A strange syntax

As an ex-programmer (now manager) and a life-long lover of folklore, magic-as-code is a concept I love reading about. Programming is, after all, about using certain words and symbols to instruct energy to move in certain ways — with potentially disastrous consequences if you get even one character wrong. This was my first foray into exploring this idea myself. The programming pun was a nice little bonus.

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A dingy old bar isn’t Rune’s usual haunt, but work can take her anywhere - especially when there’s fae gold on the table. Or will be, if she can figure out this stupid syntax.

Sweat drips down her face as she curls further under the bar top, balancing on the metal pipe that runs its length and acts as a footrest, twisting her spine so she can peer up at the curling figures burned into the underside of the ancient wood. Annoyingly, her problem isn’t the only matrix embedded in the bar - there’s older work, protections against fire and flood, which the new lines have written over without any care for the consequences.

Which would explain the smoke drifting gently towards the ceiling. And the humidity.

Her headlamp splutters; Rune shakes her head to knock the crystal back into place. She almost has it - one spoke of the matrix is clearly a luck anchor, and the second has to be emotional, though she hasn’t figured out what it does yet. The syntax is so wordy compared to modern standards — every clause is perfectly bracketed, every sub-structure contained and controlled. It’s like whoever wrote this learned their syntax a couple thousand years ago and never bothered to update their knowledge.

The worst part is the symbols — strange phrases interweave with standard characters in a way that feels almost familiar. Like she should recognise it; like it’s on the tip of her tongue. The third spoke is the worst for it, complex logic nesting several levels deep, the lines overlapping and twisting as they sink further into the wood.

She traces it with a gentle finger, trying to parse it out. Something about a spark?

There’s a whisper of cloth, then: “Any luck, lass?”

She jumps. She’s lucky she doesn’t bang her head, feeling her curls squish against the hardwood as she recoils. The barkeep peers at her from barely two feet away, his glasses making his eyes bulge and his height putting him eye level with her while standing. His eye flash like a cat’s in her headlamp’s light.

“Getting there, Mister A,” she says. “It’s a tricky one though. Do you remember anything else about who set it?”

Mr A blinks, slow and languid. “The hood hid too much, I’m afraid. I’ve told you all I could — short, long beard, fond of sweet milk.”

“And you have no idea who it could have been?”

“You know how many drunkards come through these doors, looking’ for a fight or somewhere to redirect their sorrows? There’s too many potentials.”

Rune sighs, and turns back to the matrix. Hopefully she can get extra pay for the extra time. Though it really does feel like she’s close…

Her headlamp splutters again. Irritated, she tosses her head to make it stop.

“There was one other thing actually. I can’t be sure — these old ears aren’t what they used to be and there was a rowdy bunch the other end of the bar that night — but maybe…”

Rune tips her head — the innermost line almost looks like a trigger. “Oh?”

“He might’ve asked for a job.”

Rune pauses. Reads the matrix again, her eyes widening as she works through it, ignoring the closing phrases and making a jab in the dark at some of the longer phrases—

Her headlamp splutters and she scrambles back, well out of the three foot range she just discovered. She tears it off her head, peering at the crystal with narrowed eyes — it does look dimmer, she thinks.

“Lass?”

Rune glances over the bar — there’s glasses stacked behind it and a few bottles of liquor within range, but nothing overtly dangerous that she can see. Still —

“Clear this area of anything with power. Three— No, four feet from the matrix, just to be safe.”

The old man — now barely up to her elbow — blinks again. “Why?”

“Because there’s a bomb under your bar that’s charging itself off ambient power.” Rune kicks her kit back another foot and squats down to dig through it. “We’re going to depower it, neutralise it, then revert it — and you’re going to have to close the bar tonight I’m afraid.”

“That wasn’t the deal—“

“Neither was me having to deal with Kobold, but here we both are!”