A Dictionary of Symbols, Second Edition (Madoka Magica Quest)

You blink slowly. That’s a nasty headache, exacerbated but probably not caused by the fact your face is pressed against what appears to be a beaten-up wooden desk. About twenty centimetres from your head lies a book, spread open and spine-up. That’s not a great way to mark your place, you fixate on this detail in particular, that’ll damage the book. God, your head is pounding, and that’s what you’re focusing on? Priorities. You need to set better priorities. First off, you are going to get your head off the desk, and then you’ll look for alcohol. This may well be a hangover, and if it is, you’d like to be drunk for it.

Raising your head from the desk elicits a sharp jab of pain. Clearly this headache is sensitive to sudden movements, you’d best be careful and move gently for the time being. There doesn’t seem to be any alcohol in the vicinity, and this space in fact resembles an office. The desk that served as your pillow is strewn with papers, and there were in fact several more books, just outside of your line of sight. Of note are J. E. Cirlot’s A Dictionary of Symbols, and Fritz Stern’s Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire. You aren’t sure what, if any, connection there is between these works. You close the Fritz Stern book, however, and mentally admonish the owner of this office (is it you?) for leaving their belongings in such a state.

The act of closing the book brings another point of interest to your attention. Your right hand is clutching some sort of fabergé egg. Soul Gem, your brain helpfully supplies. You raise it to your eyes. The egg (and you will be calling it an egg, brain be damned) is a deep, dark red like dried blood, pulsing slowly with a faint glow of brighter red deep within. Honestly, just looking at it makes you feel drained. You want to look at something else. Maybe you’ll read about Bleichröder? The back seems to imply it’s something to do with Jews in the early German Empire. That sounds like a fun way to spend a few days, judging by the thickness of the book. Best get started!

Oh, there’s a slip of paper in the front cover. It looks like a hastily drawn picture of your fabergé egg, next to what you think might be a spindle? Grief seed, your know-it-all brain chimes in, eagerly informing you that if you don’t find one and use it to purge your corruption, you’ll probably die. That seems to be the gist of the note, too. Well, the headache is pretty bad, but not so bad that you want to die, you’d better get on finding one of these spindles. Witches drop them when killed, your brain supplies, being helpful for once. You can track witches with your soul gem.

You wait for your brain to clarify how to do that. It does not. It would appear that this is where your useful mystery knowledge comes to an end. If you had to guess, your soul gem looks to be around 82% dark, though you’re not sure how you came to that number, you’re pretty sure that when it goes black, it’ll kill you, so you’re going to get going. There’s a coat hanging on the back of the door of this office, which you’re increasingly sure is your office, so you pull it down and put it on. You think you feel like yourself, though you admit you don’t know what yourself normally feels like, and the headache still sucks. There’s a bit of dizziness going on too, joy. You slip out the door without a second thought, and after five minutes or so trying to find the exit of this building, you slip out onto what looks to be a university campus of some kind. Fuck.

Your brain helpfully supplies that you hate the layout of university campuses, and regard them all as damnable mazes. There isn’t a map in your increasingly blurry vision, either, because you know whoever designed these infernal places is out to get you. Is blurry vision a sign you’re dying of fabergé egg blackening? You hope not. Regardless of your unreliable eyes, you can make out a few important details.

Firstly, the building you’ve just come out of has a sign by the door, reading Greber Building for Architectural Studies. Secondly, there’s a door a few metres to the right with stairs leading down, that your brain promises has tunnels at the end of it. Tunnels are nice, you don’t need your know-it-all brain to tell you that. Third, this is a wide open space, so you can absolutely just wander around. Given your inability to figure out how to find witches, what will you do?

