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Interlude: Dr. Nathaniel West, PhD. 1
🕑 Added 2025-01-15 19:39:31 +0000 UTCAN: This is the first 'main story' Interlude. I wanted to make sure that it came out now at the start of the training week for everyone.
Before the mid-afternoon light or the soft tapping against the reading room door, foreboding startled him awake.
Victor peeled his face off the library table, blinking through the white haze as his eyes adjusted to the waking world. Fear, his constant companion, gripped him, coming on fast and strong. What had the light blinded him to? What horrors had stolen away into the dark corners of Rare Texts Room 6b as he slept? His hand came up instinctively to crack his neck, though, oddly, there was no pain there today. Perhaps his body had finally acclimated to sleeping on hard wooden chairs while hunched over tables, or perhaps the universe was playing some sick joke on him, and the pain would return momentarily, the hope but an added cruelty.
As his vision returned, he saw nothing of any note in Rare Texts Room 6b; it was just him and the shelves upon shelves of decades-to-centuries-old research manuscripts on magic. He looked again, unwilling to give into hope so easily, and peered through the dust hanging in the beams of light coming through the tall, narrow windows as if expecting monstrous faces to emerge in the swirling clouds. He examined the empty spaces around the books on the shelves and the long shadows they cast. He looked up to the tall ceiling and under his desk. Nothing – it must have only been paranoia and the generalized anxiety disorder he'd apparently brought with him to this universe. The only creature haunting this room was him.
But still, fear clung to him. He couldn’t help but feel like he was forgetting something.
Victor tried to put it out of his mind, tried to recall the relaxation techniques he’d learned from those scant few weeks when he'd had the wherewithal, time, and self-respect required for therapy. It was not unusual for him to awake to dread and doubt; prior to meeting Mars and being invited to join her gaming table, it had, in fact, been the custom. Loneliness inflicted these feelings on him. Humans were not meant to live so isolated.
He took a deep breath of the stale library air and stretched out his back, freezing when someone knocked on the door again. Victor stayed quiet. Whoever it was, they had either forgotten this week's entry PIN and were hoping to get lucky or were a confused undergrad in the wrong building; either way, it wasn’t his problem. He vastly preferred having the room to himself, and the fewer interactions he had with the bizarrely horny co-eds of this Earth, the better.
How late did he sleep this time? By the angle of the sunlight, it must have been at least four in the afternoon. Oh God, what day was it? Hopefully, he hadn’t missed his office hours again. No one in the Classics Department cared how reliable a TA he was, but Rakhmanov was always snooping about and just enough of a dick about Veil protocol to write him up for it. If only the old Interceptor could understand that it was less believable for a Classics postdoc to show up to all his meetings and classes on time than it was for him to not.
More knocks. Victor ignored them and searched around for his phone amongst the mess of papers sprawled out in front of him. It was difficult to do without making noise. The door was thick, but the top floors of the graduate library were pin-drop quiet, being largely reserved for the small fraction of the student body and faculty who were among the Wise. Ruffling of papers or the squeak of the chair against the parquet floors would give him away in an instant.
Tilde’s voice came from behind some shelves in the far corner of the room. “Someone forgot their PIN.”
He jumped in his seat at the comment, not expecting the woman to be here so late. His hand, which had been delicately lifting up a sheath of papers to look for his phone, tugged them out from under his water bottle in surprise. It hit the table with a clang and rolled off and onto the floor. Victor cringed at the unholy clatter; the loud, echoing sound of steel rolling away was a blasphemy against the sanctity of libraries everywhere. At least it had been closed - he’d have had to walk into the sea from shame if it hadn’t.
“Everything alright?”
“Yep,” he called back to Tilde. “All good.”
Another knock – Christ, they were insistent, weren’t they? Well, there was no helping it now. He stood with a sigh, expecting to feel the stiffness in his knees. Victor had started his Deep Research, the system’s equivalent of Training Hard but for nerds, at around 10-ish last night. It could take him up to twelve hours on a bad roll to get through a session; if it was conservatively 3 PM now, that meant he'd been asleep for at least five hours seated like he’d been. Luckily, he seemed to have finally nailed whatever invisible Endurance roll let you avoid the pain because he felt fine. Huh. Could things finally be coming up Milhouse for old Victor Paladino?
