It seems that my meeting with Kelevra has already been made public, indeed Kelevra did reach out to me when he was stunted on figuring out how to read the book that he acquired from the Blind Man's domain. I of course declined said meeting, my own research on the development of Anti-Azoth was far too important, I was not willing to put the research off for any deviations, however, in order to entice me into the meeting Kelevra offered a bargain: I help him out with the book and in return he will give me a jar of water, which he acquired from the Dying Man's river. Remembering that the water was capable of healing even the most severe of injuries, I determined for myself that it was a valuable asset to have at my disposal, not only for the purposes of studying, but potentially to help me make progress with the development of Anti-Azoth (Still deciding on a better name).
I gave Kelevra a date, time and the address of the research centre that I would need, telling him not to path in there before, or after the agreed upon time and date, he had to path in at exactly the agreed upon time, otherwise I would not show up. Luckily for me, him and his colleagues seemed to have followed the instructions quite closely.
I've been to this facility many times before, so I knew my way around. I discovered this place during one of my experiments, the experiment was about trying to determine how various nucleus areas can transport one who wanders into them, to the domain of the creatures that many of us are hunted by. However, I failed to take the necessary precautions and was transported to their domain, it wasn't a big issue though, mainly because I'm really good at determining where the exits usually are, the problem with that however is I had no control on where exactly I would exit and so, a happy accident occurred and I exited on the outskirts of this facility. I swiped one of the access cards many years ago, hence why I can access the facility with little effort, same wasn't true for Kelevra and his colleagues, so it was very fortunate that me and Hannah stumbled upon them, before they could trigger the alarms.
I believe both Malik and Hannah did a decent enough job explaining where we all ended up after meeting up.
Now, some might say that it wasn't a particularly smart idea to shoo Hannah away with Malik and Franky on guard duty, effectively leaving me alone with Kelevra, an individual that isn't exactly regarded for his honesty, however, if he were to betray our agreement, I doubt Hannah would be able to do much, in fact, her being outside gave her a head start if anything were to happen, luckily nothing happened.
Kelevra took out both the jar with the water from the Dying Man's River and the book he acquired from The Blind Man's Catacombs: "Let's science, Spooky Man!" he exclaimed with excitement.
Ignoring the nickname I immediately started analysing the book, which wasn't exactly in the most pristine condition. The blank, red, half-scratched hardcover was barely holding together due to the falling apart spine of the book, the smell was "earthly" best I can put it, the pages are all of the dark-ish yellow colour, all of them blank, just like Kelevra described. Well except for the one blood filled page, I'm assuming that's the one Kelevra smeared his blood all over in hopes that, that would somehow do something: "You claimed that you are certain that there's more to this book." I enquired, mainly because, again, other than the poor condition of the book, there was nothing to it, it was blank, none of the pages had anything written on them, or etched into them and it was definitely not in brail.
He sat down on the opposite side of the desk: "I am, it may look blank to you and me, but my darling is telling me that there's actually something within it."
I knew it was probably a poor choice of words on his end, but that sentence did give me an idea on where to start. If we couldn't determine if there was anything actually written on those pages, or not, then we could try to determine what those pages consisted of. With Kelevra's permission, I cut off a small piece of the paper and placed it under a microscope, now if I were to place a regular piece of paper under a microscope, I would see a network of plant fibres that have been laid down to form a flat sheet. But with the paper from this book, I wasn't presented with a network of plant fibres, I was presented with... fly ash particles.
What does that mean? Well it means that the pages within this book were all made out of black fly ash, which is something you get when you burn coal. Now, this isn't that much of an alien concept, but it is also not the most common one considering that the Chinese Professor Zhang Meiyun only in 2009 proposed the idea of using Fly Ash as the key component in paper production, what's weirder is that the the suggestion turned into reality only a year ago, what is weird about that you may ask? Well, the fact that this book looked like it was put together long before 2009, long before the idea of even using fly ash to produce paper was a theory, this book predates the practice. Meaning that whoever put this book together were way ahead of their time, this revelation made me slightly amused, mainly because this was a sign of our science finally closing some kind of gap between us and the "supernatural"!
Sorry, moving away from the tangent, this revelation might seem like nothing special, a sentiment echoed by Kelevra's unenthusiastic: "So what?" Funny thing about research, any new revelation raises more questions, questions demand speculation, speculation leads to action, action results in further questions, it's kind of a never-ending web of questions that will untangle after you ask all of them and get to the core. Knowing that the pages were made out of fly ash particles, meant that these pages were at some point part of coal, what does coal do? Burn. Now coal ash on it's own (Which is a combination of fly ash and bottom ash) is toxic enough to pose a health issue for many who work in the coal-oriented industries, so burning a small piece of a page, consisting purely out of fly ash, which came from a book that was acquired from a Alternate Creature (In this case the Blind Man) would probably be a bad idea without the proper precautions.
Luckily we were in the right room, respirator masks and goggles were plentiful. Putting the small piece of paper in a tray, I began to burn it, it didn't burn for long considering it was just a small piece of the page, nothing was out of the ordinary about the burning process itself, it just burned up, emitted a bit of smoke and that's it. However, when I began to approach the burnt paper Kelevra tried to follow, but immediately stumbled and almost fell, if it weren't for a table next to him, that he grabbed onto to maintain his balance. At first I thought it was him just being clumsy, but once I glanced at him, slightly hunched over, standing still, holding his bandaged head with one of his hands, it was clear that this was more than a mere stumble.
I eagerly approached him, asking him if it was something from the burning, how could it possibly effect him if he was wearing the mask and the goggles, what did he experience and etc. I didn't get any answers to those questions, he just looked up at me, with a wild smile on his face, quietly proclaiming: "I saw him doc..." After which he suddenly grabbed me by my shoulders, I instantly braced myself for whatever violent act he was going to enact upon me, but instead all I received was an excited shake, with Kelevra, seemingly back to full energy proclaiming happily: "You did it doc!" I tried to ask what is it exactly that I "did", but he would cut me off, stating: "No time! I got what I needed, so I'm taking the book now, as promised you can keep the water." To say that I wasn't frustrated at the lack of answers I was getting would be a lie, however, as excited and interested as I was about learning what is it exactly that I "did", ultimately that wasn't why I was there, I was there for the water and so, deciding not to push my luck any further, I simply took my reward and we parted ways.
I have been researching the water since my return, I will publish my findings in my next post.
