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 Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 10:33 am
Backdated to April 26 Reims had warned Dering about the books. Or warned him as best he could. There was kind of a difference between saying there happened to be a room full of old hymnals… and opening the door to reveal shelves overflowing with them, stacks covering the tables, and uneven piles lining the walls. Some were bound in cracked leather, others in faded cloth, and more than a few had loose pages threatening to spill out if handled too quickly.
Reims had opened the door, stared at the mess, then glanced over at Dering as though the room decided to betray him by being worse than he remembered.
He hadn't closed the door again, though…
They had been working for a while. The space heater had taken some of the bite out of the cathedral's cold, and their hot chocolate sat safely away from anything that could be easily ruined. Reims had tried sorting the books into damaged and intact piles before realizing nearly all of them were damaged.
Dering, predictably, seemed much better at making sense of everything.
Reims had stepped out to find a few empty boxes. When he returned, a black lion stood in the doorway, stained-glass wings catching the pale light while it watched Dering work.
"You're blocking the door," Reims told it. One ear flicked. The lion did not move.
"I know he's more interesting than me. Move."
That earned him a slow turn of the head and what looked suspiciously like judgement before the lion finally stepped into the room. It crossed toward Dering with silent, careful steps, sniffing at one of the stacks before settling heavily beside the table, nearly knocking over a small stack with its tail. Reims caught the top book before it fell.
"He's harmless," he said, setting the book back. "Mostly. He likes getting in the way."
It wasn't the first time Dering had seen the lion, although in past instances it was mostly while they were in the midst of battle.
He placed the boxes down and looked over the progress they had made. The room was still a disaster, but at least the piles were beginning to look… intentional.
"This already looks better," he admitted. "Usually I just pretend this room doesn't exist."
His expression softened when he glanced over at Dering. "We can take a break whenever you want. Or keep going." There was a faint trace of amusement in his voice. "You look like you might actually be enjoying this."
The lion lowered its head onto its paws beside Dering. Reims eyed it, then looked back at him. "Seems you've been adopted."
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 10:35 am
Truthfully, Dering did like this kind of work. It was easy–straightforward. Reims didn’t really have a plan for how he wanted the books sorted, and because there was no singular way to sort them, the risk of failure seemed so much slighter.
He was gentle with all the books, and tender with the ones that were badly damaged. He treated each of them like treasures, but the battered ones were handled with a great deal of reverence.
Reims was right–Dering did enjoy this. He liked the repetition, and the low-stakes, and the satisfaction of finding order in the chaos.
For the most part, Dering worked in silence–which he also appreciated. He’d been quiet lately–not distant, but distracted. Or careful. Sorting books in a language he didn’t understand was the perfect excuse to work in relative quiet when it required a great deal of focus.
But it didn’t mean he wasn’t aware of the lion staring from the doorway.
He had every right to be suspicious of Dering, who was–for the most part–a stranger to him. Though they’d fought together, it wasn’t like they ever spent any time doing a proper introduction. If Dering was more interesting than Reims, it was only because he was an unknown in whatever peace they had cultivated together.
Of course, the summon was not ‘harmless’. Dering had seen what he could do. And he hoped he’d never be on the receiving end of it. He might have been able to save the stack of books before the rest of them toppled over, but he didn’t want to move too quickly. Instead, he just held the large, worn tome he’d been working with to his chest. A few pages from this book had long-since fallen from the book, so Julian was collecting them and sliding them beneath the top cover.
His water bottle was by the door, next to his lute, and he hadn’t taken a snack break since they arrived. He wasn’t planning on one any time soon.
Dering hadn’t bothered to tie back his hair, so his work was often interrupted when he needed to tuck a few loose strands behind an ear. Like, now.
As he did so, he glanced between the lion and Reims. “What?”
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:28 am
Reims's ears immediately turned red.
"Nothing," he said too quickly.
Dering had only tucked his hair behind his ear. That was it. There was no reason for Reims to be staring, and definitely no reason for the lion to turn its head toward him with that same slow, judgmental look.
Reims frowned at it.
"He likes things I like," he said, as if that could explain everything. "That's probably why he's sitting there instead of knocking over every stack you've made."
The lion blinked at him.
