by J K Ishaya
“‘Did he teach you anything about transformation?’ he asked. ‘Ah, no, or you might have utilized it already in the marsh to escape me again. Here, let me show you.’
“Again, words cannot quite describe it. His hold on me snaked deeper into my mind and weeded out specific areas, actuating the latent abilities Malorix had spoken of. Knowledge surfaced how to tap them, but it was Nyarlathotep who began to turn on each synapse himself like a captain commandeering an enemy ship, steering the rudder in any given direction, adjusting individual sails.
“The first charge sparked a change in my hands, forcing me to let go of the deck. My wrists became hyper jointed and my fingers elongated with the sounds of bone crunching and skin stretching unnaturally. I still did not scream, but I emitted some other unpleasant noise to express my alarm. My arms commenced to narrow and elongate and webbing formed between my fingers, while all of my teeth, and not merely my canines, ground in my jaw and lengthened into sharper rows. My already torn clothing was ripping apart completely as my chest expanded but my waist narrowed into a tight drum of muscle. Something was also happening with my legs, bones cracking with forced growth, and then the spinal pain in my back changed. It turned into a crawling sensation before, in my hazed vision, I witnessed dozens of long, black and segmented tendrils spilling over my shoulders and whipping the air around me.”
“From your back?” Howard asks, paling as he works to picture this in his imagination.
I nod. “From my back, much like those which Malorix manifested. I was not becoming the same creature exactly, but I sensed there were similarities. I felt some elongation in my face, a snout forming, and ridges rising on my brow and running up my forehead. Utmost, my focus remained on my arms and hands, because those were most clearly within my periphery. They continued to lengthen into spindles, with the webbing filling in, and black pigmentation rose to the surface on my skin and spread like ink on wet paper.
“Then just as I sensed the transformation truly about to make its final push, Nyarlathotep’s attention ripped away from me to fix upon the sky in the ship’s wake. Whatever he saw was enough to distract him, for the stimulation stopped almost instantly. The transformation not only ceased but fell away, leaving me to lapse back into human form. I fell forward on the deck, grasping my face, wiggling my normal fingers before me and what was left of my clothes hung on my frame in tatters.
“‘Advance speed!’ Nyarlathotep suddenly shouted at the crew, his voice acquiring its unearthly roar that made the strange, turbaned men scramble almost comically around me. They rushed to adjust sails, while speed was already increasing with the oars that I now knew were manned by those frog-like, white beasts in the galleys below.
“As all of this registered with me, I turned to look over my shoulder to see what had both freed me and spurred on this oddly evasive measure from my captor. High in the sky, I saw them: hundreds of night-gaunts swarming toward the shantaks until they were virtually consumed. I heard the freakish birds screeching and tittering at their attackers, watched them attempt to dive and then come up again, while one night-gaunt after another would sweep by, slash at them, pull at a wing feather. The shantaks were not exactly helpless as I saw one of them catch a night-gaunt in its feet, dig in its talons, and then pull the smaller beast apart in the center to release a rain of blood and guts before it dropped the pieces. The night-gaunt's legs and lower torso fell faster, while the upper half flipped and sailed chaotically from the wind resistance of the spread wings.
“‘Faster!’ Nyarlathotep commanded. ‘The Cataract is near!’
“I did not know what this meant at first, until I turned and looked toward the front of the ship and saw a thicker cloudy haze on the horizon, a cataract indeed, that would soon whiteout all visibility. Looking back, I saw the shantaks falling further behind under their attackers, and I felt the tiniest thread of hope, or at least some satisfaction that those things would be dashed from the sky.
“That was when I heard a voice in my mind, calling to me distantly, but it was familiar and calming and I had the vaguest vision that there was something else out there behind the shantaks and night-gaunts. I thought I glimpsed two strange mythic steeds, half horse, half something else, and there was the vague silhouette of a chariot with a powerful figure steering it.
