Chapter 18: The Hermit

The official story is unknown. Lost to history forever, now only subject to speculative debate and campfire stories. Constructing any semblance of truth about the Archive is like throwing darts at the night sky, hoping to hit the moon. Of the many stories on its origin, the one Johan Rhyner always told his two sons goes as such…

After Alexander the Great tore the barrier between Asia and Europe, the floodgates opened and there was no going back. Mythics and Entities alike began flooding in from Europe into Asia and vice versa. One of the first recorded organizations tasked with dealing with magical threats formed in Rome under Caesar’s rule. Their main goal was to find new ways of keeping Rome powerful.
The Order was small and secretive, consisting only of Natural Philosophers and Scribes. As it grew over the years it became a small and elite division of the Army. Their troops were handpicked from all over the empire. A well-kept secret that helped raise Rome’s power exponentially.

Before his death at the hands of the Senate, Caesar instructed the Order to choose who they reveal themselves to. He claimed that not all leaders could bear the responsibility that came with such knowledge.

Thus, the Order chose to reveal themselves only to the wisest and most powerful emperors. Under Marcus Aurelius —some 200 years later— the Order saw radical strategic and structural improvements. He realized that the Order must be widespread and able to collect information from even beyond the empire. Yet Rome, like all things, was not immortal, and Aurelius realized this. He ordered them to keep collecting information, to stockpile wisdom, with no definite end goal. The knowledge collected in their underground libraries was far too valuable to lose. The Order had also, by that time, become increasingly focused on keeping knowledge from the people. If the world found out about the unknowable and ‘unclean’ powers plaguing the world, the empire would fall to ruin.

Aurelius theorized that this knowledge was going to propel humankind forwards by centuries. He wanted Rome to be alive to see it all unfold, but he knew that this may not be in the cards. He told them that they are to have no allegiance to any state or doctrine, to allow no bias or distraction to their members, to have no attachment except the mission, and to never share this secret to anyone who they deem unworthy.

So the Order hid away in a location even Aurelius did not know.

After Rome fell, the Order barely survived, only following their emperor’s orders religiously.

With the Medieval Age closing in, communication between sects broke down. There began a splintering, followed by infighting over resources. Branches of the Order in the Ottoman Empire, Northern Africa, Persia, a newly independent Britain, and Northern Europe, all strove to become independent. Some strayed from the Order’s original goal and dogma, others stuck to it so religiously they stagnated. All of these independent branches withered and died. The last remaining sliver of the old order established a new school in the depths of the Norwegian mountains.

As a last resort, one of the most advanced sects pooled their resources into establishing a new hope for the archived information. These men became the founding members of the Archive. They operated for millennia, watching and documenting without passion or allegiance. By the 1700s, they were unrecognizable. Adopting a monk-like dedication for the pursuit of knowledge, in a world that was changing faster and faster. Many had secret families and were killed or made an example of because of it.

In the year 1997, the United States Paranatural Containment Division, in collaboration with the UK’s Royal Malediction and Divination Service and France’s Département de la Protection Malveillante, successfully found and destroyed the Archive, ending a millennia-old institution. The operation resulted in the incineration of nearly every tome, record, memoir, and textbook, plunging the world of Magic Academia into a new dark age. What knowledge remained was taken by the coalition. It was divided and repurposed to fit their ends. Few Archivists fled, enough for them to be deemed a security risk by the United States and its allies.

Johan Rhyner was one of those who fled before the fall of the Archive, escaping five years before the end of it all. His two sons by his side, he came to New York. He told them few things of the Archive, ghost stories and anecdotes. One thing he can never tell them, is how he and a few other escaped Archivists like Sergio D’Acquisto were the ones responsible for the PNCD finding the location of the Archive. He doesn’t have the heart to tell his sons that everything is his fault.

Petrie Oaks retirement home is a Band-Aid-colored dream. A washed-out image a medicine-addled brain conjures up two minutes to brain death. Located just outside of Albany, near a quaint wooded area.

