That was my circle. Binny, Darla, Leon, Ribber, Cindy, Me, and JJ. Circles are the families you make. We see the system for what it is, and the system hates us. Circles protect you. Strengthen you. They make you strong. If you don’t have a circle, you’re alonely. On your own. One voice shouting in the darkness, echoes of your own voice in the static.

Many voices together, all chanting the same. That’s real power. A hundred hands on the hammer. Without a circle, you horde. You keep. You don’t share. Dark magic. Being alonely is selfish, really. Some people deserve it, but most don’t. Without a circle, you’re not a part of the chant. Not like you could be.

The Moulde Family carriage, jet black and topped with black plumed feathers, wound its way out of the Squatling district thorough the smog-roofed streets of Brackenburg towards City Hall, temporary home of the Board of Generals among several other official war offices. It was also one of several recruitment stations in the city.

The carriage was slowed to an unsteady crawl as they neared the City Hall. The streets of Brackenburg were filled with citizenry, far more than Edmund had ever seen. Granted, he could count the number of times he had gone into Brackenburg on one hand, but while the streets had been busy on those previous occasions, movement had been possible. Now, the carriage hobbled through the throngs as young men and women teamed like a rolling ocean.

Edmund’s nose pressed to the glass window as he scanned the sea of laborer’s caps, servant’s bonnets, and the rare silk bowler or top hat to mark the magnanimous few who were there by duty or choice, rather than necessity. Here and there in the throngs, men and women with large bull-horns shouted beneath the flag of Britannia, decrying the latest crime the Spanish people had wrought on the land. Cheers and fists were thrown into the air with every patriotic proclamation.

Edmund watched and learned.

Outside the door, the man in the white coat was waiting.

“Hallo, Master Edmund,” he stepped forward, hand held out in front of him to shake. “A pleasure to finally meet you, really, a pleasure. I have read so much about you.”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” he shook the doctor’s hand.

“Of course, forgive me,” the man blushed and gave an awkward bow. “Doctor Leginald Hamfish, physician and phlebotomist. I’m the head of Advanced Medical Practices at the Lady of Infinite Jest.”

Edmund nodded. The Lady of Infinite Jest was one of the Moulde’s better renowned hospitals, capable of serving the majority of extreme cases in Brackenburg while maintaining a respectable rate of legal conflict and perfectly reasonable numbers of skeletons in the closet.

Edmund was an orphan from birth, as was fashionable at the time.

Sir Limmingsbald Wonthorpe III, noted writer of the age, wrote a dissertation on the rise of the pennies dreadful, the pulps, and the un-noteables. He documented the professional language of pen-pushers and ink-sots, who were desperate to wring the price of another evening’s spirits out of the downtrodden and destitute. He ascertained the pinnacle of their craft, and called it the Hero Delusion.

“Someone will come to save us all,” the pulps proclaimed. “The horrors of the world are beyond our ken, and new sciences and technologies give us only more mysteries to face. Only someone as mysterious as these new challenges, someone from the same world of intrigue, could possibly hold the answers to all of life’s threats.”

After Sir Wonthorpe’s subsequent dismissal from the Calligraphic Institute of Cliffside, his theories and musings over this depressing sentiment in society were forgotten by everyone.

By everyone, that is, except for Edmund Moulde.

The Chant. The Chant. The Chant.

Chant freed me. Chant showed me the real world. Chant sang to me. Chant carried me. Chant gave me everything. Chant brought me home. Chant gave me home. Chant was life. Chant was real. Chant was clear and crisp in a world of fuzzy moldy brown. Chant helped me talk. Chant gave me a direction, and that direction was every direction. Chant gave me the world. Chant opened doors. Chant closed windows. Chant tore down the curtains. Chant gave me me. Gave me them. Gave me. Gave.

Chant is everything.

And with that, we finish the second book of the Edmund Moulde Quadrilogy. On Monday, I will start posting the third book: Edmund Moulde and the Battle of Harmingsdown. Among other things, Edmund’s story has always been about transition, either from orphan to heir, from shame to pride, or from peace to war. From a Meta persepctive, I myself was always interested about what the transition from Steampunk to Dieselpunk might look like.

Dear diary, Edmund wrote…

“Yes,” Lady Tinbottom frowned. “I cannot say it surprises me. Lord Dashington was always very…open, with his boudoir.”

“He hid it from everyone,” Edmund continued, sipping his tea, “by killing anyone he had slept with.”

“How shocking,” Lady Tinbottom closed her fan. “I hope this hasn’t reached the papers yet?”

“No,” Edmund set down his tea. “You are the first person we’ve told.”

“We?”

“Me and the Raven Ressurectionist.”

Darla had a shit family in the subs. Hated them, trying to make her like things she didn’t like. Told her who and how to be, like everyone does. Forced her into college. Didn’t like the culture, she said. Full of people trying to change themselves, weren’t happy with who they were. Try on different kinds of people like different clothes. Made her feel bad. Stupid. Not good enough. Decided to leave.

Has a room of her own. Tiny. Good to stay, though. No flop nor couch for Old Oz, long as Darla’s his squeeze. She still has green, still has glitter. Took it from her mother’s box, she said. Sells it for cash when she needs it. Doesn’t always need it. My Darling Darla, she’s got fingers. Takes books from the library. She knows how to take back what’s been taken. Mall’s a good spot. We all spend a lot of time there, watching the dusted shamble by like zombies.

Little is known about what exactly happened during the time that Edmund spent with Victrola and Professor Whiskfield. The only available evidence comes from two sources: the events that occurred afterwards, and a small note in the margins of one of Edmund’s surviving notebooks:

I have done it! After much study, experimentation, and inspiration, I have concluded that it is possible to perform a post-encardiocephelographic revivification on a corpse of indeterminate duration of death, by adjusting a few ingredients and procedures involved in the creation of my ancestor’s Mechanus Vitae.

I have discovered a truly marvelous recipe for this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.

Scholars and medical professionals have struggled for years to discern exactly what this recipe is, to no avail. Many have used this lack of success to posit that Edmund was a bit of a prankster at this young age, while others suggest that, at its simplest, Edmund decided it was safer that no one knew the recipe apart from himself.