The Magnus Archives - MAG 168 - Roots

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Hi everyone, it's Kareem, the voice of Simon Fairchild from the Magnus Archives. Today, I'm here to tell you about Ostium, a podcast launched on the RQ Network. Ostium is an adventure, sci-fi, fantasy podcast set in the mysterious and thrilling town of Ostium, where some doors should not be opened. Follow Jake Fisher, who discovers the secret and abandoned town of Ostium

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Starting point is 00:01:30 Rusty Quill Presents The Magnus Archives Episode 168 Roots Okay. Time you went for a walk. Yeah, about that. You sure you'll be okay on your own? I always have been. Okay. I mean...

Starting point is 00:02:35 Well, I don't like this place. Once again, Martin, that's sort of the point. Yeah, I know, right? I get it. It's just... It's more than that. This place, what did you call it? The Rotten Corpse? The Corpse Roots. Yeah, yeah, that. Well, it... it feels... I don't know, it feels like it's... Waiting.

Starting point is 00:02:55 Yeah. Waiting. This is the one with the, um, the death guy, isn't it? This is Oliver Banks' domain, yes. So it's him that's waiting? Not just him, but yes. So are you going to smite him then? Um... John?

Starting point is 00:03:19 John, I said are you going to... I heard you the first time. And? I... I don't know. Why not? Can't you just do what you did with that Sasha thing? Make the eye see him and all that? I could, I think.

Starting point is 00:03:33 Cool. So what's the problem then? Take another monster off the hit list. Job done. It's not that simple. What does that mean? What does that mean, John? What happened to Kill Bill?

Starting point is 00:03:46 John? John, you said... I know what I said, and I don't... I don't know, Martin. I just... I don't think he's... I don't know. I don't think he's evil. Oh, yeah, sure. He's probably a really kind, benevolent ruler of a hellish fair prison. It's just... he helped me.

Starting point is 00:04:05 When I was... He helped me. When I was... He woke me up. Wow. What a hero. Martin? What? What? Yeah, alright, I know.

Starting point is 00:04:18 I'm sorry. Is there something you want to talk about? No, I'm fine. It's fine. Everything's fine. I'm sorry. Martin? I said it's fine. Everything's fine. I'm sorry. Martin. I said it's fine. Are you jealous? I told you not to know things about me. I really didn't have to. Good. Because I'm definitely not. Alright. Look, I'm fine, alright? You

Starting point is 00:04:39 said. Yes, I did. And even if I was jealous, I would be perfectly justified anyway so but you're not no i'm fine all right good good great all right fine yes yes i am jealous right yes if you absolutely must know because he woke me up i was there weeks and nothing he talks to you for five minutes and suddenly you're back on your feet and bouncing around like a springy chicken. I mean, that's really not... And what's so special about him that you wake up for him and not me? Enlighten me.

Starting point is 00:05:11 I mean, that's not really how it worked. It wasn't... Look, Martin, I'm sorry you feel that way, but I'm not going to kill a man just because you're jealous. Why not? Yeah. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. Please? Who knows? Maybe he'll try to stop us getting through the roots, and I'll have to. But I'm not going to seek him out. At the very least, he's earned not having me hunt him down. Fine. I suppose that's reasonable.

Starting point is 00:05:47 Now, if you're quite done inciting me to murder... Not murder. Smiting. Right, yes, yes, of course. You... you vomit your horrors. I'm not sure I like that metaphor. Puke your terrors? Just go. Right, right, I'm going. Report to prevent future deaths.

Starting point is 00:06:22 This report is being sent to the great eye that watches all who linger in terror and gorges itself on the sufferings of those under its unrelenting stuporous gaze, and its archive which draws knowledge of this suffering unto itself. 1. Coroner. I am Oliver Banks, sometimes known as Antonio Blake or Dr Thomas Pritchard. I serve the coming end that waits for all and will not be ignored. 2. Coroner's Legal Powers I make this report under no authority, no regulation or act of law,

Starting point is 00:07:02 save the hollow power and grim responsibility given me by the termination of all life. With it I may see and spread the hidden veins of destiny that wrap us close and draw us through the empty, gurning parody of meaning that we call life, knowing at all stages that the last and final point of this journey is a blank and futile end. I have no power to stop it, and even if I did, I would not do so, for to rob a soul of death is as torturous as its inevitable coming. 3. INVESTIGATION AND INQUEST On the first and last day of the Age of the Beholding, I begin my vigil into the doom of Danica Gellthor. She was, at the time of the change, thirty-four years of age, and found herself within my domain,

Starting point is 00:07:53 travelling slowly and unremittingly along the length of the stretching corpse-roots. She is one of many thousands, neither remarkable nor unique in her background or destination. many thousands, neither remarkable nor unique in her background or destination. She has spent the last twenty of those years acutely aware, and in constant dread of a death she believed to be imminent. The earliest she can remember being certain that she was about to die was when, at the age of fifteen due to a chronic case of acid reflux, she decided that she had a malignant intestinal tumour. She would spend whole nights lying awake, imagining it lurking there, growing,