Ha. Yeah, right. That was impossible. His old therapist would have called it catastrophizing, but at this point, after having been kidnapped and forced into a pornographic nightmare for the pleasure of interdimensional perverts, Victor felt comfortable saying that, no, the universe really was trying to fuck him.
Wait.
No pain in his neck, no pain in his knees, and unless she’d been standing perfectly still, he would have surely heard Tilde in the room with him. That was impossible.
Victor stopped in place, hand inches away from the handle of the door. There were yet more soft raps from the other side.
Oh, shit.
Victor took a step away from the door. The knocking grew commensurately louder with the thumping of his heart, so that the pounding of the latter never obscured the pounding of the former. He felt his voice catch in his throat. His training kicked in, and he tried to vocalize the very line he had made his mentees memorize, ‘I reject you. I am my demesne, and you are not welcome. Begone.’ You were meant to repeat it over and over, focusing only on the words and your intent until whatever was trying to Latch moved onto a softer target. The mantra would fail against stronger Foreign Entities, but most of the parasites that flocked around the Wise could be rebuffed with a bit of intention and persistence. They were opportunistic predators, the spiritual equivalent of leeches lurking in the mud.
"I…" His mouth was dry, and he was trembling. "I," he tried again, "am my demesne—”
From behind him, in the far corner of the room, Tilde’s voice called out once more. “Don’t flatter yourself, Victor. Your demesne? You’ve slutted out your soul for a billion voyeurs. You know that.”
He turned to look. He shouldn’t have, he knew, but hearing Tilde call him Victor was so jarring that he couldn’t help himself.
She was naked, her tall, slender physique on full display. There was a subtle wrongness to this depiction of Tilde that captivated him and kept him from averting his gaze. Her nipples and clitoral hood were pierced, which he hadn’t imagined when he’d pictured the bookish and generally upstanding astrophysics major. Her body was flush with details that seemed to unnaturally draw his attention – old, faded scars, slightly asymmetrical muscle inserts on her abdomen, miniscule lipomas only visible because of how skinny she was. It was as if the vision was trying to prove to him it was real, that this was no mere hallucination conjured by an exhausted mind.
Tilde started caressing her body. “Do you like me, Victor? Do you like what you’ve done to me?” She flicked her nipple piercings. “They changed me for you, made me your ideal woman in more ways than adding a few bits and baubles. You love jerk-off-instruction videos, and so now I love to watch a man pleasure himself for me.” She circled her areola with her fingers. “You dreamed of a woman who could come alone from foreplay and so now my tits are unnaturally sensitive. They made all your puerile fantasies true, all at the lowly expense of the woman I was. I watch anime, and play Magic the Gathering, and draw fanart, and read all your favorite books, and watch all your favorite shows.”
“I,” he gulped, “I reject you. I am my—"
Her hands curled into fists, her face contorting with fury. “You reject me!?” Tilde stepped forward and flung the table between them aside with supernatural strength. It knocked three shelves down and sent papers flying, kicking up decades of accumulated dust into the air. Victor stumbled back, colliding with the door. The knocking continued. “You made me, Victor! You can’t turn me away now! Who am I? Who was I before you and your friends and their Masters arrived in this universe? Tell me. Tell me!”
The sun was setting rapidly now, the lights beginning to flicker as it passed into twilight outside.
“Jesus Christ. Fuck.” Victor closed his eyes, unable to bear seeing the rictus of anger on his crush. If only he could deafen himself, shut out her words and that damnable knock, knock, knocking at his back. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”
He reached out for the system, begging it to allow him a roll, anything to defend himself, keep whatever spirit was hounding him at bay, but nothing answered. He was alone and helpless.
“Look at me. Open your eyes, you coward. Look at me and tell me I’m not real.”