Reims's expression tightened. "Don't."
He looked back at Dering, deliberately keeping his attention on the book held against his chest instead of anything else.
"You don't have to stop working," he added. "I was just saying he trusts you. Or likes you. Whatever."
Yeah, that was probably okay to say. Not that Dering would assume anything different, anyway.
Reims crossed the room to straighten one of the boxes he'd brought in, mostly to give himself something to do.
"If he didn't, he'd probably be making this harder on purpose." He glanced toward the lion again. "More than usual, I mean."
The lion's tail moved across the floor. Reims narrowed his eyes at it, then looked back at Dering. "What are you doing with the loose pages?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:34 am
“Oh,” Dering said, and his smile softened as he drew his gaze back to the lion. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.” He was generally a little less shy around animals than he was people, but even then it was only after he’d had ample time to get to know them. Patience came easily to him; he was very attentive to signs of discomfort, and he let them set the boundaries.
He was happy to exist in the same space as them. There was a certain degree of affection that animals provided that simply could not be replicated by humans. Maxim was nearly the only living creature who could invade Julian’s space comfortably, and Julian never worried or questioned his intentions.
Maxim had only love in his heart, and the worst he’d ever done to Julian was scratched him once while stretching. It was an accident, and hadn’t even broken skin.
The lion’s claws could do much more damage.
Dering looked at them for a second, and then his shoulders eased.
“If you need me to move anything so you can be more comfortable, please let me know. I can make more space for you. But these books are so old, I’ll have to move them carefully so they don’t get hurt. But I can go fast,” he promised.
He cautiously stepped over the lion’s tail and set his book down on the table. A loose page was sticking out, so he carefully adjusted it.
“He’s not making it hard. I think he’s just big. I can work around him.”
Besides, it was warmer here. Dering didn’t blame him for wanting to stay where there was heat.
“Um–the loose pages.” He had a stack of them on the table. “If I can find the book they go with, I am putting them behind the cover of the book. Some of them are easy–some use a colorful ink, or a distinct type of paper, or they’re an odd shape–or they have a stamp, or a page number. Um, a lot of them look too similar for me to tell where they go yet, but I was thinking that if we got things organized first, then we could figure out what to do with the damaged books. And we could go through the pages we have and see if any fit. But–you know. Getting them off the floor was the first step.”
He cleared his throat. “If you want to do it any differently, I can do it that way. I was just trying to make the biggest dent, the fastest. But doing it this way does mean there’s probably going to be a lot of work later,” he said apologetically. “A lot of these pages look really similar.”
Like, really similar.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:39 am
Reims glanced over the loose pages, then at the stacks Dering had already managed to organize.
"No, this is fine," he said. "Better than fine. I didn't have a plan beyond getting them off the floor."
He stepped closer to the table, careful not to crowd Dering or the lion sprawled between them. There was nothing to apologize for. Dering had already done more with the room than Reims had managed in all the times he'd opened the door, stared inside, and decided some other part of the cathedral needed his attention more.
"We can worry about where everything belongs later," he added. "At least now we'll know what we actually have."
Reims reached for one of the loose pages, handling it carefully by the edges. The writing was familiar in the strange way everything on Reims was familiar now. He could understand it when he looked at it, even if the words would catch uselessly in his throat if he tried to speak them aloud.
"It's a hymn," he said after a moment. "Something about feasting and music. Staying at the table until the candles burn down."
Nothing unusual for Ganymede, from what little Reims understood of it.
He picked up another page. Then another. His brow furrowed.
"These aren't just similar…"
The page and ink varied slightly, but the words were the same. The same lines, the same notation beneath them, and the same abrupt ending where each page had been separate from whatever followed.
Reims set them beside one another.
"They're copies of the same hymn." He glanced over at Dering. "Or part of it, anyway…"
He reached for the worn book Dering had been holding earlier and carefully opened its cover, searching the damaged binding. "And I don't think these pages fell out."
The edge near the spine was too even. Not clean, but deliberate. Reims looked back over the stack Dering had collected.
"I think somebody tore the same section out of more than one book."
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:40 am
Dering stood, ankles pressed tightly together, and watched while Reims examined the pages. His eyes followed Reims’s hands, and then stuck to the pages as he handled them.
