Auteur's Abecedarium
- You may be looking for the titular short story.
Whilst imprisoned within the Shadow Spire, Auteur wrote an abecedarium.
History
After Auteur found himself dying in a crumbling reality of his own creation, three Retconning Crocodiles offered him his resurrection in exchange for a narrative that would unravel their archenemies, the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids. With no other choice, Auteur agreed, deciding upon writing an abecedarium, fulfilling the Crocodiles' request for something simple and to the point while also being a format which could pull away at every thread of the Cupids' history. The Crocodiles then temporarily regressed him to when he was sealed away inside the Shadow Spire, giving him a short window of time in which to perform his task. After the deed was completed, the Crocodiles upheld their side of the deal, restoring Auteur to life, but in a cruel trick, they left him trapped in the crumbling reality. (PROSE: Resurrection of the Author [+]Loading...["Resurrection of the Author (short story)"])
An illustration by Jayce Black depicted what was believed to be Auteur's thirteenth reincarnation writing his abecedarium. (PROSE: Auteur's Abecedarium (Issuu edition) [+]Loading...{"var":"Issuu edition","1":"Auteur's Abecedarium (short story)"})
In December 2020, a mysterious Christmas present in shimmering wrapping was found in the Cupid Homeworld. Carter-1277 opened the gift to reveal a large leatherbound book. Reformed time-demon Lord Thymon and Celebration-665 of the Department of Festivities were both summoned to give their opinions. Thymon was suspicious of the Abecedarium, noting that whoever was responsible for it ending up in the Homeworld had very serious metatemporal capabilities, but Celebration's belief that the present was a Christmas miracle was the interpretation which prevailed, with Celebration proceeding to begin a reading to several assembled Cupids. Thymon was proven correct as the Abecedarium contained several psychic and telepathic interruptions, ending with a warning to the reader for them to burn their history and save themselves from Auteur. Bibliophile-962 emerged from the crowd once Celebration had finished and took the book, intending to place the book in a restricted section of the Cupid Archives. (PROSE: Auteur's Abecedarium [+]Loading...["Auteur's Abecedarium (short story)"])
Bibliophile did store away the Abecedarium in the Archives as promised but he forgot to inform the Archives' custodian Herodotus-724. Whispers from its leather binding travelled through the halls until, one day two years later, Herodotus discovered the unknown book and decided to read it in order to record its contents. Soon after he began, Auteur appeared in front of him, having using the cursed Abecedarium to escape his "crumbling little oxbow". Auteur then left to steal a Fog Ship with which to return to his native Third Universe, using his powers to bring life to all of the fiction contained within the Archives in his bid to accomplish this which wreaked havoc across the Homeworld. However, Herodotus, who was still in the Archives, leveraged this spell to mark the Abecedarium with his "REJECTED from collection" stamp which, in the present state of affairs where everything in the Archives became true, had the result of expelling Auteur from the Homeworld and returning him to his oxbow reality. Herodotus then chained up the book and left it in a drawer to make doubly sure nobody ever read from it again. (POEM: Auteur and the Homeworld [+]Loading...["Auteur and the Homeworld (poem)"])
