Chapter Text
The Bureau of the Architect was busy today, the long halls packed with hopeful applicants and overworked administrators hurrying back and forth. Some carried new concepts in their hands, or led them through the building on leashes. It was a marvellous display of the breadth and depth of Amaurotine ingenuity – but an incredible nuisance to navigate though.
Despite this, Hythlodaeus threaded his way through it all very deftly, occasionally offering a tactful “Pardon me” or “Would you mind?”. He needn’t have bothered. In the Bureau, the chief architect can go where he pleases.
Azem scampered close behind him, keeping up with the gaps he created in the crowds. I followed behind her at a slightly more dignified pace, trusting that my Convocation mask would encourage people to make some space. An unfounded trust, it turned out, as I found myself repeatedly jostled and blocked. I quickened my step to keep up.
“I still don’t see what your problem is,” Azem called to me over the throng. “It’s an adorable little concept.”
“It’s ridiculous,” I shot back. “Artless. An indecisively chimeric form with no clear purpose. Neither a true companion creature nor a genuinely independent wild animal. The worst of both worlds.”
“I think you’re just grumpy because it didn’t like you,” Azem said.
“It’s not as if I didn’t try,” I said. This was entirely true. The creature had enthusiastically rubbed its head against Azem’s outstretched hand and even curled up in Hythlodaeus’ lap for a time. Yet, when I tried to pick it up, it bit my hand and fled under a nearby desk.
“I told you,” Hythlodaeus said. “You have to let it come to you on its own terms.”
“I called to it! It didn’t even acknowledge me.”
“On its own terms, my friend. In its own time.”
I shook my head. “Ridiculous. A pet should do as it is told. If I were you, Hythlodaeus, I’d reject the whole concept out of hand for being a frivolous waste of time and aether.”
Hythlodaeus had promised us a tour of some of the most interesting pending concepts at the Bureau. This had amounted in practice to an almost scandalously diverse range of fabrics, some assorted aetheric tools (admittedly ingenious), and a selection of highly questionable life forms – including the useless creature we had just seen. It had crossed my mind more than once to leave early, but Hythlodaeus had a way of guilting me into compliance. Besides, he had promised a “special surprise” at the end. A surprise to which, I was assured, he was now taking us.
Hythlodaeus led us out of the public section of the building and down into the basement. This section of the Bureau was for employees only – although, of course, visiting members of the Convocation of Fourteen were fully entitled to inspect the premises. The doorman at the top of the stairs took one look at my mask and bowed respectfully as we passed.
The basement corridors were mercifully quiet, granting me a moment to compose myself after the chaos of the last few hours. Even Azem was quiet for once, presumably consumed with anticipation for this coming final revelation.
“Now this,” said Hythlodaeus as the workshop doors swung open, “is a bit of a mystery. I promised you something unusual, did I not?”
It was unusual. It was an exceptionally large contraption, taller than any of the three of us. It stretched around the four walls of the room, leaving just enough space in front of the door for us to step into the open space in the centre of the room. Golden pipes and valves and tanks were etched with intricate angular filigree; a selection of control interfaces displayed rapidly changing charts and graphs that were, at least on first glance, indecipherable.
“What is it?” I asked. “And don’t say ‘a mystery’.”
He shrugged, smiling. “I really don’t know. It was found amid the personal effects of a fellow named Perdix, who returned to the star just a few days ago. He was an inventor; a bit of an eccentric, by all accounts.”
“Sounds like an interesting fellow,” Azem said.
“Sounds like a troublemaker,” I said.
She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes.”
“We have more than a few of his concepts registered on file here,” continued Hythlodaeus, “but apparently his life’s work did not include documenting the functionality of any of his abandoned prototypes. Some we were able to make sense of quite quickly; others, like this one, are in storage until we can puzzle them out.”
I looked the device over in more detail. One of the tanks caught my eye. “Is that an aetheric reservoir? It’s exceptionally large.”
Hythlodaeus nodded. “I think so. This whole machine uses a very large amount of power, which is one of the reasons we’re keeping it out of the way until we understand it better.”
Azem squinted at one of the displays and tapped a few buttons experimentally. “This looks like a targeting system, maybe?”
“Leave it alone!” I snapped. “What if it’s some sort of weapon?”
She pointed to a dish-shaped structure protruding from one of the upper corners of the device. “That looks like an output focusing array, at the end of the reaction chain. And it’s pointing inwards, right at those antennae there. It wouldn’t be a very good weapon if it pointed back at itself, now would it?”
I looked at the dish. Annoyingly, she appeared to be correct. “I suppose it could be the output mechanism,” I allowed.
“Perdix didn’t build weapons,” Hythlodaeus said, crossing the room to take a closer look at the putative focuser. “Or at least, he never registered any with us. He made toys, mostly, and toy-making tools. I spoke to a couple of people who knew him. They said he was a whimsical sort, but basically interested in making the world a happier place.”
