My Dear Rackham,

I wiggled my toes in the ocean today. Over the objections of Robards, I might add! “Doctor! You of all people should know that we cannot assume anything about the safety of the water! Where is your analytical mind?” Or something to that effect. I was impetuous; I confess it, nevertheless, if our world has changed to a point where a man can no longer take a dip in the brine on a fine summer afternoon, then would it really be worth it to go on?

As it happened, the water was fine. Very refreshing to see something so vast and so unchanged. Your description of the Ravine brought to mind a lingering question: Are we in the same place that we were before the Incident? Certainly since then I have seen familiar landmarks, yes, but also unfamiliar or unexpected terrain, to say nothing of the things we have encountered out of fantasy and nightmare. Is this home, or is this a place only resembling it, a doppleganger landscape at once reassuring and alienating? Idle speculations, I know, but at least the ocean remains the ocean.

And, as I suspected, Robards means to cross it. No one knows how far the chaos has spread, and if lands abroad remain untouched, then perhaps there we can gain succor, or at least clarity. For all his brilliance the man is a landlubber through and through, however, and several of us had to convince him that the fishing boats in this backwater village where we are encamped would not make the crossing. Where to find a bigger boat? That is the question of the day, but it is, thankfully, Not My Problem.

Have I let slip a hint of annoyance at our illustrious captain? I do confess it. But I have good reasons. Your last letter reaffirmed something that had already been troubling me: forbidding the autopsy of the “were-rats” (a terrible name but at least it is short) on grounds of “hygiene” was not only ill-advised but also out of character. Certainly you remember Robards in the days leading up to the Incident: he was not an investigator himself, of course, but he shared our unbridled enthusiasm for uncovering the secrets of the stone. Never one to shy from turning over a rock to find out what lies beneath.

Alas, the opportunity of a hybrid autopsy is now lost to me. He did not want to risk an attack while we were on the move, and so, two days before we were to leave the observatory, he took a dozen men and took the fight to their warren. I was not invited to that particular party. Indeed, while I am generally present at all meetings of consequence, and am known to have Robards’ ear, on this particular operation he kept me completely out of the loop. The first I learned of it was when they returned, thoroughly bloodied. I was kept busy patching up the wounded right until the moment we decamped, and so had no opportunity to investigate the warren myself. He says they burned it all, and I do not doubt him.

Hence my annoyance with the man. I will not say “suspicion” — I have seen him risk his life far too many times to doubt his devotion to his men, and to the expedition — and yet, there is something he is not telling us. No doubt it would be easier to swallow if he were a Society man, or a Luminator. One could imagine all manner of ulterior motives or secret agendas in a such a case.

—

It is now the following day, and I only have time for a brief yet consequential addendum. Amid spirited discussion at our morning council, I found myself staring absently at Robards, pondering what I had written the night before, my mind wandering … and then my perception shifted. It was similar to what I had experienced weeks ago, but this time focused solely on the captain. I saw through him, saw into him, after a fashion. But I could make out very little, because something glowed so brightly that it overwhelmed my second sight. It was small, in the vicinity of his chest, where one might expect to find a pendant on a necklace. More I cannot say, for so bright was it that I reflexively raised my arm to cover my eyes. When I lowered it, my vision had cleared and all present were staring at me quizzically.

Do I now have evidence of the very thing he is hiding? Or are my interior doubts simply projecting themselves and deluding me? I hope to discover more, but with no sense of when I may experience another perception shift, I cannot say when that will be.

I will make every effort to write again before we take to sea, though from your report it seems uncertain whether even if this letter will find you. I pray that it does. Stay safe, my friend!

Warm Regards,

Crane

Dear Crane,

With your gentle admonishment fresh in my mind and a heart emboldened from the news of Thorpe’s unexpected success (details toward which I will progress as the ink flows here) I want to first tell you: I attempted it again.

I can remember that I stared for a few moments at the stopper on the laudanum bottle, knowing fully that peace was three droplets away, but something inside me changed. A new will seized me. I unfolded the torn sheet of note paper upon which you had written your missive, and I saw your advice to at least document my experience with the laudanum tincture. I decided that I would instead document my experience avoiding it—and I knew your ever-scientific mind would be eager to hear the results.

As you recall, there had been a night a few weeks ago when I had allowed the sounds to override my senses, welcoming the cascade of voices and noises into my mind. Then, I felt a visceral panic like a drowning man whose lungs are filling with water: confusion, fear, hopelessness, and then nothing. Last night, the same dread overtook me—but instead of resisting it, I welcomed it.

The fear melted, to my surprise, into peace—in fact, a feeling of control, not an abyss of horror. I tell you Crane, it was an odd feeling, to be sure, but one that left my heart beating with confidence, not weakness.

