all the pieces and the wires all connected to you (part XXX)

(Continued from part XXIX.)

"Right," said Justine. "I'll bring you all in once I get there. Lina, please send any results via personal message to me." She disappeared in a swirl of light.

The Duchess nodded. "First, we need to make sure it actually is the book of Ose and Hiram, and not the Book of Hosea. Which is substantially different, but does mention Hiram..."

The priest stood silent, looking intent.

"...but if I remember correctly, it was part of the Apostolic writings," Emilly finished.

Lina nodded. "Accessing," she said. "Accessing...Book of Hosea also found."

"What about the Apostolic Constitutions? Specifically book...six? Eight? Is it six?"

"Accessing...Accessing all Memory Alpha archives..." Lina looked up, her eyes still unfocused. "Should I scan only human literature, or all races' literature in the archive?"

Emilly thought. "I would stay just with human writings. I think we're looking for something around the time of Solomon, I believe..."

"Accessing..."

"Hiram being either his chief architect or allied king, depending on the text."

Lina nodded. "Accessing...Book found. Inputting note."

"Send to Justine."

"Not all information that was in the book is in the archive, due to the fact that the only extant copy that was scannable was damaged...Sending," she ended, after a pause.

The Duchess sighed. "That's what I was afraid of. Separate researches have turned up an undamaged extant copy, sold at auction in 2015, which then went dark and has never been seen since."

"Copy on file is from 2235," Lina said.

The priest looked up. "Ah, Justine has asked for aid now. I'll go see how I can help."

Emilly nodded. "She'll likely call for us soon, or we can just go. I think the lab's as secure as we can make it."

"Would you like to make another inquiry?" Lina asked.

Emilly looked up. "Ah, there's the port. Possibly, but not right now." She disappeared in a swirl of light, shivered a bit on arrival, and shifted into fur. "All that talk of having to play human made me itchy, I think."

The priest just nodded. "The roots of fae can be lasting."

She nodded. "Indeed, especially in my case."

The brain in a jar sloshed slightly. "Hello! Please ask me anything!" Everyone ignored it.

Justine looked around as everyone coalesced in the library. "Welcome, everyone. Please, start looking through the books, anything that looks like it might reference Ose, or Hiram. Or...Nyarlethotep, the Queen of Sheba, the Queen of Heaven...Solomon..." Justine thought for a moment. "Bilqis," she finished.

The Duchess blinked. "Wait, we're pulling in the Nyarlathotep records?"

Justine shrugged. "I'm spitballing, Emilly. Grasping at anything." She grabbed a large tome off a nearby shelf, blowing the dust off the cover, and settled on a cushion in front of Fen to read.

The Duchess pondered. "I'm assuming this is just Nyarlathotep, not the rest of the elder things? Because one entire shelf here IS dedicated to Carcosa and the Yellow King."

"Ooh, my," said Lina.

The brain in a jar, now next to one of the bookcases, burbled. "I don't understand, sorry. What do you mean?"

Lina looked at the jar, then looked at the shelf Emilly stood before. "That's a lot of books..."

"Can you elaborate on that?" the voice from the jar asked.

Emilly shook her head. "Not now, brain."

Justine carted the brain to a far corner, out of hearing range.

Emilly pulled a few books from the shelf and settled on the opposite couch. She opened to the start of a chapter in one of them.

"And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences--of electricity and psychology--and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of a nightmare."

She looked up, frowning. "See, that's not helpful..."

Justine idly stroked Fen's leg as she read.

Emilly turned to another page.

"And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods--the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep."

The Duchess rolled her eyes. "HPL, come on, this is ridiculous. Fine, you don't like him."

Justine looked up. "Hmmm, I may have found something."

The Duchess set the book down, picking up another. "Oh, good, all I've found so far is hyperbole."
Justine looked up at the Nephilim, still standing. "Lina, can you run to the kitchen and bring some coffee?" Lina nodded and left at speed. She returned to her tome. "I think I need it..."

The priest looked puzzled.

Justine looked up at him. "Lina is our head cook, as well as chief of security. And she makes a mean espresso."

Emilly nodded, reading through another book. "And so far, she hasn't been eaten by the shrubbery."

The priest blinked. "What?"

Justine just nodded.

"Oh, speaking of," Emilly continued, "we had a Heliamphora pop up? So...be a bit careful."

Justine laughed. "I think we may have finally found a cook that is more than a match for the predatory flora around the grounds."

Fen nodded. "And she has learned the joy of focusing on protecting you."

