We’re home for the night, and absolutely exhausted. We walked the tunnel as long as we could but we now know we’re going to have to camp overnight to make it to the end. We’re going to take more food and water and sleeping bags tomorrow. It’s strange, that cold I had? Gone the moment we walked through the door into the tunnel. But now I’m feeling foul again. Cole says there’s no telling what effect the spell could’ve had on me, or going back to Neithernor so often.

The tunnel unlocked a new entry in the journal. It’s mostly my dad exploring the three manners of magiq again, but it’s things he learned or figured out some time later. Here are the important bits:

“Two true manners of magiq… material and wrought. Borrow and break. You make the third with one or the other or both, and it changes it, depending on what you use, what story you end up telling.

Borrowed figuration is slow, but steady. The stories take root over time. But possess a particular, gentle resonance. Broken figuration… faster, but unpredictable. The stories take on hidden themes one didn’t intend. Combining them is hardest, nearly impossible without many, a coven. Coalescing the opposites, ordering the chaos… but the magiq created is potent. Rich soil. How my dear girl was made safe.

But it’s all minor figuration. Trickles of temporary power. All that can be managed here. How to create major figuration? True, new magiq? Impossible in the mundane, and even Neithernor? Or just beyond my power? Even with all I’ve learned, all I’ve gathered in the stick over these years…

Must I be inksworn? Yes, that’s the word. The one they were afraid to speak. Why? Why did they fear that name?

When will all these secrets be undone?”

I wonder how much time passed between his last entries and this one? His tone is different, even his handwriting. Everything was closing in on him. The Silver. Its dog, The Storm. The Guide to MAGIQ was found again in 2013 (according to the site), because he stole it from those monsters. But he died in 2016. Was he just hanging on, waiting for the fire to catch so he could let go? Alone in that park through winter and weather, with no one but the voices of The Council egging him on to finish this plan. Thinking he couldn’t call on me until the time was right, because the path was more important than his life?

That last entry, him in that hall and that thing tearing at him… I’m full aware I’m not truly dealing with it. I’m not truly dealing with anything right now. I can’t. There’s so much to do and I can’t stop to look at everyone I’ve lost lying on either side of this path, it’s too much. Forgive me for not…

We’re going back tomorrow. Prepared.

For some reason this tunnel feels like the beginning of an end. The closing of a circle.

The dreams of my mum and dad laid to rest.
The last pages of The Monarch Papers.

One question left for me to answer.
What’s inside the little red house?