Elsewhere:

Moonlight fell in fractal rainbows over the refracted shadows of the night-dark city as a figure in white armour hauled itself, dripping, out of the black ghost of the East River. Bits of white still flaked away, and it turned a fragment over between heavy gauntleted fingers.

“I should have expected you’d fail.” The voice from the surrounding darkness was sharp and velvety all at once. The knight turned.

The speaker was a slice of white in the darkness, long robes glittering with a wealth of metal embroidery. Their face was covered with a vaguely smiling silver mask, and their horned crown chimed with tiny bells. “No that’s not fair. You were a proof of concept, and you succeeded somewhat. Ah, maybe it’s my own fault, trying to find shortcuts in my process.”

Behind them, clowns with their blank smears of faces came shambling out of the darkness. Tiny clockwork creatures ticked through the rustling grass and across the pavement of the promenade. Knights, five of them, their armour more elaborate and patterned in colourful stripes and checks, surrounded the speaker, and a sixth took its place at their side.

“But the difference between science and just faffing about is the note taking, isn’t it?” The speaker chuckled softly, holding out their hand to spread a few glowing pages in the air before letting them vanish.

The white knight took one heavy, heaving step forward, hands spasming as it tried to reach for its helmet. Two of the other knights, one in red patterns, and the other in black, grabbed the one in white and slammed it to its knees, pavement cracking under the impact.

The white knight made an inarticulate growl, its exposed eye damp with unshed tears.

“I can hear you screaming in there, screaming ever since I sealed you up in that shell. You were so, so easy to rejacket, little one. I know that part worked well enough. And she’s still got her chops. Even might have gotten you free if that idiot with the shield hadn’t bashed you all the way up here.” They laughed and a wheezing calliope of giggles rippled through the army assembled behind them. A tattered monkey clapped cymbals together with a nerve-shattering clang. “But she’s not ready for me, not yet. That won’t do, my little project, will it?”

The speaker took a step forward and knelt, sparkling robes pooling around them. They reached out, one long silver nail raking across the patch of bare skin revealed by the knight’s shattered faceplate, right under that shifting, blue-opal eye. A thin line of golden-green welled up in its wake.

“I know that you know how to find them, my little knight. Burn every one of those books to ash and leave those humans with nothing but their shit and blood. But do not touch the Author, do you understand?”

The knight’s fists twitched violently as the others gathered around them.

“I’ll take that as a yes, Valefor, the Berserker." They said the name with a snort of condescension "Now go on and be a good little daemon, and wipe out the rest of your little shelf of friends. If I can’t permanently rejacket the lot of you, there’s no sense letting a bunch of antiquated penny dreadfuls run amok. Not when I can make my own as needed.”

The two let him go, then stepped away as one as he rose robotically to his feet.

The knight closest to the speaker, in parti-coloured violet armour, touched the speaker’s arm and they playfully tapped the blank, gleaming faceplate in return. “You’re right. I can’t wait to see this on the evening news when they level a quarter of Brooklyn,” they said as Valefor turned on his heel. “Oh Ruby. You have no idea what’s in store for you, my darling.”