“...How do you know they’re hymns?” he asked. He could make out some similarities from the symbols on the page, but nothing about the words there looked like anything he could actually recognize.
Of course, Reims spoke with such certainty that Dering didn’t doubt him, but he wasn’t sure if there was something he was missing–or if Reims had been taking lessons from Ganymede, maybe?
Maybe it was a secret he wasn’t supposed to know.
Dering cleared his throat and leaned towards the table.
“The other pages I’ve found, um.” He filed through the stack with the utmost care, and began to separate the pages. He recognized some shapes and patterns on the page, but they hardly even looked like words to him. Of the two stacks he began to form, one contained pages that looked similar–or identical–to the one Riker was holding. The other stack contained loose pages–all of which seemed to be torn roughly, or from books that had just fallen apart.
There was a notable difference in condition between the selectively torn pages, like Riker’s, and the random pages.
Also, a notable difference in the number of pages.
The stack with the hymn would have been double the size of the loose pages were it not for some crinkled, waterlogged papers bloating the height.
“I don’t understand why they would want to tear out that page and just leave it here.” If there was a purpose, shouldn’t that be a bit more obvious? –Or a bit less obvious? If the goal was to keep those pages together, then they shouldn’t have been scattered so randomly. If the goal was to remove them, they shouldn’t have still been here.
“Does that make sense to you?”
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:40 am
Reims looked up from the page.
"Oh."
He hadn't realized he'd never told Dering. There wasn't exactly much opportunity for it to come up in conversation.
"I can read it," he said, then grimaced at how unhelpful that sounded. "Uh… I didn't learn it. I mean… I don't know how to explain it."
He glanced back down at the unfamiliar symbols. They should have meant nothing to him, but the meaning settled into place as naturally as if they'd been written in English.
"The longer I've been here, the more things just… make sense. I know what it says when I look at it." His brow furrowed. "I can't speak it, though. I wouldn't even know where to start."
Reims looked cautiously at Dering. "I wasn't keeping it from you. I think I just forgot to mention it."
His attention returned to the two stacks Dering had separated. The difference was obvious now. One pile had suffered from age and neglect. The other had been removed intentionally.
"No," he admitted. "It doesn't make sense."
He carefully lifted another of the repeated pages and compared its edge to the damaged binding.
"If someone wanted the hymn gone, they should've destroyed the pages. If they wanted to keep them together, they wouldn't scatter them all over the room."
Reims glanced at the books around them, then down at the lion. The summon had lifted its head, watching the pages with unusual focus.
"Unless whoever tore them out didn't leave them here."
He paused, considering the possibility. "Things on Reims have repaired themselves before. Maybe the books are trying to put themselves back together, but they don't know where the pages belong."
The thought sounded strange, but no stranger than stained glass restoring itself or an organ working after centuries of neglect.
Reims set the page beside the others. "Can you tell if the music is exactly the same on all of them?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:40 am
Dering blinked a few times, but he nodded, and gave up trying to make sense of the words on the page. When he fell quiet afterwards, it wasn’t because he was upset Reims hadn’t mentioned it, but because he was again reminded of how vastly different the relationship with his own wonder was.
He could placate himself by saying ‘there isn’t anything to read there’, but maybe there was plenty, and Dering just chose not to share it with him.
…But he could ask Cyril.
And maybe Cyril could teach him. And if he studied enough, if he could prove how serious he was, maybe Dering–
He tilted his head to give the impression of thought, but really he was just trying to buy himself a few seconds to let his brain catch up with what Reims had said.
The words were there but lost their meaning, and when he understood them it was all at once–sharp and violent, like a rubber band snapping in his brain.
“Oh,” he said, and nodded. “That makes sense. Reims has been working very hard.” And maybe wonders could get overwhelmed.
He watched Riker from the corner of his eye and said, “You have too.”
Dering stopped sorting the papers and focused on the stack of hymns, lifting one paper at a time, scrutinizing it, and then filing it into a third stack. He compared each new page to the last, eyes darting back and forth with a speed he rarely expressed. It took him longer to move the pages than it did to look at them, and it even seemed like he might not have been reading them at all, until he paused on one, drew it closer, and then said, “This one is the same too, sorry. It’s just smudged.”