Nick appreciates the top-of-the-line stair lifts, glass elevator, and security cameras. Anton must pay a pretty penny for this place.

A knock on door 313 is responded to with a muffled “Who?!” from the other side. The voice cracks and strains under the effort.

“It’s me, Dad.” Nick says, followed by silence.
“Come in.” Nick hears before entering the room. What greets him is a room that saw a cleaner recently, judging by the vacuumed floors, dustless surfaces, and made bed, but has quickly devolved back into a mess. Books strewn in an organized chaos along the wall and under the window like stepping stones. Lamps projecting unneeded light, likely from the night before. Nick peeks into the bathroom to his right, a wet towel twisted on the floor and toothpaste stains on the mirror.

“You used to get on our case about keeping our room tidy.” Nick muses to his father, sitting on an easy chair between the window and bed. He’s reading George T. Kaplan’s “Analysis of the non-Euclidean construction of the Moser-Shirazi Structure.”

“Jeanette cleans it up anyway.” He grumbles to himself, eyes glued to the page. “What do you want?”

“How do you know I want something?”

“Last time you came was two months ago and that wasn’t to check up on me either, so what do you want this time?” His croaky voice feels much quieter in a soft and furnished room than it does in a cold, bare kitchen in the Bronx.

“How have you been?” Nick looks through old photographs of himself and Anton, both frowning in Indonesia. Anton has the beginnings of acne and Nick’s baby teeth have all but fallen out. They are both forcing a smile after an angry Johan told them to from off-camera.

“This was the day you left us in Bangkok.”

“Yeah…” Johan’s wrinkled shirt looks big on him. His beer gut protrudes through his frail frame. He needs a shave. And a shower.

Nick licks his lips and coughs. “Anton cried the first night,” he says in a somber tone, suddenly feeling how sore he was after training Muay Thai for the first time as a child.

“He always was a whiner.” Johan spits out. His lips and jowls tremble with anger as he remembers his eldest son. The son who pays the equivalent of a new sports car each year to keep him in this gilded prison. Anton, his firstborn who can’t bother visiting him. And when he does he can’t even meet his father at eye level out of shame.

Nick sits on the bed and reaches into his jacket. He hands his father the photos and notes he took in Tanzer’s secret office. “Project Orpheus?” Johan reads. “Stupid name.”

“Keep looking.” Nick says. Johan looks through the rest of the photos. He looks at Tanzer’s obliterated head, the secret research room, the books inside of it. He flips to the picture of Dex’s notes and scribbles, then a picture of him in the back of Nick’s truck, drifting in and out.

“And?”

“And… Tanzer is dead.”

“Goddamn.” He remembers one of the only times he met Tanzer. Johan lets out a laugh and then a cough. “Er tanzt nicht mehr…” He picks at something in his teeth and thinks. “I met the guy back in 2006. From what Anton told me, you’d think he was some saint.” Johan chews on his tobacco, looking back at the crushed head of the director. “But these guys that the top brass gets to run the circus are all the same. Bunch of worms with their tie-clips and male secretaries.”

“Well, this worm got murdered because of this project, and it was made possible with a lot of Archive records.” Nick looks to see his father stare through the photo once he hears that word.

“He was…” His mouth hangs open, under his scornful eyes. “One of us?” Johan asks.

The man who was responsible for the PNCD’s destruction of the Archive was once one of them? It almost makes Johan laugh. Almost. Tanzer was an arrogant man, type to piss in your pocket and tell you it’s raining. Johan felt a familiarity in him, but he always chalked it up to him being German. Johan had come to PNCD headquarters in 2006 as an Archive liaison. A tattletale, telling the Division where they can hunt down the rest of his former colleagues. Tanzer shook his hand and made slight jabs at him; his legacy, and what a joke the Archive was. Tanzer talked about how much of a promising agent his son Anton is. He mentioned details about Johan’s son that Johan himself was not aware of.

Nick sits back and reads from Tanzer’s damning journal. Johan looks at Nick’s crossed legs.

“Reads like a confession. And the Archive never had a glory to return to.” Johan scowls.

