The Bard's Canon

Finton's Magnum Opus

Alright, folks, settle in. Before we delve into the rather… spirited adventures of one Finton Merrybrook, a few crucial disclaimers are in order. Firstly, and most importantly for legal and karmic reasons: No actual authors were harmed in the making of this story.

Now, how did we get here? Well, it all started with a challenge. The esteemed

Bradley Ramsey

a purveyor of fine words himself, threw down the gauntlet for his “Madness & (MAY)Hem - Day 5” prompt: take one of his existing characters and weave them into a tale of our own devising. The character I chose, as you’ll soon see, is the delightfully quirky bard Finton Merrybrook, narrator of the Chronicles of D’veen.

My mission, should I choose to accept it (and I clearly did, hence this preamble), was to give Finton a personality rather… different from his usual charming self. Let’s just say I leaned into the “Madness” part of the prompt. With all due respect to Bradley—a truly wonderful author whose creativity sparked this whole endeavor—and with absolutely no offense intended (he’s a good sport, I hope!), I saw an opportunity. You see, in my twisted little version of events, the long-suffering Finton has finally had enough of narrating tales he deems… subpar.

And who, you might ask, is the unfortunate author in Finton’s crosshairs in this particular narrative? Well, let’s just say if you squint hard enough at “Lord Yeldarb,” you might just see a familiar, beloved author. And if you pay really close attention, you might even catch yet another cameo, as well as some literary Easter eggs.

This one’s for you, Bradley! Consider it a very, very dark fan letter. I simply completed the mission the only way my slightly warped muse knew how. So, buckle up. It’s about to get literary. And a little bit stabby.

The rain, a persistent, mournful drizzle, had slicked the cobblestones of Angell Street to a dark mirror, reflecting the bruised purple of the twilight sky. I huddled deeper into the shadows of the recessed doorway opposite Number One Hundred-ninety four. The chill seeped into my bones, though it was a discomfort I scarcely registered. My attention, my very being, was focused upon the flickering lamp that had just begun to bloom in the window of Lord Yeldarb’s ground-floor study. He would be settling in soon, the fool, to cast more of his ill-conceived notions into the void, like a man bailing a sinking ship with a sieve.

Why, you might ask, do I endure such inclement weather, such tedious vigils? Why does Finton Merrybrook, a name once synonymous with lyrical grace and narrative charm, now haunt the periphery of such… literary incontinence? The answer, dear reader, is a lamentable one. It is because the world, our precious world of letters, is drowning. Drowning in a deluge of raw, unformed thought, a veritable ocean of what this Yeldarb, and others of his ilk, dare to call prose.

He does not write; he merely… expels. Each page a testament to the unbridled id, a chaotic scattering of words untempered by the craftsman’s hand. I have perused his latest offering—“D’veen,” he grandly titles it. A more apt nomenclature would be “D’void.” It is literary effluvia, no more, no less. And I, Finton Merrybrook, have appointed myself the architect of its ultimate, and most necessary, silence. For if such verbal detritus is allowed to proliferate, what hope remains for beauty, for structure, for meaning itself?

The clatter of a ladder and the rhythmic tap-tap-hiss of the lamplighter’s pole drew my gaze momentarily. Old Thomas, his face a ruddy map of wrinkles beneath his oilskin hat, was making his slow progress down the street. He paused by the lamp nearest my alcove, his movements practiced, unhurried.

“A damp vigil ye keep, Master Merrybrook,” he rasped, his breath misting in the air. He squinted towards Yeldarb’s lit window. “Waiting on his Lordship, are ye? Another ballad to compose in his honour, perhaps?”

A thin smile touched my lips, a gesture I doubt he could discern in the gloom. “Something of the sort, Thomas. One might say I am here to ensure his Lordship’s latest work achieves… a certain permanence.”

Thomas grunted, satisfied with an answer that, like Yeldarb’s prose, likely meant little to him. With a final hiss, the lamp above me flared, casting a wan, buttery glow that did little to dispel the encroaching night, nor the darkness I carried within. He moved on, his silhouette shrinking into the rain-swept street.

My gaze returned to the window. Yes, Lord Yeldarb. He occupies a rather special place upon the parchment of my grand roster, a veritable monument to literary malpractice. Young Master Quillson, for all his misplaced apostrophes and saccharine sentiment, at least attempted a structure, however flawed. Yeldarb, by contrast, offers only the primal scream, the intellectual equivalent of a child smearing paint upon a canvas and proclaiming it art. His correction, I mused, promises a far more profound act of artistic reclamation. Tonight, the void he so eagerly feeds will begin to echo with a silence of my own careful design.

