Katalepsis VI: "And Less Pleasant Places" (part 5)
The last leg of this arc centers around a fact-finding mission sent into the chronically condemned high-rise known as Glasswick Tower. They decide to send Praem alone, with Evelyn assuming direct control and the others clustered around her scrying pool. Twil keeps saying she wants to go herself, but the others countermand that; they know from experience that Twil isn't spell-proof the way that she's bullet-proof, and whatever weird bullshit Alexander was cooking up in there is as likely to require a saving throw as an attack roll. If Praem's body gets destroyed, meanwhile, it's just a temporary inconvenience.
As for what they expect to find, Twil has a disconcerting suggestion:
Katalepsis 6.7
"Maybe Alexander's in there?" Twil suggested.
"He's dead. I killed him," I said.
She shrugged wide. "Seriously? We never saw a corpse, and the big fucko zombie woman made off like a ghost afterward, right? Tch, it's like you lot don't even have basic instincts. If you don't see the kill, it might have run off."
"Don't say that. Twil, don't say that." I shook my head and sighed. "That is the last thought I needed preying on my mind right now, please."
Stack made it sound like she and her boss have both written Alexander off as dead, so I've been working under the assumption that he is in fact dead. However, at the time of his death, it DID occur to me that he might have, somehow, barely survived, albeit in a state that'll probably never be able to fully heal. The truth ends up being...well, sort of complicated, but sort of not.
...
...also, it didn't occur to me until I started typing up this review, but I'm actually not sure why they decide to go raid Glasswick Tower at this point. They're trying to deal with the Fake Lozzie. They don't have any particular reason to think it would be hanging out there, as opposed to any other site associated with Lozzie's human family. I might have to take back what I said about the plotting of this arc being especially tight, there are more than a few places where the story feels like it's on rails.
I guess they don't have any better leads to follow than that tower, to be fair, but still. Granted, Evelyn also seems to be outraged that there are still works of other mages in "her" city, so the motives for this next expedition might just be coming from Evelyn, with Heather being in it in case of the longshot that it does end up connecting to Lozzie.
The fact that it does, in fact, end up connecting to Fake Lozzie despite the lack of evidence pointing to that beforehand for the girls to have been acting on is actually another mark against the plotting.
Oh well.
...
Anyway, Praem has been periodically attracting the reader's attention to herself throughout this arc. Sort of building up or foreshadowing her importance to the end. Her proactivity and verbosity have both continued to increase since the winter break arc, and her personality seems to be getting more complex. Or at least, she's gaining the ability to express more of her complexities than she could before.
The author manages to capture this while keeping Praem uncanny and alien. Still preserving some ambiguity about whether Praem is actually undergoing character development, or just perfecting her human mimicry to an eerie conclusion.
Katalepsis 6.3
"Take Praem if you must," Evelyn said. She clacked over to us but didn't sit down, tossed an open packet of chocolate digestives onto the table and extracted one for herself. "This is important. Find out what the necromancer is doing, or where she's gone. Today."
"Breaking and entering," Praem intoned.
Twil jumped in her seat, startled, then frowned at the doll-demon. "Bloody hell. She's too quiet, I keep forgetting she's there."
"I am precisely as quiet as I wish," Praem said. Twil frowned at her, the suspicion of a canine for an unknown animal.
"Don't engage with her," Evelyn said. "Not unless it's necessary."
She's not scary, exactly, but she's spooky. I wonder if that will ever change? Praem is either going to get way more humanized, or way less so, once she gets expressive enough for Heather to learn what she's actually like inside (in the non-sexual way, that is. In the sexual way, while I wouldn't be at all surprised for Heather to learn what Praem is like on the inside, it wouldn't be especially character-revelatory).
Praem is also still getting less blue and more human-colored, gradually. Which, again; is she being shaped by her social environment, or just learning to mimic it?
Evelyn is still trying to keep anyone from encouraging this change in Praem, for reasons that she's unable to convincingly argue. Unless she was actually talking to Praem at the end of the above quotation, and was telling her not to talk to riff-raff like Twil. That would be funny, but I don't think it's the author's intent.
It isn't clear if Evelyn even *can* still remotely control Praem, at this point. She can exert some influence, but outright control? Unclear.
By the way, we've never gotten a description of Evelyn's lab when she's doing her drone ops before, and it turns out to be kind funny lol.
