The vanishing chronicles

The low drone of an airship somewhere up above caused a ringing in my ears. If my count was right—and it usually was—that would make five passing by in less than an hour. The unusual flight patterns had increased all week, and yet there had been no explanation, something that did not sit right with me. It felt less like a regular patrol and more like a search.

But for what I could not say.

If I were to ask my younger siblings, they would feed me the same story that had been whispered in the shadows for months on end. I had heard the older scribes myself, while I was down in the lower stacks, discussing in hushed breaths about the return of a Shade-Leech. A dark and formless force that would apparently drift through the city’s aether. It was said that the terrifying beast did not want for gold or jewels, like the dragons in old tales, nor did it desire the blood of its victims, in the way of a vampire. No, what the Shade-Leech wanted was legacy.

According to the old tales, it would steal stories. Plucking at the threads of lived lives and stealing them out of collective memory. But this was nothing more than a ghost story. It stopped the interns from napping, allowed the gossips their fill, and helped parents put rowdy children to bed. After all, who didn’t love a good story to get the heart racing and the mind wandering before bed?

But‌, be that as it may, I could not shake the feeling that there was something the powers that be were not telling us. In my gut, I knew something was going on; I just wasn’t naïve enough to believe that some supernatural force caused it. I just had the common sense to know that Chancellor Cole Nemo had remained uncharacteristically silent in his palace over the last week. Never in all my life had I witnessed the ageing man pass up an opportunity to be in the spotlight.

Tapping my now dry quill against the blank parchment before me, I looked at the glowing Echo Glass on my desk. There was no point in worrying myself about the deeper meaning of the Chancellor’s actions. I, for one, did not get paid enough.

I was tasked with recording the life of William Letchford, and that was what I was going to do. Even if he were only a gardener. A simple man of dirt and seeds, this was quite possibly my most riveting piece yet. Honestly, why anyone would wish to keep a record of a mere gardener was beyond me. But it was the name I was given, and so I would write.

But if someone were to ask, I would not deny that the idea had crossed my mind of misplacing the old man's name. After all, “Who would miss one small insignificant story?” However, if my siblings were to hear me say such a thing, they would think me no better than a Shade-Leech. The tales did say the beast started small. With ‌stories no one would miss. The stories no one would fight for.

Sighing, I set to work, dipping my quill into the swirling golden cloud that hovered above the small Echo Glass on my cluttered desk. In no time at all, the parchment before me was filled. Twelve and a half pages of a quiet, honest life. I was about to reach for my binding equipment when a familiar, irritating voice called out my name.

“Blackwell!”

Forcing a pleasant smile onto my face and holding in a groan, I turned to face Orion Xavier Abbot. “What do you want, Abbot?” His smug smirk was already irritating me beyond measure. Why the girls in the office above fawned over him was anyone's guess.

Alright, he was handsome, not that I would tell him that. But, “looks are not everything,” as my mother used to say, and after working with Orion for almost two years, I knew for a fact that his personality left much to be desired.

“Tut, tut, Blackwell. Is that any way to talk to a guest?” He plopped himself into one of the bulky armchairs, as if he owned the room. “Zedock gave me a list for you. The pneumatic tubes are blocked again. So please don’t flatter yourself; I’m not here because I want to see you.”

“So you’ve become the errand boy,” I retorted, making no attempt to hide the small grin of satisfaction on my face. I could tell by the look on his face that I had struck a chord.

“Better an errand boy for the second level than working on your own in the depths,” he snapped back, his eyes falling on my desk.

“If you say so,” I shrugged, not letting his words affect me, and tugging the list of names from his grasp. “At least I get to do some writing.”

“Oh, please. You call this writing? It’s not even two pages long.” Before I could stop him, he had reached over my desk and grabbed my work, observing it as if he were a teacher and I his reluctant pupil.

“Stop being dramatic. I’ll have you know this is twelve and a half pages,” I said heatedly, marching towards him to grab the work. But before my fingers could make contact, the arrogant git pulled them out of my reach.

“You’re going to have to be better than that, Hattie,” he grinned, his dark eyes dancing with delight.

“It’s Harriet,” I told him through gritted teeth, “not Hattie. Now give me back my work; I need to bind it before I go home; some of us have a family to look after and don’t have our rich parents' money to keep us.”

“You really are going to bind two -” Orion stopped mid-sentence, his eye now fixed on the parchment I had spent over an hour working on. “How many pages was this, Harriet?” All smugness from his voice was now gone, replaced with something else. Something that almost sounded like fear.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, with an annoyed sigh, if this was his stupid idea of a joke; I did not find it funny.

Without another word, he handed the parchment back to me, but his eyes never left the paper. I was almost ready to berate him for his childish nonsense when my own eyes glanced down at the papers before me. The sight made my heart sink, and a wave of fear washed over my veins.

The golden lettering that had stood proudly on the pages in my hand only moments ago was gone. Before my very eyes, the ink was retreating.

It wasn't just fading; it was as if the words were being pulled off the page by some invisible force, sucking the pigment from the fibres.

Suddenly, the air felt thinner, and the usually warm room felt cold. Chancing a glance at Orion, I knew he felt it too. It was as if the very history of our world was being inhaled into the void.

“Twelve... there were twelve,” I whispered in disbelief to myself, more than to him. I held the page to the flickering lamp, watching as a sentence about William’s first prize-winning marrow dissolved into a blank yellow stain.

In that moment, a sudden fear struck me.

