Apocalypse Noun by Jeff Grubb: Words That Can Destroy the World
Book: Thieves’ World: Turning Points Editor: Lynn Abbey Story: “Apocalypse Noun” by Jeff Grubb
Yes, That Title Is Real
“Apocalypse Noun.” Two words that shouldn’t go together but absolutely do. Jeff Grubb gives us one of the most purely entertaining stories in this entire anthology. It’s got humor, action, a chase scene through the streets of Sanctuary, and a very dangerous linguist who just wants to be left alone with his books.
This story is a blast. And it introduces one of the freshest characters in the whole collection.
Meet Heliz Yunz, Linguist of Lirt
Heliz is a scholar. He rents a cramped garret above Lumm the staver’s barrel shop. He spends his days comparing ancient texts, cross-referencing languages, and collecting words. Not just any words. Words of power. The original building blocks the gods used when they made the world.
He’s discovered about a dozen of them so far. A verb that softens earth for plowing. An adjective that makes fire ignite. A phrase that helps lambs during birth. He keeps them all in a small leather notebook tucked over his heart.
And there’s one more word in that notebook. A noun. A single short word that, when spoken aloud, leveled an entire monastery. Killed fifty scholars. Destroyed the hillside tower where Heliz grew up.
He didn’t mean to do it. He found the word, spoke it out of ignorance, and everything exploded. He was the only survivor. So he ran. He ran to the most illiterate, backwards, unmagical place he could find to hide.
He ran to Sanctuary.
The Perfect Opening Scene
The story opens with Heliz mid-discovery, hunched over documents at his desk, comparing a stained Rankan legal transcript with a Beysib erotic poem. He’s found matching verb patterns that prove a deep connection between two languages that nobody knew were related. He’s grinning like a predator closing in on prey.
Then a fat merchant knocks on the door wanting a letter read.
The scene that follows is pure comedy. Heliz reads the merchant’s letter from his wife. She says she misses him. She asks when he’s coming home. Standard stuff. Then Heliz offers to tell the merchant what the letter really means. For another coin, of course.
Turns out the wife’s handwriting is different from the scribe’s. The scribe is clearly someone she trusts enough to dictate intimate words to. She wants to know when her husband is coming home so she can hide her boyfriend. The merchant storms out.
“Which is why I ask to be paid in advance,” Heliz says to empty air.
This whole exchange does so much work. It tells you exactly who Heliz is. He’s brilliant. He’s sarcastic. He’s broke. And he’s terrible with people. But you can’t help liking him.
Enter Lumm, the World’s Most Patient Landlord
Lumm the staver is the guy who owns the barrel shop and rents Heliz the garret. He’s a big, good-natured man who keeps trying to help his tenant. Heliz keeps telling him to go away.
Lumm is worried. Heliz is running out of silver buttons on his robe, which is how he’s been paying rent. He needs actual work. Lumm keeps finding potential customers at the Vulgar Unicorn and sending them up. Heliz keeps insulting them.
Their back and forth is wonderful. Lumm is trying to be practical. Heliz is trying to be left alone. Neither is getting what they want.
Then Lumm accidentally touches Heliz’s notebook of power words, and the scholar snatches it away like a man pulling a child from a fire. The tension shifts. Heliz tries to explain what the words are without revealing too much. Lumm doesn’t really understand, but he gets the message: don’t touch the book.
The Great-Grandmother Problem
After Lumm leaves, he heads to the Vulgar Unicorn and spots a young woman dressed in identical crimson robes. Same dark hair. Same sharp features. Same raptorish nose. She looks like she could be Heliz’s sister.
She’s not his sister. She’s not even young.
The woman uses some kind of compulsion word. Something low and breathy that slides off the mind, something you hear and immediately forget. But it makes you want to answer her questions. Lumm almost tells her where Heliz lives.
