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Everything had been going according to plan. Gertrude was out of the picture. He’d found a new Archivist who didn’t know anything and would be easy to manipulate. And who was already Marked by the Web. And the Eye, by now, as well. The next step had been to introduce him to the Corruption. It should have been easy enough. Have Jane Prentiss invade the Institute with her worms as she was trying to complete her Ritual in the tunnels, be just unhelpful enough that the situation gets out of hand without raising too much suspicion, make sure the Archivist doesn’t actually die and the Ritual isn’t completed. Turns out he really hadn’t needed to worry about that last part. Foiled by some CO2. It was, frankly, ridiculous. He blamed himself for overestimating the Corruption. He really should have known better. He should have Known better. He also blamed the Spiral for making the team aware of the worms’ weakness, but it did seem to be well on its way to Marking the Archivist, so that part wasn’t all bad. What really annoyed him, though, was that Prentiss hadn’t even been stopped thanks to the great work of his team, if anything, quite the opposite. Jon had just happened to smash through that shelf, right into the tunnels, forcing Jane to attack before she was ready, and as Elias had been watching this disaster from his office it had been all too clear that it was only dumb luck that the Archival staff had taken that left turn out of the Archives instead of going right to seek shelter in the safe room. Not long after that they had pulled the fire alarm to evacuate the building and someone else, who just genuinely thought it was a fire, had had the presence of mind to turn on the fire suppression system manually before leaving the building. Within moments all the worms had been dead, and Elias had been forced to wait outside, because he may have been the 100-year-old Avatar of an omniscient Fear Entity, but he still required oxygen. And the Corruption hadn’t managed to put so much as a scratch on the Archivist and everyone had made it out safely and the not-them that had been bound to that table in Artefact Storage had been another casualty of the CO2. He should have just pretended to install that damn fire suppressant, but the Archivist could be truly annoying when he put his mind to it and Elias had just wanted to put a stop to those incessant passive-aggressive emails. Well, surely there would come more chances for the Archivist to be Marked by the Corruption. Jane Prentiss might have been a bust, but there were many… bugs in the… garden? Anyway. Next up he would have the Archivist stop the Unknowing and, though he held no respect for the Stranger, it was undeniable that they were more capable than the Corruption. Nothing would go wrong this time.
Nothing had gone wrong with the Unknowing plan. Because they hadn’t even made it that far but, even so, Elias was facing a new setback. His idiot employees had all gone exploring in the tunnels!? The creepy, full-of-dead-worms tunnels!!! And in doing so had somehow managed to stumble across Gertrude’s body. Now his Archivist was a paranoid wreck and the Institute was being investigated by the police. Not that he was in any danger from them. It was clear that they’d only sent out an officer to investigate for appearances sake and, although the woman who was on the case seemed both determined and competent, they could do nothing against the Institute without Elias allowing it. No, the police were just an annoyance. It was the effect finding the body had had on the Archivist that was cause for concern, and even more so the fact that he’d taken several of the Tapes they’d found with the body before the police could confiscate them as evidence. Tapes that held certain information that should have been kept well away from the Archivist until much later on in the game. And because of the tunnels being something of a blind spot for him Jon had managed to listen to several of them before Elias had been able to subtly make them disappear. This was a considerable setback, but at least he hadn’t come across the one detailing how to quit the Institute, nor any of the Tapes that mentioned the Rituals being doomed to failure regardless of intervention, so the Unknowing plan was still on. He would have to change some of the details – and he was still trying to fit in a new attempt with the Corruption somewhere in his Archivist’s jam-packed Entity Marking schedule – but the situation was still salvageable.