I could not quite sense the passage of time, and I found that during this episode, my eyes would not focus; at one point I tried to recognize any shape inside my tent, but as soon as I used my eyes, the noises caused a stabbing pain at my temple. The sensation reverted to pleasure each time I closed my eyes and allowed the sounds to crash over me like a mighty surf.

The most exciting discovery I can report is that I found that I could “channel” the voices by gentle concentration. For a few minutes—or perhaps an hour for all I could surmise—I chose to pick out Thorpe’s voice in my head. Not all of what he was saying was understandable, but as I mentioned in an earlier letter, I nevertheless understood meaning and emotion—direction and purpose, let us say. In my mind, I could hear him giving orders to the men under his command, accepting their reports, and explaining his plans to explore a deep ravine.

When I awoke, it was the darkest part of the night, but a light from a new fire blazed behind my tent. When I exited, it was Thorpe, who had newly returned from his foray. He was describing his discovery to Bennington, so I joined them.

My blood raced as I heard him describe the ravine. As he told us how he encountered this strange place and how his men approached it, I matched what he said to us at the campfire to what I recalled his voice telling me during my feverish repose. I then also noted that, for the few moments that I had been conversing with Thorpe and Bennington, the noises and sounds were all but vanished from the background of my perceptions.

I will leave off now more details of my personal experiences with the sounds, and instead devote the rest of this letter to news of Thorpe’s discovery, and then to Bennington’s opinions of your sketches.

If Thorpe is a fool then he is at least a fortunate one, and perhaps we ought to make full advantage of his luck for as long as we have him on our expedition. The five men that accompanied him—Arasaku, Kensington, Laray, Gujparat, and Elberts—came back relatively unharmed physically, and I daresay that Thorpe has thoroughly mapped out most of the way ahead. This is a huge advantage as we begin our northern slant tomorrow.

They returned after about a week’s time, and as Bennington and I learned later, most of the reason for the delay was the four days spent investigating what we have been calling “the Ravine.” To me, it sounded like more like a scar where a hideous giant carved out a great swath of earth, leaving an angry gangrenous wound behind.

The entrance to the ravine is more or less an easy, wide ramp, which Thorpe likened to the shape left behind from the angular strike of some rough-hewn meteor. Thorpe reported that no rocky debris was scattered that would indicate an explosion; rather, the burnt gouge seems to have drawn earth in with it, as if some elongated sinkhole occurred well underground yet cracked the land with a jagged mark in its inexorable progress.

The far end of the ravine was never reached by Thorpe and his crew. After finding a drop-off at the ramp’s edge, a laborious descent allowed them to land deep on its floor, but even navigating that depth was an hourly challenge: the base had no easy level, and sub-abysses were found every quarter-mile or so, such that additional equipment had to be employed to allow their safe navigation. After the fourth day Thorpe had decided that our base camp here at the Narrows was undefended for long enough that prudence (or guilt) dictated that he make a return.

The one detail that disturbed Bennington and I the most about Thorpe’s report was the fact that all five of the men who descended into the ravine described the discovery of humanoid skeletons near the bottom. Burned and charred just like the rock surface inside the ravine itself, the men who had enough light to make out these harrowing shapes found that in general, they all seemed to have laid in a uniform direction—skulls upward toward the open sky high above, arms seeming to clutch the side of the wall, reaching toward the surface. In some cases, skeletal remains seemed piled upon another yet slanted in the same configuration, always toward the top of the ravine and away from the far end of the ravine. The bones got more dense as the men moved away from the entrance, and finally, Thorpe commanded a halt.

Thorpe and his men had passed by what appeared to be an official building of some sort—as he tells me, a blasted, ruined bunker some thirty miles along our current trajectory—and so we will head for that in the morning. If I can, my next correspondence will be from that location.

Ah, my dear sir, I had almost forgotten to relay what Bennington wished to convey to you regarding your helpful sketches of the autopsy results. As a footnote, I appreciated what you noted in sotto voce regarding whether or not I thought she could be trusted with the autopsy findings. I can say that while you and I both know that she is an agent of the Society, thus far her motivations have been true regarding the purpose of our mission and her scientific interest. If that changes, you will be the first to know, and if you wish to follow the same course of action as we did the others, then so be it—but this time we must be of the same mind about it.

Bennington studied what you had enclosed for at least a day or more, which itself told me enough—she had seen this type of metamorphosis before. From your clinical notes and measurements she seemed to conclude that the agent of the transformation was carried in the blood of each victim; she pointed to a recent round of Society-sanctioned research that showed that the blood’s superstrata could be manipulated as an effective diffusion system for an aetherial force, like an ultra-magnetic pulse.