Victor cradled his head in his arms, covering his eyes and ears. “Please, God, please just leave me alone. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t—”
She laughed cruelly, inches away from his face now, her breath hot and stinking of ozone. "You begged for this. How many of your childish isekai animes did you watch, Victor? How many times did you go to bed dreaming of a second chance? Pathetic. Look at you. You're in your twenties again. You're attractive, intelligent, and not half as lazy as you were, and yet you're still a burden on everyone around you. Your friends are out there fighting for their lives, and you're curled up on the floor. How many plot hooks have you ignored? How many willing women have you turned away from your bed?"
“No…” Nails on rattling glass – they were clawing at the windows now, too.
“You can’t wake up from this, Victor.” Her lips were close enough to feel brushing against his ear as she whispered. “You are the nightmare. You are a poison in the well of this world. Do you think they’re knocking to be let in? No, they’re asking you to join them, parasite. Open the door and walk out into the night where you belong. Open the door and be one with US.”
He awoke swinging his arms and falling off his chair. His water bottle, knocked over in the chaos, rolled off the table and smacked his mouth painfully. The system spared him a point of Damage but did nothing for the pain.
[Deep Research Results]
Whiffed. Took 3 Temporary Willpower Damage. Threshold for Success lowered by 1 on next attempt.
Victor read and reread the notification. The laughter welled up, spilling out in little giggles and growing into painful, manic guffaws. If anyone was outside Rare Text Room 6b, they would have heard the unmistakable sounds of a man losing his mind.
That was what happened when you Whiffed a Deep Research? He had made it a solid half of his build, and that was what happened?
“I can’t do this, man. I really can’t do this anymore.”
All he wanted to do was to roll over onto his side and go back to sleep, but he knew the pain of his cut lip and the palpable terror that seemed to pulse through his aching muscles and joints would make that impossible.
He lay there, half-laughing and full-crying until he was spent of both energy and emotion, a shell of a man. Were this his old world, now would be the time he shot Mars and Cat a text to see if they’d have him over. Mars had a preternatural ability to know from a text alone when he was in true need of companionship versus when he was just bored, and Cat was at baseline the most nurturing person he knew.
Victor groaned and pushed himself to his feet. He never thought he’d be grateful for neck and knee pain before. Mars and Cat were not here. They were off suffering who-knows-what who-knows-where, and this time they needed him. For the sake of his friends, he had to not be such a colossal fuck up for once in his life. It wouldn’t be easy, but they were worth an attempt.
So, what now? Other than a shower and a hot meal, that was. Deep Research was off the table and would be for the days to weeks it would take to recover from the temporary Willpower Damage. He could study normally, of course, and still receive non-Experience based benefits, but that felt like a betrayal of what his friends were undergoing for him. The top three members of the Party had to take Challenges just to get the bottom five up to their level, and he knew without a doubt that he was the bottom of the bottom. Mars and Alan, both of whom had managed to get into hijinks and shenanigans as normal humans on a normal Earth, were assuredly among the three who’d handicapped themselves for him. He owed them both too much to be, well, himself about all of this.
Something had to change. He couldn’t fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy; just because he had sunk in so much to Deep Research didn’t mean he was stuck into the Feat tree.
Victor had used the Experience, Attributes, and Tokens given to him from the Challenges to shore up his offensive and defensive options on the chance he got jumped by monsters. It wouldn’t do to die off-screen. Both Crucifixion and Roundabout, Missouri, were unfathomably dangerous, to the point that if they’d existed on his Earth, the military likely would have stepped in to investigate all the mysterious deaths and disappearances.
He supposed he could approach Rakhmanov and ask to join his Interceptors now that he could theoretically keep up in a fight. But that meant being surrounded by professional investigators, and like his nightmare had pointed out, as an intruder from another world, he was technically one of the things they were meant to ‘Intercept’.