That is, until they found Jurgen Leitener in the tunnels as well. That stupid, idiot, motherfucking Jurgen Leitener! GOD DAMN FOOL, BOOK COLLECTING, DUST EATING, RAT, OLD BASTARD, SHITHEAD, IDIOT, AVATAR OF THE WHORE! BIGGEST CLOWN IN THE CIRCUS, LAUGHED OUT OF TOWN, COWBOY, MOTHERFUCKING JURGEN LEITNER!!! And, okay, yeah, maybe Elias had overreacted just a little bit to the news that he’d been living in the tunnels this whole time, but that steel pipe had been so conveniently nearby and really, who could blame him for wanting to get rid of the bastard? Even if he wouldn’t have ruined the Plan by telling Jon too much too soon he just made things worse by his very presence, so, no, Elias didn’t regret killing the bastard, but the fact that his Archivist had fled the Institute and was now wanted for murder was… inconvenient. Typical of Jurgen Leitener to mess everything up, really. But Elias was nothing if not resourceful and he would take full advantage of the situation. The fact that Jon had left the Archives to go live… with his ex-girlfriend? – it was beyond Elias how he’d managed to get together with a girl like Georgie Barker, but that was hardly of importance – meant that Elias had full control over which Statements he read and there would be no further mishaps with premature information. And what was even better was that the cop that had been assigned to bring Jon in was and Avatar of the Hunt. Unknowingly, but strongly enough that she’d be able to Mark the Archivist for the Entity. As long as she didn’t kill him first, of course.
The Hunter did return the Archivist to him alive and Marked. Confessing to murder was a small price to pay for it and he ended up with two new, useful pawns under his thumb. And he’d even managed to get his hands on that Slaughter aligned Melanie King, who already hated Jon. Keep them coped up together and it was only a matter of time before she’d stab him and that’d be another Entity to check off the list. It was coming along nicely. Everyone were working hard to find out everything they could about the Unknowing and how to stop it. Jon had increased the amounts of Statements he’d get through in a day; Martin was making himself useful in more ways than by making tea, for once; Sasha was proving once again that he’d made the right choice making Jon the Archivist instead of her, as she made great headway on the case: she was hard to manipulate already and Elias shuddered to think about her with the Archivist’s powers; Tim had brought in his brother, who had had first-hand experience with the Stranger and was happy to help out but vehemently refused Elias’s job offer; Basira was well on her way to having read every book in their library even vaguely related to anything that might be related to the Stranger or rituals; Daisy was obediently carrying out his orders; and Melanie, well, to be honest Melanie was still mostly plotting new assassination attempts on Elias, but she was also prone to fits of rage so she’d serve her purpose and Mark Jon soon enough.
-*-*-
“What?” The word was flat and void of all emotion, as Elias stared in shock at the Archival team showing up to the site of the Unknowing several hours after the Ritual had already failed on its own. When they’d left the Institute that morning, they had all been so confident. They’d had a plan, they’d had explosives, they’d known where the Ritual was to take place and they’d been determined to stop it. And then they END UP GETTING LOST ON THEIR WAY THERE!?!?!?!?!? The sheer incompetence of these people! The shock slowly subsided from Elias, only to be replaced by frustration and bewilderment. He let out a muffled scream, burying his face in his hands. On the bright side, he noticed when he returned his Gaze to his employees, Melanie had been disappointed at missing out on some good violence so she’d finally stabbed Jon “as compensation” and the group was now heading to the A&E.
After that the Archival team had decided to take some “well deserved” time off. This had not been approved by Elias, who most certainly didn’t consider it deserved even a little bit. But he was already mad enough at them that he didn’t want to see their dumb faces anymore, so he let it slide for the time being. Although, he drew the line at making it a payed vacation, something that would have dire consequences for Tim, who had gone on a shopping spree to celebrate the mission succeeding without them having to do anything (as well as Jon being stabbed, but he kept that to himself). Elias spent that week pointedly ignoring his Archival team, which was easier said than done after all the time he’d spent keeping tabs on them. First, he distracted himself by Observing his other staff. He got bored of that within minutes. Nothing interesting happened at the Magnus Institute outside of the Archives. And occasionally Artifact Storage, but most of the time the staff were painfully careful when handling the Artifacts and didn’t accidentally activate them or use them against each other in escalated office drama. A bit of a waste, if you asked Elias. When watching his employees turned out to be futile in terms of distraction, he tried to Watch Peter instead. Peter was nowhere to be Seen, probably off sulking in the Lonely somewhere. Elias considered filing for another divorce but decided to try calling him first. He was reasonable like that. The call went to voicemail.
