Eldritch Subs
Riley was an appraiser at a renowned auction house through no skill of his own. His late father — a man the boy hardly remembered anything about — had almost single-handedly earned The Pentacle its reputation. But he died young, long before most of his shares in the auction house and the many, many guilds he served had vested, leaving his widow and three children with pennies, not the king’s fortune he was well worth on paper.
Hoping to catch lightning in a bottle twice, The Pentacle had seen Riley through university, earning him an honours degree in dungeonry while the boy incurred massive debt offset by the promise of reclaiming his father’s dividends — should he meet the auction house’s world-class standards for appraisal.
Riley would not meet those standards. Unlike his prodigious father, the boy’s appraisal spells were iffy, requiring him to rub, scratch, break, and sometimes even lick the most basic of items to identify them. One must never lick the brazen skull of a cultist’s lich-wife, however tempting — lest he be sacrificed at the altar and a poor, spiteful soul take his place.
That said, now that I find myself in Riley’s body — thank you very much — I don’t blame the boy (although I do rather judge him). I’m certain Riley didn’t have any appraisal spells, but dreadful eldritch subtitles — probably fansubs too, of the kind that drove him insane, yet he revelled in the madness between magics lost in translation.
Why else, pray tell, would he lick that brazen skull when he could have roiled it in mana and known the truths of this world?
— From the Diary of Riley Tarot: A Spiteful Eldritch Media Player With a Heart.
What to Expect:
“THE END.”
I’ve never written those words for any story I’ve told, but I will do so here. Eldritch Subs may not have the ending you want — or even a good ending (good writing’s notoriously hard) — but there will be one.