She does not know if this was the cause of the metamorphosis in those poor beings you described in your previous letter—she corrected me dryly for my proposed use of the word “wererat”—but I suspected that she felt the phenomena are connected, even though she did not say as much. She also told me that she could not account for the variance of the changes; in other words, why one man’s insides turned to liquid and another man’s insides became so efficient as to strain his own system to implosion. Finally, she asks that you convince Robards to find a way to safely autopsy one of the half-men, as she does not believe a communicable disease is truly at play here. (Do with that advice, friend, as you will, as I am loathe to countermand Robards.)

As for thoughts of rendezvous—agreed, that is well impossible now, as your group is striking east and ours is intent on heading north, with the eventual destination of the obelisk. My most immediate worry is whether Alia can find another safe landing area at our new location, and if not, I am afraid our correspondence will be yet more sporadic.

With best hopes,

Rackham

My Dear Rackham,

Indulge me for a moment while I paint a scene:

A seaside hilltop, its southern face very nearly a cliff, descending steeply into the surf. An abandoned observatory, once a jewel of the Society, now useful primarily as a defensible position. Me, on the roof, enjoying a moment’s quiet with my sketchbook. The sky, clear for once, with rays of sunshine filtering through puffy white clouds … as pretty a day as one could wish for, as if the heavens remain ignorant of all that has transpired below. I look north, and my heart leaps, for I perceive what seems at first just a horizontal line, an em dash written on cumulus, but gradually resolves into a nimble vehicle beginning its descent. Angelic Alia’s aero swoops down from the sky, its wings rotating on their axes at the last second, propellers emerging, allowing her impossible contraption to suspend nestled against our improvised mooring mast on the roof.

And so I find I must once again write in haste, as she is with us for only a short time. It had occurred to me more than once to begin writing earlier in anticipation of her arrival, thereby giving you a much more detailed account of everything that has transpired here. Alas, this was not to be: far too much has been going on, and most nights I collapse asleep before my head hits the wadded-up jacket that passes for my pillow.

So then, to business: the autopsies. Both of them were baffling in entirely different ways. Smythe’s internal organs had gradually liquefied in a manner consistent with extreme heat, as if he had melted from the inside out. I had noted an extreme fever in his last hours, to be sure, but nothing that could account for the condition of his innards. Dodgson’s was an even more peculiar case. Imagine the heart and lungs of an Olympian athlete in his prime, and then extend that image to the very edge of your credulity. That is what I found inside him: the very heart of a Hercules, in perfect condition. It was as if some new, impossible strength had swelled within him, but the rest of his body was unprepared for the transformation. He had ruptures up and down his entire cardiovascular system, and died from internal cranial bleeding.

I have included notes of a more clinical nature, as well as my sketches. Dr. Bennington may find them interesting, but I leave it to your judgment whether she can be trusted with such information.

It seems that nearly everyone in proximity to the stone has been affected. My own nightmares continue but I have had no recurrence of the strange perceptions I related in my last letter — at any rate, none that I can easily separate from my dreams. Robards, though, has been fine and reports nothing unusual. Strange.

Our primary occupation this past week has been fighting off attacks that I wish I could chalk up to fevered imaginings, but alas, are all too real. Theriocephic hybrids, part rat and part man, have attacked us every night without fail. They certainly lack human intelligence, for they throw themselves against our defenses willy-nilly, allowing us to mow them down by the dozens in interlocking fields of fire. Their fierce cunning at close quarters is undeniable, however. Thankfully we have lost only one enlisted man in the assaults, though minor injuries are numerous, and I am kept perpetually busy in our makeshift infirmary. An autopsy of one of those creatures would reveal much, but Robards, fearing disease, has forbidden it. We burn the bodies.

Something tells me Thorpe’s expedition may be encountering something similar; hopefully you know by now, one way or the other. But as to my wishes should he fail … I fear they are of no consequence. Robards has a plan, and it does not involve a rendezvous. We are to abandon this position in coming days and make for a fishing village east of here. I believe he means to set some or all of us to sea.

And finally: I hope you will forgive me for giving the sort of admonishment allowable between old friends. Laudanum may help ease your symptoms, but if we are to truly understand what is happening to us I fear it will be a hindrance. Dispensing with concerns about “long term” effects, as each day may be our last, I nevertheless advise caution. If you insist on imbibing, at least keep careful records of amounts, frequencies, and side effects.

Warm Regards,

Crane

Dear Crane, good Sir,

My hands have finally stopped shaking: the laudanum has taken its effect, and it is now with a firmer resolve and a greater degree of control over my mind and body that I take up a pen to write. I promised Bennington, your counterpart here, that I would only take what little I needed and reserve the rest for the other poor souls—if they return.