Katalepsis 6.8
Evelyn's remote viewing setup was barely believable, but I reminded myself I'd witnessed far weirder things. I'd seen all this the first time she'd ridden Praem at a distance, but I'd never watched it working before.
A child's two-tone blue paddling pool, filled about halfway, with a magic circle written in permanent maker onto the plastic itself, maddened black scrawl extending below the waterline. A delicate ring of ice had formed around the edge, a by-product of the magic. Twil was the only one of us not wrapped in extra layers against the lingering cold. I had a blanket around my shoulders, while Evelyn wore two jumpers, a shawl, and gloves. She'd been at this for hours already.
Everyone having to bundle up in blankets and jackets because of the whole magic-enables-thermal-conduction-across-the-fifth-dimension thing is somehow really silly despite how intuitive it is and how reasonable the worldbuilding behind it. The scrying kiddy-pool that she needs to constantly clear the forming ice off of is a nice touch.
They watch through Praem's eyes as she climbs through the gaping, rotted hole in the boarding over the front door and explores. This scene is one of the best-written of Katalepsis. I honestly wish I could just quote the entire damned thing and let it speak for itself. The environmental descriptions, the commentary offered by the girls (and occasionally, unpredictably, by Praem herself), the growing sense of tension as she slowly ascends one floor after the next and things get progressively stranger.
With occasional spots of humor to defuse small bits of the tension and allow the escalation to be drawn out without dragging.
Katalepsis 6.8
"Wonder if she can see us from up there?" Twil mused.
"Don't be stupid. We can't see the towers from here," Evelyn said.
"Hey Praem," Twil spoke up. "Flash your torch out one of the windows."
"No," Praem intoned, her voice echoing off the concrete.
"See?" Evelyn snorted. "Even she knows not to listen to you."
"S'just a joke." Twil huffed and crossed her arms.
Heh.
On the first floor, Praem finds evidence of homeless camps and animal activity, but none of it less than half a year old. Which is the opposite of what you'd expect, given that it's the middle of winter right now. The implications, once you remember that the Brotherhood of the New Sun is a natural predator of homeless people, are grim. The next couple of floors are just normal creepy abandoned tenement full of normal creepy rot and water damage, but then on the fifth floor there's another "keep out" sign, with another layer of boarding-up over the stairways and other access points. Going up from there, something about the interior starts to subtly make Heather think "cave" rather than "building," but she can't quite put her finger on what. Then, on the fifteenth floor, fresh metal chains and heavy-duty padlocks, all very new looking, bar the way forward.
After that, shit starts getting fucked up. Corners getting round. Walls getting veined, ribbed, and miscolored. Each floor gets progressively more Gigeresque than the one below it, until Praem is trudging through a set from "Aliens." My first suspicion was that the upper floors of this building contain a still-working portal to the leviathan, and some of its organic structure is bleeding through and reshaping the building's interior. That MAY indeed be the case (it would explain how the cultists are getting in and out unseen. In fact, this would make it so that Kim might have actually been in here before without realizing it), but it's not the only thing going on here. At the center of the biomechanoid corruption, they find Alexander's remains.
Katalepsis 6.8
"It's gruesome, yes, alright? Turn away if you're suddenly feeling squeamish," Evelyn said. "But that's not the point. I just … I … look, if I just say it, you'll all freak out. I need to show you the proof. He's dead. Praem, go ahead."
"He? Evee, who … "
The question died in my throat, as Praem turned the final corner of knotted concrete. She walked the length of a projecting spar, up to the centre and purpose of this disgusting aberration, and played her torch over her discovery.
Meat.
Like a heart – no, I corrected myself, like a tumour. Muscle fibres of frozen concrete converged on a central point, blood and meat colours fading in as they approached, as they wound around and merged with the figure in the middle. Minced flesh, spars of shattered bone, ribs exposed and cracked from awful crushing force, limbs clad in charred shreds. Head a burst melon, a few scraps of blonde hair clinging to flaps of scalp. Once-red blood was now dried and black, shiny like tiny beetles.
The wreckage cradled by a concrete harness was barely recognisable as a human being – let alone as Alexander Lilburne.
"But I killed him," I breathed. A terrible, numb feeling came over me, an emotional violation. I'd dealt with becoming a murderer, and he was still here? My breath caught in my throat, stalling the more animal reaction to this awful sight. "I-"
"I was fukkin' right!" Twil pointed at the image in the still water. "I called it!"