- - > [Return to the Greber Building! Perhaps there’s someone there who knows you, and can render aid. Everyone knows magical girls congregate in architecture departments, after all.]
- - > [Descend into the tunnels, and discover new and more efficient ways to traverse the damnable mazes that are universities. You’ve heard rumours they have maps. Also, maybe witches live underground.]
- - > [Wander the campus on the surface. The sun is setting, and perhaps witches come out at night. There’s more space out here than underground or indoors, so you might be more likely to spot a witch if one does show up.]
- - > [Write-in. What the hell is ‘write-in’? Write what in? All you know is that whatever gets written in, it’s subject to QM veto, as is standard for these types of things.]

(Notes from the author: Well, this is my second attempt at a quest. This time, however, I did more than one draft, and have actual ideas as to where the story might go. No more digging around in graveyards on esoteric missions, comrades! Now, we scurry around a heavily distorted version of Major Canadian Cities trying to avoid dying from fabergé egg blackening! Here's hoping!)

 

With uncharacteristic clarity of purpose and intention, you resolve to head into the tunnels. The descent is nondescript, marked only with a brief stagger partway down the stairs, after which you elect to clutch the rail tightly to avert a fall.

There’s a pun in that, somewhere. You aren’t sure what it is, but you laugh nonetheless, eliciting an odd look from a small gaggle of students passing by you on their way out of the tunnels. You call out your fabergé egg and glance down at it. The arbitrary corrupted-ness value that comes to mind (through blurred vision) this time is about 91%. That’s worse, right? Yeah, that’s a whole lot worse. You could really use a spindle right now.

You reach the bottom of the stairs and come to an intersection almost immediately. You can proceed right, or travel straight ahead. There’s a map on the wall to your right, and while your blurry vision makes reading it difficult, you broadly make out your location near the Greber Building and conclude that there are more buildings straight ahead of you, to the north. As such, that is the direction in which you march, a periodical sway in your step. You have yet to find any witches, but you’ve been searching for what, five minutes at most? Time’s a bit of a blur. You feel like dancing, but suppress the urge. People will stare.

What, more than they’re already staring? You’re sure you look like you’re drunk, haphazardly wandering this tunnel with unsteady steps, clutching a faintly glowing magic rock. You remember your aunt. That’s a memory! That’s a success! She used to glare at a specific painting a lot, before… Ah, you suppose you don’t have much in the way of memories. These thoughts occupy you as on you march. A leaf blows past, perhaps fallen from a tree in autumn and tracked in months later on the sole of someone’s boot.

There’s a swelling of ethereal music, though you get the sense that you’ve heard this melody before, as you turn the corner in the tunnel towards the section of the university devoted to business and the students thereof-

O glorious autumnal scene, with small and fearful beasts, hares, driven before storms of hail and red leaves. You blink for a moment. Tunnels don’t traditionally resemble futurist-impressionist paintings, do they? This is a good sign! Your pulse quickens, you can taste the familiar hunt on the air. You may not have been able to find a witch, but lo, a witch has found you.

What follows is pure instinct. Your fabergé egg leaps from your hand (or do you move it?) as if possessed by some force, and affixes itself to a sort of metal clasp at your right shoulder that certainly wasn’t there before. From there, a grey cape of questionable practicality flows outward and over that shoulder, stopping just short of your hip. Silken gloves appear on your hands with an odd sense of dissonance and unfamiliarity. You’re a veteran, you should be used to this by- Ah, and there’s the weight of a familiar sabre in your left hand. A heartbeat passes, and a buckler joins it in your right. Your hair is gently tied behind you by some method you can’t see, given your forward-facing eyes.

The hares stop their rout a moment, if only to stare in rapt attention at the goddess, the corpse, the standing one before them. If you were to examine your cape, as you take a moment to do now, you would find a series of half-completed lines in the silk, as though someone had begun to embroider it in the past only to stop before the work was completed. This whole sequence feels off, quite frankly, but if it’s what you need to do to survive, then by Jove you will put up with it! All through this, your march continues, the swaying steps that led you through the tunnels up to this now leading you into the depths of the autumnal labyrinth.