Emilly nodded. "That also. But we'd pruned it back to just a few eyestalk plants, until that."

Justine tilted her head. "So what's dangerous about heliamphora?"

Emilly shrugged. "He seems fine, he just doesn't want his eye touched? Which I'm fine with. I'm not in the business of randomly poking eyes...But the literature does mention that if someone does, he has a chance of producing digestive acids, retracting the eye, and swallowing the offender." She looked up, staring at Justine. "So...try not to do that."

Justine paused in her reading to stare silently at Em for a moment. "Right. Got it."

"In this case, we do not WANT the eyes to have it," the priest murmured.

Justine giggled. "Nice one, Fen."

He smiled softly, stroking her hair. "You are very inspiring."

Justine knelt up, kissing Fen.

Distracted by the book, Emilly didn't notice. "Did Lina send you the damaged copy she tracked down in her archives?"

The priest shook his head. "No."

Justine shook her head. "No."

"Hmm..." Emilly flipped deeper into the book, pausing at a slightly thicker page of parchment. She traced a small sigil at the top, waiting until the letters reformed and settled.

"Ah, right. Here we are. The Book of Ose and Hiram.

'One day the heavenly beings building came to present themselves before Soloman and the builder, Hiram, and Ose, also, came among them...'"

She read for several paragraphs, ending with

"'Ose replied: Time is a flat circle, and it is what it is.'"

Justine sat up straight on the cushion. "I swear to God, I JUST READ THAT, and didn't...it just slid past my brain."

Emilly hmmed, peering at the last line."I think that was an editorial addition..."

"Life as a circle," the priest said softly. "Experience and reclamation..."

Emilly nodded. "Life and time both."

Fen slowly inhaled as she stared at the page again.

"I was more thinking of the 'it is what it is', bit," Emilly said.

Fen shrugged. "Perhaps both are true."

She looked up at the priest, slowly nodding.

Justine keyed in on the reference to the Leopard Demon. "So...we both agree who that is, right? That somehow...Hiro Prime was...is...in ancient Jerusalem with Solomon...Hiro is Ose?"

"No, I don't think so," Emilly began, then paused. "Wait..." She shuffled through the books she'd brought over to the couch, finally picking up a slim volume bounded in embossed red leather. She flipped through it until she reached the entry she wanted, scanning it quickly. "Ose!" she cried out. "Why didn't I connect that?"

Justine read the rest with a look of concentration. "The tomb...cohort...words are sounded...the true priestess..." Justine looked up at Emilly, mouthing "...gives of herself..."

Emilly, meanwhile, was reading. "The Great President of Hell, the giver of true answers, the inducer of illusions, the leopard king. Ose. Of course!"

Justine's mouth dropped open.

Emilly nodded, then frowned.

"Gods, I hope he doesn't want us to find the Ark...The only one I know of was in the Beth Temple in Caledon."

"We're...finding something, though, aren't we?" Justine asked.

Emilly nodded. "Pretty sure. Something containing Hiro."

"Like the Sphinx guards the dark secrets..."

The Duchess nodded. She picked up the previous book to compare information.

"Is there...are there...any holdings...can you think of any Gearhaven holdings that might be..."

But Emilly's gaze had dropped to the page she'd opened at random. "Justine...there's...more, now. On the page."

Justine blinked. "What?"

Emilly followed the new words with her finger.

"Hiram was confused, so he asked 'What shall I tell them if they ask of him?'

"'That he loves them, don't fear. The power is there, for those who know how to weld it. The mission is real. Don't trust the clown. Never trust the clown.' This was all Ose said to Hiram on this day. He departed, planning to bring more wisdom to the agent of the King."

She looked up slowly. "Well, that LAST is clear."

Justine's lower lip trembled, her eyes filling with tears. "Oh, Em..."

Emilly just nodded, breathing through it. "I know. But...there's hope. There's still hope."

Justine wiped her eyes, trying to focus on the page.

The priest stroked her hair gently.

"Think of Blondel searching Europe for Richard the Third...the Coeur de Lion..."

Emilly nodded. "Sort of. But with more time travel." She thought for a moment. "Unless...You know, he may have meant something else, Justine. Remember the ringleader at the circus? Maybe that's the Nyarlathotep connection..."

The priest nodded. "One to share in the future..." He smiled. "I'm still thinking about the search for Richard the Lion King."

Both Justine and Emilly nodded. "But this time out, it's a leopard king," Emilly said.

(Continued in part XXXI.)