Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

The moment Lilith began to read, her eyes glazed over. “Lilith, how are you doing?” Tunem asked, only to be met with silence. His gaze hardened. “We’re aborting this test.” He slammed his fist against his chair, and a series of glowing lines spiraled towards Lilith. Suddenly, a series of lines spread out from the book, down Lilith’s arms and into the circle. As they progressed, the circle’s glow faded, and it began to suck in light rather than emit it. As the two series of lines met, there was a brilliant flash of light, and Tunem’s lines were overwhelmed.

Another one of the council members, a tall angelic woman began to chant. A soft, white light began to fill the room, and the progress of the line’s conversion was slowed…until the white light shifted to a dark color, streaks of light resembling lightning bolts rushing through it, speeding the conversion of the lines even more.

Do not interrupt. We welcome another into our circle.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

The woman quickly ceased her chant, the light fading. Two council members stood up, one unleashed a barrage of thousands of magical bullets towards Lilith, while the other began to recite a spell. The bullets were stopped as the fully corrupted lines leapt upwards in defense, swallowing the bullets whole before wrapping themselves around Lilith, writhing and lashing out against any stray shot. Space seemed to distort as the other council member finished his chant, and several lines were cut off, teleported out of sight. Seconds later, they oozed down from the ceiling, in through the walls and door, more numerous than before.

I believe we instructed you to stop. We do not wish to interfere with our new sibling’s playthings, but we will if we must.

“You, sir, should unmask.”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed it’s time. We have all laid aside disguise but you.”
“I wear no mask.”
“No mask? No mask!”

Nashra was staring at the scene with glassy eyes, mumbling under her breath. Vithi had Judy in a hug, uttering words of assurance, more to herself than Judy. Alex was focused on Tunem, who seemed to be focusing hard, beads of sweat rolling down his temples. As one, all the seated council members stood, and began to channel nauseatingly thick waves of magic into an elven woman, who began to recite a banishment spell.

While amusing, it won’t work. Sleep now and pray our new sibling will be lenient.

The magical energy suddenly went haywire, and one by one the council members fell unconscious.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa

The only noise in the chamber was Lilith robotically flipping the pages of the book. Nashra, Judy, Vithi, and Alex were huddled together, watching in terror as Lilith read.

Fear not, younglings. Should you not interfere, we will not harm you. We wish to be on good terms with our new sibling.

Notuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponusnotuponus

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa

Lilith snapped back into focus, feeling…refreshed. She was full of energy, like she’d just had a good night’s sleep. She briefly went to check the pop-ups she’d gotten before stopping in her tracks, looking at the surroundings. The room was in complete disarray, and the council members were all passed out on the floor. She quickly whirled around to the satellite magic circle and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that everyone there was safe. The inhabitants of the circle, well, where the circle used to be, didn't seem to share that relief, however. Aside from Judy, they shied back from Lilith’s gaze.

“Is that…you?” Judy squeaked.

“Yeah. It’s still me. What happened here?”

“Before I answer that, we need to know, do you feel any different? Urges, impulses, anything?”

“Perfectly fine. Between my Domains and my abilities, I should be safe. Of course, if I was insidiously insane instead of straight crazy insane, I’d say the same thing, so I’d watch me carefully. Without a closer look you’ll just have to take my word for it, though. I’ll answer any other questions you have, but I don’t think we’ll be able to get anywhere with it.”

“Good enough, I guess. The moment you opened the book you stopped responding. They tried to activate the circle but, something stopped them. They tried to fight it, but it mentioned something about welcoming a new sibling and not wanting to interfere with their playthings. They kept trying to stop things, but the thing just put them all to sleep. We’ve been here for about an hour after that, just…watching you read.”

Lilith frowned. “Great. Just great. I’m going to try to wake Tunem up, hopefully he’ll know what to do.” She walked over to where Tunem was and began shaking him. Almost immediately, he began to stir.

“Uh? Who…Lilith?!” Tunem bolted upright, scrambling backwards.

“It’s fine, I’m safe, feeling perfectly normal. I don’t know how this thing usually drives people mad, but I hope the fact that I’m not gibbering is a good sign. I’ll submit to a deep mental search later if you want, but you should probably wake up the other council members first.”

Tunem frowned. “I guess that’s a sound course of action for now. I hope you understand that we’re going to be in emergency mode for a bit, so you won’t be leaving the vault until we determine you to be safe. You’re right that not gibbering is a good sign, we haven’t had any cases of anyone going insane in any way other than ranting and raving, but we’ll be checking anyway.”

Lilith nodded. “Just so you know, I got the ability to replicate any magical formation or spell that’s been written down from just a glance, so if you have any of those you wouldn’t want me having, don’t let me see them. Just a heads-up.”

“Good to know. I’m going to go wake the rest up, you see if Vithi can conjure you a blindfold.”

After everyone was woken up, Tunem and the other council members stepped out of the room. Half an hour later, Tunem returned and led a blindfolded Lilith (as well as everyone else) to another room within the vault. Once everyone was inside, Tunem gave permission for the blindfold to be taken off, followed swiftly by Lilith taking it off. They were in a fairly large room that seemed to have been cleared out recently, judging by the patterns of dust on the floor.

“Alright”, Tunem said, “We’re going to have Kali here,” he motioned towards a bubbly-looking demonic woman “take a look at your mind while I look through your status.”

“Hi there!” Kali waved at them. “Name’s Kali, I’m a succubus and the chief of intelligence for the Protectorate.” To the surprise of Lilith and Judy, Kali was wearing a long-sleeve shirt and pants, and generally looked like your average girl-next-door, if you could put aside the bat wings and heart-tipped tail. Seeing their faces, she smirked. “Just because succubi have a reputation on Earth doesn’t mean we’re all go mode all the time. In fact, it’s prohibited to be in go mode in public. Too distracting. Anyway, we’ll start when you’re ready, just let us know.”

