Chapter Text
It is an uneventful evening, and Rose is sitting in front of the fire when Vriska Serket comes crashing into her life. Quite literally, through her window. One minute Rose is curled up on the chaise longue, absorbed in her copy of Tentacular Monstrosities: the Denizens of the Deep, the next there's a troll with a mass of hair smashing through the glass.
Rose is on her feet before she knows it, and edges backwards until she hits the unmistakeable smooth marble of a wizard statue. How perfect would it be, if she were to be cruelly struck down by an assassin when she might have made a daring escape, all because her mother insisted on filling the house with these things? Her mind leaps to the headlines: A Mother’s Taunt Costs Her Daughter’s Life: A Tragic Waste Of Youth.
But the troll girl doesn’t attack her. In fact, she doesn’t even come any closer. She stands by the window, feet placed surely and widely apart in stiletto boots, her shoulders back and her head drawn up to display her full height. Her longcoat is covered in glass, which she brushes off with a scowl. (The coat is blue, Rose notices, and isn’t that interesting?).
The troll is also wearing a pirate hat.
“If you’ve come to ransack the place,” says Rose, her voice only shaking a little, “I have to question the wisdom of starting with my private library, unless you’re displaying a commendable level of intellectual avarice. If you’ve come to kidnap me, you should know the ransom will be paid whenever my mother can get around to it, if she doesn’t forget and invest it in expanding our wine cellar. Either way, I’m giving you five seconds to reconsider before I start yelling.”
“Wow, rude,” says the troll girl, who appears to be looking round at her bookshelves. “Are you always this much of a suspicious bitch to people you’ve just met?” She heads over to the desk and picks up the copy of A Guide to Sea-Dwelling Elder Gods that Rose has left there.
Rose starts to relax a little as her curiosity overpowers the threat of imminent danger. She steps out of the sagacious stone embrace of the wizard statue.
“Do excuse my manners,” she says. “It was rude of me to assume that a mysterious troll breaking in through my window could be anything remotely dangerous.”
“Okay, Lalonde – it is Lalonde, right? I’ll cut you a break for now.” The girl tosses the book back onto the desk with a thud, making Rose wince, and grins at her with a mouth full of fangs. “I guess it’s not like you could've known why I’m here or anything.”
“Do enlighten me,” says Rose. She only knows one other troll, and she can’t think of a single reason why another one would be breaking into her library. Despite herself, she’s intrigued.
“I’m offering you a deal,” says the troll. “Something really really good! You just won’t believe how awesome it is.”
Rose raises an eyebrow. “This is about business? You’ll have to speak to my mother, then, but I’m afraid we Lalondes tend not to engage in illegal activities. When it comes to damaging the image of the Governorship, my mother seems to prefer debauchery to corruption. Less cliché, I suppose.”
The troll has wandered over to the bookshelves while Rose is speaking, and is flicking through more books. She looks up. “Illegal? Who the hell said anything about illegal?”
“It was just a guess. I suppose there could be perfectly innocuous reasons why you came in through the window to conduct this business meeting. And why you’re wearing a pirate hat.” Rose winces as the troll chucks aside the copy of Eberhart’s Malevolence she was holding, and it hits the bookshelf and falls onto the floor on its spine.
The troll tosses back her hair in a defiant gesture, and a few shards of glass fall onto the carpet.
"It's not a pirate hat, I'm a privateer, duh. Captain Vriska Serket, scourge of the seven seas!" She looks at Rose expectantly, but rolls her eyes when she doesn't get the desired reaction. "Anyway, I'm strictly business on land, and they say you've got aaaaaaaaall your stubby human fingers in my area of business. They say you're the one to ask about horrorterrors."
"They?"
"Oh, you know, contacts. People who know people. People who know people who sell books, and know who's in the market."