He continued comparing, but after a few more sheets said, “All of these are the same. I mean, I think, the notes are. I can’t tell if the words say anything different. But it’s the same tune.”
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:41 am
Reims's ears warmed at the praise, and he looked down at the pages rather than at Dering.
"I didn't do that much," he muttered. "I just didn't want anyone getting hurt if they came here. Someone had to clear the broken glass and make sure the floors weren't going to collapse or whatever."
He'd done more than that, but most of it hadn't felt optional. Dering had been there. Cassidy and Yvoire had been there. Dawn and Maisie and Evan too. If Reims invited anyone back, it was his responsibility to make sure the cathedral didn't hurt them.
He watched Dering work through the pages instead, quietly impressed by how quickly his eyes moved over the music. Reims could read the words, but the notes still looked like little more than lines and symbols, even if he'd been learning more music. For him, a lot of it was by ear once he got the chords right.
"So they really did tear out the exact same part," he murmured.
Reims reached for one of the pages Dering had already checked. The page was worn but mostly intact, its edge unnaturally even compared to the pages that had crumbled free with age.
The moment his fingers closed around it, the room disappeared.
Heat struck his face.
Paper tore beneath his hands — one page, then another, ripped violently from open hymnals spread across a table. His hands were larger, gloved, moving so quickly that the bindings cracked beneath the force.
Every copy.
The thought wasn't his, but it filled him with frantic certainty.
He saw fire consuming the first page, ink curling black before disappearing into orange flame. Another followed. Then another.
Someone was coming.
Footsteps echoed beyond the door. A voice called from somewhere in the cathedral, distorted and impossible to understand.
His — someone's — heart hammered hard enough that it hurt.
There wasn't time.
A final page slipped from his grasp and fluttered beneath the table, unseen as he swept the others into the flames.
The room returned all at once.
Reims sucked in a sharp breath and stumbled back from the table. The page dropped from his hand. For a second, he couldn't understand where he was. His pulse raced, his skin cold despite the warmth the space heater brought to the room, and the smell of burning paper seemed caught in the back of his throat.
The lion was on its feet before Reims could steady himself.
Its broad head pressed firmly against his side, stained glass wings flaring just enough to scatter fractured light across the room. Reims caught himself against its shoulder, one hand gripping dark fur.
"I'm fine," he said quickly, though his voice came out thin.
He wasn't.
His face had gone pale, and he stared at the fallen page like it might catch fire on the floor.
"He burned them," Reims managed. "Whoever tore them out — he was trying to destroy every copy."
His fingers tightened in the lion's mane. "He was in a hurry. Someone was coming."
Reims looked over at Dering, still pale and disoriented, then back at the stack of pages spread across the table. "And that page wasn't supposed to survive."
But there were far more than one in front of them now.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:41 am
By the time Reims had gone quiet, Dering was already on edge. The air had shifted, and he’d felt the tension radiating from his side. He turned to face Reims just as he recoiled, and while he reached an arm out to help steady him, it was unneeded. Reims found stabilization with his summon, so Dering just hovered for a moment in case he needed extra support.
He wanted to kneel down and pick up the paper, but given Reims’s reaction, he didn’t want to do anything to worsen his state.
“Okay,” Dering said, soft and steady. His eyes hardly left Reims’s face, out of concern more than curiosity. He understood that sometimes Knights had vivid flashes of the past, sometimes their own and sometimes an unknown.
He offered an arm but didn’t force it.
“Do you want to sit down? I can get you some water…”
Or a snack. Reims was so pale that Dering’s first thought was that he might pass out.
Of course, he knew how stubborn Reims was, and how prideful. How eager he’d probably be to pretend like nothing could shake him, and how quick he’d be to prove he was fine.
Dering didn’t look at him like he saw weakness. Reims was one of the strongest people he knew. Which was all the more reason to take his response seriously.
…And encourage him to take care of himself so he had the strength to figure this out.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:42 am
Reims opened his mouth to once again insist that he was fine.
The words caught when he looked at Dering.
There was no judgement in his expression. No doubt, either. Just concern, steady enough that Reims couldn't dismiss it without probably making things worse.