There was the sex aspect of the game. He hadn’t had any intimacy as of yet, but he assumed that the Producers, being pornographers, would incentivize it heavily. Victor's best guess was that they harvested the lust energy from their viewers as the primary return on investment for all the power they gave the Party. It was the only thing he could think of that made sense. Attention could provide a form of energy in itself, but it would pale in comparison to Eros. Fanaticism could trump even that, but that would require the show to become popular enough to have super fans and he was sure the Producers would need something more to last them in the interim. Of course, that was all assuming SkinDimensional actually was a media company and not just an ineffable ploy by a bafflingly horny eldritch God.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, Victor hadn’t even been able to bring himself to masturbate since getting here. As it turned out, the thought of being watched by a billion voyeurs was pure boner cyanide for him. He was young, modestly attractive, and had a Dr. in front of his name – coeds had been throwing themselves at him – but imagining so many people watch him awkwardly fumble his way through flirting had kept him from even trying. Sex was…just not going to happen for him. He was a coward as well as being socially awkward, but if you couldn’t get it up, then you couldn’t get it up. At least he could conceive of rolling into Initiative.
Victor sighed and rubbed his eyes with his palms. Maybe it would be better to have this argument with himself after eating something. He was in danger of falling over he was so tired.
St. Christopher’s was unusually idyllic for a fortress built to stand against cosmic horrors. The campus spread across three large hills under which a staggering nineteen separate ley lines crisscrossed, converging in the threes and fours in some places. Since it was a relatively small school and always had been, there were large stretches of greenery between the gorgeous old stone buildings, with well-manicured walking paths perfect for pondering upon. Anywhere with a few nature mages was sure to have excellent horticulture, and St. Christopher’s had a department full of them.
Late Summer was delightful in the Ozarks, and he spent far too much time indoors these days, so after grabbing a panini from the dining hall, Victor made his way to his favorite willow tree near one of the graduate housing facilities. The branches, low and thick, provided him with the privacy of one of the more secluded walking trails while also only being a few minutes from his apartment.
His phone had died sometime in the middle of the night, but maybe that was a blessing in disguise. He never missed his friends more than when he was fruitlessly scrolling through social media looking for their characters. God, did he miss them – more than his mother, as awful as that was to admit. It was the regret that did it; at least he’d told his mother he loved her. Victor couldn’t say the same about his friends. And he did love them, he loved each of them fiercely, enough that he really, really ought to have told them that at least once. The thought that some or all of them could die without knowing how important they were to him was…unbearable.
He clutched his chest. Damn it, the tears were back.
“Fucking Willpower Damage,” he muttered, using his sleeves to dry his face.
Victor laughed bitterly. He was in his twenties again, that was for sure. Crying over a sandwich had been one of the defining features of many of his meals back then, though, by this age, he would have already been through the worst of it. He’d have known Mars for a few years by age twenty-nine.
Crazy to think that his closest friend was his former weed dealer. Crazier to think she'd probably saved his life by being 'that' weed dealer, the sort that reschedules constantly and makes you come to a rotating set of her friends' places.
One day, instead of meeting him at the house he was sharing with five other scumbags, Mars had told him to come to her D&D session and had him wait quietly until a scene break happened. He’d been worried it would be insanely awkward, but the table seemed to be used to Mars’ ways, and Victor had found the game and story so engrossing that the time passed quickly. He even found himself lingering after buying his eighth. The next week, he made sure to hit her up at the same time on the same day, curious as to what was going to happen next in the campaign. There had been precious little going on in his life otherwise.
Victor had done it again the week after that, and then again, and then finally, on his fifth consecutive visit, they'd asked him if he'd like to play. He'd been shocked. It had never occurred to him that they would choose to spend time with him. They weren't like the scumbags he hung around; they had college degrees and real jobs, none of them had been to jail, and they didn't assume that everyone in the world was trying to screw them. Frankly, he had been feeling a bit guilty intruding as he had. He'd tried to decline for their sake – his life was a trainwreck, and he was a boring stoner – but Alan had insisted.
“Dude, you come every week and you’re respectful. You’re a fucking unicorn. Of course, I want you at the table.”
