by J K Ishaya
“From where he watched, Nyarlathotep issued first an amused snort of a laugh. The corner of his mouth drew up smugly and the black oily quality rimmed his eyes, grew thicker and swirled to cover them completely. Inky veins branched out from his temples, and dark hollows drew in under his cheek bones as his mouth opened, he threw back his head and laughed maniacally, triumphant. My vision blurred for an instant, and against the night sky he became that indescribable force again. But more. So much more.”
I pause as I recall this vision, and that there is no way to really give it form in words. Only Kvasir glimpses it in my memory that I briefly share, and he suppresses a shiver and quietly agrees that it is well to let young Howard’s imagination fill in the lack of detail.
“Then the peels of laughter dropped off into a deadpan glare and he was an ethereal man again, fair and elegant as I was used to seeing him. ‘Clean that up,’ he commanded the crew. ‘Throw it in with the rest of the refuse.’
“The turbaned men grunted at each other, shifted nervously toward me and the remains of my meal. They hesitated, heavy brows furrowing, wide lips now flattened and grim. I might have been a source of amusement to them before, but now everything had changed.
“‘And you.’ He looked at me, eyes roaming over the red gleam on my hands and chest. ‘Wash up, get dressed, and never defy my orders again.’ He turned and once more looked toward the sea, but this time he watched the crew cast the body into the water that then churned more ferociously with strange feasting.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Nyarlathotep did not recreate his servant women again, and there was no luxury bath this time to clean away the gore. A pan of water and a rag were unceremoniously brought to me, but very quickly both were saturated with crimson and there were still streaks on my skin, crusty rims of blood around my fingernails, and I could smell it drying in my beard. I got dressed again, and pulled on my belt and pouch, but I still felt filthy underneath.
“Where I had come to see Nyarlathotep as a companion, a guide, I now saw him as a captor again. I had made the dreadful mistake of grasping the slightest trust in him, and yet everything he had said scorning my last moral trappings made a kind of sense that I resented. It was not practical for me to hunt only the corrupt, not that I intended to make any human populous fair game, but I understood that to suppress my appetite would mean a far ghastlier outcome than when I fulfilled it with more expedience. While my ghoulish repast digested, my entire middle felt heavy with this realization. The ship had begun to pick up pace again and was moving further around the island. The enthusiastic smack of small mouths and the slosh of the sea creatures disposing of my kill had faded by then and they had dispersed.
“I sought distraction by looking out at the towering volcano which sat under a crescent moon. The aurora was not active tonight to sooth my tattered spirit, but I focused on the far side of the island and a series of black forms in the landscape. It was a field of ancient lava hills that were jagged and clearly treacherous. Lava pathways, long hardened and cracked so that some plant life found purchase therein, were etched between those hills. Further up the slope, the haze had begun to part so that I saw drifts of snow catching the subtle moonlight and further up, the white drifts aided in defining something unexpected. I telescoped my vision to see that there was a face there. A great face that had to be taller than several men, carved into the rock, and it was angled and sharp but beautiful, with tapered ears and large feline eyes. It was that very moment I felt something touch my mind, like a little tap on the shoulder, and I spun to look across the deck at Nyarlathotep standing there, watching me. The face in the rock and his were not exactly the same, but they did share similar features, and I thought of my prison mate back in the waking world.”
On this note, I look at Kvasir, who may be dressed as a modern-day human man, but the features of which I’ve spoken are still there, if scarred, if tired. Howard’s gaze follows mine, takes this in quietly. Kvasir looks back patiently, then when he’s had enough of being gawked at again, he raises a brow at me and I take my cue.
“I remembered then what I had let slip away over my days here in the Dreamlands, that my prison mate had told me about his brother, whose body was possessed by a malevolent force named Nyarlathotep. That same force had rendered me insensible, made me forget what little I’d already learned in the cave prison. It was coming back to me pieces at a time. I think Nyarlathotep realized this, for he began to step closer to me and quickly began to explain the face in the rock as a possible diversion.
