Ch. 2

The cellar creaked open as he considered the question. Then he laughed—he laughed and laughed. "Cost?" he stepped down into the dark. "It's worth everything that could ever be."

Horry awakens to the all-encompassing sensation of safety and wellbeing. Which is his first indication that something is utterly, horribly wrong.

He's alone, in a great stone hall. Row upon row of roll-out hospital style beds line each wall. Warm light streams through windows between each bed, covering everything in a soft glow. The otherwise hard-angled stone walls, ceiling, and floor appear welcoming and soft in the ethereal light. Two rows of beds to his left, occupying the entirety of one wall, stretches a metal door, and fifteen rows to his right is a canvas partition. The canvas is only a couple meters tall, though—far shorter than the ceiling. Harry can see that the hall seems to extend significantly beyond the 'wall' of canvas, off into the far distance.

Horry stands, touching his neck. The skin is smooth—unblemished. Curious. The floor is warm, too, like stepping on the dirt around a summer campfire. Not that he's ever been camping. Or sat next to a fire. The action of stepping on it nonetheless presses the idea into his thought. Not obtrusively, though—a gentle shove—a forced reminder. He pushes the thought out of his head and rubs a temple. He lingers to the window adjacent his bed, and his jaw drops.

The castle is enormous to the point of being nausea-inducing. Where the interior buzzes with warmth, the exterior evokes…hostility. It looks cold and sharp and forbidden. If he focuses his eyes on any individual turret or parapet for too long, the features in his peripheral vision seem to shift, drawing his eyes away, as if the castle is continuously slowly rotating, just out of view. Even the decorative gargoyles seem to be moving—always a meter or two off from where they last seemed to be. He focuses on the closest one, for some point of reference, and it turns its head, locking eyes with his.

He yelps, tripping backwards to the ground.

Panic rising, he hears echoes from the other side of the door, as someone approaches.

"Nope." Horry says, standing. He sprints to the canvas curtain, and tears it aside. The hall beyond has the same sort of disorienting wrongness as the castle, even though it's covered in that warm, welcoming glow. It also genuinely doesn't appear to end—beds upon beds line each wall out to the vanishing point in the infinite distance. He swallows, and sets off down the hall.

After fifty or so bed's worth of distance, he hears the metal door creak open. The echo reverberates down the hall. It occasionally echoes back and forth, until the sound is wholly swallowed by the unending passage. Horry slides to a stop, darts behind a bed, and peeks back towards the canvas. He hears voices, but they're featureless in the muted echoes.

"A rude awakening, hm?"

Horry screams. Spinning, he slides backwards across the floor crabstyle. Behind him, by the window is an ancient man. He has the ambiance of a wizened professor—all tweed coat and proper—but from a decades old style. He seems bemused, but his eyes are deadly serious.

"W-what?"

"Three times my boy, and this is the first. While I wish it had been later, we'll have to make due. Can't change the terms," he smiles, sadly.

"Don't trust the old man. Learn as much as you can. Don't pay too much attention to the nonsense about souls—they're deeply confused minds flailing for some semblance of order in an orderless world. And most important of all, befriend the librarian. Goodbye Ha—,"

"Mister Patter!"

Horry spins. A matronly woman wearing a hat with a red cross looks down upon him. Horry looks back to the window, and the ancient man is gone.

"What…what is going on! Who are you!" Horry, scoots further away from the woman.

Her face softens, "Ah," she says. "Everything is going to be alright Mister Patter,"

"That really doesn't answer any of my questions!" Horry stands, keeping his distance.

"My name is Madame Pamplemousses. I am the school nurse. You've been in an accident, but there was no lasting damage done, although I imagine it may have been…Mister Patter?"

Horry continues stepping backwards slowly, turns, and breaks into a run. A sudden bone rattling-crack knocks him to his feet, and in front of him stands a ridiculously ancient looking man. Where the curious professorly fellow had been old and wrinkly, the new man looks to carry the weight of millennia. His robes sag, and his hat—once pointy in a bygone era—dips below his shoulders.

"Horry—," he says, reaching out with a gnarled hand.

Horry hyperventilates, scooting back towards the nurse-looking woman—Pamplemousses?

"Horry, everything is going to be okay. You're in a safe place now. Possibly the safest place there is," the wizened man smiles. His teeth are grey and black. Horry hyperventilates faster.