The rest was history. It was amazing how little it had taken to completely alter the trajectory of his life for the better. All he had needed, it turned out, was something to look forward to once a week and people he didn’t secretly despise to spend time with. He began showering and washing his clothes regularly because, unlike his former 'friends,' his new ones weren't complete washouts and fuckups. He picked up more hours at his job so that he could always have extra to contribute towards pizza. He got into Magic through Nasim, painting Gundam figurines through Ted, obscure anime through Cici, and audiobooks through Alan. The combination of decent hygiene, disposable cash, and actual hobbies even managed to finally get him laid.
God, he missed them. It was hard to believe that they missed him, but he swore on Heaven and Earth that once they reunited, he’d be the friend they deserved. The nightmare hadn’t been wrong about his being a burden; beyond his consistent presence, Victor hadn’t brought much to the group. But that would change, he told himself, as soon as he could figure out how to change it.
Tilde’s voice was like a jumpscare after his nightmare. “Dr. West?” she said, poking her head through the branches, immediately clapping her hands over her mouth. He didn’t look that bad, did he? “Oh my God. Are you okay?”
“Late night,” he said, as if that would explain his busted lip or the fact that he’d clearly just been crying. “Am I supposed to be in my office right now? My phone’s dead.”
Tilde Overgaard stepped through the willow curtain, one arm crossed her chest, nervous and concerned. This was the Tilde he’d come to know, not the torturer of his vision, caring, intelligent, and a little unsure of herself. She was alt-coded, with a septum piercing and dirty blond hair cut into rough bangs and a shoulder-length bob, but dressed in comfortable, casual wear – jeans and a Futurama t-shirt today. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t want her; she was right in his strike zone. But even without the voyeur situation, she was his mentee and unofficial research partner; it would be inappropriate to pursue her. He had been entrusted to guide the baby wizard through her first steps into their world, to keep her healthy and sane as she explored her new power. Taking advantage of her trust would be the height of scumbaggery and could lead to her death or worse. Victor didn’t even feel good about relying on her for help with the trickier bits of math involved in Sympathetic Astronomy, but at least that could be justified as mutually beneficial.
“No, Dr. West, it’s Saturday.” She scanned his clothes, furrowing her brow. “Sorry, did you…just leave the library? Is that all you've eaten for twenty hours?"
Victor stared at the panini in his hand. Hm, it appeared there were unexpected benefits to buying Dice in Endurance. “Yes,” he said plainly, “it is.”
"Dr. West, I…" Tilde bit her lip and frowned. She looked like she was debating between giving him a hug or shaking some sense into him. "I don't mean to overstep, but a month ago, you were giving me a warning on the danger of burnout.”
It was true. Academics and wizards were both capable of studying so hard that they went insane in this world. Deep Research was a gamified approximation of a natural process that all humans here could do if they pushed themselves hard enough. Too hard, though, and, well, he’d seen what happened. “I’m aware, Tilde. It won’t happen again,” he said.
“Oh. Good.” She didn’t believe him. How odd. Women didn’t usually associate him with the type of man to overwork himself.
“Did you need something?”
“I did, but I think maybe you should get some rest, sir.”
“I don’t want to upset my sleep schedule.” He gave a little grin to let her know he was joking, but she didn’t find it funny. “What did you need, Tilde?”
The tall, lanky master’s student studied his face for a beat before sighing. She didn’t have the authority to make him take better care of himself, and while they were friendly, they weren’t truly friends yet. “Okay, if you say so, Dr. West. I wouldn’t bother you in person on a weekend like this, but I’m not sure who else to turn to. Dr. Rakhmanov was no help.”
Rakhmanov? He sat up straighter, forgetting his woes for a moment. If Tilde had felt the need to go to the Interceptor, then this was serious. "You aren't bothering me. I could use the distraction. What happened?"
"Nothing yet. That's part of the problem. You see, I met these two undergrad guys last night, and they were talking about going cave diving at a nearby slough. I thought they were just bullshitting to flirt, but they sent me a message this morning, and I think they're actually going." She pulled her phone out of her back pocket. "Ryan sent me a picture of his gear and everything. They're going cave exploring today.”
