The Midnight Quota

The High Scriptorium was a cavernous, drafty hall of stone that offered no comfort to the monks and indentured servants who labored within it. It smelled perpetually of old dust, sharp iron gall ink, and the acrid smoke of sputtering tallow candles. Rows of slanted wooden desks filled the space, occupied by silent figures hunched over parchment. The only sound permitted during the night shift was the relentless, rhythmic scratching of dozens of quill pens.

At her desk near the frosted, leaded glass windows, twenty-two-year-old Elara worked with practiced precision. As a Master Illuminator, her task was to bring light to the pages of standard hymnals, applying delicate flakes of gold leaf and vibrant lapis lazuli to the oversized capital letters. Yet, her focus tonight was not on the divine glory of her artwork. Her eyes kept darting to the desk immediately to her right.

Rowan, her sixteen-year-old brother, was a Junior Scribe. He was too thin, his chest prone to rattling coughs when the winter damp seeped into the monastery walls. Since the plague had taken their parents, Elara had made it her sole purpose in life to care for him, to shield his gentle nature from the brutal overseers who patrolled the aisles with heavy wooden canes.

But tonight, Rowan was not copying the standard theological treatises.

The overseer had placed a new text on Rowan’s desk at the start of the shift. It was a heavy, misshapen tome bound in a leathery, grey hide that looked distressingly porous, like the skin of a diseased shark. Since opening it, Rowan had not stopped writing.

Elara leaned closer, risking a sharp reprimand. The temperature around Rowan’s desk was unnaturally cold. He was shivering violently, a feverish sheen of sweat coating his pale forehead, yet his hand moved across the parchment with a manic, jerky speed.

"Rowan," Elara whispered, her voice barely carrying over the scratching of quills.

He did not look up. His eyes were wide, the pupils blown completely black.

Elara noticed his inkwell. The standard black iron gall ink had separated. It was frothing slightly, releasing an overpowering stench of raw brine, rotting fish, and ozone. It smelled of the deep ocean, an impossibility given that the monastery was perched in a mountain valley hundreds of miles from the nearest coast.

"Rowan, stop," Elara urged softly, reaching out to touch his wrist. His skin was freezing, slick with an unnatural, oily dampness. "You are ill. Let me speak to the overseer. I will finish your quota."

Rowan’s hand suddenly clamped down on the parchment, snapping the tip of his quill. He slowly turned his head toward her. His expression was slack, entirely devoid of the warmth that usually lit his face.

"I cannot stop," Rowan whispered. His voice was layered, carrying a wet, echoing undertone that made Elara’s stomach churn. "The masters of the deep are dictating. The words must flow."

Before she could press him further, the heavy footsteps of the overseer approached. Elara quickly withdrew her hand, bowing her head over her hymnal, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She watched from the corner of her eye as Rowan mechanically dipped a fresh quill into the frothing, foul-smelling ink, his hand guided by something entirely unseen.