Around you, hares stand at attention even as the gale of leaves and ice buffet their delicate ears. Your quarry is nearby! You will heal yourself, and your march will continue forever onwards until-! Until-! A wave of exhaustion overcomes you. A figure rushes to your side. She’s beautiful, a resplendent blur in green and gold. She grasps your arm in one hand and moves her lips wordlessly. This beautiful maiden must not stay your hunt. The witch must be slain, if you are to survive. She moves in front of you, temporarily causing you to stagger to avoid bumping into her, and places her hand on your shoulder. Your eyes burn. Exhaustion overcomes you. The storm stops, and the rabbits flee out of your sight.

Your hunt has been stayed, and you have failed. Dreams claim you, o martyr of a cause you do not remember.

What do you dream of, dear martyr?
- - > [Dream of your aunt and her tastes in art. There was a lesson there, you think.]
- - > [Dream of the girl in emerald and bronze tones, she seems familiar, and so beautiful.]
- - > [Dream of the hunt, you’ll need to be more prepared if you ever get another chance to save yourself.]
- - > [Sleep without dreams. You are a martyr fallen in the pursuit of her duties, you deserve the rest at least, should you ever return to wakefulness.
- - > [Write in Option. You aren't sure how one would 'write in' a dream, but you know it'd be subject to QM veto anyway.]

 

You dream of your aunt. What morals could be found here, in a life so mediocre?

Your aunt was not the type to hate art. At worst, she hated the artist themselves and was disinterested in the art, but she wasn’t the sort of person to so anthropomorphize a painting as to hate it in and of itself. Like any general statement about a person, however, this of course had its exceptions. Most of these were music, since she had sensitive hearing and repetitive noises could easily get on her nerves, but there were a couple books she had great disdain for as well. The most notable exception, however, was Alina Gray’s Autumnal Dynamism.

By all accounts, Autumnal Dynamism was a decent enough painting, if a tad derivative of earlier works in the Italian futurist movement. Painted a bit under a century late for the height of the movement by a nine year old prodigy, the painting depicted scenes of hares and other animals scavenging amidst storms of hail and fields of fallen leaves. The hares form a blur of motion along the edges of the scene, painted in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (which most believe the title to have been a reference to, hence the accusations of being derivative.) By all accounts, it was an acceptably mediocre painting early in the career of an artist who would go on to do greater, more original works.

You aren’t actually sure how your aunt acquired Autumnal Dynamism, but acquire it she did, shortly before she contracted. When she moved out of your grandparents’ house, the painting went with her, and was hung in the kitchen of her apartment. You suspect she could not have hated it that much yet, given that she brought it with her, rather than selling or gifting it away. As years went by, however, she gained a distaste for the painting, and when you would visit her with your mother, you’d often catch her glaring at it when she thought you weren’t looking. She kept it on the walls for many years, however, and only removed it when…

Your aunt’s distaste for one specific painting was not the only noteworthy thing about her, mind you! She was a passionate woman, who often fixated on elements of what she perceived to be her duties, be they to society, to family, or to her enemies. In the few overlapping months in which you were both contracted, she took it upon herself to impress upon you your duties as a magical girl, and the importance of making what sacrifices need be made for the greater good. She would always kill the familiars along with the witch, and encouraged you to do the same when you would hunt together. The painting thing is what you mostly strongly remember, though.

Her demise was untimely, and yet you take solace knowing-

<>

There is no sound to wake you. You are not shaken or prodded, nor does the resplendent emerald maiden take any action to hasten your wakefulness. You are woken instead by the smell of eggs, awareness returning to you like the tides returning to shore come nightfall. You have rested in no place of glory, neither hospital bed nor mausoleum’s slab, but couch. Greenish-brown couch. The sort of couch you might find in a university student’s apartment, which makes sense, given that this seems to be a university student’s apartment.

