Honesty, Essays, and Void-Beasts

In a mansion that suffered from Grecian urns the way slum hovels suffer from cockroaches, a woman in half-moon lenses sat down at a marble table and offered her hand.

“I’m Vanessa Quillfeather – chronicler, scribe, and writing consultant. A pleasure to meet you."

Across the table, a young woman of eighteen summers kept her arms crossed. “My father says you can help me get into the Academy.” She was clad in Helian vestments, in keeping with her rank and aspirations. “It’s pointless, you know? He’s the High Templar. The council would be idiots not to let me in.”

“Yes.” Vanessa retracted her hand, a taut smile across her face. “Mr. Dawnstar expressed as much. He also said that, for a High Templar, properly processing paperwork is as much a part of the job as purging the deathless hordes of the Necropolis. Perhaps even more so.”

The young woman turned her head and huffed.

“Now do you prefer to go by Astralis or…?”

“Astrid.” The young woman leaned forward. “I shouldn’t even have to submit an essay. It’s just stupid. I can cut down a man twice my size in combat.”

“And with some rhetorical refinement, you’ll learn to do that out of combat.” Vanessa reached into her bag and laid out a stack of papers. “Now I have the draft of your essay here and I have to say, it feels like it’s missing something.”

Astrid narrowed her eyes. “Like what? I included every ghoul and revenant I’ve ever purged.”

“Yes.” Vanessa placed a hand on the stack. “Twenty pages of meticulously itemized butchery. And while there’s something to be said for thoroughness.” Vanessa lowered her glasses. “It doesn’t feel emotionally honest.”

Astrid wrinkled her nose. “Every one of those kills is confirmed. The ledgers will show-“

Vanessa waved her off. “I’m not disputing what did or did not happen. I’m asking you to tell the reader how it felt.”

Astrid eyed Vanessa warily. “Why?”

“The point of the essay is for the council members to better understand you as a person. It’s your opportunity to present yourself and to show how you intend to present yourself, one day, as an emissary of Ank-Mon-El.”

Astrid stiffened. “As an emissary of Ank-Mon-El, I am a light upon the face of the innocent. I bring swift death to the heretic. I-“

“Yes, yes, it’s good to know the Creed, but that still isn’t being emotionally honest.” Vanessa shuffled through the papers. “Now if I could find…okay here. This part, ‘As the void-beast reared, tendrils lashing, my hands trembled in fear. I thought of my father and the shame it would bring him if I died-‘”

Astrid shifted uncomfortably, hearing her words aloud for the first time. “Stop reading that.”

Vanessa looked up. “Why?”

Astrid averted her gaze, muttering under her breath.

“I’m sorry?”

“It makes me look dumb! Okay?!” Astrid crossed her arms and turned away. “We should take that out.”

Vanessa smiled softly. “It makes you look human, like someone who lives under a very long shadow.”

Astrid turned up her nose. “It’s unseemly.”

“Emotions often are.” Vanessa tapped the paper. “If you had 5 pages of this, it would be worth a pound in gold.”

“Really?”

Vanessa nodded.

A mischievous grin spread across Astrid’s face. “Good, because there’s plenty more.”

She reached under the table, pulled out a stack twice the size, and slapped it on the countertop.

“Oh my,” Vanessa said.

“When I heard father was hiring a scribe, I knew I’d finally have someone to share my work with.”

“Wow,” Vanessa blinked. “Well, I- it’s an honor, for sure.” Vanessa eyed the stack. “But we’ll need to pair this down. By a lot.”

“Go ahead. Read it.”

Vanessa took a page off the top and scanned the first paragraph. She blushed. “By Ank-Mon-El’s blood, this happened to you? With the tendrils? Upside down?”

“Nope,” Astrid beamed. “I made it up.”

Vanessa flinched. “You can’t make it up! Especially things like this!"

“Why not?” Astrid pouted defensively. “I made up the void-beast in the first place.”

“…what?”

Astrid shifted her gaze. “I mean it happened to a friend of mine.”

“A friend?”

“A friend of a friend.”

Vanessa sighed. “Astrid, the essay has to be about things that actually happened to you. Otherwise, you’re lying.”

“You just said I was being emotionally honest!” Astrid turned away and crossed her arms again.

Vanessa opened her mouth and closed it. She glanced down at the paper in her hand. “Listen. Sometimes we write things that aren’t true, but they capture how we feel. Sometimes they capture how we feel better than the truth itself.”

Astrid glanced at Vanessa, her arms still crossed.

“It’s good to write that way, in your spare time. But it’s not appropriate for the essay, okay?”

Astrid looked at Vanessa, then the paper, then sighed, turning back. “Okay. I’ll rewrite it.”

“Good.” Vanessa scanned the rest of the page in her hand. “This is something though. Sick. Depraved. The product of deeply unwell mind. But very good.”

For the next ten minutes, the scribe read through the second stack while the daughter of the High Templar eagerly waited.

“So what do you think?” Astrid swayed in her seat, barely able to contain herself.

Vanessa checked over her shoulder then leaned forward, whispering. “I’ve got a contact with a press. We get this printed and it’ll be the most widely read smut in the land.”

Astrid’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

Vanessa nodded. “You’ll need a pen name though. If anyone ever finds out that the daughter of the High Templar is writing this, they’ll feed us both to the pigs.”

“Celeste Nightbloom,” Astrid blurted out.

Vanessa smirked. “Had one ready to go huh?”

Astrid shook her head.

The scribe offered her hand. “Then it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms. Nightbloom.” Ω