“Why?” he asked slowly. What a terrible idea.
“It’s their hobby, I guess? They didn’t say otherwise.”
“Are you sure they’re exploring? If it’s a mapped dive—”
“It isn’t. I asked. There are ley lines all over here, right? Isn’t that, like,” she slapped her head, “fucking insane to do? Like, it’s dangerous anywhere, but here specifically? They aren’t Wise, though, so I didn’t know how to talk them out of it.”
Victor looked at her blankly, trying to keep his thoughts from making their way to his expression. He didn’t want to worry her, but those boys were as good as dead, surely. Even without Victor Paladino’s out-of-context genre knowledge, Nathaniel West knew not to go cave exploring in the wilderness around Crucifixion. “What did Rakhmanov say?”
Tilde put on a thick Belarussian accent and did air quotes. “We do not have the resources to police male recklessness, Ms. Overgaard. The cave is not known to harbor Foreign Entities and is therefore outside of our purview.”
“He isn’t wrong, per se.” Rakhmanov wasn’t going to risk one of his investigators’ lives for two idiots with a death wish, not when common sense should have done the trick. “I share your concern, though. What are you suggesting should be done?”
“I don’t know! You’re the wiz—” she stopped herself, remembering that they were out in public. “You’re the Wise expert. It feels like someone should do something, though, right?” Tilde put on a formal, somewhat stilted voice, “‘We are at the crossroads of a million realms, each more horrifying than the last.’ Remember? You told me that two days ago.”
That was an impression of him? He didn’t know he sounded so disaffected. “There’s not a lot we can do. Unless you’re proposing we go down there with them?”
“No. God, no. I mean, they offered, but absolutely not.”
“They offered to take an untrained woman underwater cave exploring with them?” He had to pause to admire the stupidity. “Are they…martial artists?” Brain damage could be the only explanation.
She shook her head. “Just regular rednecks, as best as I could tell.”
“Ah.” He leaned back against the trunk of the tree and watched the branches sway in the breeze. “Hm.”
He was tired, he felt like shit, and if he took another two points of Willpower Damage, he'd incur Permanent Corruption and spend some time temporarily insane. But Tilde was right; someone had to do something. Victor had ignored a lot of plot hooks in favor of playing the long game with Deep Research, but there had either been others ready to step in for those, or they hadn't felt all that pressing. Neither applied here – if those young men went diving into the depths of Crucifixion's still, black waters, it would be the start of a horror movie. But at the same time, he wasn't equipped to solo a confrontation with the supernatural, nor would he want to if he could.
“Okay.” He’d decided. Victor struggled to his feet, fighting past the dizziness. “There’s nothing for it. We’re going to do what we can. Let them know you’re bringing a plus one; if anything happens, supernatural or not, we’ll run and get help.” They didn’t have to be badass Call of Cthulhu investigators. They just had to be decent human beings – Victor could do that, theoretically.
Tilde sagged with relief. "Oh, thank God. You don't know how good it feels to hear that. I've been running around all day trying to get someone to take this seriously. They aren't bad kids; they're just dumb young men, you know?"
"I do. I was once a dumb young man myself." She looked at him skeptically – if only she knew. "But I want to be very clear, Tilde, we're going to operate within our limits. If anything, anything, supernatural happens, one of two things is going to happen. I am either stalling while you run for help, or we are both running away together. Either way, you are running. We aren’t Interceptors; we’re there to observe.”
“Yes, of course, Dr. West. Believe me, I’m one thousand percent on the same page.”
“Good.” He yawned into his elbow. “I’m going to grab some gear. Don’t let them leave without me.”
Comments
Spessgot
lol, I know right? truly a unicorn
Einar Strandberg
You can tell this guy has self esteem problems, because I would kill several people just to have someone who always shows up for dnd.
TheDevotus
Yeah, him and Ted are competing for most miserable player right now
Evil Midnight Lurker
Poor guy 😢
