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Ink stained August’s fingertips, the stain fading from the dark black to lighter gray splatters near the middle knuckles, but stray dots from broken nibs appeared all the way up to his wrists. Glasses, earned from hours of staring at miniscule text, forgetting about the dying candlelight, sat on his long pointed nose. His hair was pulled into a low ponytail at the base of his neck, and though it may have been neat once, it had long since become mussed. If it weren’t black, the smudges from where the ink from his fingers had transferred into his hair would be apparent. Slight wrinkles, between his eyebrows and outside his eyes, had carved themselves into his skin.

Candlelight flickered casting warped shadows onto shelving covering every available space on the walls, all of it occupied by books. It was still possible to make out the organization system that had been in place when the books were first acquired, but it had long since been abandoned—books crammed in tightly, and where the books did not reach the top of the shelves, more volumes were shoved in above them until every single empty space had been filled with pages of text. Loose pages of notes even stuck out of some of the tomes, notes about the contents, cross-references with other works on the same or similar subjects: theory discourses on alchemy blended into manuscripts on arithmetic which merged into discussions on astrology which merged with tomes on astronomy which blurred into botany, chemistry, charms, divining, geology, each subject represented by numerous books.

August himself was seated at a table, even more manuscripts stacked around him in a semi-circle, one paged open in front of him. Half the open volume was covered by a loose paper on which he was frantically recording text while hissing words to himself at a rapid pace. Occasionally, one or two phrases could be made out.

“Mug wort, no, no, no… toadstool, mix it with… but then… hmmm.”

A complicated diagram, a design with runes and symbols interspersed throughout, each with a caption, and each caption had notes drawn in by a third party in the same hand as the paper on which August was writing notes.

Suddenly, August leapt up with a shout, bumping the table in his excitement, but hardly noticing the avalanche of texts sliding from the desk. He was waving the paper about excitedly in front of his face, a look of astonishment on his face.

“By the gods! I think I’ve done it!” His voice was breathless, as though he’d run a mile with a pack of wolves on his heels.

He dropped the page on to his table and ran from the room, only to emerge back a second or two later with an open bag. He ran about pulling books from shelves and out of stacks only to cram them haphazardly into his bag. He began pulling clothes from his wardrobe, jackets and pants, long johns, shirts and handkerchiefs, none of them coordinated, never looking twice at them, mumbling all the while.

“Need to consult Virgil over the recipe. And Thaddeus will have to be informed. But of course I will have to hire a coach and a guide and—oh!—I need my oilskin!”

The bag began to overflow, spilling pant legs and the arms of jackets over the side trailing them along the ground behind him as he dashed around the room picking up odds and ends the entire way, stuffing them into the bag.

When he deemed himself properly packed, he finally seemed to register that the small sack would not be enough for the trip on which he was about to embark.

“I suppose a trunk would be better.”

August knocked on the door of a rather run-down and secluded cottage in the middle of a dense wood. The door was made out of what appeared to be a hard wood of some type, but with some signs of wear along the edges. The cottage itself was made of rounded stones, a dark grey with no apparent material holding the stones together, as though they had been stacked that way long ago, and now habit held them together.

Muffled grunts, scraping and shuffling sounds issued from the interior of the cottage in response to the knock. Finally, after long, tense minutes of waiting, the door swung open viciously to reveal what looked like the most decrepit human to ever walk the earth.

Long, frail wisps of white hair dotted his head, resembling cobwebs more than follicles. However, what he lacked on his head, he more than made up for in his eyebrows. The hairs were so long and so thick that they sagged, obstructing his eyes. There was no way to discern the color. His skin must have hung in folds once, but it appeared to have dried and sunk into his skull. It was as though a vacuum had appeared within his skull, the great sucking force creating the appearance of the skin falling into his mouth and eyes, thin lines around each. He was garbed in a single ratty, grungy tunic that hung past his knees, revealing shockingly thin and hairy calves with square toes and knobby ankles. Despite this fragile appearance, he stood on his own with no cane or stick, and he appeared more angry than weary.

“Are you blind, stupid, or just illiterate?” He demanded, his voice rasping like the door to a mausoleum.

“There are ‘No Trespassing’ signs posted all the way up here.”

“Thaddeus, it’s me. Let me in: I have important news,” August rolled his eyes at the old man’s greeting and

shoved past him through the doorway.

“August. Of course it’s you. Everyone else knows to leave me the hell alone. It was lovely to hear your voice.

As you can see, I’m not dead. Goodbye.” He gestured at the door hopefully.

“I’ll take a cup of tea. Thank you for asking. A splash of milk, no sugar,” August spoke over his shoulder, a messenger bag weighing him down on one side. Thaddeus released a frustrated sigh of resignation.

“What are you doing here, August? I moved up here to stop young upstarts like you from bothering me. If I had known you’d be in and out of here like an inn, I never would have given up the convenience of a city.” Thaddeus dropped himself into a chair by the fire. Unlike August’s home, this room contained no books or decoration of any kind. Instead, the interiors of the walls were carved with shapes that confused the eye, drawing them from one to the next, all flowing together. The tops and bottoms of the stone wall were course, much like the exterior, but everything within arms-reach was worn smooth from untold years of hands running over the stone.

The floor of the cottage had clear paths worn from Thaddeus’s feet shuffling along the same routes, making it apparent that the furniture had not been moved in years, if ever. Oddly, none of the chairs faced each other: the room was clearly not built for company. Instead, there were single chairs next to the most worn shapes on the walls, and one next to the fire, with a small table in front of it on which sat a tea set.

August placed himself into a chair, one facing in the general direction of Thaddeus and his chosen perch, careful not to move the chair and disrupt the system in place.

