promotion Committee probably wanted people to sing praises of the homeland to boost morale and laud the Empire’s unyielding spirit.

But the imagery the word ”island” struck up in his mind was entirely different from what the committee wanted.

What was an island?

An island was surrounded by water on all sides; all you had was that tiny patch of dry land beneath your feet.

The wind blew in from every direction, cutting right to the bone.

The wind had been howling for hundreds of years, but the land beneath your feet was still there.

He picked up his pen and wrote a title on the top blank page of the submission stack.

What the Island Holds

He stopped after writing those few words.

The title was wrong. Too blunt.

He crossed out ”What it Holds,” thought for a moment, and wrote down a few more words.

The Island Chronicle—still not right.

Lacking inspiration for the moment, Richard folded the flyer, tucked it into his notebook, and moved on to other things.

The framework for the fourth piece of the Collection of Strange Tales was already outlined; it was about a Highlands shepherd.

He had adapted it from an old tale he heard from Edith.

A sheep kept circling the same cliff edge. When the old shepherd went over to pull it away, he found a pile of old bones at the bottom of the cliff.

When livestock repeatedly returned to the same spot, one shouldn’t just pull it away—first see exactly what it was looking at.

While he was on a roll, he replied to Charlotte with a short letter.

”Thank you for asking around about the printing house.

”Also, do you know about the call for submissions?

”I plan to submit to both sides: a penny for the people at the bottom, while tossing the other into the pool up top.

”Do you think that’s too greedy?”

He finished the letter, folded it, and slipped it into an envelope to mail out tomorrow.

Charlotte’s reply arrived three days later.

”Two pens, then. One in your left hand, one in your right.

”The left-hand pen tells ghost stories to miners, and the right-hand pen writes poems about islands for the lords.

”One pen earns a penny, the other earns fifty pounds.

”If you really have the ability, you can profit from both ends.

”That being said, you certainly are greedy—though that’s a merit, too.

”The editor-in-chief asked me to tell you he’s already contacted a printing house for you. It’s in the old district in the northern suburbs of Manchester.

”The boss’s name is Duckworth. He prints parish newsletters and horse racing schedules, and his prices are fair.

”He prints a minimum of one thousand copies, charging you a cost of three-quarters of a penny per copy (including paper, ink, binding, and shipping).

”You sell them for a penny each, making a quarter-penny profit per copy.

”If you manage to sell all one thousand copies, you’ll net about one pound.

”A pound is enough for you to eat at the cafeteria for two months, right?

”As for the essay contest, as long as you know what you’re doing, it’s fine.

”Just don’t write the same things you do for the Northern Literary Review. The essay judges aren’t the Poor Relief Committee; their methods won’t be nearly as mild.”

After finishing the letter, the part that caught Richard’s attention was ”a pound is enough for you to eat at the cafeteria for two months.”

With his current appetite, a pound was barely enough for one month.

If Grey knew his food expenses had gone up this much again, she probably wouldn’t think of just bringing a couple of simple sandwiches when they met at the park.

For the next week, the effort he poured into the submission far exceeded the other two combined.

The Collection of Strange Tales featured ghost stories the underclass could understand, and he had mountains of material for it.

He had already run through the process once for the Northern Literary Review essays; he knew what the editor liked and disliked, who would read it upon publication, and who would hold a grudge against him.

But this essay contest... he had never touched anything like it.

On the night of the third day, he finished the first draft of his submission.

He found that he had unconsciously turned it into an indictment again. To the judges, it would be no different than spitting into their coffee cups.

”The essay judges aren’t the Poor Relief Committee.”

Charlotte’s warning echoed in his ears.

He sat back down, gripped his pen, and pondered for a long time.

He naturally wanted the fifty pounds in prize money, and he wanted the Imperial Publishing Administration’s recommendation channel even more.

But he had no intention of writing insincere praises against his conscience.

That meant he had to find an incredibly narrow path between ”making the higher-ups comfortable” and ”writing something real.”

He only just managed to finish it right before the impending Theogony Salon gathering.

He brought three letters to the mailbox not far from his dormitory.

One for Charlotte, one for the Empire’s Cultural Promotion Committee, and one for that printing house in Manchester.

He shoved the three letters into the verdigris-mottled slot; they slid in one by one and disappeared into its pitch-black belly.

A pigeon was perched on top of the mailbox.

The dusty gray pigeon cocked its head to look at him, as if asking why he hadn’t left yet.

”I’m going, I’m going.” Richard waved at the pigeon.

The pigeon cooed, not moving an inch.

...

The night of December 16th.

When Richard opened his eyes again, the sea of stars had already receded.

The main seat was higher... No, the height hadn’t changed; Hecate’s presence had.

Between the upper maiden’s face and lower old-woman’s face of the Golden Mask, the stitched seam was much clearer than last time.

Richard sat down in his seat. His shadow was standing by in the shallows behind the veil.

Hecate looked around the table.

”Only one matter for today: the Second Stage of the masks.”

No one at the table made a sound.

Hecate folded her hands on the table.

”Having worn the masks up to now, you know best what they have given you during this time.”

”Sharper words, keener Perception, doing a better job with the tasks at hand... these are all bonuses from imperceptible transformation.”

”But there’s one thing most of you have probably noticed.”

”The more you use the mask, the more uncomfortable it feels to take it off.”

Richard’s heart stirred.

He certainly had that feeling.

Whenever his shadow trained behind the veil wearing the mask, its outline would fade a shade every time he took it off.

It took his shadow about ten minutes after taking off the mask to shake off that sensation.

Hecate tapped her fingertips against the table.

”This indicates that you are beginning to resonate with your masks.”

Dionysus was the first to break the silence. ”What is the standard for resonance?”

”Wearing it long enough, using it often enough.”

”But most importantly, the actions you perform with the mask must align with the inherent meaning of the god’s name.”

Hecate emphasized this last point:

”If you take the Mask of Hermes to go mining, you wouldn’t resonate with it even if you dug for ten thousand years.”

”If you take the Dionysus mask to sit and meditate, you wouldn’t resonate with it even if you sat until your bones turned to dust.”

”The masks recognize actions. When what you do aligns perfectly with the domain of the god’s name, resonance occurs naturally.”

Richard’s mind raced.

Everything he had his shadow do while wearing the mask was directly tied to the primary domain of Hermes.

Having his shadow travel back and forth across the veil, using the mask’s bonuses to practice Silence and unsealing—two Spell Formulas that bridged the inside and outside of a seal.

Used this way, he wondered if it counted.

Hecate continued.

”When resonance reaches a certain level, you can borrow weapons, skills, or tools from mythology. This is ’Radiant Mask Shadow.’”

”In myth, Hermes has his Caduceus and winged sandals.

Heracles has his Great Club, poisoned arrows, and lion skin.

Nemesis has her Whip and scales.”