"We can't publish this!" Dobbins cried in exasperation. "Mr. Carlyle, we paid for your expedition to Ceylon under the express understanding that you would go out, have a nice adventure, and come back with a nice, tidy journal we could put out as a sequel to your Oriental explorations. Some exaggeration would be fine - that's almost what we were looking for, honestly - but this... this isn't even marginally non-fiction! You have dead gods! Underground nations! Angels and demons living together! Mr. Carlyle, should we publish this as a true account the Church will call for our heads on a pike and our investors will give it to them!"

Victor frowned. "So do you honestly mean to tell me that you carved things out of sentients?!"

"Of course," came the Gnomish reply. "It was necessary for the sake of scientific progress."

"Normally where I'm from, 'scientific progress' comes with the caveat that we don't go dissecting anything capable of asking us not to." This merely earned a scoff and a slow shake of the head.

"M'boy, you must come from a magic-dead world. Here, everything can have a voice with the right persuasion. Give a cow speech and it'll tell you steak is barbarism. Give it to a butterfly, and entymologists are mass-murderers. And, of course, when rocks can talk they'll argue against sculpture. If we listened to these things, we'd never get anywhere in our studies."

The words started out normally enough, markings of time and acknowledgements of presence or pithy little slogans (or, as far as Victor could discern, other cultures' equivalents of those same pithy little slogans - "stated individual is of questionable sexual orientation/prowess" seemed to be as universal an idea between worlds as "greetings," "look out," and "care for steeped vegetation in hot water?"). As the corridor stretched on, however, it seemed as if the vandals had begun running low on synonyms or sanity midway through their defacement. The phrases grew shorter, more random, and in some cases flew in from another line of thinking entirely; "Tord We Junta, 124/92/3X6" gave way to "Peace and Love for all" and finally to such random bits and pieces as "no matter" or, inexplicably near the ceiling, "sandwich!" By the end of the hall, the writing was a hodge-podge of complete gibberish. Even the bits capable of being recognized as Phoenecian-Greek alphabetical compositions threw their consonants and vowels together in absolute disregard for meaning, compositional structure, or the annoyance it caused a barely-competent linguist as he tried and failed to make any sense out of the mess. Soon even those fell apart into absolute formless scribbling - chalk, charcoal, and chisles arcing randomly in a record of absolute nonsensical nothing... that slowly faded, bit by bit and scribble by scribble, into a uniform ruddy brown as Victor finally came near the far door.

He had his hand on the wide stone ring set solidly in its face before he realized it was dried blood coating the walls around him.

"It's hard to know how to talk to animals sometimes. I've had nightmares of baby-talking to animals and hearing them answer back in polite puzzlement."