The rain showed no sign of abating, its dreary percussion a fitting accompaniment to the task at hand. Across the street, Lord Yeldarb had, no doubt, already begun to besmirch fresh parchment with his literary emissions. I drew from my satchel a rather heavily annotated copy of his “D’veen.” The pages were a battlefield of my own making, the margins bleeding with crimson ink where I had waged war against his chaotic sentences and unformed ideas. “Inchoate!” I had scrawled beside one particularly egregious passage. “A veritable swamp of unrefined sentiment!” declared another. And on the title page itself, beneath his vainglorious “D’veen,” I had neatly penned my own corrective: “D’void.”

My fingers, though numb from the cold, moved with practiced delicacy as I selected my instruments. Not the crude implements of a common thug, you understand. Mine are the tools of a refiner, a sculptor of silence. Here, a keen-edged paper knife, its ivory handle smooth against my palm, perfect for excising superfluity, for slicing away the cancerous growths of rambling digressions. And this, a heavy rule of polished brass, not merely for measurement, but for imposing the straight, unwavering lines of disciplined thought where now only meandering paths of nonsense exist. Each tool, in its own way, a promise of order.

A sigh, almost of contentment, escaped my lips. The world, alas, is drowning in this tide of raw, unmediated expression. It falls to the discerning artist, such as myself, to build the levees, to channel the flood, to carve from the shapeless clay of another’s ineptitude a form worthy of contemplation. It is a sacred duty, this. To bring structure where there is only the void. To lend a final, definitive shape to an existence as rambling and pointless as Lord Yeldarb’s prose.

The moment had arrived. The street was quiet save for the relentless hiss of the rain. With a final glance to ensure no errant passersby, I crossed Angell Street, my steps light despite the grim purpose that propelled them. The front door of Number One Hundred-ninety four, much like its owner’s literary efforts, showed signs of ostentation rather than true quality. A gentle pressure, a subtle manipulation of the lock—a skill acquired in less… editorial pursuits, but useful nonetheless—and the way was clear.

I found him, as expected, hunched over his desk, a quill clutched in his ink-stained fingers, his brow furrowed in what he likely mistook for profound concentration. The air in the study was thick with the smell of stale pipe tobacco and, I fancied, the faint, cloying aroma of intellectual decay. He looked up, startled, as I closed the door softly behind me, the click of the latch an unnervingly final sound in the quiet room.

His eyes, small and porcine, widened not with ignorance, but with a flicker of shocked recognition, quickly followed by a frown of bewilderment. “Merrybrook?” he exclaimed, his voice a reedy thing, pushing his chair back slightly. “Finton Merrybrook? What in the seven hells are you doing here at this hour? Unannounced, no less! If this is about some perceived slight regarding my continuation of ‘D’veen’...” He gestured vaguely at the papers before him. “...I assure you, the publishers were most insistent.”

A cool smile played on my lips. So, the name still resonated, even with one who so defiled its associated legacy. Excellent. It would make the lesson all the more poignant.

I offered him a slight bow, the picture of scholarly deference, though my eyes, I am sure, held no warmth. “Indeed, my Lord Yeldarb, it is I. And you are astute; my visit does, in a manner of speaking, pertain to your... stewardship of “D’veen’.” I paused, letting the silence hang for a moment, heavy and ripe with unspoken intent. “Consider me a fellow artisan, come to offer a... shall we say... finishing touch to your rather exuberantly unformed oeuvre. You, my dear Lord Yeldarb, have provided the raw material. I,” and here I allowed the keen edge of the paper knife to catch the lamplight, its polished surface reflecting the hunger in my gaze, “shall provide the discipline.”

Lord Yeldarb’s initial bluster seemed to deflate, replaced by a dawning, palpable unease. He licked his lips, his eyes darting from the paper knife in my hand to my face, searching perhaps for some sign of jest, some glimmer of the amiable bard he once knew. He would find none.

“Discipline?” he echoed, his voice a mere whisper now. “Merrybrook, I… I don’t understand. If there are concerns, creative differences…”

“Concerns?” I chuckled, a dry, rasping sound that held no mirth. “My dear Lord Yeldarb, one does not have ‘concerns’ about a cesspit; one endeavours to see it drained. Your ‘D’veen’ is not a work requiring mere ‘creative differences’ to be reconciled. It is an abomination, an affront to the very spirit of narrative craft!”

I advanced, and he shrank back, his chair scraping harshly against the wooden floor. I gestured with the paper knife towards the manuscript scattered across his desk. “Behold, my Lord! Your legacy! Or rather, the defilement of my legacy! Did you truly believe you could take up the threads of the Chronicles, threads delivered with such care, such artistry when I gave them voice, and merely… smear them onto the page as unlettered scrawlings, stripped of the very narration that lent them their soul and substance? To think these are but the pale echoes of my words, lacking the skillful delivery that once made them sing!”

