{"id":235,"date":"2009-08-19T15:52:08","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T22:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/?p=235"},"modified":"2009-08-19T15:52:21","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T22:52:21","slug":"46-the-pit-of-vipers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/2009\/08\/46-the-pit-of-vipers\/","title":{"rendered":"(46) The Pit of Vipers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I left a tip anyway, which just meant the extra cash was burning a hole in my pocket.\u00a0 In a figurative sense, of course.\u00a0 It was too late to hit the comics shop<\/a>, and I definitely didn’t have enough time to browse comfortably for some new books, so I just ushered Doloise into the car and headed back to my place.<\/p>\n

“The Lord’s House,” I said aloud.\u00a0 “Not `the House of the Lord,’ because you’re not a church.\u00a0 Not `the House of Lords’, although maybe you are a parliament.\u00a0 The real question then is who is the Lord of the Gillikins?”<\/p>\n

Doloise did not look at me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike a lot of the stuff you read about allergies to cold iron and names of Deity and all that, well, Doloise was first a construct, so although it was definitely of fey energy, she did not have to suffer thoroughly from their weaknesses.\u00a0 (Which is something to remember if you irritate one of them – they can send all sorts of Renfields at you,\u00a0if not Tohrus.)\u00a0\u00a0 The truth of the matter has to do more with how energy from the Outside interacts with items of the Inside.\u00a0 If you could condense Truth as a skewer against Illusion, it might be made of iron, and if you’re fighting Illusion, you want at least some amount of Truth in your weaponry.\u00a0 (Although they’re not direct opposites, if you ask me.\u00a0 Would you use Truth to destroy Art?\u00a0 Is Allegory merely a seasoning or a main dish?)<\/p>\n

Reality has a lot to do with the observer.\u00a0 It’s a quantum thing, but it implies something a little scarier, too – truth and reality do not have to be in agreement.\u00a0 Both are mutable, and often they drift.\u00a0 My reality freaks me out everytime I go to bed in the dark after turning off the light, and I see\u00a0the television screen slowly draining its luminescence because it reminds me so much of open doors.\u00a0 Your reality may never have noticed, may not have cared, might even have admired it\u00a0from a scientific standpoint, thinking of all the neat things it implies.\u00a0 But what’s the truth?\u00a0 That if given enough Will something could use that moment and that energy to go Walking from somewhere else, or that it’s just science on display and nothing to fear?<\/p>\n

Both.\u00a0 Both are just as true, because it’s a matter of Will, and Will is shaped by observation, knowledge, perception, all those bits that make our psyches as unique as possible and thus our particular fingerprints when touching the world(s) around us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“A mixture of the physical and ephemeral.”\u00a0 I did know a little about them, and it was difficult for them to breed without Reality as well.\u00a0 Not that some didn’t enjoy the related acts as lasciviously as any of the -cubi, but I wondered if the Realm was so far off as to think of independence.\u00a0 I mean, if it takes a Village, maybe the Village could also be a Child?<\/p>\n

Guide and Guardian, she said, but she also had her own volition, her own goals in this.\u00a0 I wondered if the blueprint showed pretty pictures or if it was a bunch of magical incantations moved to print.\u00a0 (Written magical languages, outside of runes, are another subject of study altogether.\u00a0 It all looks like advanced mathematics to me.)\u00a0 Maybe it was just a big picture of a tree.\u00a0 I didn’t really need to see it, but I was curious.\u00a0 It was an opportunity to learn.<\/p>\n

“The Lord is a Dragon,” she said, finally, while I was turning towards the parking lot.<\/p>\n

I mulled that one over.\u00a0 In the eternal game of finding where the Kings were in the deck, what Dragons were left were pretty much on top.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, it’s not a standard 52-card deck… you didn’t think we were playing with a full one, did you?\u00a0 There are Knights and Kings who hunt them, but those don’t come along often, and Dragons have Princes of their own.<\/p>\n

Of course, I use the ones I understand with the capital letters.\u00a0 If her family was in league with a Dragon why did they need a mortal to give a push\u00a0to a deity?\u00a0 Dragons ate more gods than I did waffles, or at least, they used to…when we had gods like waffles, and I bought syrup.\u00a0 (It goes through phases.\u00a0 Creating gods isn’t a hard thing to do, all told.\u00a0 Again, why I’m not much for religion.)<\/p>\n

What did Dragons mean to Ivan?\u00a0 I recalled the amulet Nellie had used.\u00a0\u00a0Could you have an undead Dragon?\u00a0 That would be my next point of research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reality has a lot to do with the observer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-three"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}