Two things save him. First, Old Thool the tavern drunk crashes into their table, breaking the spell. Second, Lumm has enough street sense to recognize when something weird is happening to his brain. He tells the barmaid to watch the woman and runs to warn Heliz.
Back at the garret, Heliz goes pale. “Her name is Jennicandra. She is my Great. Grand. Mother.”
That’s a great reveal. This woman who looks younger than Heliz is actually his great-grandmother. She speaks a word of power each morning that keeps the demons of age away. She’s looked the same for a century.
And she’s the one whose tower Heliz accidentally destroyed.
The Chase
What follows is one of the best action sequences in the anthology. Jennicandra shows up outside the garret and speaks her own collection of power words. The front of the building drains of color, turns ash gray, and collapses into dust. Just dissolves.
She rides through the streets on a giant stone ape that walks on all fours, its mouth glowing with green fire. She’s shouting for Heliz to surrender.
Heliz and Lumm bolt. They run through alleys in a trickster’s storm, hot rain spattering down. Heliz fights back by using his earth-softening word on the road, sinking the stone ape up to its haunches in mud. They escape to the abandoned manor houses north of the city.
But Jennicandra catches up. And here’s the twist. She doesn’t want to kill Heliz. She wants his apocalypse noun. That word that destroyed the tower? She doesn’t care about the fifty dead scholars. To her, a word that powerful is worth five hundred lives. She just wants the word.
She hits him with her compulsion magic, trying to make him hand over the notebook. He almost does. His hand reaches for it. But Lumm body-checks him out of the trance.
The Diminutive Suffix That Saves Sanctuary
Here’s where Heliz’s earlier discovery pays off. Remember that diminutive suffix he found at the beginning of the story? The tiny grammatical piece connecting two ancient languages?
When Heliz finally speaks the apocalypse noun at Jennicandra, he modifies it. He appends the diminutive form to the word, shrinking its power. Instead of leveling half a mile of city, the blast contains itself to a fifty-foot circle. The stone ape is destroyed. Jennicandra vanishes.
A scholar saved the day with grammar. Seriously, when has a diminutive suffix ever been the hero of an action climax? Jeff Grubb pulled that off and made it feel completely natural.
There’s a great line in the middle of the chase where Lumm calls Jennicandra a sorceress. Heliz corrects him: “Worse. She’s a thesaurus.”
That joke alone makes this story worth reading.
The Ending
Lumm helps Heliz up from the rubble. Heliz says he’s not sure Jennicandra is dead. He did the same thing to her before and she survived. But for now, the threat is over.
Then Lumm hits him with the bill: “You owe me a house, linguist.”
And that’s how Heliz Yunz ends up working as a public scribe in Lumm’s courtyard. Not because he wants to. Because he owes his landlord a building.
Why This Story Works
“Apocalypse Noun” succeeds on every level. The central concept is clever. Words are literally power. Not metaphorically. The gods built the universe with these words, and finding fragments of that original language gives you pieces of creation itself. That’s a killer magic system.
But what makes the story really work is the characters. Heliz is a great protagonist because he’s annoying and sympathetic at the same time. He’s brilliant but terrible at basic human interaction. Lumm is the perfect foil. He’s simple and practical, but he’s also loyal and brave in ways Heliz can’t be.
Their relationship anchors the whole story. Lumm doesn’t understand Heliz’s work. Heliz doesn’t appreciate Lumm’s kindness. But when it matters, they trust each other. Lumm runs to warn Heliz. Heliz warns Lumm to get out. And at the end, they walk back to the Unicorn together.
Also, Jeff Grubb does something really smart with Sanctuary. Most of the other stories treat the city’s history as serious dramatic weight. Grubb treats it as texture. Heliz is comparing Rankan and Beysib documents. The Vulgar Unicorn shows up as a setting piece. The abandoned manors serve as a chase location. He’s using the world without being buried by its lore.
This is one of the strongest entries in the entire anthology. Funny, fast, smart, and it introduces a character who clearly has more stories in him.