“I haven’t been to visit you in years, Thaddeus. Don’t exaggerate. And I brought something that you’ll find well worth putting up with my company.” He reached into his bag and drew out the same paper he had been so excited over three days prior. His voice took on a contemptible hushed, revering quality that made even Thaddeus perk his ears, “I’ve done it Thaddeus. I found the ritual, the recipe, everything.”

The blood drained from Thaddeus’s face. “That’s impossible! It’s been lost for generations!”

“I recreated it, collected the scraps from failed tries, did the arithmancy and the calculations, combined the theology. It took years of work, but I did it. The ritual can be done on the next blue moon.” August was still staring at the paper, a look of dazed satisfaction on his face. Thaddeus’s reaction might have been less of a shock if he had been paying any attention to the old man instead of petting the paper like an obsessive lover.

Thaddeus leapt from his seat, a seemingly impossible feat for a man so old and frail, “But you can’t mean to actually perform it!” He spat the words, and, had he been facing August, would have sprayed him with furious sputum. August looked as though someone had hit him across the face with one of his precious manuscripts.

“Of course I mean to perform it. Why else would I have worked so hard, for so long on it?” He was tensing up, even if his voice did not reveal it. Still unaware of August’s rising aggravation, Thaddeus forged on.

“Why else? For the challenge, the excitement, the knowledge you have accomplished something few else ever have.”

“Few else? Thaddeus, no one has done this in generations! We can’t even know that it will work unless we try it!” Thaddeus chuckled at the impudent tone the boy had taken.

“Let me guess. You found that you must correspond the silver with the blue moon in order to activate the latent properties of the mug wort, correspond that reaction with the rising moon, all within the pictographs that you found drawn in the caves of some ancient civilization long since lost in the middle of some forest.” August’s jaw had dropped somewhere along the way.

“You knew? Why would you let me waste years of my life on this if you knew?” He sounded near pitiful tears.

“Like I said, the challenge, the excitement. It’s a puzzle, boy. Few have ever completed it, and none as young as you. Welcome to the ranks of the elite. But now, you must destroy it. You said that this was your life’s work; keeping this secret is mine. Something of this magnitude is not meant to be touched by man. That is why it was destroyed in the first place. Man is not meant to summon god.” August’s face registered anger mixed with the shock of the conversation.

“Destroy it? This is my life’s work, Thaddeus! I could no more destroy it than a man could his child!” Thaddeus slumped back down into his seat, perhaps lost at the devotion August had to this worthless pursuit. August could not see the look of utter defeat on his face, only the bowed head and the saddened slope of his shoulders. August’s tension disappeared with Thaddeus’s, his anger turning to confusion as fast as it appeared.

“I was afraid you would say that. I beg of you, if you do not destroy it, for the sake of all, do not complete the ritual, do not let anyone know of your discovery, and take it with you to the grave.” August’s eyes went round. His mouth gaping in stupid confusion.

“Thaddeus, I… I cannot do that. My whole life is meant for this. I must follow this path to its end, wherever that may be.” Thaddeus nodded.

“I can do nothing to actually stop you. I suppose I have lived long enough, then. I am only sad for those who cannot say the same. Go then, follow your path. I hope that I am wrong, and that this is not the ruin of us all.”

Considerably less energetically than he had entered, August left the small cottage and its wizened inhabitant slumped in his seat, his head hanging in a defeated pose. August shook his head and set off back to the town where he had stayed the previous night.

Days later found August in a large warehouse, clearly abandoned and scavenged through. All that remained was an open wooden floor. The walls surrounding it were brick, red, neatly stacked, and sturdy. The only feature distinguishing this warehouse from any other empty warehouse was the design drawn on the floor, taking the entire space, runes and symbols interspersed throughout, each intersection attracting the eye, pulling attention to it. Hundreds of bowls were set around the outside of the room, each with a variety of oils and powders mixed in. Each containing a paintbrush with which August was adding to the design on the floor.

He held his precious paper in his fist, crumpling it. After each addition, he would smooth it out, check his latest addition and then verify what the next one was. Hours passed, the sun rising and then setting. The rising blue moon could be felt in each breath, in every molecule. As it approached its zenith, the intensity of its pull only increased.

August checked the paper one last time, and, satisfied, he placed it in his bag and set it off to the side of the door. Standing there, he stripped off his clothes, leaving himself nude. He reached for the only bowl that he had not yet touched, and drew a gleaming silver knife from his bag. Inside the bowl was a metallic powder: silver filings. Kneeling down, he placed the bowl on the ground and held his hand above it. The silver edge of the knife slid through the meat of his palm in a swift, efficient incision. He flinched, but otherwise did not react.

Immediately, blood welled from the cut, pouring down his hand and dripping onto the metal. Careful to keep his dripping hand over the bowl, August clumsily searched his bag for the final paintbrush. Wrapping his fingers around the handle, he yanked it out of the bag. Unusually, this brush was made with silver wire for bristles.

He began to swirl the blood and metal mixture, using the brush to stir it together until it formed a paste. When it was the thickness he desired, he grabbed the bowl in his still bleeding hand, and rose. Using the silver brush he began to paint runes across his body to match those on the floor. The rust paste with silver flecks stood out against his pale scholar’s skin. He finished the designs, setting the bowl down only minutes before the moon would reach its peak.

The intensity was enough to feel in the bones, as though they would yank out through the skin. He stepped through the design, careful not to smudge any lines. When he reached the center of the diagram he stopped. He began to speak, chanting in a language unheard for centuries, a language long thought to be dead. And just at that moment when the moon reached the center of the sky, when the pull became just enough, just at the moment when he uttered the last syllable…

At that moment, I stepped through the portal that August had created, and I breathed air for the first time in centuries.