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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · 3h

The email has found me running through the reeking crypt, pursued by a gurgle of rotten laughter. I *must* reach the coffin before the sand runs out. I am the last of the team-building exercise still alive, Dom from HR has just been lost to the mechanical spider with eight black garnets for eyes.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · 2d

The email has found me stumbling through the undergrowth, gasping, thorns catching my coat. The stories are true, Vanya! I crept to the glade where the women meet and saw their faces change in the firelight, from lovely maidens to the feathered round death-stare of owls.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · 3d

The email has found me blending in seamlessly at the conference, vast hat covering my auxiliary eyes. I extend a friendly tendril to the facilitator. ‘Fortuitous time allocation, ape, commence bonding! I too enjoy the consumption of essential minerals.’ I’m nailing it.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · 4d

The email has found me waking from drugged darkness, chained to a chair at the head of a long table laden with jewelled cups and a rich banquet. The smell of roasted meat is mouth-watering, dizzying, but mingles with unspeakable rot. Every other seat is occupied by things that were once men.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · 5d

The email has found me frantically anointing the bones - worn smooth as ice by time - with oils of cypress and myrrh as the hollow shrieking behind the iron doors to the lower crypt intensifies. I am the last of the team-building exercise left alive, Dom from HR has just been lost to the scarabs.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · 5d

We’re glad to be back! I’d avoid conference room 3 for time being, until the coffee machine has been removed. Of course, we want to assure you that the situation is under control. The screaming is merely the grinding of beans, and the scarlet froth isn’t harmful in any way.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · 6d

The email has found me carefully dusting the haunted portrait gallery. The Drowned Duchess is still asleep, pillowed on a tangle of green weeds, and I don’t want to disturb her. More than one colleague has been found floating in the gilded frame, her hands around their ankles.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · 7d

The email has found me laminating another strict No Entry sign for the canteen. The sinkholes are back, pouring forth the usual black fire and tortured screaming, and we all know what happened to Derek. Great news from the hospital though, they say he’s stopped shrieking in an unknown tongue!

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · 7d

Nothing sinister at all, absolutely not - for example - something that wakes us every two hours crying in a voice like the collapse of undersea chasms, and needs to be bottle-fed squid ink.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · 7d

The email has found me arguing with Liminal Jim of Threshold Construction Ltd. I don’t care how multiversal he wants the kitchen, that’s a load-bearing dimension and we’re not knocking through it.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Dec 13

The email has found me hanging green and scarlet baubles, bathed in the gentle glimmer of festive lights. Sweat gathers at the back of my neck as I stare resolutely ahead, trying to ignore the glint of garnet-red eyes, the rustle of clawed paper. I’ve always hated The Presence under the tree.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 28

The email has found me learning to carve The Ice Runes. Halvard is the foreman at the Dwarven mines here, grey-skinned and dour, his missing eye replaced with a ball of quartz. If you have already completed your training in Ice Runes, please pick up your certificates from Martin.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 27

The email has found me in the crowd gathered at the lake’s cracked lip. The summer’s been so hot it drained away to a bed of baked mud, revealing old walls and stubby gravestones like broken thumbnails. Perhaps that explains the hollow cries that echo over the water sometimes, even on bright days.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 26

The email has found me waiting knee-deep in still water, cold to the bone, mist rising like a sentient shroud from the fen. Soon, if I’m patient, the Hall will appear. Vast and timbered, where a woman in gold sits by the light of bright torches, and weaves the clouds.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 24

The email has found me swathed in midnight robes, a dark hymn on my lips for our profane Mass. We welcome a new brother with a prayer said backwards, a wafer dyed black upon his tongue. That reminds me, I forgot to tell Brian that two of the conference attendees are gluten free.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 24

The email has found me dressing for the job I want: encased in a cold power suit of the new synthetic ice. I gaze implacably at the Teams meeting through my visor, hearing only the sound of my own breath and the click of biometric scanners. Mike from IT looks really freaked out.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 18

The email has found me chiselling vast gold fangs from the mouth of the statue of Aion, each shining tooth as long as my forearm. I know it’s marked urgent Sue, but the winged god of Time will come alive when the sun sets so I’d better crack on, can you ask Graham to reschedule the coffee morning.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 18

The email has found me staring into the microscope, hardly able to believe my luck, as I make a breakthrough translation of the symbols fossilised in ancient amber tablets the size of my thumb. They are - as I suspected! - the complex funerary rites for a long-extinct species of ant.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 18

The email has found me welcoming all these lovely new followers! Please avoid conference room C for the time being until the clutch of man-sized amber eggs has been safely removed. Best regards.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 17

The email has found me at the village fair, cautiously judging the vegetable competition. Mrs. Bartleby wins hands-down again this year, her HorseRadish has savagely bitten two volunteers and thrown a child from its back.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 16

The email has found me following a trail of sherbet lemons to the crooked house, surrounded by rambling sugar roses. I slide the letter from the council under the shortbread door. Witch or no witch, at some point she’s going to have to face the music about planning permission.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 16

The email has found me in a hidden glade, my lips pressed to the soft green foot of a forgotten patron saint of moss.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 16

I adored that book

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 16

The email has found me dressing for the job I want: magician of the wilderness, intoxicated with gold and black Runes, made insane by the roaring language of trees, able to lift from my skin and go forth in the form of a hare. Mike from IT looks totally freaked out.

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How the Email Found Me @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social · Aug 16

The email has found me halting the presentation as rotten stumps that were once hands thud rhythmically against the glass. So, they’ve breached the barricades. Are you sure you can’t move to another room, Tim? Alright, well would you mind popping yourself on mute for a minute.

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