“Some toy,” I said. “It looks like it burns enough aether to blow a hole in the wall.”
At this point, I realised I had made the critical error of taking my eye off Azem, who had gone suspiciously quiet.
I turned to see what she was doing, but it was too late.
“Hey,” she said. “I think I found the ‘on’ button!”
And before I could even begin to scold her for the terrible idea that I knew was forming in her head, she pushed it.
The machine whirred to life. There was a great harmonic chorus of aethereal sound, and the focusing dish began to crackle with energy.
Hythlodaeus was standing directly in front of it. There was nothing else to be done. Protective instincts taking over, I rushed forward and shoved him out of the way.
The dish glowed bright white, made a loud pop noise like an electric spark, and pumped a burst of aether directly into my chest.
It was a curiously painless experience. In fact, it felt like nothing at all.
“Are you all right?” asked Azem in the silence that followed.
“No thanks to you, hero,” I growled. “That was an exceptionally stupid thing to do, even by your standards.”
She shrugged. “You’d be amazed how many mysterious machines I’ve seen in my time. Best way to figure out what they do is to let them do it.”
“I’m very grateful to you for rescuing me, anyway,” said Hythlodaeus. “You’re sure you’re in full working order?”
I patted myself down experimentally. “Everything seems fine.” I paused and blinked. For a moment, it had seemed as if the room was moving around me. “I’m a little light-headed, perhaps.”
Azem and Hythlodaeus looked at each other. Then, in perfect synchrony, they looked back at me.
“What?” I asked, annoyed.
Hythlodaeus cleared his throat nervously. “You appear to be… shrinking.”
Another sudden rush of vertigo overtook me. The room wasn’t moving around me. My perspective was shifting. Downwards.
“Azem! What have you done?”
She shook her head and started pushing more buttons. “Maybe I can reverse the process…”
“Don’t you dare! Get your hands off that thing.” My mask was coming loose, untethering from my facial features, and my cowl began to hang down over my eyes. Apparently my clothes weren’t shrinking with me. “Don’t push any more buttons until you know how this thing works.”
A moment later, my hood collapsed over my face entirely, and I was completely lost inside my own robes. Disoriented, I dropped to my hands and knees as the fabric settled over me. I tried to channel some aether of my own to halt or reverse the process, but… I couldn’t. Something was blocking me. My body contorted and reshaped itself around me, and all I could do was groan and accept it. My skin felt… itchy.
Eventually, the changes seemed to stop. My robes pressed down heavily on my tiny, transmuted form, blocking out all light, but also mercifully shielding me from view. I was naked and transformed in front of my friends. The indignity of it.
“Azem?” I called out. “Hythlodaeus? Are you still th-?”
I stopped mid-sentence. My voice was… different. Higher-pitched. I sounded like a child, or some pathetically twee familiar.
“We’re here, my friend,” said Hythlodaeus. “Hold on. Let’s get you out of there…”
“No!” I shouted, my indignation still surely palpable despite the ridiculous timbre of my voice. “No. I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“Oh, come on, Hades,” said Azem, the one person who still insisted on using my given name instead of my proper title. “It’s hardly the first time we’ve seen you out of your robes.”
“I will extract myself from this. I don’t need your help.”
And so I did. It took a few attempts to find my way out of it, but eventually I pushed and wriggled my way out and emerged back into the light of the workshop.
Hythlodaeus’ jaw dropped. Azem burst into a fit of giggles.
“I’m glad to see you’re treating this with the seriousness it deserves,” I said. “I have been transformed against my will and I can’t even revert it! It’s hardly an amusing situation.”
She could barely breathe. “I’m sorry. It’s just – you’re just – and you sound so – it’s all just too perfect!” She bent nearly double over the control console, hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking.
“It leaves a unique impression, my friend,” Hythlodaeus said. I could see very clearly that even he was struggling to repress a smile. “But don’t worry, we’ll have it fixed in no time at all.”
“What is it about my appearance that is so amusing?” I asked.
He coughed and took a deep breath. “Perhaps I’d better show you.” He glanced around the room, casting about for some suitable raw material. Eventually his gaze landed on a stray aetherometer, which he picked up, deconstructed and reformed into a small hand mirror. He knelt down and held it out for me to look into. “See for yourself.”
I was somewhat surprised to realise that I was still on all fours, and could not comfortably stand upright. In spite of this, I managed to crawl forward to look at myself.
The visage in the mirror was horrifying… and horrifyingly familiar. Bright white fur covered my entire face – my entire body – and there were bizarre whiskers protruding from either side of my flat pink nose. My ears were pointed and had relocated themselves to the top of my head. My eyes were still the same vibrant gold as ever, but my pupils were tall, narrow ovals. And behind my head was a quadrupedal body, with a long, thin tail that swished back and forth entirely out of my control.
I let out a quiet but dignified gasp. I had been transformed into the exact same type of creature Hythlodaeus had last shown us.
“No…” I murmured. “I’m a cat!”