"Yeah," he said after a breath, ignoring the way his ears probably turned red, bringing color back to his face. "Okay. Maybe."
He kept one hand buried in the lion's mane and accepted Dering's arm with the other, more for guidance than support. His legs still worked. The room had just… returned too quickly, leaving everything just a little off balance and out of place.
Reims lowered himself into the nearest chair. The lion stayed close to his side, broad enough that one stained glass wing rested behind him and Dering like a shield.
"Water's fine," he muttered. "You don't have to worry about me, you know." His voice lacked its usual bite, and he knew Dering would hear that.
Reims rubbed his free hand over his face, trying to clear away the remembered heat and the smell of smoke. His pulse was beginning to slow, but every time he looked at the pages, he saw gloved hands ripping through the books again.
"I think it was him," he said quietly. "The Reims from before."
He didn't know how he knew. The hands hadn't been his, but the panic had settled into him like it was his own.
"He was destroying them on purpose. Not just tearing them out. Burning them." Reims glanced over at the loose page on the floor but made no move to touch it again. "One got away from him, but the rest…"
His attention shifted to the stack Dering had sorted. "They shouldn't be here." Reims swallowed, then looked back at Dering.
"Don't touch that one yet," he added quickly. "I don't know if it'll do the same thing to you." He doubted it would. The memory had probably been meant for Reims, but he wasn't willing to test that with Dering.
"Can you check the others without picking them up?" he asked, then grimaced. "After I stop looking like I'm about to pass out, I mean."
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:44 am
Dering had every right to call Reims a hypocrite. Reims worried about Dering constantly, and was hardly discrete about it.
His own concern was more tempered–quiet, and dutiful.
A part of him understood that worry was just care, but when care came with a price, it was easy to fear it.
Reims was either very comfortable with Dering, or more affected by the vision than he knew, because the admission that he was about to pass out was surprisingly vulnerable.
Dering flitted through the room, avoiding stacks of books and loose papers altogether. He picked up his waterbottle, and opened it on his way back, pressing the cool water gently into Reims’s hands.
He pulled a packet of crackers from subspace and opened them deftly, without asking if Reims wanted them. They hadn’t eaten for a few hours. He doubted that contributed to his symptoms, but he knew it wouldn’t hurt.
Dering had no doubt that the paper wouldn’t hurt him; it hadn’t had any effect and he’d already handled that sheet and more. Still, he avoided it.
“Do you want me to check for anything specific? I have some gloves, I can wear those.”
There was plenty he could have done right now, but he waited by Reims’s side to make sure he was okay, first.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:44 am
Reims accepted the water and crackers without hesitation. He trusted Dering. Completely. If Dering accidentally poisoned him with coconut, then apparently that was how Reims was meant to go.
"Thanks," he muttered, taking a long drink before setting the bottle against his knee. He ate one of the crackers while Dering spoke, the familiar blandness helping to settle his stomach. The lion remained pressed close, watching him with far more scrutiny than Reims appreciated.
"I'm not going to pass out," he assured them both, though he stayed seated.
His attention returned to the pages, more cautiously this time. "Gloves are probably a good idea. Not because I think they'll hurt you," he added quickly. "I just don't know why that one did anything to me, and I don't want to find out by making you touch everything."
He looked over the repeated pages without reaching for them again. "See if anything's different between them besides the damage. Ink, paper, stamps. Anything in the margins." He paused, thinking back to the vision. "And maybe check the edges. They were all kinda roughly torn out, from what I could see."
Reims took another cracker and leaned back slightly into the lion's side.
"The one I saw fall under the table should've been the only page left," he said. "So either these aren't the same pages he burned, or Reims brought them back somehow."
Neither possibility made him especially comfortable.
He glanced up at Dering, noticing that he was still hovering nearby rather than immediately returning to the table.
"You can go look," he said, softer. "I'm okay now."
Then, because he knew Dering well enough to know that probably wouldn't be convincing, Reims lifted the water bottle and crackers slightly. "I've got these. And him."