Starting point is 00:08:32 spreading, blocking her organs and preparing to kill her. Danica knew the whole thing was ridiculous, of course, and did not visit a doctor about it, simply assuming it would be discovered when she finally collapsed. She diagnosed herself with a year to live at most. At the age of sixteen, she contracted a case of acute gastroenteritis, which knotted her guts so severely that she had to have several scans taken by a buzzing hospital machine. taken by a buzzing hospital machine. Young Danica lay there on the hospital bed, waiting for the stern-faced doctor to come in and tell her what she already knew, that she had months at most to live. When they said no such thing, talking about her treatment for her decidedly non-fatal condition,

Starting point is 00:09:21 an incredible sense of joy began to overtake her, a deep and profound relief. There was nothing there. She wasn't going to die. She was going to have a life. At least for the next three months, which was how long it took her to find a lump in her chest that she decided was fatal breast cancer. This one she did get checked out, and was told in no uncertain terms that it was a harmless cyst. But she knew they'd missed something. Clearly the cyst had distracted them, causing them to miss the actual tumour. But she couldn't go back. No doubt she'd be dead within a year.

Starting point is 00:10:01 Two, at most. And so it continued for the next two decades of her life. She started smoking at the age of 17, battling with the addiction her whole life, and not once was there a chesty cough that she did not decide was lung cancer. When she had her first panic attack at age 23, she was absolutely certain that she was having a stroke. Every dizzy spell was a sign of MS, every achy leg was a fatal blood clot. She never feared an epidemic or a plague, and the thought of infection rarely troubled her, because she knew that whatever was about to imminently kill her was going to rise up from deep inside her own body. For her whole life,

Starting point is 00:10:47 as each milestone of adulthood passed, Danica never believed that she would live more than two years further. Every relationship was tinged with a melancholic guilt that she would leave them so soon. Every achievement overshadowed by the certainty she wouldn't be around to enjoy it for very much longer. Real health problems—her acid reflux, her blood pressure—were ignored because, well, they wouldn't matter for much longer, would they? When the change came and the fears oozed forth into our world, the end that laces through every fibre of my soul reached out and gave Danica to me. She had fed it well for so long, it was only right that she should be here.

Starting point is 00:11:37 4. Circumstances of the Death In exactly thirteen stretches of the route on which Danica travels, a stretch being measured in the waves of nauseating terror that flow out of her with such rhythmic regularity, she will finally arrive at her destination. It will be a crowded place, a shopping mall or somewhere similar, though her feet will never leave the root that binds her. She will feel it first as a dull ache, a sensation not unlike being pinched, but in the inside of her leg. Her skin will prickle like a faint and shuddering

Starting point is 00:12:18 electric current were passing through it, and she will absentmindedly scratch at it, as though it were a simple itch that could be dismissed. She will know exactly what is happening, but after so many scares and false alarms and dismal morbid obsessions, she will not feel comfortable enough to sound any alarm or ask for anyone's help. She will simply stagger over to a bench that is nearby, anyone's help. She will simply stagger over to a bench that is nearby, and find herself a seat to try and wait out whatever unpleasant sensations are washing over her, even though she is certain they will never leave her. It is, alas, the act of sitting down that dislodges the long-foreseen blood clot in her leg, formed when she took that long-distance coach trip. She should

Starting point is 00:13:06 have known with her dreadful circulation that cramming herself into so little legroom would be the end of her, but she had dismissed such thoughts, waving them away as more paranoia. But the end knows there is no paranoia about your own demise, only that dim, plodding awareness of its constant approach. The clot, now broken, will travel up and through her. Danica will feel its passage all through her body, aware of it, as every vein of the corpse root is aware of her and those just like her, walking along their all-too-brief span. She will begin to cough as it hits her lungs, her anxious dread and sense of doom bubbling up to fever pitch as the pink mucus bubbles up through her lips.

Starting point is 00:13:56 She clutches her chest as if desperate to pull the knotted blood vessels out with her bare hands and looks wildly about. But the crowds that were there such a short time ago have vanished, and there is nobody to help her, nobody to see her collapse and call an ambulance. It is too late. It has always been too late. Danica Gellthorpe will try one last time to stand and instead collapse into a corner, mostly obscured by a large pot plant, and will not be discovered for almost half an hour,

Starting point is 00:14:33 by which time any hope of saving her has long since passed. She remains conscious for several minutes after she falls, unable to move or speak or even think in any recognisable sense, but aware enough of what is happening to be grasped with the despair of a terror realised. And then, at last, she dies. Her last thoughts are certainty of the yawning well of nothingness that awaits her as consciousness slips away. Danica takes another step along the corpse route. that awaits her as consciousness slips away.