If William Letchford’s life was disappearing before my eyes, how many more were being taken at this exact moment?

I liked to think of myself as a sensible person, but even I could not deny that something incredibly strange was going on. The room was so cold now that I could see my breath dancing before my eyes in wisps of cloud.

Looking into Orion’s eyes, I knew we had both come to the same conclusion. Not that I wanted to believe it. Because Shade-Leeches did not exist. But what else could explain what was going on?

Were we having a shared nightmare?

Was this just a trick of the low amber lights?

Or was this all just down to a lack of sleep? And I was starting to go mad, like my great aunt Betty?

But deep in my heart, I knew the truth. These stories were no longer just gathering dust. They were being hunted, quicker than a fox could catch a rabbit.

“What am I going to do? It won’t be long until there is nothing left!” I cried, not caring if Orion could hear the panic in my voice.

I reached forward to dip my quill back into the Echo Glass, desperate to rewrite what was being lost, but Orion’s hand clamped around my wrist.

“Look,” he whispered, pointing to the Glass. Or, more importantly, the cloud above.

The swirling golden cloud I was used to—the essence of memory itself—was gone, and in its place, a thick, oily black smoke churned, pulsing like a deadly heartbeat. If the Shade-Leech were real, and I hated to say that it was. Then this unseen beast was in the room with us, not just in the wider city, as the whisperings had said.

With each passing moment, the room grew colder, and so did the trembling of my heart and hands. The black smoke slowly grew in size before Orion and I; it pulsed with an unnatural predatory rhythm, the likes of which I had never seen before.

While dark and deadly, the strange substance had a hypnotic quality. Without any thought for my safety, I made my way towards it, my unknowing hand outstretched.

"Don't touch it," Orion warned, causing my head to snap in his direction; his voice had lost every trace of its usual bravado.

“We need to do something,” I stressed, as I tried to shake myself out of whatever trance I had been under.

Carefully, I watched Orion draw closer to my desk. He got to eye level with the Echo Glass and said, "It's almost as if it has been infected."

Groaning, he ran a hand through his dark curls. "I hate to say it, but it looks like the old stories are true." I watched as he got up, dusting off the knees of his trousers, before looking me directly in the eye; “That’s the work of a Shade-Leech, there is no other logical conclusion.”

"Wait, so then, William," I whispered in disbelief, heart hammering against my ribs. "If this is a Shade-Leech, like the ones in the stories, that means it will devour all record of him, until even his own family forgets he existed.”

Orion didn't answer, but the look in his eyes was answer enough.

I looked down at the parchment. Only a lone paragraph remained—a single, flickering description of the rose garden, which had started it all. The ink was greying; the letters seemed to shiver, trying to cling to the fibres of the paper.

"I’m not letting it take him," I said resolutely.

In a flash, I was scrambling for my binding salve. A thick, iridescent liquid we usually only use for the most notable and ancient texts. It was designed to protect the written word for thousands of years.

"What are you doing?” Orion hissed in surprise. “That stuff is regulated!" Despite his words of warning, he moved to help me without being asked.

"I know that. But unless you have a better idea, then it’s the only plan I have.”

For a moment, we locked eyes, then without a word, I upended the jar. The gooey, glowing wave of liquid spread over the parchment at a torturously slow pace.

"Hold the edges! We don’t want this to curl," I commanded. Orion, for all his faults, did not hesitate. He pressed his palms onto the corners of the paper, his knuckles white.

As the salve hit the last few surviving lines, the black smoke above the Echo Glass went wild. The sound that squealed from the cloud made my teeth ache, and the room's cold air seemed to double in intensity.

Orion and I watched in awe, struck with horror, as the ink began to lift from the page. Hovering a fraction of a millimetre above the paper. Caught in an invisible tug-of-war.

"I think it's pulling back!" Orion shouted in wondrous delight.

I gave him a small, hopeful smile, but I was not ready to let down my guard. The Shade-Leech was not going to give up that easily. Holding on tight to the page we had left, I had to steady my feet as a gust of air so strong almost blew me off my feet.

Something was wrong.

The words were drifting further from the page.

My heart sank as the brief realisation hit me. We were going to lose William Letchford.

But then a mad idea hit me.

“Orion, we need to read this paragraph!”

“What?”

“Just trust me! Please!” I begged, and together we started to read.

Orion’s voice, usually full of snark, was thin and trembling, matching my own, but he read the sad, lonely paragraph of William’s life without hesitation.

As we spoke, the ink stopped hovering. It settled. The black smoke above the Echo Glass let out one final, frustrated hiss before receding into a dull, stagnant sludge.

The room fell silent, broken only by our heavy breathing and the forgotten, distant, rhythmic drone of the airships above.

"Did... did we get it?" Orion asked, wiping sweat from his forehead.

Slowly, I looked down at the pages of William Letchford’s life. The salve had become solid, and what was more, the words the Shade-Leech had taken started to make their way back to the pages as if they had never been away.

“I think so,” I replied cautiously, “it looks like the words are coming back.”

“Um, Harriet,” Orion said, “do you, I mean, do you think if … if this is happening to a gardener in the depths. Does this mean the Shade-Leech will attack the libraries upstairs next?”

I gave him a small nod as I tried to gather my thoughts. “We need to get upstairs and find Zedock, because I think we have a lot more stories to save.”

With that, together Orion and I marched out of the depths and towards the upper levels, with one clear thought in my mind: as long as one person held a pen, the monsters hadn't won yet.