Jackal Among Snakes

“You’re talking about losing limbs?” Argrave stared at Raven, stepping back cautiously within this mental landscape. “Why do I need to sacrifice anything? What’s going on?” Argrave braced himself.

Did Argrave even have limbs to lose? He wasn’t entirely sure. And if he did, was this man truly speaking in his best interests? He tried to think of Raven, and while there was a tidbit of him saying that he was a friend… there was another whispering that this man had committed a genocide. Then again, perhaps friend and genocider weren’t mutually exclusive, given the flashes of knowledge he’d seen.

“Your name is Argrave.” Raven slowly rose to his feet, then stood tall. He was both shorter and taller than Argrave—two forms, intermingling. “You’re the King of Vasquer. You were fighting a battle atop a mountain in the Great Chu against Erlebnis, god of knowledge.” Raven stayed still as he recited these details. “Sound familiar? We don’t have time for this.”

Argrave thought on it, straining his mind. It felt as though trying to remember something that he’d done half a century ago, not half a second. But as things fell into place, it was as though a great smog was lifted.

“Good lord… he hit me with something.” Argrave clutched his head, doing his best to remember.

“He’s not a good lord… but from what I can gather, Erlebnis gave you the sum total of his knowledge. He’s attempting to break you under its weight. My discretion, however, would mean he didn’t calculate I might be able to help you with it.” Raven moved closer. Every step he took, the floor changed—it was as though he was walking through tens of thousands of different memories.

“Erlebnis’ knowledge?” Argrave’s eyes brightened, and where there had been confusion, disbelieving desire poured over him, like he’d won the lottery off a gifted ticket. “All of it? You really mean all of it?”

“Yes. Your brain isn’t big enough to accommodate all of it, so it’ll be overwritten unless we do something.”

Argrave recalled that feeling that had come not a moment ago, where he’d thought he was Erlebnis. A grim, creeping horror set over him. It was like a parasite within, slowly eating him up… or an illness, an invisible enemy. As he wondered what would happen he suddenly knew, in such great detail that it shook him to his core. He would be rather like the Castro that Sophia had created—not understanding who or what he was, without proper use of even his limbs. He would totally lose his sense of self, concocting delusions to explain the world around his shattered mind.

stop it.” Raven rolled his shoulders. “We’re going to rewire

he tried to imagine what that might entail, knowledge that wasn’t Argrave’s came to him. “Like a memory palace, or other mnemonic systems?” As soon as Argrave said it, he felt the need

have to encode memories. When you see certain colors, for example, it’ll conjure a section of memories. Sounds, sights, even shapes—they’ll evoke memories, hopefully while retaining the form and structure of your mind. It’ll fuck with your head for a few months, but it should help you

Argrave asked Raven, afraid to call upon his own knowledge for fear it might corrode

things lead,” Raven explained, helping Argrave up. “I need you to find something you can remember best of all. The place that you spent the most time. The place whose entire structure—bottom to top—you can remember. It needs to be big enough to explore, big enough to hold a lot of things, a lot of notions, a lot of clues.” Raven let the idea settle, then gave him examples. “Think of

one town for more than one or two

Road. If you

in a frantic pace. “Was there any location that you went to consistently for more than five years? A town hall, a

truck? We

truck…? Describe what that is to me. How large is it? How much could it store? How many compartments does it have?” The

maybe four, five people, if you cram ‘em in. More if we used the

with four or five people?” Raven grabbed Argrave. “Think! A library, a place where you carried out your trade; think, damn it all, or you’re to

be kept… and like it

“The wiki,” Argrave said.

“I want you to think about what we could

left to spare.” Argrave started smiling, slowly. “How many words do think fits on one page of a book? Couple hundred? Well, one page of the wiki could have a million, if we wanted it to. And if a wiki’s got a good enough search feature, good enough hyperlinks in the text, you can find whatever the hell you want—go on a deep dive through thousands of hours a work. I’m talking a rabbit hole that starts as a description for one person, and leads to a creation myth about the universe itself.” Argrave laughed. “Honestly—the only limit to how much a wiki can hold is how much work someone is willing to put in to complete it.

book of some kind? Won’t work, then,

Erlebnis’ knowledge, we probably won’t need much actual sensation.” Argrave pried himself from Raven’s grasp and peered into his