“‘That is the face of the Great Ones,’ he said. ‘Or, at least, a composite representation.’ He turned his face so that I could examine the angles a little more. ‘They called themselves gods on Earth. Your Zalmoxis, for example, and Rome’s Jupiter and his entire pedigree. Those are names given to them by humans trying desperately to understand the universe and their insignificant role therein. Long before humans claimed them, they had their own names, their own kingdoms, here in their homelands. Here they spawned with the local humans, but you cannot erase the heredity of a god. Their children and their children’s children all bear those same features that you see up there on that mountain.’ He leaned in, lips close to my ear, and said with especially cruel delight, ‘They all serve me now. The Great Ones and their offspring. You see the resemblance to this face.’ To my innocent blinking he gave a scornful chuckle. ‘This body was a gift to me, a sacrifice. It is my unlimited doorway into your world,’ Nyarlathotep explained.
“‘Why?’ I stammered at first, having to rediscover my voice in his presence. ‘Why do you need this doorway?’
“He merely smiled, and those particulars he kept to himself, leaving my mind to stir with mysteries. He turned away and started to cross the deck for the cabin. Then suddenly he spun around and looked past me and toward the island and its volcanic mountain. Actual surprise flashed across his face, and I automatically turned around to see what had so abruptly captured his attention.
“I barely had a chance to glimpse the creatures flapping toward the ship on leathery wings. There were gangly limbs and long, thin, barbed tails. In a flash, claws reached for me, and I glimpsed a face that had no eyes or mouth. The spindly claws captured me so fast, one wrapped firmly around my neck, and the other grabbed an upper arm before my feet left the deck and I was borne up into the air.
“Behind me, on the descending deck of the ship, I heard Nyarlathotep issue an angry, echoing shout that reached up into a crescendo of pure rage. I struggled in that awkward grip, catching glimpses of the waves below as my fangs budded and my own claws extracted to tear at those holding me.
“The creature let me go, and I dropped with a startled shout but only fell a few feet, head flipping over ass to point straight down, before another grabbed one kicking leg and bore me higher. The waves rushed by beneath, and I barely shouted my own rage at them. My head dipped so low as to almost go under water and then I was pulled up again, higher and higher and then tossed with the ease of a toy.
“Screaming like a madman, I rose and then started to plummet before I was grabbed yet again by one arm and a leg and dangled wavering in the open air. I hissed at them, growled, slashed at the air and heard their wings beating, felt air rushing by as higher we climbed, and the sea below and the sky above kept shaking, tilting, and sweeping around me, dizzying and discombobulating, but I acknowledged that there seemed to be hundreds of them, a swarm gathering, and they were not carrying me toward the island but further out to sea.”
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I notice that Howard has grown exceptionally pale, and despite myself I am amused at how it makes the redness of his pimples more pronounced. His eyes, wide and distraught, betray that there is a frightened boy still hiding inside.
“Night-gaunts,” he whispers and sits up straight.
“You recognize the description.” I stand and absently pace before the coal hearth which has long died out.
“Yes.” Howard collapses back hard into th
e couch, exhales. “I know no one else who has encountered them in this same manner. They used to haunt my own dreams, tossing me about, as you said, like a toy. But how? I never descended the steps. How is it they came to me as a child?”
“They are one of the few and various species able to traverse the Dream veil somewhat,” Kvasir explains. “They cannot break through completely into the earth plane, but if you are a Dreamer, sometimes that is enough. They can touch your mind without need for you to descend the steps, and when that happens they can get up to quite the tasteless mischief for various reasons.”
Howard nods absently, contemplating this. A sense of relief radiates off of him that he can fully speak of this, finally, and also understand it. “What did they want with you? Surely your being swept off of that ship served some other scheme, especially since it seemed that Nyarlathotep did not approve.”