"No you didn't, he's dead," Evelyn snapped at her. "Heather, listen to me. He's dead."
The rogue cell that was once under his command have apparently *tried* to revive him, using the limited magic they've been taught. It didn't work very well, though. He's still dead, it's just that he's also a bit more...spread out. Even worse, the iconography ritually painted all over the walls suggests that the rogue cell has turned to a new patron to empower them against the foe that laid them low. A patron who we know Alexander had already been researching thanks to what Heather told him.
They try to do the prudent thing and make absolute sure Alexander isn't coming back. They have Praem rip off his concrete-encrusted head and prepare to crush it...but she unthinkingly moves it through the space where the gaze of the four eye-icons scrawled on the walls intersect. And that ends up revealing what it is about this building that had Tenny afraid to draw near.
Alex's severed head opens its remaining eye, and uses it to make eye contact with Praem. And then, everyone watching through the scrying pool has to make a SAN save with disadvantage as the Eye uses Alexander's brain as a vector for its mental attack. Evelyn, who was sitting closest to the pool and couldn't look away, critfails. She falls unconscious, bleeding out the faceholes, and still can't be woken the better part of an hour later. They lose contact with Praem, the scrying kiddy-pool's image winking out. The others, who only caught a glimpse of the zombie gaze attack relay, are stunned for some minutes.
While Raine, Heather, Twil, and Kim are trying to decide what the hell to even do now and whether or not they need to bring Evelyn to a hospital or something, there's a knock at the door. A slow, loud knock, similar to what Kim described when recounting "Lozzie's" visit to her apartment. And then, from the door, Lozzie's voice distorted into uneven, G-Man cadence.
Katalepsis 6.8
Knock knock knock.
Raine pointed her gun at the door.
"That you back with us, Twil?" she called out.
The reply came after a long silent pause, as if the speaker had to think very carefully about how to form words, how to use its lungs and larynx, mouth and tongue. It didn't do a very good job.
"Open up, open up, three little piggies," it said, in a nightmare imitation of Lozzie's voice.
The faux-Lozzie nightgaunt doesn't give them long to answer before breaking in.
While they're busy with it, a car pulls up outside, and four cultists start banging on the door.
Raine gets her ribs broken by Fake Lozzie with a single open-handed slap. Not even a punch. A slap. Heather's protector, the warrior, the one who's always been there to defend her, down instantly. We've seen Raine get injured before, but never like *that.*
Meanwhile, Twil is busy trying to fend off the cultists and doesn't even see what's going on.
Nightgaunt-Lozzie advances on Heather, and intones the words "Heather. Back to school."
The Eye knows. It understands. It always understood what it was doing.
It grabs Heather, and brings her back to "Wonderland" much sooner than Heather had been intending.
...
Before getting to the denouement, I'd like to talk about this arc as a whole up until now.
First of all, you all see what I mean about this feeling like a Call of Cthulhu adventure? A shady contact goes missing, leading to an investigation of that shady contact's apartment in a dangerous neighborhood. They find her, and she gives them a lead involving a counterculturist group whose leader is secretly doing real occult stuff on the side. Infiltrate by posing as a new member while the fighty party members get into position and wait for the leader to incriminate herself. Interrogation, providing a new lead, taking us to an abandoned building containing some creepy mythos stuff that triggers the boss fight.
I'm pretty sure I've played through this exact series of steps in a CoC game, just with a couple of different pronouns. I might have even played through these steps more than once.
And yet, this very much *isn't* litrpg. Like I said at the start, this feels more like a story that those playable adventures could have been inspired by. It isn't, to be clear; I'm recalling mostly-homebrew games from over a decade ago. But it feels like it could have been. It actually feels less game-y than the "Other Side of Nowhere" arc, despite more structurally resembling a game.
While the plotting is a little tortured in how it gets from point to point at times, "And Less Pleasant Places" is a masterclass in tone, tension, and subtle characterization. It's overtly the "they fucked around, and now they're finding out arc," in the sense that antagonists they ran roughshod over are now ganging up for revenge, and reckless risks that they took in previous arcs are catching up to them (although really, sending rocks to and from the Eye's homeworld and taking the lack of an *immediate* response as proof that it isn't paying attention was probably the most reckless act so far, heh). It turns out that yes, the occult underworld actually IS dangerous, and you CAN'T just have young adult fantasy adventures in it without consequences.
