8FOLD/PREVIEW: Excerpt from Reign Morgana

[Amabel Holland]

Sooooo one thing I've noticed is that the google groups interface I
use to interact with RACC has decided to eat my formatting (INCLUDING
FOR OLD POSTS!) and rather than have to like manually add
double-spaces after every paragraph, I'm trying a thing where I
"indent" each new graf with a period and two spaces. I need to see if,
you know, this works, and so, as a treat, here's a teensy context-free
bit from one of next year's 8Fold series.


Summon, bind, ask, banish. These are the four steps for evocation. The
first isn't relevant. The second has been done.
.  This leaves the ask. Kate may ask one question of the shape. As
soon as it answers, the circle that binds it will be broken. The shape
will be free, wild. Dangerous. More dangerous, perhaps, than it was
last night.
.  "Which is where the banish comes in," explains Kate.
.  "I thought you were going to kill it," says Melody.
.  "Trapped within the circle, I can do that," says Kate.
.  "Ah," says Melody. "And if it answers your question, it's free."
.  "Right," says Kate. "In which case the best I can do is banish it.
Which I'll have to do quickly."
.  "But what if it lies?" asks Simon.
.  "It can't," says Pill. "Bound within the circle, it must answer
true. But that doesn't mean it will answer fully or usefully or even
coherently."
.  "Like, honest gibberish?" says Simon, trying to wrap his head around it.
.  "More like cryptic portents and metaphors," says Pill. "Kate, do
you know the story of the second door?"
.  Kate nods. "But I doubt they do. Do you wanna do the honors?"
.  And so she does.

.     THE STORY OF THE SECOND DOOR
.  A clever man came to a place with three doors, watched by a devil.
.  "Open two doors. Behind one door, you shall find the key. Behind
another, the lock. But beware. One door holds only doom."
.  In a rage, the clever man bound the devil.
.  "Very well! Then you may ask me one question, and I will answer true."
.  At first, the clever man wanted to ask which two doors he should
open. But he knew that the devil's answer would be, the door with the
key and the door with the lock.
.  Then, he thought to ask behind which door he would find the key.
But then how would he know behind which door the lock and which doom?
And likewise if he asked which contained the lock.
.  And so the clever man asked the devil, "Behind which door is my doom?"
.  "The second door," said the devil.
.  The clever man opened the first door, and there found the key. He
skipped the next door, then opened the third, and there found his
doom.

"The devil did not lie," says Pill. "My dude opened two doors. And
behind the second one he opened, doom."
.  "So," says Kate, "I need to phrase my question really carefully."
.  "Well, then I'm your guy, sis," says Simon. "I do this all the time."
.  Kate raises an eyebrow. "You, uh, summon demons?"
.  "Well, no," says Simon, a little embarrassed. "But this monkey's
paw stuff? We do it all the time in our Pathfinder game. Parker loves
pulling those kinda gotchas on us."
.  "It's a little bit different," starts Pill.
.  "Maybe not," says Kate. "We're trying to outwit a malicious pedant, right?"
.  "Basically."
.  "So, let's get a bunch of other malicious pedants to help us out,"
says Kate. "Simon, call your group."