“Oh, it did,” I say and rejoin my tale, remaining by the hearth just to be back on my feet for a while. “I would soon learn their purpose, but not before a long journey across the waves. After several attempts to struggle and being tossed from one to another, spun, dropped, caught, and tossed again, rationale caught up with me that to be dropped into the water below would not aid me in any way. Nyarlathotep may have said I could not die, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be devoured by some creature of the depths and that be equally uncomfortable. The thought of being digested and shat out alive and completely aware of the experience was terrifying indeed.
“I ceased to kick, claw and squirm and finally landed almost upright in the arms of the largest night-gaunt among them with my legs dangling. Its front claws were wrapped firmly around my upper arms and digging into my flesh, sufficiently immobilizing me. The ship had by now disappeared behind us, along with the island, and there was only open sea and sky. With my ears I listened to the swarm’s flapping wings, to the rush of wind. With my mind I listened to a litany of eerie whispers that passed between them, the language as foreign as that of the turbaned crewmen. Finally calming, I stared around me, examining them in detail from their long, narrow and segmented tails to their gaunt middles and broad shoulders meant to bear those powerful, massive batwings. I saw that they bore horns that swept back from their faceless heads, and they navigated the sea winds with skill, darting upward, dropping and soaring back up on the swells. I turned my attention toward the direction of their course and bided my time marveling that I was in flight. I was not doing the flying myself, but the experience itself… I began to somewhat enjoy it, even with the talons that were sunk into my upper arms.
“When at last land appeared, daybreak was at hand and the sky to the east lightened to rose and peach hues while the west remained cloaked in night and a dusting of lingering stars. We were coming upon a coastline of yellow sand, and in the distance to the right I saw the lights of a city, but my new captors veered to the left and toward the spread of a lush forest. Their games began again, and I was thrown from the larger leader’s grasp toward one of the smaller creatures down front. I let out a yelp as the gaunt caught me single handed and effortlessly flung me catapult fashion to one of its brethren who grabbed a leg. The whispers in my mind picked up, overlapped, their language compacted, and from my upside-down perspective, I saw that we were directly over the forest and still hundreds of feet up. That is when the last one simply let go of me.
“By now I expected to be caught and tossed again, but I kept falling, my body turning in the air so that I was looking up at the swarm above. They circled like vultures, but they were growing smaller, disappearing into the sky, and I was hopeless to do anything but continue downward. Wind whipped my hair upward, my limbs were braced with a floating feeling, and then the foliage closed around me. I hit the upper branches which broke easily under my weight, shaking loose leaves, and plunged further down. Above me the sky disappeared completely above the canopy and then I hit the lower branches.
“I bounced, turned, hit another, felt bones break and immediately start mending before I hit the next one, until the final thud came. I landed on a large, twisted root and tumbled off onto solid ground. Leaves rained down around me along with broken pieces of branch, and I lay stunned for a moment. The breaks in my body creaked and cracked back together, cuts and scrapes sealed. I felt these all in a series of sharp little stabs and stings, and then I lay still, wondering what would happen next.
“From not far away, I heard a voice shout. It was masculine, harsh, anxious. It called out again, the forest around me creating an echo, and then a calmer, different voice issued from somewhere nearer. And then I heard exactly what it was shouting: ‘Zyraxes!’
“‘He is here!’ a closer voice called to the other. It, too, was masculine, but far less frantic.
“I struggled to get an elbow under me to lift up and have a better look at my surroundings. Morning light filtered through very weakly here, not unlike in the Enchanted Wood, casting everything in an emerald glow that was comforting. The clearing into which I had bounced and rolled was carpeted in ferns and mosses and appeared to be the meeting point of several beaten paths through the other trees. It was less exotic than the Enchanted Wood, but my vision was just as comfortable in these shady depths.