“Peter, I require you at the Institute at your earliest possible convenience. If you’re here before Wednesday, I’ll let you have one of my Archive employees.” After having hung up, Elias was happy to discover that the Archive staff’s sudden absence had caused some massive scheduling errors, and happily went to work on fixing that. He was just finishing up, several hours later, when Peter appeared in his office.
“I want Martin Blackwood,” he declared as a greeting. Of course, Elias had already known Peter had had his eye on him for a while.
“Of course,” Elias said smugly. If Peter indoctrinated Martin into the lonely it would be child’s play to bait the Archivist into being Marked. On top of that Peter proved to be a sufficient distraction from his incompetent employees. So much so, in fact, that Elias was entirely caught off guard when Monday rolled around and the Archive team returned to work with several police officers, there to arrest Elias for murder. Nevertheless, he decided a change of scenery would do him some good after these last disastrous months and went with them willingly, leaving Peter in charge of the Institute. Peter was none too pleased about that arrangement seeing as being in a role of leadership usually included human interaction, and if there was one thing Peter hated more than talking to people it was talking to people who he didn’t know very well, but who nonetheless looked to him for orders. That was why the crew of the Tundra had such a low turnover.
Prison was fine. It probably wouldn’t have been his first choice of destination for a vacation, but he did appreciate the irony of his employees celebrating getting rid of him, even though he could walk out any time he wanted. And, as an extra bonus, one of the guards stationed outside his cell shared his name. Kinda looked like him too – like he used to look. And of course, poor Jonah had no idea why Elias had taken a special interest in him.
But, as fun as playing games with the guards were, he did have important business to attend to. There were still nine fears left for the Archivist to be Marked by, and he was running out of time to pull this off before the full emergence of the Extinction. It was easy enough to find some weak-willed Avatars of the Corruption, the Flesh and the Stranger and subtly convince them to attack the Institute, which would surely get Jon caught in the crossfire. And if that didn’t work out the first time around, he had the resources to make it happen as many times as needed. He absolutely delighted in insinuating to the Detective that the Dark would be attempting a Ritual and then watch her and the Archivist run right off to Ny-Ålesund to stop it. The fact that Jon had truly gone out of his way to get himself Marked, even when they found the place all but empty made it worth being punched in the face the next time she visited. He then instructed Peter to use the favour he was owed by Simon Fairchild to get him to the Institute and make sure he didn’t leave until the Archivist was marked by the Vast. The Desolation was a bit trickier. Of course, he could have them attacking the Institute as well, but he really wasn’t keen on ignition sources in the Archives. It really would put quite the damper on his plans if the whole place burned down. But it was an easy fix to have someone attack Jon on his way to or from work – on one of the rare occasions he actually left – although he decided to hold off on it a little longer to make sure the encounter wouldn’t end up being fatal. The Buried required a different approach as it didn’t have a whole lot of Avatars to pick and choose from. However, there was a perfectly good Buried-aligned Leitener sitting in Artifact Storage and Elias was confident that he would be able to get his Archivist to read it, sooner or later, even with his… aversion to the books. The End was the most difficult. He would have to wait to orchestrate an encounter with it or he’d probably just end up with a dead Archivist, but it would be dangerous to wait for too long as well. A dead Archivist would be bad, but a too powerful Archivist would be worse. Jon might end up Knowing too much and be able to see it coming and thereby stop i– oh, who was he kidding, this was Jon he was talking about, he was dense enough to not realise what was going on, even with all of the Universe’s infinite knowledge at his fingertips. No, the issue lay in him being able to manifest his powers enough before time started to run out.
It was a disappointment to return to the Institute without having made much progress. Apparently, Martin had proven much less willing to Isolate himself than Peter had anticipated and because of that Peter hadn’t even gotten around to marking the Archivist. He had wanted to “use their feelings against each other” to “amplify their loneliness” or something but they had defeated him with the power of open communication, leaving Peter in quite the mood and filing for another divorce on the grounds of a “defective product”. At least Fairchild had done his job properly, which wasn’t something Elias could say about him often.
This still left him with another seven Entities, which was, frankly, absurd, given how many chances he’d given some of them to leave their Mark. But apparently, they were all criminally incompetent. No, if you wanted something done you had to do it yourself, or, when you couldn’t, at least manipulate your game pieces with as great detail as the Web.