"I'm hardly going to deny my interest when we're sitting in my private collection," says Rose, "but I wouldn't call myself an expert on the subject. An amateur scholar at most. If you have questions, I'd be delighted to refer you to some genuine professors."
"I already tried some," says Vriska, turning to the bookshelves. "You realise most of those guys are completely nuts, right? They mostly just gibbered at me and spewed black stuff over the floor."
Rose acknowledges the point with a tilt of her head. "Yes, it is a problem in the field."
"Right?" says Vriska, but she's not really listening. She's tugging out books one by one, before stuffing them back on the shelf.
"What are you looking for?" asks Rose.
Vriska yanks out three at once, then discards them in a pile. "Ocean horrorterrors. Where do you keep them?"
"The beasts themselves? Generally at the bottom of the ocean. The books make up about two thirds of my library. Most horrorterrors live in the deeps." It makes sense that a pirate - sorry, privateer - captain would be looking for information on ocean horrorterrors, Rose supposes.
"How about Gl'bgolyb?"
"What?"
"You're going to make me say it twice? Gl'bgolyb! Man, how come I find an expert and I'm still having to explain things?"
"It's not a name I expected to hear," says Rose. Coming from someone who treats my books like two penny pamphlets sold in the sort of shop that boards up the windows, she doesn't say.
"Yeah, well, apparently that's the name of the stupid thing that wrecked my ship," says Vriska, tossing her hair. "Well, not my ship exactly, but I was using it. The cannon shot just bounced off like... what do you call them, those shitty little pieces of wood you humans stick in your mouths for no reason?"
Rose has to think on that one. "Toothpicks?"
"Yeah, that's it! Man, I hate those things."
"Horrorterrors are immune to our weaponry," Rose points out.
"Oh, tell me something I don't know! I'm so glad I came to see you so I could just bathe in all this wisdom you're spilling out everywhere!" Vriska snorts. "Anyway, I did some asking around, and it turns out you just have to talk to the thing. Some sort of pacifying spell, sends it right off to dreamland. The only trouble is, no-one seems to know the spell, and all I've gotten is that it's in some rare textbook."
"Yes, the Hundred Burblings. Compiled by Professor M.C. Whimperings, just before he exploded."
Vriska looks up sharply. "You've got it?"
"I do."
"So where is it?"
"You still haven't mentioned why I should show it to you yet," says Rose. "You said something about a deal?"
"Oh man, I can't believe I almost forgot! The deal, sure. Just bring out the book first, and we can talk business."
Rose examines Vriska, but can't make out anything worth probing in her smile. Something feels very off here, but it seems the only way to find out what is to play along, at least for now.
Next to the fireplace there's another bookcase, tall and slim, stacked with seemingly identical volumes. When Rose walks over and pulls the third book from the left, the whole thing creaks out to reveal a second, secret library filled with her most valuable tomes. It was a needlessly dramatic gesture installed by her mother to mock her attachment to her collection, but the space does come in handy.
She keeps Vriska in the corner of her vision as she goes in and selects a large, black-bound volume tucked at the back of a shelf. When she carries it back in and drops it on the nearest desk, the resulting thud makes the surrounding wizard statues hum with the vibrations.
She flicks through chapters on Sabbadur, the great horned one ("I could take him," says Vriska when they get to the illustration), Gnraarsh and his reekstench ("Gross."), and Ilyip of the million toes. Rose makes eye contact with Vriska over that one, and has to nod when Vriska just goes, "Wow, lame."
Finally, they come to Gl'bgolyb.
"I think you'll find this is what you need," says Rose.
"This stuff right here? That's the spell?"
Rose nods.
Vriska punches her shoulder, and Rose nearly takes a dive onto the table. "Great! I knew you'd be better than those other chumps. I'll just need to take this, and that thing will be history!"
"I'm afraid it's not for loaning," said Rose. "I can see how you might be confused by the word library, but human nobles use the term ironically to describe books they plan to hoard in their own private pile."