“Resist him, Zyraxes, the voice said. You must not give in to his intentions. T’would be best to fall into oblivion than submit to the Daemon Sultan.”
“Nodens?” Howard asks and his thoughts, giddy with new excitement, beg to be correct. “Had Nodens arrived to save you again?”
“It was Nodens, yes, but he had not arrived to pull me once more from enemy clutches. The godly vision faded quickly. We were too close to the end of the world, or at least, the place where the Dreamlands as I had come to know them dropped off. In seconds the Cataract had engulfed the ship which continued to pick up speed. The crew were adjusting the sails in such a way as that they lowered to the sides and became more like pointed red wings or fins. Unable to see the shantaks or the night-gaunts anymore, I turned to face forward, seeing that Nyarlathotep’s face was once more masked with its usual smugness, and in moments, when the white veil began to clear around the ship, it opened upon a black void dotted with stars unfiltered by any atmosphere, aurora, or moonlight. The last froths of the sea lapped at the Phantasm, and then the vessel shot free from all watery support and kept going, floating into outer space.
“I think, if I had not seen so much already, I might have either fainted or pissed myself.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“The Dreamlands are flat? Like the flat earth of old belief?” Howard asks, astonished.
“Why is that so strange?” I reply. “Everything I’ve told you already goes against the science you hold so dear.”
He stares, twists out his bottom lip and raises his brows as he considers this and nods. “You have me there.”
Kvasir smiles at this. “It is hard to explain, Howard. The Dreamlands are both flat and spherical, defying all laws of physics as we’ve come to know them now via Copernicus, Galileo, Newton. They are hollow as well, with an underworld which will take you from one side to the other if you can find the doorways into it.”
Now who is baiting him? I send pointedly to my companion. “Keep that in mind,” I tell Howard. “The physics bit, anyway,” I add critically as I cut my eyes toward Kvasir and try to glare, but that is hard when I look at the humored expression beaming from behind those diagonal scars. “Anyway, imagine my perspective then. To venture into space was rarely something a man of my time thought about. To find myself on the deck of a ship that lifted from the sea and sailed toward the stars, yes, I almost fainted.”
“Go on,” our young charge says eagerly.
“We sailed into that pin-pointed blackness, and the deepest of silences fell around the ship. I spun around to look back and see the Earth of the Dreamlands falling away, and it was an orb as the Earth is supposed to be, not the flat surface it seemed when the ship departed.” As I note this, Kvasir gives an expression of See, I told you, to Howard.
“It was blue with oceans, green and black with patches of land, swirled and puffed with layers of clouds and, utmost, beautiful. More overwhelmed than ever, I lapsed back into a somewhat passive state and did nothing but stare around me. The crew went back to their coarse chuckles to see me so dumbfounded but the quiet bubble that seemingly engulfed the ship muted them somewhat, leaving me to my peaceful wonder. This bubble, or atmosphere, seemed to keep us all safe as the oars lifted and the Phantasm shot onward propelled by some other mysterious means.
“After a while, new noises began to bleed back into my ears: distant flapping like bat wings, whispering and slithering sounds, and I began to notice subtle shadows slipping back and forth before the stars. Upon focusing, I detected polypous forms moving around each other, sometimes catching a slimy iridescence from star light. Strange winds howled around the winged sails and the ship surged forward as it
would on any ocean before calming back into a constant speed. New abhorrent fears rose in me and clenched around my stomach and heart. I may have become a deathless creature, myself, but I had learned the hard way enough that there were still things more terrifying.
“And I was terrified.
“The stars sang around us in tones beautiful and haunting, striking chords that resonated through space while more things came out of the aether and appeared to snarl at the ship, giving me glimpses of enormous, long, larval bodies with teeth that nipped at the sails before moving on. Great, gleaming segments moved overhead, never quite giving me a look at the entire atrocity. To the port side, in the distance, I saw the moon of the Dreamlands, and there were dots of light moving toward and away from it, a highway of other ships, but we did not veer to join them.