The maiden in green, whose touch you yearn for, is off in a room full of what look like blurry circles. Perhaps this is an attached kitchen, which means this is not any student apartment, but a nice student apartment, that she gets her own kitchen instead of having to share with a whole floor. It’s a little worrying that your vision is still so blurry. You think she gave you a spindle to purge your corruption, surely you should be all better now, right? Your pulse speeds up slightly. Are you still in danger? You pull your fabergé egg from a pocket, and consider transforming once again. It’s murky, but certainly possessed of a much clearer shine than before. The arbitrary number that comes to mind is 55, which is a marked improvement! You dismiss your fears and squint into the distance (that is, into the kitchen), trying to focus your vision.

“Yes, you’ll probably need to track down your glasses at some point.” An angelic voice says pointedly. If you weren’t capable of hearing what directions sounds came from, you’d think it came down from heaven itself, but no. It came from the kitchen. It came from the maiden. You squint harder, trying to dispel the blurs that keep you from seeing her graceful form, to no avail. She knows you need glasses, perhaps she knew you before whatever it was robbed you of your memories? All your memories. You recall nothing of the past. Your voice cracks, but you press on with the only question you can really ask now.

“D- Wait, do you know who I am, o g- Do you know who I am?” You catch yourself before you say something certain to be embarrassing. She (Mercifully! Kindly! In the manner of a goddess!) approaches you now, carrying what you can make out are two plates of what smells like eggs, which makes sense. She gracefully places one plate in front of you, on a coffee table a bit too low to eat off of, before sitting down beside you on the greenish-brown couch.

“Nope.” That angelic voice again, tragically cut short by the end of her single-word sentence, and marred by what sounds like irritation. She takes her fork and stabs herself a bit of omelet. “I’ve never met you before.”

“How do you know about my glasses, then?”

“You keep squinting at things, and I have seen you around campus before.” Ah, perhaps you’re a professor here. That would explain the office, and your presence on a university campus. You’d make a great professor, you suspect. Bar your unfortunate knowledge of the past, you get the sense you’re a decently quick study and could probably be a half-way passable orator, given time.

You eloquently nod to this and take a bite of egg. You aren’t actually terribly fond of fried eggs and omelets and the like, they’ve always been an ingredient in better things, or the sort of thing you cook up out of desperation when the fridge and pantry are getting empty and you don’t feel up to shopping that day. But, prepared by the graceful hands of the maiden (and tempered with things you do like, such as onions and mushrooms and green pepper) eggs are as ambrosia on the tongue of Venus. Were it that you could eat such a fine meal every day, you would live for centuries and die happy at the end of it.

“So if you don’t know me, why am I in your apartment?” You query.

“It wasn’t my call. Roommate wanted me to watch you. I was only going to leave you in the tunnel.” Yes, you’re sure of it now. Your goddess is irritated. With what, though? You?

“Yes, I am irritated with the girl who I had to use my last grief seed on. I’m also irritated with my cryptic-ass roommate, who demanded I drag you back to our apartment- up several flights of stairs, for your information! My roommate, who then fucked off to who knows where and won’t answer my calls!” She snaps at you, “And stop fucking calling me goddess and maiden and ‘that resplendent blur’. It’s fucking creepy and objectifying and will make the difference between my kicking you out after you’ve eaten, or kicking you out now.”

You’re pretty sure you didn’t actually say any of that out loud. Your goddess is so perceptive! You take another bite of your heavenly ambrosia.

Your goddess groans in response to this thought. “Out. Now.”

You shovel another mouthful of ambrosia into your mouth, but you are not one to disobey such a graceful woman. This elicits another angry grumble, as you stand and are marched at fork-point over to a little foyer area off from the living room, where you are given a few seconds to slip your boots on before being pushed unceremoniously out the door. You find yourself standing in a well-lit hall in a student residence building, staring at a wooden door marked ‘Room 117’.