“My gaze followed a rise on one side of the clearing and up to another large root where a figure stood watching me. By his broad shoulders and powerful stature, I would have thought him to be a warrior, but the face was that of an old man, deeply lined and angled, with a full head of silver-white hair that spilled down his back and a long, ample beard that ended in three thick braids capped with horned sea shells. His clothes were a tunic of sea green overlapped by a leather vest and a thick belt that was tooled with more images from the sea: shells, tendrils of kelp, octopuses and fish. A half cape of royal blue draped over one shoulder and his right hand rested on the staff of a massive trident that looked as deadly as it did ornamental with the engravings in its thicker supports carrying over the motifs on his belt.
“I opened my mouth, about to ask the obvious, and then a second figure appeared from one of the paths and all but plowed into me, kneeled and gripped my shoulders to give a firm shake.
“‘Zyraxes!’
“The question I had as to the old man’s identity skipped right out of my mind and I gaped with more confusion but also an almost painful relief to see this face before me now.
“It belonged to Malorix.”
Chapter Nineteen
Howard exhales renewed excitement and the questions burst forth in his mind. How did Malorix find me? How was it that the night-gaunts delivered me to this juncture? Who was the old warrior with the trident? And so on, and so forth. I narrow my eyes and stare at him for a long moment just to drag out his tension.
Kvasir ponders getting up and coming over to the hearth to kick me. You are starting to enjoy this too much.
“My last thoughts of Malorix, now over a week ago in Dreamlands time, had been the surge of resentment I had felt toward him during my first night in Dylath-Leen when I looked out from that basalt tower. At the present, he appeared the same as before, still in the leathered garb he’d been wearing when I’d departed his company, and the golden torc was fixed around his neck, the same long sword on his belt. He scrutinized me physically, checking my eyes, my limbs, even prying open my mouth to see my teeth, while at the same time I could feel his mind hurriedly wedging into mine, exploring my surface thoughts, stabbing deeper here and there looking for something specific. He was assessing rapidly what I had done and learned since my time here, what Nyarlathotep had said to me, how he had indulged and then tormented me. I was in shock enough to allow it, especially since it lacked the pain that accompanied Nyarlathotep's incursions, and when Malorix seemed satisfied, the examination ended.
“After a long moment of collecting himself, he said, ‘You are still you.’ He turned and looked up at the old man who had not so much as taken a step from his elevated position on the great tree root. ‘He has not been corrupted. Not the way we feared.�
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“I did not immediately acknowledge what he had just said and went straight to resenting him all over again. ‘Fucker,’ I hissed, shoved him away and backed up, sliding across the ground. My clothes were torn from my descent, and I was flaked with leaves and bits of bark. I clambered to my feet, slightly wobbly, and did my best to attain a strong stance.
“‘He is certainly willful,’ the old man said.
“‘You have no idea,’ Malorix replied dryly.
“‘What is this?’ I demanded. ‘What do you mean I have not been corrupted? How did you find me and who is he?’ I turned a glare upon the old warrior and realized those were not human eyes staring back. They were aquamarine orbs like large marbles fixed in his sockets—no whites, no irises, no pupils, just solid glass or crystal—and yet light caught in them at such an angle as to indicate that he was indeed looking at me.
“‘Calm yourself, boy,’ he said with distain. ‘It has been something of an effort just to locate you, Zyraxes, let alone appeal to my night-gaunts to snatch you away from the Crawling Chaos. They are powerful, but even that being gives them hesitation.’ He hocked and spit to his side with bitterness.
“I looked to Malorix for an explanation, shaking my head hopelessly. ‘Please tell me…’
“‘You remember,’ he began to explain, ‘that when you wandered off that morning, our minds were joined? I know you were aware of it. It was a subtle link, so I could keep an idea of your location and what you were up to.’
“I nodded to this and gritted my teeth, remembering that tether and how liberated I had felt when it suddenly fell away without explanation. ‘I thought I had reached the limits of your hold.’