“The Phantasm continued out into deeper space, where the ethereal things swarmed closer with curiosity. All of this time, Nyarlathotep had been watching me watch them. He was not fazed by them in the least, as if he belonged among them and they were as natural as trees and rain on Earth. When I finally made eye contact with him again, the contemplative look he was giving me sent erratic chills through my body, raised the hackles on my neck and the hairs on my arms, a very human sensation I had almost forgotten about over the course of the last week in the Dreamlands.
“When I finally spoke, it was to try not to stammer as my wits caught up with me. ‘How is this possible?’
“My captor did not answer my question specifically. He continued to stare for a moment longer, until the subtlest of shifts brought a crease to the corner of his mouth and a rise in one brow. ‘It is almost time,’ he said, and his voice had that softer muted effect created by the atmosphere around the ship. That, too, built upon my chills, until I had to fight not to hug my arms around my middle. ‘All of my work is finally coming to fruition, and it will bloom and grow for all of the world to see. I should say all worlds: Earth, the Dreamlands, and all of the spheres that fill the universe with its countless facets. You are about to become exceptionally great, Zyraxes.’
“Another more violent chill racked my middle. I was still ignorant what this supposed greatness was that he had in mind for me, but I had a feeling that it was nothing I would choose on my own.
“He turned aside then and gestured beyond the forecastle to the spacial horizon where the slipping and undulating larval entities cleared away, and beyond, in the field of stars, a great black cavity appeared, and I knew this cavity to be that extrasolar nesting ground that I had been staring into since now well over a week ago in Dreamlands' time.
“I stared into that gaping tear in space and now could not take my eyes away as we sailed straight into it, and from somewhere out among the spheres and the singing of the stars I heard true music. This was not, as with the stars, merely a series of tones but there was an actual melody produced by a piping sound. It would have been entrancing, calming even, were I not so rattled by the entire situation.
“It was harder to focus here, the way I could on Earth, telescoping my vision like a hawk to spot prey. I could not comprehend, at first, what I saw, at last, seated at the end of that rift in space. It was a glossy, black mass of a thing that faded around its edges into the darkness around it, while tendrils or tentacles reached back out of that darkness and spread so far as to become lost in the distance around us. These tendrils seemed to serve a purpose like anchor cables, and the ship had to navigate around a few of those that stretched past us and out into the distance from which we had come. The portion of visible surface bubbled and rippled, and as we drew nearer, I saw huge eyes, some open completely, others at half mast, all unfocused and cloudy. There were multiple mouths of long, jagged teeth that gaped with gleaming trails I could liken to drool, and others bobbed open and shut slowly as with drunken drowsiness. Closer still, and the details emerged on the surface: pustules that glowed from deep within, and more ropy tendrils were curled around each other, and at its center sat the especially giant eye that I had become acquainted with in my dream during the journey to Dylath-Leen. It was very real, with a great iris of umber and violet surrounding a horizontal pupil, the very one that had swallowed me into its depths in that same dream. I am not embarrassed to admit I almost broke into tears seeing it before me like this. Not in a dream. Not in some illusion Nyarlathotep had cast upon my mind.
“Around the thing, the piping continued, and I found myself rising completely to my feet and backing to the rear of the circle as far as the forces of that invisible cage would allow me. Soon the ship turned, and I saw that we were siding up to a sort of floating dock that appeared woven from the same iridescent, black tendrils that reached out into space, like an extension of the unnameable being suspended in space before us.
“Nyarlathotep drew his sword and stepped forward to aim the point downward and across the outer line of my prison and there he scraped the tip backward, marring the ship’s deck with a long gash that interrupted the line along with a couple of the symbols just within. Immediately the phosphorescent glow faded, and I felt a subtle jolt in my body: release. I was freed of the circle prison, but that was all. Even had Nyarlathotep not then immediately seized me anew in his telekinetic hold, which now seemed stronger than ever, I could not have bolted. There was only the ship and the platform, and the seething mass before us that was almost a hazardous world unto itself, but that was no landscape that I could escape into.
