Chapter Text
It Knows You was watching.
It looked down at it’s ruined earth and watched. It did not understand. It never would, it just watched.
It was watching a child, a girl, sitting on the ground, and looking at it. However much it watched, it did not like being looked at.
So it Asked.
Why must you stare so?
The girl did not hear it. She simply continued staring, an expression of puzzlement on her face.
Curiosity. It could use that.
It promised her answers, if only she went to the Panopticon.
It sent a friend, someone who would push her to grow, to learn. Even when it lost it’s Archivist, when it started fading from the world, into a thousand others, and the friend vanished into It Is Lies, it promised her.
And she went. She went to the City-of-Magnus and searched.
She wandered, and even when The Mother Of Puppets tried to steal her, she did not listen to it.
It was as if she could not hear them. So It Knows You tried again, tried to talk.
What do you wish?
She sought answers. Answers It Knows You could provide, and so it let The Mother confuse her, twist the world around her until it dipped unnervingly into Es Mentiras, but still she did not answer.
It did not like this, this ignoring. That was the antithesis of it. It wanted her to Know. IT WANTED A PUPIL.
But however it tried to touch her, she did not listen.
Then the girl made a deal with the Mother. Asking The Mother to let her go until she could reach The-Place-Of-Knowing, the place that its’ servants called the Panopticon.
And the girl went. And the girl saw the tear, where it was leaving, where all of them were leaving, and she saw the broken bodies of its’ Archivist, and its’ Pupil, and finally, finally she heard it.
And it screamed. Screamed questions, answers, more information than a human could process.
Then she was gone. Stolen by The Mother.
It did not like this.
The girl was its. The girl wanted to Know. But she went to the Mother?
Through The Place-of-Spider’s rift.
And then it was ripped apart, broken into a thousand pieces, and it knew it would never be whole again.
And then it Woke.
Ever since Elsie was a child, she loved to stare at the sky. The clouds were fascinating, with their twisting wisps of white, and the sky consumed her mind; and she truly loved them. Then she learned about how they were made, why the sky was blue, and she found that she loved the sky even more. Then she learned again, and again, and again. She discovered that the feeling of Knowing, of learning, was an addiction, something she needed more of.
So Elsie Learned. Even when the sky turned black, even when there was an Eye constantly watching her, she learned.
She learned about the Places, about how to combat them, and Elsie helped people. For the years that the Eye did not fade, that the Places grew ever stronger, she helped, and learned.
And then Elsie met Noa. They were a couple of years older than her, and Elsie still remembered their first meeting.
Elsie sat on the ground, drawing loops and turns in the dirt. She’d been in one of the Places that tried to twist her mind, and drawing was one of the few things that was making sense.
It helped, to have things that wouldn’t change, that wouldn’t corrupt and die, or become something so utterly Wrong that she wanted to scream. But Elsie did not scream. Whenever one of the people she was dragging out of a Place screamed, the Place seemed happier, fuller. And even at 12 years old, she knew that was wrong.
The Places should not be happy. That was Elsie’s first rule.
As she drew, someone crouched in front of her. A teen, maybe 15 or 16, with choppy brown hair and green eyes, and they waved a hand in front of Elsie’s face.
”You alright kid? I know Es Mentiras can be a bitch.” The teen had an accent that Elsie couldn’t quite place, but it sounded American.
Elsie nodded, not wanting to speak to the weird teen, and very much hoping they would leave, but they just laughed, plopping down beside Elsie and offering a hand to shake.
”Noa Harrison, they/them. Pleasure to meet you. What’s your name?”
Elsie looked at their hand suspiciously, before shaking it slowly. “I’m Elspeth. But I go by Elsie. She/her.”
Noa smiled, and then leaned back, staring at the sky. “Alright. Nice to meetcha Elsie.”
Elsie nodded, then turned to Noa. “What did you mean by Es Mentiras? Not the translation-my mum insisted on Spanish, but why did you call the Place that?”
Noa smiled at the question, and soon Elsie had a very thorough explanation of the fears, and how they worked.
Noa and Elsie became something like siblings after that, mostly because Noa just Knew so much stuff that Elsie couldn’t resist staying close by.
One of Elsie’s fondest memories with them was a day, almost a year after they met.
Noa had been teaching Elsie about chlorophyll, and how the plants had worked when there was sunlight, and Elsie had asked about how they worked now.
Noa had paused for a second, before devolving into a long explanation on how the old laws of physics didn’t work, but that that didn’t necessarily mean that there weren’t any laws. They had explained that now, things generally worked on the logic of a nightmare, which practically meant that while the rules changed, they were fairly easy to figure out if you thought for a bit.
That had been one of the last times Elsie saw Noa wearing short sleeves.
The last time Elsie saw Noa had been just outside of a Place, and right before eye’s pupil had vanished.
They were crying. She remembered that well, because Noa hardly ever cried.
When Elsie had come over to check, Noa had wiped their tears, and faced Elsie.
”It’s time for you to Know on your own, little sister.” They had said those words, Elsie remembered exactly. She had been confused, why was Noa leaving, what was going on, and she tried to ask those questions, but Noa had just shaken their head and turned. The door they walked into was yellow. It locked behind them. Elsie tried to open the door, to get her sibling back, but it never opened. Soon after she found the note. Noa told her to go to the Panopoticon, that all her answers would be there.
So Elsie was in London, staring at the sky.
And the next thing she knew, she was walking through a dark grey door, in a house that looked more spider than house. Or was it a tower, with three dead bodies?
It didn’t matter.
Weird doors…Maybe she could find her sibling.
Then everything faded to a warm, pulsing red.