I snatched up a page, its surface dense with his untidy script. “Listen to it, my Lord! The sound of words scattered like ashes in the wind, signifying nothing!” My voice rose, each syllable a carefully aimed dart. “You do not construct; you merely… accumulate. You mistake volume for voice, effusion for art! Where is the chisel, man? Where is the hammer that forges sense from the raw ore of experience? You cast your thoughts into the void, hoping, like some desperate fisherman, that a glimmer of meaning might snag itself upon your hook like a hapless cuttlefish, all ink and no substance! But the void, my Lord, offers only emptiness in return for such haphazard offerings!”

He was babbling now, pleas and protestations tumbling from his lips, a pathetic torrent as unstructured as his prose. I confess, I paid them little heed. My purpose was too clear, my resolve too firm.

“You speak of ‘D’veen’,” I continued, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, though the steel beneath remained. “But you have only conjured ‘D’void.’ A hollow echo. A barren landscape where once a vibrant world flourished under my tending.” I circled him slowly, the paper knife tracing idle patterns in the air. “An author, a true author, Lord Yeldarb, is a shaper. A god in miniature, breathing life and order into the chaos of imagination. You… you are merely a conduit for that chaos, a leaky vessel spilling its raw, unrefined contents for all the world to see.”

The time for words, even my own exquisitely chosen ones, was drawing to a close. The true editing was about to commence.

With the deliberate care of a sculptor revealing the form within the stone, I began the final edit. His struggles, once so erratic, found a terrible, imposed rhythm as I guided him, not ungently, from his chair. There was a brief, undignified scuffle, a flailing of limbs that I quelled with a pressure here, a precise restraint there. His pleas became whimpers, then choked gasps.

I worked with a focused intensity, each movement precise, each application of pressure a necessary redaction of the superfluous. The heavy brass rule found its purpose, not against parchment, but against bone, a sharp, definitive punctuation to his sputtering protests. The keen-edged paper knife, ah, it danced, excising not just errant phrases, but the very breath that threatened to utter them.

And as the crimson ink didst bloom—not as a hesitant, ill-formed blot, but as a bold, conclusive flourish upon the virgin parchment of his cravat—a rather more compelling narrative than any he himself had ever penned. I confess a profound, almost artistic satisfaction. His final, choked utterance, though inarticulate, was at least blessedly concise—a single, stark syllable against the encroaching silence. A period, perfectly placed, to a life sentence of rambling prose.

When it was done, I stepped back, surveying my work. The scene, I admit, lacked the neatness of a freshly printed page, but there was a certain… finality to it. A terrible, imposed order. I retrieved my heavily annotated copy of his “D’veen, or rather, “D’void”—and placed it carefully upon his chest. The crimson ink from my own pen now mingled with a newer, more vibrant shade. Upon the title page, beneath my earlier correction, I added a brief, final editorial note, using the tip of the paper knife, still slick: “Thus, order is wrought from chaos. Consider this my most definitive emendation.”

A final draft, one might say. Brought to a most definitive, if somewhat abrupt, conclusion.

The silence in Lord Yeldarb’s study was now absolute, save for the gentle patter of rain against the windowpanes and the faint, rhythmic drip from a newly christened stain upon the rug—a minor imperfection, I conceded, in an otherwise satisfying composition. I stood for a moment, breathing deeply, not from exertion, but from a sense of profound, almost sacred, accomplishment.

My gaze swept the room. Where before there had been the chaotic detritus of an undisciplined mind, there was now… a certain stark clarity. The tableau was, in its own grim fashion, a testament to the power of the editor’s hand. I had not destroyed; I had perfected. I had taken the raw, rambling narrative of Lord Yeldarb’s existence and given it a definitive, if severe, conclusion. His life, like his prose, had lacked a firm editorial presence. I had merely provided that missing element.

A faint smile touched my lips as I adjusted my cravat, ensuring no speck of Yeldarb’s… editorial process… had marred my own attire. The library of the world is vast, and many volumes yet require my discerning eye, many a page yet festers with the blight of the unformed thought, the sentence cast carelessly into the void. The task of the true artist, the ultimate critic, is never done. Many a void yet yawns, awaiting the firm hand that can sculpt it into meaning. But tonight… Tonight, at least, one particularly egregious wilderness has been tamed, one chaotic voice brought to a harmonious, if silent, chord.

I retrieved my satchel, ensuring my instruments were carefully wiped and returned to their rightful places. My annotated copy of the manuscript, remained with its author, a final, indelible critique.

With the same quiet precision I had employed upon entering, I let myself out of Number One Hundred-ninety four. The rain had lessened to a mere whisper, the streetlamps casting long, lonely reflections on the damp cobblestones of Angell Street. Old Thomas, the lamplighter, was long gone. The city was settling into its slumber, unaware of the small act of literary purification that had just transpired within its heart.

As I walked, a jaunty, self-composed little tune began to form in my mind, a counterpoint to the evening’s grim work. A ballad, perhaps, for the editor who dares to make the ultimate correction. The night was still young, and the grand roster of authors awaiting my… attentions… was, alas, still quite extensive.