What do you do now?
- - > [Well, everything is still quite blurry. You ought to go find your glasses, perhaps starting by tracking down the room you initially woke up in.]
- - > [Your goddess mentioned using her last grief seed on you. Assuming that’s another name for a spindle, perhaps you can gain her favour by tracking down a witch and getting her a replacement. You’re sure it’ll go better the second time around, now that you aren’t dying.]
- - > [On the subject of apartments, maybe you should try and figure out if you have a place of residence. You can’t stay with your brilliant emerald maiden every night. (Yet?)]
- - > [Write in. Seriously, what even is a ‘write-in’? More importantly, what are you writing on? You suspect that whatever the answers to these questions are, they’ll be subject to a QM veto.]

 

Well, you feel a little bit indecisive as to what your next course of action ought to be, so you decide to pursue multiple, in whatever order seems more efficient. As such, the first order of business is to check your pockets for identification (or indeed anything of value) and then figure out where the room you woke up in was, so as to retrieve your glasses.

Pockets. Pockets… Fuck, you don’t have any pockets. Women’s pants! These little bits by the sides are ornamental, you can’t fit your hand in them, let alone a wallet or identification card! This is bullshit! Maybe you have a coat or a purse somewhere. That’s going on the agenda too, then. Find your glasses, find your coat and/or purse, then find a spindle to appease the wrath of your goddess.

It is fortunate that this residence building is not nearly as maze-like as the Greber building, and so you manage to find the stairs and then the exit with little difficulty. There’s something ironic to that, you think, a student apartment building being easier to navigate than an architecture building. You step out of the building and back onto campus.

Judging by the position of the sun, it’s late in the afternoon. Your beautiful maiden certainly takes her breakfast late in the day. Perhaps she has insomnia, or perhaps that was a late lunch. It’s no matter. The day is warmer than the one preceding it, and you think you can see the Greber building from here (though with your blurry vision, it could be any large beige-building, you really are just guessing based on colour and apparent shape), so you elect to walk on the surface. You certainly aren’t avoiding the tunnels.

There’s a breeze, and it is still somewhat cool, but you don’t find yourself wishing for a coat quite as much as you likely would have had you attempted this yesterday. The walk is fairly short, and you see a fair number of students walking between the buildings, which suggests to you that this is a weekday. You briefly wonder if these deductions are all that reliable but dismiss it. Short of it being exam season, which you’re decently sure it isn’t, there wouldn’t be this many students here on a weekend, you think. Ah, there’s that sign and tunnel entrance from the other day. Your colour-and-shape building identification methodology has proven a resounding success, and you’ve managed to navigate to the greber building.

Now, for the actually difficult part of trying to figure out which room was yours. You nearly got lost the last time you were in here, and don’t have high hopes. Perhaps there’s a magical solution here? You can’t track witches, but maybe you can use your fabergé egg to track where you-

“Hey, Atnikov!” A voice interrupts the beginnings of what may well have been a genius plan. You glance around. There seems to be a young man approaching you at a fair clip. Perhaps he was addressing you? You point to yourself and tilt your head, giving him a careful look. “Yes, you. Do you know any other Lucy Atnikovs?”

The man comes to a stop near you. “Look, part of the agreement of letting your group store their research materials in my office is that you don’t use it as a general storage space. Your books are cool, I’m sure, but I don’t see what symbolism has to do with the development of telephones in concern with the second great awakening, and my office is certainly not a place to store your coat.” This man, despite his irritation, has proven very helpful. You can’t help but appreciate him, as strange a favour as telling you your name is. You smile carefully.

“Right, yes. Apologies. Could you perhaps point me to the office in question?”

The man gives you a look. In his defense, you have just asked him what is from his perspective a very obvious question. You’d better salvage this fast.

“I- I have a hangover. That stole my memories of specifically where your office is.” Smooth. He’s certain to take this well, and indeed he is already opening his mouth to lecture you about something or other. You wonder if this is a regular occurrence, or if he thinks you’re acting out of character today.

