A Water-Ruined Requisition

aka the crystal that still sounds

A Listening College requisition slip found among the warren's tribute — the provenance of a resonance-crystal that never reached the College, and the two-underlined note that it 'still sounds.'

A College requisition slip, the ink run to bruises by damp, folded small and lost among coins and teeth in the tribute-heap. What survives: a resonance-crystal, catalogued and bonded, dispatched west with a bonded courier along the hill road — the same road the Skritch raid by night. The courier is not mentioned again. In a careful archivist's hand along the bottom, added later: 'Recovered report: crystal never arrived. Presumed with the raid-take. Note — it still sounds.' The last three words are underlined twice, and beside them, smaller: 'the census note. it holds the census note and it will not stop.' The goblins who dragged it home saw a shiny for the pile. They could not have known they had fed the dark a thing that hums the College's own broken chord.

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