"Alvin, this really isn't working," the woman sighs.

The old man—Alvin?—frowns, and a stick appears in his hand. He flicks at Horry, and then there is darkness.

Horry awakens again, in a panic, but he's alone. He's in a completely different room—stuffier—his bed but an alcove in a wall. Wood-paneled all around, it smells like old books, probably from the wall composed entirely of dusty novels at his feet. Light trickles in from a small, circular window, and a ladder leads to a basement—or maybe storage for more books? Horry edges to the window and looks out. He sees a generic forest, and the dull, grey, uninviting sky that can only be Britain.

Horry turns and runs a hand along the wall of books. Alphabetical. He nods, approvingly. He locates the sci-fi novel he had been reading at home and slides it out. But he freezes. And blinks. A crease runs along the first hundred or so pages.

A door—or rather, a wall he hadn't even realized was a door—rattles with a gentle knock. Horry jumps.

"Y-yes?" he says, retreating to the alcove-bed. Drawing the sheets around himself, he eyes the escape ladder to the basement.

"I apologize Mr. Patter, it seems we have begun entirely with the wrong boot, so to speak. May I open the hatch?"

"Um yes, but please don't come in," Horry says.

The door rattles again as the old man slides a hatch aside. Horry can only see the side of his face, in profile.

"H-how did you get my books!" Horry almost yells.

"Ah," says Alvin. "Well, I did not get your books. If I had to wager, the room did. But that probably does not answer your question either, now does it?"

Horry's grip of his book tightens.

"What is actually going on! Is…is my…is Uncle Vernors…? Where am I!"

The old man heaves a great sigh, and collects himself.

"Horry, when most people first learn that magick exists, they are stunned—flabbergasted—knocked to their britches, if you will. But learning that magick exists does not really answer any question. It raises more and more. That is something of a recurring theme of magick, you will learn,"

"The castle-was moving? That was magick?"

"Ah, yes. The castle has something of a mind of its own," Alvin smiles to himself.

"But, more importantly, learning of the existence of magick is like a peeling of the bandaid. This expression makes sense to you, yes?"

"Yes, sir, I think."

"It is sudden—shocking!—but the shock fades rather quickly, and it becomes the new normal. Like being told that everything is made of atoms, say. It's another true fact about the universe. Like electricity. Or those points of light in the night sky being yet more stars just like our sun."

"To be honest, sir, I don't completely follow. And…I think you still have not answered my question."

"Indeed." He says. Then, again, "Indeed. Horry, your uncle…" the man trails off.

Horry's heartrate jumps, and tears fill his eyes.

"Horry—," he pauses. A pipe appears in his hand, and he takes a deep puff. Then shakes his head. He continues:

"Horry, your uncle doesn't have a soul."

Horry stops. He blinks a tear away, "Wait, what?"

"Nor your aunt nor cousin. Nor anyone you knew, I think. It's a different sort of shocking, for sure," the old man continues, "Magick? It's a familiar sort of fantastical, but souls? Much heavier stuff. Many moggley-folk never really seem to get over the fact when they first learn it. They refuse to believe it, even!" the old man is rambling now.

"Wait, sir, my Uncle is okay?"

Alvin pauses. He swivels the pipe around in his mouth, and blinks.

"Heavens, my boy, you thought your uncle was dead?"

"Y…yes!" Horry cries, relieved—, "I saw, he was—the giant man—there was an explosion!"

"Goodness no, Horry. Poor Horbid couldn't kill a man, even one as foul and as, well, soulless as your uncle. It was rather unpleasant though, I imagine. I believe Horbid accidentally swapped most of the front of your foyer, including your Uncle, with a pocket of space comprised entirely of highly compressed bovine viscera. You'll learn more about that in your third year, I suspect…" Alvin trails off, lost in thought. As if suddenly remembering something, he continues:

"Anyway, it's important, Horry, to understand how our world works. You will see many a fantastical, magickal thing at this school, but few will talk about the soulless with anything other than derision. Most will not talk about them at all. It is not fair, but it is the way things are," Alvin frowns.

Horry realizes he has more than a thousand additional questions at this point, but one in particular seizes his thoughts:

"How do you know—that moggley-folk? Don't have souls?"

"Because I've seen heaven," said the old man, sorrowfully.