Lucy Atnikov, though. That’s quite a name, and you roll it around in your mind. It sounds Slavic. You aren’t sure what to make of that. Perhaps your family are descended from Russians or Poles or people of whatever nationality this name comes from. Still, it’s good to be able to put a name to the face you haven’t actually seen, given a lack of mirrors. Ah, the man looks to be wrapping up.
“If you truly don’t remember, it’s room 117. One floor down, turn right and walk down the hall. It’s really not hard to find.” Huh. That does sound really simple. How did you manage to nearly get lost in this building? The man points over your shoulder. “Stairs are directly behind you. Don’t get lost, Atnikov. I have a meeting now, but please tell Caddus that I need to speak with her if you see her before I do.”

You give a sort of nod-bow thing that you think is probably polite for this situation, as the man whose name you didn’t ask walks straight out the door you just came in, bound for whatever his meeting is about. Honestly, you aren’t sure if he’s a dick or if you just frustrated him by leaving your stuff strewn about his office. Perhaps it’s a mix of the two.

Regardless of dickishness, his directions are good, and you find yourself back in the office you woke up in so long ago. It’s a bit of a wonder you forgot your coat, since it’s just draped over the back of the chair you woke up in. You pick it up and sort of dramatically swirl it over your shoulders, before slipping your arms through the sleeves. The right corner of the coat impacts a shelf with a surprisingly heavy bump, suggesting that pocket may indeed have things in it. Your hand reveals the shape of- Oh shit, did you just break your glasses against a shelf? You pull them out quickly and check for damages, which thankfully your glasses seem to have evaded. Satisfied, you slide them onto your face, and enjoy your newfound ability to make out details on objects more than a foot from your face.

Also in your pocket is your wallet, a phone you can’t unlock, and a set of three keys, possibly to wherever you live. Shit, that might also be difficult to find. Your wallet, for its part, contains one hundred and twenty dollars in cash, a bus pass, two bank cards, two bookstore gift cards (one of which looks water damaged), a health card with some stranger’s name and photo on it, and a photographic ID bearing a picture of an awkward looking young woman and the name “Lucy Atnikov”. Apparently, your birthday is in late October, and this card expires in like a month. The health card bears the same birthday (perhaps you have a twin brother? It shares a surname too) and expired six months ago.

Well, that business is done with. Onto the final part of your agenda, since you really don’t want to think about trying to figure out where you live right now. That sounds hard. Unlike hunting witches, which is easy, and you have a 100% success rate at finding those. You get the sense your previous method of just sort of wandering around probably wasn’t great, though. You still can’t track them with your soul gem, so you reckon you should return to the basics of hunting. Witches lurk where people go to die, right? The bus pass expands your operational range, too, so now you have options.

- - > [The first option, of course, is the municipal hospital. By virtue of its role as a hospital, sick people congregate there, and some of them die. Of course, there is the issue of it being inherently suspicious to lurk around a hospital if you aren’t sick or there to visit a patient.]
- - > [You think you heard once that witches congregate where people go to commit suicide, but you aren’t actually sure where that would be in this city. Maybe bridges? You could definitely go on a tour of the city’s bridges. That’s an option.]
- - > [The tunnels worked before. You should return, and try to find that witch you met before. You’re feeling better now, this time the hunt will go better. You know it.]
- - > [Some part of you, though you try to ignore it, notes that you really should try to figure out where you live before nightfall. Even if you find a new spindle, there’s no guarantee the emerald maiden will let you stay at her apartment again.]
- - > [What if you killed two birds with one stone, and tried to track down this ‘Caddus’ person? She might know where you live. She might not.]
- - > [Write in. Why are you wasting time thinking about write-ins? You have a hunt to get to! Regardless, you’re sure if you kept thinking about it, it’d be subject to a QM veto.]