Nick provides further context, laying out how the ritual works and Johan’s involvement in the whole fiasco.

Johan adjusts his half-barren scalp, palming shiny sweat off with the sleeve of his shirt.“My work on the Wall was supposed to be purely theoretical. It was supposed to drive further research on the human experience,” Johan says. “This is invasive.”

“So you think it’s possible?”

“No chance. Death is final, I thought I taught you that, boy. No matter what kind of ghosts or vampires there are, true life can never return.”

“He’s using Nilalkali bodies, Dad.” Nick points to the photos of the books. Nick chose not to show Liv these pictures when he saw them in Tanzer’s journal. The pictures are of the kidnapped girls, pictures of them vivisected like frogs on cold metal tables. One image of Tanzer, in turquoise latex gloves, picking through the gray deceased brain of a girl sitting upright, with half of her head surgically sawed off.

“Some perversion.” Johan shakes his head. “Using poor Gustav’s research for something like this.” He thinks for a bit of his friend. He and Cosimo’s father, Sergio, were some of the only ones who kept contact with him after his wife’s murder. “He died last year, you know. Heart attack.”

Johan remembers the Archive, and how it all spirals in around his life. He fell into it as a young man, thirsty for knowledge and got spit out as a widower with a bum knee and two ungrateful sons.

“I’m sorry, Dad.” Nick looks at his father. The skin of his neck droops down to meet his jutting collarbone. The pictures speak to him, and he mouths something with a shaky lip, before looking at Nick. He frowns. His bony fingers make a typing motion in the air.

He leans forward and slaps Nick’s foot off his knee. “What the hell did I tell you about crossing your legs. Sit like a man.” Nick looks at him. “And sit up straight.” Nick adjusts in his seat. “Too much time around that bureaucrat of a brother of yours.” Johan says. Nick’s jaw clenches and unclenches once he remembers why he’s here.

Johan shakes his head and scratches his face. Nick looks over at the nightstand to see bottles of pills and half-empty blister packs. “You know, Anton told me you go by Romeo now.” Johan angles his gaze at Nick, the skin under his left eye droops slightly.

“Dad, if we could stay on topic…”

“You ashamed of your name? Is that it?” Johan’s bony finger points at Nick. “This your way of thanking me?”

“No, Dad, I just wanted to-“

“You wanted to embarrass me. That’s what you wanted to fucking do.” Johan throws the pictures down onto the bed. “I met him a few times. But there were a lot of us, so who knows. Could be he’s another fanatic. Lots of those these days. If you ask me, good he died, they were all scum-suckers, every single one of them.”

“Could you at least help me figure out how this can be tracked or stopped?”

“I’d help my son.” Johan looks at Nick. “One who carries my name. You miss your mother you don’t even remember, want to feel closer to her like a little boy. Go ask her ghost, you fucking chickenshit.” Johan picks his own book back up. For a split second, Nick is a nine year old boy, standing in a doorway, picking at the skin of his finger. “Now get the fuck out.” Nick nods.

“I’ll come next week to check up on you. Sorry I haven’t been making the time.” Nick speaks to his father’s back. He is already facing the window, overlooking the parking lot.

“Don’t put yourself out on my behalf, Romeo,” he says. Before Nick can leave, Johan stops him. “What hardware are you using?”

Nick stops and unholsters his revolver. “My 19.”

“Right.” Johan says nothing else. Nick takes that as his cue to leave.

As Nick sits in the van, squeezing the wheel, he feels the overwhelming urge to hug Anton. He remembers the words their own father used to describe him. Ungrateful bastard. After everything Anton did. After apologizing and spending half of his salary to keep Dad here.

Then he thinks of Anton telling Dad about him changing his last name. Why would he do that? Knowing Anton he did it to get back in Dad’s good graces. The last decade has been defined by Anton doubling back on Dad, becoming his fiercest defender. Maybe an awkward moment between them felt like the best moment to throw Nick under the bus.

Nick starts the car and backs out of his parking spot. “Fucking asshole.” He says, referring to both of them.