Lilith nodded. “I got an ability that makes ‘weak-minded’ people go insane upon reading my mind,” she said, “I can turn it off if you want, but I figured I’d let you know and give you the option first.”

Kali laughed. “No problem there. I’m not the head of the Protectorate’s intelligence department for nothing. I’ll back out if I feel it’s getting too much but go ahead and leave it on for now.”

“Understood. Ready when you are, then.”

Kali nodded, stepping close to Lilith and placing a finger on Lilith’s forehead. “Oooh, you weren’t kidding, that’s nasty. Alright, I’m good. This’ll take a bit, but feel free to talk with Tunem and everyone else while I look through this.” She removed the finger and sat down in nearby chair. Glancing at Lilith’s slightly confused expression, a mischievous smile lit her face. “What, expecting more? Well, if you’re a good girl, I wouldn’t be opposed to giving you a kiss later.”

Lilith started, blushing. “No, I, uh, I just thought you would to stay in contact with me the whole time, so I was surprised. That’s all.”

Kali laughed. “I’m just messing with you,” she said, face becoming serious. “Anyway, I’m going to have to focus on this, so don’t expect me to do much talking until I’m done.”

At this, Tunem cleared his throat. “If that’s the case, I’m going to perform some identification spells and see if I can find anything. Go ahead and find a seat.”

Lilith found a chair and sat down, and Tunem began chanting in a low voice, and then began speaking with the council members (sans Kali) after he finished. Nashra gave Lilith a skeptical glance and retreated to the corner of the room, where she laid down and proceeded to fall asleep. Vithi and Alex approached Lilith, where they began to uneasily chat with her. About ten minutes later, Kali came out of her trance, and began to go speak with Tunem and the others. At this point, Vithi excused herself from the conversation, and walked towards Tunem as well, leaving just Alex and Lilith.

“H-hey, so…I, uh, well, can we…talk later? Just you and me? I just need an hour, and then we’ll be done.” Alex blushed and looked away. “I…have some things I need to work out.”

Lilith blinked. “Yeah, sure. No problem at all. When were you thinking?”

“The sooner the better, but it should probably wait until we get out of the vault. Got, uh, bigger fish to fry.”

“Sure. Let me know whenever you’re ready.”

Alex nodded and withdrew. Judy came up to Lilith, giving her a hug. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine. How about you? Are you sure you should be trusting me after everything? I mean, I feel fine but right now it’s just my word.”

“They’ve finished their analysis and haven’t immediately come to get rid of you. As far as I’m concerned, that means you’re safe enough for now. Honestly, I’m more concerned about how we’re going to deal with your parents. Things just keep getting crazier and crazier with you, huh? How am I gonna tell them that their son, who is now their daughter, is also an eldritch god? It’ll make Thanksgiving awkward for sure!”

Tunem cleared his throat. “Well, I’ve got good news and bad news in that regard. The good news is that you won’t have to deal with that. The bad news is that we can’t afford to let you leave this school for the time being. Either of you.”

Fighterman481

Alright this is a whopper of a chapter. So, this is simultaneously the most and least fun I had writing a chapter. It was the most fun because there was a lot that went into the small things, and honestly I'm decently happy how the main scene turned out. It was the least fun because the lot going into the small things was also a lot of work. For instance, most of those jumbles of letters are ciphers. It's been months since I wrote this particular section, so I don't remember *exactly* what type and what exactly the keys were, but I believe the key was some variation of 'thekinginyellow'.

You're not really missing a lot in those ciphers, though. It's basically the system just freaking out because it has no clue how to classify any of this.

Which is really important. Remember that the eldritch abilities come from outside the system's sphere of influence, and this causes a lot of potential problems.

There's a lot more to unpack in this chapter as well. Full disclosure, the prose in italics isn't mine. It's what little we have of the play The King in Yellow, although the "notuponus" section I took a few creative liberties with.

So, the Council vs the Elder Gods. Honestly there was only one way that would ever go down. They might have had a shot if it was against a singular Elder God. It was not. Now, the question you should be asking right now is "what separates Lilith from the other Perfect Chimeras?" The Council clearly wasn't sure exactly what would happen if she read The King in Yellow, so that implies that they either don't have much contact with/knowledge of Perfect Chimeras, or that the other Perfect Chimeras haven't received a welcome like this. And while the former is at least somewhat true, the latter can't be discounted.

That aside, a bit more knowledge on what a Perfect Chimera is. As is somewhat touched on, a Perfect Chimera is something that logically should not exist. It has multiple mutually exclusive Domains, and yet still functions. The tag theory proposed by Help Yourself is pretty accurate, although it doesn't paint the full picture of what the repercussions of that are. Keep this in the back of your mind, though, it'll be important later.

And then, we have the abilities gained from reading the book. As things stand in-universe, King's Knowledge is undoubtedly the most absurdly powerful ability anyone has. It might not seem like anything special, but there's some really funky stuff going on with it. Most of it is under the hood of the magic system, which we also won't touch on until later. Even without the under the hood jank, simply being able to combine abilities is something that no one else has, and this gives Lilith a huge edge.

Let's talk a bit more about people, though. Kali's introduced in this chapter. I like Kali. That's...about it for now, but I felt I should at least mention her.

And then Lilith choosing to tell Tunem about her ability to memorize formations like that. Her thought process was something along the lines of 'it'll help prove my honesty', but I don't think it was strictly necessary. It just felt like what she would do in the situation, so that's what I went with.