Chapter 6: The Owl of Undoing

He dressed again, drawing his long gray coat around him as if it were some sort of talisman. Downstairs, he found Caleb dressed in street clothes, enjoying the TV. He was so engrossed in what was on the screen that he didn’t even notice Vlad come in.

“This is exactly how our enemies will overtake you.”

Caleb started. “Holy llamas! What is wrong with you?” 

“Holy llamas? Caleb! Have you forgotten that you’re a supernatural and not a sim? Have you lost…lost…” Vlad trailed off.

A commercial for some inane TV show called the Unparalleled Windenburg Baking Show was playing. Some man in a garish suit paraded around a serene country kitchen. Mortals frantically whipped batter in bowls and glanced at the clock while socializing and being overly friendly.

But it wasn’t the contest that caught Vlad’s attention, it was the prize. To anyone else’s eyes it looked like some ugly owl sculpture.

To Vlad, it looked like the sages hadn’t done such a great job at removing powerful magic items from this realm after all. 

He tilted his head, examining the screen, trying to remember the story about the sculpture. He didn’t even look at Caleb. 

“Get out,” he said simply.

Vlad turned a page in another book. It was the tenth one he had looked through. The dining room table was covered in papers, random notes, and piles of heavy tomes he demanded Caleb bring upstairs. He had been at his research for what felt like days. There were no windows in the room but Vlad was sure the sun had come up and gone back down again multiple times.  

“This isn’t working!” Vlad yelled to no one in particular. 

He turned the page. The entry didn’t look quite right, but he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t what he was looking for. He made a note and in doing so, broke the end off of yet another quill.

He sighed. He had learned to write with a quill and ink at the age of five. It was his grandfather who taught him. King Connas Straud had happily stepped down to let his eldest son rule and was delighted to spend time with his grandchildren.

Vlad’s father had not been so kind. 

“Does no one produce a proper writing instrument anymore?” Vlad shouted, again, to no one in particular.

He looked down at the broken quill. Was it the manufacturers or had he simply forgotten what a light touch they required? It was important for Vlad to remember who he was—to keep traditions alive. Every day he was met with another example of those things fading away—of change wiping the slate clean of everything he ever felt mattered in the world.

He reached for another book: The Elder-most Manuscript of Myths and Creatures. It was one of the oldest in his collection. The spine was brittle with age and cracked alarmingly as he opened it. Inside, he could see that bookworms had made a meal of the vellum: tiny holes dotted each page. The book had been the abbey’s proudest possession.

It was one of the things he saved before he set the place on fire.

His conscience barely prickled at the thought. By the time Vlad returned to Windenburg, the monks had become a greedy and heretical bunch, sacrificing the poor in the town square in hopes of warding off vampires and other “evil” creatures. The fire had been his gift to the townspeople…after he fleeced the monks for every treasure they owned, of course.

He carefully began to look through book, running through story after story. Just as he was preparing to give up, an entry caught his eye: “The Owl of Undoing, mystical secret as told to Nicolai Flamellius.” or, as they wrote it in Vlad’s day: “The bird of the night of undoing, mystical secret as toldeth to Nicolai Flamellius.”

Finally.

He laid a hand on the page gently, his touch almost reverent. He could nearly recall the story without reading it—something about a petty feud between gods and goddesses leading to the Fates constructing the feathers for the Owl of Undoing out of the same threads they used to weave the outcomes and probabilities of the world. He knew the trick about the feathers:

The Fates wove the threads backwards so the feathers could not create states, conditions, or natural laws, only undo them.

But Vlad wasn’t worried about that. He didn’t need the feathers to do something, only to undo something.

There were rules, of course. They were laid out in the addendum which, for some reason, was written in ye olde simlish rather than just olde simlish. Admittedly, his ye olde simlish was rusty, but he could make out a few words: tapestries, powers, feathers, replacement, lifespan and B’Ollathirnon (some long forgotten god of death or agriculture or some such activity).

No matter, he could send Caleb and William to find a translator and then he’d make a plan to secure the item.

Vlad sat back and for the first time in five months, truly smiled. 

A little perseverance had gone a long way. Vladislaus Straud finally found the key to ending his curse. 

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Credits

Sitting & Talking Pose Collection by Ratboysims