Starting point is 00:15:08 Danica takes another step along the corpse route. 5. Coroner's Concerns I watch as with each motion, each laboured, reluctant movement along her path, Danica Gellthorpe is painfully and inescapably aware of what it is that lies at the end of it. She tries to move backwards, off to the side, any direction other than that unstoppable, inescapable, forwards. But her limbs seize up with the attempt. She tries to stay still, but can do so only with the most incredible of efforts. To eke out another few seconds of stasis sets every nerve in her body aflame with agony and effort,

Starting point is 00:16:00 begging her to scream, despite her jaw being set in a frozen rictus of sombre mourning. I see her relive the coming moment of her inevitable demise. Every inch along the route she moves, she sees another flash of what is to come, the sickening knowledge of where she is going, the sensation of travelling there through the movements of her own body, as much as those movements may be made under duress. No amount of protest or effort can travel any other way but towards the end. Sometimes, for some small variety, I will allow Danica to brush against another route, the final fate of someone she loves. She may see Maria lying in her hospital bed, monitors crowding her as the doctors struggle to get an IV into her wildly convulsing arm.

Starting point is 00:16:50 She might have a flash of Bobby, fingers tightening around the rungs of the ladder as the rusted nails give way. She often sees Dennis' face as the knife slips eagerly between his ribs, even though he doesn't die for hours afterwards. And with each one she knows her steps forward bring closer not only her own end, but all of theirs. Time walks forward with her, but she has not the strength to stop it. Her fate draws ever nearer, filling me with the joy of watchful fear, but also my own concerns. The matters of concern are as follows. A. When Danica Gelsthorpe reaches the end of her corpse route, she will die. This new world of fear reviles death as a release, but the coming end cannot exist without its reality. It is not a being of dangled promises and shifting torments. The certainty of death waits for all who travel the corpse routes,

Starting point is 00:18:00 and that certainty will be delivered on without hesitation or consideration of any other factors. This places a limit on the fear that can be generated from them, as their pool is necessarily finite and ultimately, however slowly, it will be exhausted. To be offset, this consideration will require the acquisition of victims from other domains as replacements, potentially inciting bad feeling between those domains. C. A metaphysical quirk of this new reality's divorce from the traditional concept of time, and one for which I have no further explanation, means that I do not believe new humans are being created or born. The souls trapped within this transformed world are the only ones that will ever be here, and the presence of the termination of all requires that, ultimately, that is what will happen. However slowly the domains

Starting point is 00:19:04 of death will be removing sufferers from a closed system, however many thousands of years may be experienced in the meantime, eventually this world will be left barren and empty. d. When this happens, the great powers themselves will also fade and die, withering away into nothingness and releasing this reality from their grip. I do not know how I feel about this. 6. Actions that should be taken. None, even if such a fate could be avoided, as it comes closer and the other entities grow in their awareness of their own end, the grotesque ripples of their own impossible panic shall glut and feed my master, gorging it to the point where perhaps it will even surpass the watcher in prominence. The others may take what actions they wish. They may plot

Starting point is 00:20:05 and plan and tear themselves apart in an attempt to separate from the fate that they know they cannot escape. But they will fail. The currents of perception and reality may twist in whatever shapes they want, but none of them can ever render things truly eternal. And I shall help, ushering on this final blank emptiness. Perhaps once it might have horrified me, or given me some sense of pursuing the ultimate release of the world that you have damned. But I am too much of my patron now, and my feelings cannot help but reflect the shadows of anticipation that lurk within the grave.

Starting point is 00:20:52 The end does not fear its own cessation, for it is the certainty and promise of all life, however strange, that it will one day finish, and that includes its own stark existence. It shall be the last, and, when the universe is silent and still forever, it shall perhaps, in that impossible moment before it vanishes, finally be satisfied. 7. Your response. Please, John, do not interpret this report as a plea for mercy or a call to action.

Starting point is 00:21:39 I would have offered it willingly, of course, but to do so is no longer an option. You cannot ask. You may only take. And so the scope of my domain is yours. Enter it and destroy me if you wish. I fear the annihilation you would gift me as little as I desire it. I am now, as the thing I feed, a fixed point that has neither the longing nor the ability to change its state of existence. I can do nothing to you, and you may walk the corpse routes in safety should you choose, though if you wish to confront me you will have to seek me out. You know, of course, where I am, but know that even you, with all your power, cannot keep the world alive forever. All things end.

Starting point is 00:22:30 And every step you take, whatever direction you may choose, only brings you closer to it. Report ends. A lot to think about. I feel... No. I don't want to destroy Oliver Banks. It wouldn't do any good. I know that, and he never asked for this any more than I did. I feel badly for those that exist in his domain. Of course I do, but at least their suffering will be over, eventually. I can't destroy everyone I cross paths with. No. If Oliver will not seek me out, then I will leave him be. The avatar of death shall live. Martin's going to be thrilled.

Starting point is 00:23:51 The Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 4.0 international license. Today's episode was written by Jonathan Sims, produced by Laurie-Anne Davis, and directed by Alexander Janey. Produced by Laurie-Anne Davis and directed by Alexander J. New. It featured Jonathan Sims as The Archivist and Alexander J. New as Martin Blackwood. To subscribe, buy merchandise or join our Patreon, visit RustyQuill.com. Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook or email us via mail at rustyquill.com. Join our community on the Discord via the website or on Reddit at r slash the Magnus Archives. Thanks for listening. Hi everyone, Alex here. I'd just like to take a moment to thank some of our patrons. To be continued... chilling and mind bending stories, Audible has everything you need. Audible is the leader in

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The Magnus Archives - MAG 168 - Roots

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