It's also doing much subtler things to humble and tear down the characters, though. Raine has never fallen in battle, despite the many fights we've seen her participate in, but now she gets one-shotted in the blink of an eye and leaves Heather totally vulnerable. Even when Evelyn's magical knowledge has failed her, her confidence in the safety of her Sharrowford house and its defences has never seemed to be misplaced...but now we realize that we've never seen a serious enemy force make a serious attempt to do so, and when that finally happens it turns out those defences are a lot more brittle than she thought.
And Heather. Oh, Heather, Heather, Heather.
What a masterfully conceived and executed unreliable narrator.
It's not just that she tries to convince the reader that she has flaws that she clearly doesn't (constantly cursing her alleged weakness and cowardice, while never doing any weak or cowardly things). She also is either totally oblivious of or actively in denial about the flaws that she really does have. We saw hints of it before. The temper. The moralizing. The fucked up fetishization of Raine's fighting ability. Really, I should have been able to predict this side of Heather long ago, given the evidence. Craving the power over life and death, the right to play judge jury and executioner, while also hypocritically wanting to be able to see herself as the whitebread middle class ideal of a "good girl." She has the talent for self-deception to pull it off, too.
Maybe I'm being too hard on Heather. Certainly, part of that burdensome self-perception was born of her time as a mental patient. Kept sedated. Encouraged to insulate and infantilize herself. I can totally see where this is coming from. But also...
In a review of one of the earlier arcs, I raised the possibility that Heather might actually know from experience how destructive her hypermath powers can be. That there might have been an incident or two after Maisie's abduction that she is either choosing not to tell us about or has outright suppressed the memory of. I wondered about this before. Now, I'm almost sure of it.
I'm not saying Heather is necessarily going to have a supervillain arc. Or even just a villain arc. But she IS going to have to confront some of this stuff in order to avoid that.
Well, she's in the belly of the beast now, on the far side of everyone's weaknesses and failures. That's generally a catalyst for transformation in a character. The person who Heather saw in the Library of Carcosa isn't who she thought it was, and refusal to believe it led to dire consequences. Will Heather end up doing the same thing with the person she sees in the mirror, with even worse consequences?
Despite the plotting issues, this might actually be my favorite arc of Katalepsis so far. It does an amazing job of both building on what came before, and simultaneously deconstructing it. It also presses down hard on the fantasy-horror pedal that I'd been starting to miss after arcs 2-4 and only started to come back in 5.
It also just has some of the strongest prose and turns of phrase so far.
...
For the first time in a decade, Heather finds herself on ashy soil strewn with ruined, mathematical-graffiti-covered architecture, under a sky horizon to horizon with a ridged, lidded eye.
Slowly, the eye begins to open, and Heather's mind is crushed under a tsunami of telepathic data-bombardment. Heather's higher processes shut down amid reopened traumatic shock. She grabs a rock and bashes the fake Lozzie's head, over and over again, for all the good that will do. There's that motif of rocks sitting on the ground of the Eye's homeworld, like the one she sent here and back that helped catalyse this whole mess.
Heather manages to have a coherent thought. That thought being her sister, somewhere in this world with her, perhaps literally looking down from the sky above her. The descriptions here are chaotic, but I believe the implication is that Heather managed to concentrate on some hypermath formula to get Maisie's attention. And succeeds. Maisie, as we already know, is capable of sending interdimensional messengers of her own on occasion.
And, Lozzie shows up. The real Lozzie. She has a new haircut, and is holding a half-eaten brownie to her mouth. Also, she has a stand now, which she uses to repel Heather's assailant as soon as she's realized what the hell she's looking at.
There's a rescue, but then some kind of hard-to-understand struggle happens in hyperspace, and Heather feels someone or something pulling her away from Lozzie and her Silver Chariot. When Heather wakes up, bleeding out the faceholes as per usual, she's in the rogue New Sun cell's captivity, chained to a wall and being guarded by that big zombie-thing of theirs called Zheng.
So, yeah. The last couple paragraphs of this chapter raise too many questions and leave on too much of a cliffhanger for me to work into my closing thoughts. Hence, my decision to put my closing thoughts before the arc's ending.
No idea what happens next from here.