“‘Come along,’ Nyarlathotep said as if I had a choice, and my body moved on its own, walking forward to stand at his side. The crewmen had lowered the gangplank onto the platform, and my captor proceeded, bringing me with him. My whole body began to feel numb from this, my throat tight in apprehension of what was to come. When our feet set down on the platform, I was able to observe that the surface moved, the tightly bundled tendrils coiled and slipped around each other, but not so much as to trip us but the sensation under my feet was bizarre to say the least. Their uneven twining was not unlike walking on cobble stones, for they were not soft as one would expect, but very tough and leathery.
“The crew stayed behind, but Nyarlathotep brought me further down the platform where it narrowed, and on the edges, columns of the tendrils rose and twisted and formed an ornate archway over us, while the platform itself remained open on the edges with no supports or railings. Nyarlathotep forced me to face forward, straight into the enormous mass, and I trembled inside. My instincts were to dig into those parts of my mind where Nyarlathotep had probed and finessed my ability to transform into something else and flee, but still I could not move, could not so much as stir a single cell of my being to do what I wanted.
“Then Nyarlathotep spoke loudly, in a voice and language that I knew immediately were his true voice and language: harsh, indescribable, echoing out into space beyond the atmospheric membrane surrounding the ship and platform. It was an announcement, I assumed, given how it carried, and moments later I was shocked to realize I understood what he’d said: Father, I have come with a gift! Your new reign has finally begun!
“‘Father?’ I all but squeaked, given that my throat was so tight.
“Nyarlathotep turned to me and drew closer, lurked unnervingly around behind me for a moment, letting me simply feel and tremble further at his hidden presence and then his mouth was at my ear and whispering to me. ‘Yes, he is my father, lodged here at the very nucleus of creation. He sleeps here, lulled by that music you hear, for were he to awaken, the whole of the universe would collapse. No, all universes, for there are many, layered upon each other, some in which my other forebears are imprisoned, frozen in time and space, awaiting their own freedom. But neither they nor I want to see it all destroyed in a single blink. Were those titan eyes before you to gain clarity, it would all be over in moments.
“‘W-what does this have to do with me?’ I rasped.
“‘Ah, but you are the key, you see. You and Malorix. The first of many vessels that my father must use. Through you, he will dream walk and be abl
e to roam the worlds without awakening his principal body. Then he may spread his influence far and wide. His followers on Earth and in the Dreamlands have been waiting millennia for his arrival, and now you will be his first avatar. Malorix will soon follow, for he cannot flee his destiny forever. Then you will both create others, a legion, for his consciousness is too vast for merely one mind, one vessel, to contain for too long on its own.’
“His hand reached out and made an eloquent gesture at the hovering abomination before me. ’In many ways,’ he continued, ‘he is your father, too, for it is his essence that runs in your veins, that substance which changed you.’
“He left me to stare for a while into that great, central eye, and I recalled how, in my dream, I had fallen into it, down through a tunnel wherein millions of indefinable, horrific figures swum together, melding in and out with each other, pulsing and churning, hypnotic and consuming. I felt them there now, moving in the unfathomed depths, all parts of the whole, which sat waiting to welcome me into it.
“‘You feel him stirring in there, do you not?’ Nyarlathotep whispered. ‘Even in sleep, he calls to you. He always has, whether you realized it or not.’
“In my daze, I managed to shake my head. I did not want this, and yet the pull I felt, like a warm blanket of wolf pelts after a long, cold day on a battlefield… It was growing irresistible. It promised me I would happily forget about the pains of my human past, losing my family, my people, my entire culture and kingdom. All I had to do was accept and fall into that giant eye.
“‘So many fear to say his name. They call him the Daemon Sultan, the Unnameable, but you know his name already.’ Nyarlathotep was still at my ear, whispering, as he knew that to speak too loudly would jar me from my mesmerized state. ‘Say it.’
