Avis Green’s journal was one of the artifacts from the Book of the Wild discovered during the events of the Secret Society.
Background
The Mountaineers discovered Avis’s journal after using the Living Spirit Spell to dreamwalk to locations that corresponded with the latest clues from Woolie. At each location, they received new fragments of memory that didn’t seem to belong to Woolie at all, but seemed to recount someone else’s life story. The fragments were: “I manage a little bookshop”; “I’ll keep fighting for the oppressed”; “I was the unexpected sibling”; “I am proud to be an outsider”; “I won’t let my family be forgotten”; “I chose a life free of magic.”
Usage
Catherine discovered Avis’s journal in her bag upon arriving in the Ackerly Green office one morning, which seemed to have replaced her own similar-looking notebook. The journal initially appeared to be blank, save for faint writing on the bottom corner of the last page that read: “Continued in Vol. 6 – Evelyn Avis Green.”
Entries
Saberlane and Catherine discovered that if they held the journal near enough to Warner Green’s safe that Saberlane had recovered from the old Ackerly Green Book Shop, entries would temporarily appear in the journal. Catherine described the writing as “fuzzy and wavering, almost like it’s underwater.” Each entry seemed to confirm the pieces of identifying information the Mountaineers had discovered as a result of the Living Spirit Spell as belonging to Avis Green.
Entry 1
It seems others with magimystic sensitivities have experienced strange occurrences of late, though my nephew isn’t convinced it’s necessarily limited to those with knowledge of the Arcanum, only that they’re more keen to accept disappearing objects and strange sounds as magimystic. But there have been enough observed and recorded instances in a small amount of time that it’s impossible now to believe it’s not a coincidence.
Fina said I was calling out in my sleep last night, something about [there was no word there, or there was a blur, almost like it was “deeper”, more obscured, than the other words]. I confided that strange things have been happening, and I showed her the journal. She said writing has been so important to me these past few years, to help me work through things, and suggested I should keep writing my journals and book records, even if they disappear. The point, she explained in her never-ending wisdom, isn’t necessarily to preserve, but to express. Things don’t have to exist forever to have mattered–
Entry 2
Something is happening. Most of the world continues on the rails of mundane life, but those living within the eddies of magic are concerned. Like birds aware of an impending storm before they’ve caught sight of far-off clouds. Magimystic energy is behaving erratically, or so I’m told by my nephew and his coven, who are all aflutter with activity and are currently using the bookstore basement as a central office to investigate it, though I’m unclear why and frankly, haven’t tried to understand. I chose a life free of magic. As much as one can be free of magic knowing the history of our family, and having seen more than most could ever imagine exists. My brother never understood, not entirely, why I chose to live a mostly-mundane life, or more so why I relinquished my part in Ackerly Green Publishing in exchange for my little book shop on the first floor. I contend that there is more that matters in the world than magic and its never-ending pursuit.
Entry 3
Sully attempted to explain “wells” to me when I finally asked why he and his rowdy, over-excited friends he calls a coven have set up what they call “basecamp” in the cellar. What I gathered from his rambling was that there are places in the world “touched by magic” in a way that leaves an indelible mark. He and his associates use them as barometers to measure magimystic energy. He says that very recently wells have begun growing deeper, stronger, and behaving more strangely. He says that wells growing deeper might sound like a good thing, but in fact, it may also mean that magic is trying to dig in and take hold as something attempts to take it. Or destroy it. We still know so little about how magic truly works. It is a strange time. Despite everything that’s happened, all that we have experienced and endured, what I would give to have my incorrigible older brother by my side. But he’s gone.
I can’t sleep. They think I can’t hear, but Sully and his friends whisper about the dark force, once defeated, and their fear that it may have risen again, and these strange events might be warnings of a coming storm. I know our minds are simply running rampant, searching for a cause. But you can’t unring a bell. A name that had almost lost its chill, but now the old familiar cold has returned.