"Well yeah, can't let the peasants get their hands on your shit. No, I was talking about a straight-up sale. I get the book, you get a slice of my amazing treasure, everyone's happy."
Rose's eyes narrow. "How much?"
"Ten percent?"
"Ten percent... is this the money you're going after Gl'bgolyb for? That you don't actually possess yet?"
"Hey, fuck you!" spits Vriska. "Whatever Gl'bgolyb's guarding, it's more than money, it's the Condesce's most desired possession. Legend says she lost it in that spot decades ago and no-one's been able to find it. I'd say ten percent of that is pretty generous of me!"
"I'm afraid I must be misunderstanding something here. You're asking me to let you just sail off with a unique and unfathomably valuable piece of my collection and hope that you decide to come all the way back and repay me? That's if you successfully acquire the treasure and survive the effort, of course."
"Oh, quit being so negative! I failed before because I didn't have the book. I take that, the treasure's as good as mine."
"My answer is still no," says Rose. She half-expects Vriska to whip out a cutlass, but instead the troll smiles.
"What if you came on my ship?" she says. "You could keep an eye on your investment. And... I don't know, are you good for anything? I could use you as a horrorterror expert, I suppose." She eyes Rose's hands. "We always need more people to clean the decks."
There is absolutely no way this should be a difficult decision. Vriska is clearly untrustworthy and as likely to drown her at sea as pay her, and so far she's managed to maintain her wits while studying horrorterrors by staying as far away from the actual things as possible.
But that doesn't mean she doesn't want to see one. On the contrary, her scholar's heart is beating harder at the thought. And it would be the height of stupidity to join a crew she knows nothing about - apart from that they're led by Vriska, and that's telling enough - to do a job she knows nothing about, to go on an adventure she suspects she only knows half about.
But Rose can see the docks from the library window, brown dots of ships on the horizon, and it's a scene that's grabbed her over the years more than any volume in the library. There is a world out there, one not nearly as petty and small as the endless inward curving spiral that is the aristocracy.
Her eyes wander and land on the open door to the secret library, the one she's filled to spite her mother. Rose is good at petty and small, that's the problem. She was bred for it.
"I'm afraid I have to decline," she says.
"Really? You're turning me down?"
"Is it a rare experience?"
"Nah. You're not the first loser who didn't know a bargain when they saw it," says Vriska, shrugging. "Oh well. Guess I'll just be going."
"...really?" says Rose.
Vriska straightens up, adjusts her hat.
"Sure! You said no. I can take that. We're both civilised people, right? Both bluebloods."
"Well, yes, I suppose," says Rose, still a little dumbfounded. "Er, good."
"HEY, WHAT'S THAT BEHIND YOU?"
Rose doesn't even turn round, she's just thrown for a second by Vriska screaming in her face, but a second's all Vriska needs to grab the page and yank it out. Rose lunges for the paper, but there's a table in between them and Vriska's already running for the jagged hole in the window.
"Sucker!" she yells, as she slips through. Rose runs and throws herself against the glass, but it's too late. Vriska is already landing on a roof below, after which she sprints off through the market in the direction of the docks, knocking over the hapless shoppers in her way. Rose is almost set to pursue her, she's even got her skirt hiked up and one foot on the windowsill, but then she looks down at the distance to the next roof and the disappearing dot of her quarry. Leaping after your enemies is a thing that doesn't translate well from books. She could call the guards, she supposes, but Vriska has a ship waiting for her and a head start.
Instead, she walks slowly back to the desk, where the book lies open and wounded. Rose sighs as she examines the torn edge. It's not the end of the world, since she was never likely to encounter Gl'bgolyb walking round the family mansion, and she doesn't care much about the resale value of something she wasn't going to sell. But it's an annoying hole in her collection, and she'll know the page is missing even if she never opens the book again. She'd almost rather Vriska had stolen the entire thing.
After all, she didn't even take the other pages she needed.