The lion's ear flicked. Reims rested a hand against its mane before adding, "But stay where I can see you." As if Dering was going to wander off.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:45 am
When Riker first began to snack, Dering extracted his winter gloves from subspace. They weren’t anything flashy, but they were practical, which was far more important. Given how cold his hands usually were, he should have been wearing them much earlier into their excursion, but he didn’t want to draw attention to any discomfort.
It bought him a few seconds more to hover near Reims, but as soon as he was reassured, he let himself be dismissed, and returned to the work.
Reims might gloss over the severity of his injuries, but Dering trusted him enough to hope that he’d say something if things got worse. And if things were ‘okay’ now…
Well, as long as they were manageable, and weren’t causing Reims too much distress, he supposed it was fine to leave it be for now.
“I won’t go anywhere,” he promised. The papers all seemed to be in this room, anyway. If he was going to help, this seemed the place to be.
With the gloves equipped, he returned to the pages. Now scrutinizing them with a great deal more care, he had slowed down significantly. It was easy to tell if the music sheets were the same, but less easy to tell the rest apart. For that, he had to look at everything with a great deal of meticulous focus.
Reluctant to let the silence spread without updating Reims, who was doing a good job of taking it easy, he offered early, premature findings. “I’m still looking,” he said cautiously, determined not to misrepresent either his work or the pages, “But so far, the music is the only similarity. I think. The ink and paper and stamps aren’t really standing out to me. None of those things are exactly like another.”
And, none of them were exposing him to emotionally charged flashbacks.
Of course, he wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that he didn’t have anything to share, so he looked harder, a little more desperately, like there was a clue hidden right in front of him–but he just couldn’t see it.
The pages were all torn out, some cleaner than others. But that might have been from effort, or the age of the paper, or the way it was made, and while some of the text had stylistic differences, he wondered if that was no more meaningful than someone using a different font.
“Some of them have handwritten notes.” Many old books did, but he couldn’t decipher the note enough to know if it was someone noting a mistake, or writing a grocery list, or making a suggestion to improve the song, or–
Oh, he didn’t know. It was so hard not to just bring the pages back to Reims and ask if he could read them, so instead he just sorted through them, trying to find anything useful.
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2026 11:46 am
Reims watched Dering work while he finished another cracker, trying not to make it obvious that he was tracking every movement, just in case Dering looked like he was in trouble or distress. The update made his brow furrow.
"So the pages aren't copies," he said slowly. "Just the music."
Different paper, different ink, different stamps. They might have come from different books, different years, maybe even different parts of the cathedral. Someone had gone looking for every version they could find and removed the same passage from all of them.
When Dering mentioned the handwritten notes, Reims leaned forward slightly. "Are they all different?"
He looked over at the page still lying on the floor. His pulse picked up again at the thought of touching it, but sitting there while Dering searched for something only Reims could read wasn't going to get them anywhere.
The lion lifted its head as Reims shifted.
"I know," Reims muttered. "I'm being careful."
He set the water and crackers aside, then crouched near the fallen page. This time he touched only one corner, bracing his other hand against the lion's shoulder.
Heat flickered across his skin. Not enough to swallow the room, but enough to bring a sharp impression —
Ink beneath a gloved hand.
A hurried mark drawn beside the final line of music. Not words… A symbol. A narrow arch crossed by three vertical lines.
Another page. The same hand writing something different in the margin.
Choir loft.
Another.
North alcove.
Then firelight, and the sense of someone checking each note before feeding the pages into the flames.
Reims pulled his hand back. The room stayed where it was this time, though his heart was beating harder. He remained crouched for a moment before looking up at Dering.
"They're locations," he said. He reached for the water again but didn't drink it yet. "Or some of them are. I saw notes for the choir loft and the north alcove. And there was a symbol on one of them — an arch with three lines through it."
Reims glanced at the pages Dering had been sorting.
"Could you see if any of the handwritten notes repeat those words? Or if that symbol shows up anywhere. Maybe the pages weren't all meant to be used in the same place."
His eyes narrowed slightly as the implication settled.
"Maybe the music is the same because each page was part of something bigger…"
He paused for a moment and sighed. "Sorry, you only signed up for organizing books. We don't have to figure any of this out today." Or ever. It wasn't like solving a mystery at his Wonder was going to affect anyone now.
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