Entry 4
Things are changing rapidly. Even those living their lives in the strictly mundane have begun to experience the alterations. We have far less time than we realized, and yet we still don’t know what’s truly happened, only that our world is changing, and magic is somehow being eradicated. Even the bridges are beginning to falter. If they were to break… I know enough about the magimystic to understand what that possibility portends.
Those in the greater world of the magimystic with more courage and foresight than I have taken the offensive, on a worldwide hunt for whoever might be responsible, hoping to undo the alterations, or at least stop what’s happening before all is too far gone.
I did not choose this world, this life, but to think that a universe of hidden wonder, just outside the periphery of the mundane, might cease to exist without anyone learning what is truly possible… To lose that choice without ever having learned it was a choice to make, that is a reason to fight.
Entry 5
It’s worse than we imagined. It’s not only magic, it’s memory, too. Our minds are being altered. It happened in small ways at first, misplaced things and misremembered plans, but now more and more we are forgetting everything we once knew. It’s also happening more quickly now. What was once a ripple on the surface of the world is now a wave, and we are all soon to be swept up in it if we don’t act in time.
Entry 6
My dear nephew is a genius. If the first plan fails, stopping whatever is happening or whoever is responsible, then we will need a second plan to buy more time.
He and his friends are working on a stopgap spell that I have been asked to help cast when all is ready. He says that my being a Green, and casting it here at Ackerly Green is essential. So despite my reservations, I’ll help.
It’s a multifold spell. A manner of magimystic tripwire that once activated will trigger a spell to cast itself. That’s what they’re working on now, trying to make it work when no one’s been able to make a self-casting spell work before. Like his father, he’s prone to the theater of magic and has named the spell “The Last Figuration.”
As he explains it, if magic reaches a predetermined nadir, and the memories of those fighting to protect it have continued to degrade, then using the wells as measuring devices, the tripwire will snap, and the spell will theoretically cast itself without the help of a magimystic, using the company as its safest center since it is a powerful well. The spell will use whatever it can reach, the people, places, wells, and objects in its surroundings to protect what’s left of magiq and give those still fighting for it a chance. He says I’m important to creating it but is too busy to explain how right now.
He and his friends are grimly excited and feverishly working all hours to bring this about. I can do nothing at the moment but tend to the books and be with Fina. My two loves.
Entry 7
Sully has explained the part I am to take in all of this. What he needs me to do. What he needs me to find. If things weren’t so dire, I would refuse, but the world is crumbling around us, and it seems that whoever is to blame if there is anyone to blame, hasn’t yet been discovered. We’re nearly out of time.
Our world as we know it is coming to a close and we have to act swiftly to save it. The Last Figuration will draw not only objects and people to aid it but also summon the hidden objects required to open Warner’s safe, which I have brought back at Sully’s request, though I swore to never look on [missing word here] again. There are countless combinations to the safe, most of which I never learned, but I know one, and that is where I’ve hidden the object Sullivan has given me to keep and protect. Even holding it… It is an object that could at best, turn the tide of our world’s demise, but at the very least it could buy those who remain in the end extra time, a temporary dam, granting them enough power to keep fighting this scourge.
Entry 8
I can only imagine how my brother would feel if he were to see me now, fighting for everything he believed in. I turned my back on him, and will always regret it, but now I can do something to fight for the world he loved so much, and perhaps after, do what I can to protect it. Continue it. I was never proud of my name. Not like Warner. But I am a Green. And I will fight for the world of magic.
What white light awaits us in the end. Nothing but fractured thought and light. Nothing and everything. Serafina is lost to me in the blinding. There was far less time than we imagined. It happened too fast to fix. Too fast for our spell to work. We failed. In the light there is a new world emerging. Gray and without wonder, washing us away. But a last imagining comes to me. One last chance to save magic. I will try and cross the broken bridge, to enter the fray or follow my brother on to