I am distressed to hear about Smythe and Dodgson, although not altogether surprised. I did not know Smythe well except that he had been a soldier in the Blood War. Dodgson, however, I thought well of, especially after his success in safely securing the first leg of our passage.

Robards is a good man, and I took some hope when your letter reminded me that he commands your part of the expedition. I fear our Thorpe is too brash, too impatient. We cannot spare the five that are with him now, and they have already been gone a day longer than expected. If he does not return, I shall assume control of this camp; and in that case, I will set out a plan to rendezvous with you and Robards. I have invested too much of my private fortunes to declare failure this early, and I confess my patience is wearing thin with Thorpe’s distractions.

In the meantime, I will set to answering your inquiry as best as I can relate, scrawling a few details here before Alia leaves.

Yes, indeed, my friend, there have been untoward changes since the Incident. Thorpe, Bennington’s man Graustein, and the others were well outside of the chamber where we found the stone, but I daresay that it has left none of us unaltered: Thorpe complains of discolored skin, Bennington wakes with night terrors not unlike the ones you describe, and Graustein has begun to show signs of albinism. I cannot account for all of it.

In the weeks that have followed since we parted, I have turned to a nightly regimen of three drops of laudanum in purified water. I find that this has been an effective way to dull the noises I hear, now constantly. Crane, perhaps you are right to speak of sanity; the first few days after the Incident I thought I was going slowly mad, as I was hearing sounds and voices keening on the wind or coming up from the earth. I dismissed them at first, thinking them only my imagination mixed with the stain of what we had just endured and seen.

By the second week I began to notice patterns: the sounds could be localized by direction, and they were almost absent during the day, intensifying markedly after sundown. One night, I chose to forgo the laudanum, and instead gave into hearing them in their full vigor; I recognized the distinct voices of our companions, including yours, even though you were well south of here already. Try as I might, I could not separate out words or ideas, but I could feel emotion and meaning conveyed in the voices. It was if I were my dream-self who came upon a great library, and, upon selecting a book, I learned its content, yet could not recognize the shapes of the individual letters. Since that night, I have had neither the energy nor the courage to try the same experiment again.

Crane, I hear the propellers of brave Alia’s aeroplane outside the canvas, and I must hastily close this letter or otherwise cause her, and you, undue delay. I will tell you more when I write again, and by then I will also know the outcome of Thorpe’s sally into the ravine. One question I would ask of you in you next correspondence: please tell me anything you concluded from the autopsies of our stalwart companions, and let me know your wishes should Thorpe have failed.

Wishing you godspeed,

Rackham

My Dear Rackham,

It hardly seems possible that less than a month has passed since we parted ways. So much has happened that that time and place seem like a different reality altogether; I trust you feel the same, though I pray your own adventures have been less laced with tragedy than my own.

With deepest regret I must inform you that Smythe and Dodgson did not survive the journey south. Would that they had gone out in a blaze of glory, protecting the rest of us, but alas, they both faded slowly due to complications from the Incident. Captain Robards insisted we hold on to their bodies until time and facilities were found for thorough examination, and it is just such a period of respite that we find ourselves in now. Naturally the task of performing the autopsies falls to me. I am delaying that bad business by writing to you now, but with good reason: a very young and overconfident young flyer calling herself Alia believes she can make deliveries back north and return here safely, but she departs very shortly.

I relate the following to you in strict confidence. Two nights ago I awoke from a horrid nightmare. Sitting up and looking around, however, I found reality no less disturbing. It was as if the skeins that covered all the people and objects around me had been ripped away, and their inner workings were laid bare to my sight (or perhaps my inner sight). My companions appeared as skeletons and collections of pulsing organs. The walls around us were present, and yet in no way prevented me from perceiving what lay behind them. Disoriented, I rose and stumbled around madly. When my vision finally returned to normal I was standing outside the abandoned building we had turned into our encampment. I know full well that memories from a half-dream state such as that are not to be trusted, but my memories, such as they are, are clear: my mad stumblings had not led me outside via the corridor and out the door, but rather, directly through the walls, as if I were a ghost.

I do not know what to make of it, though of course my mind turns toward the Incident, wondering whether I escaped the poor fate of Smythe and Dodgson, but did not come away from that place altogether unscathed. But we were together then, and so naturally I wonder how you fare, and whether you, too, have noticed anything … unusual? A laughable question in these times of ours, of course, but I trust you take my meaning.

I pray this letter finds you well. If you receive it and if this Alia is able to make good on her promise to safely deliver a reply, then my heart will be glad. My deep hope is that our correspondence may serve as a measure of sanity in these coming months.

Warm Regards,

Crane