He heard the lady’s voice as it trailed off with the connection to that portal severed.
“Hello? Who’s there—is that you Mister Rath?”
***
The Prime
Nitthogr walked through the ancient tunnels of Vangandra; moving helped him shake off the fatigue his most recent act had thrust upon him. The tunnels wormed their way through the mountain that the monastery resided upon. He had access to Shjikara’s memories and so he knew how Zabe had met his grandfather, Shardai, in these tunnels.
He knew that the old Vangandran had died during a skirmish in one of his prison camps before the Battle of Nebraska. Shardai had caused the diversion that enabled Zabe and Claire to survive their attempted rescue of Bithia. The princess’s sacrifice let them escape, but not before she murdered his Tarkhūn general, Regorik.
What Nitthogr hadn’t known until he took Shjikara’s body, was that Shardai and his family kept a secret along with the High Priest: a hidden dimensional gate existed within the Vangandran catacombs.
Not even the vaunted dunnischktet explorer had known of that one. Zabe had used it to sneak back into the Prime after Nitthogr had placed guards at every portal site to prevent his access.
Nitthogr hadn’t given much thought to Zabe’s seeming disappearance. He hadn’t even bothered to search for him beyond sending out feelers to locate him on the Prime. The sorcerer couldn’t find him in this dimension—and the fact that Claire hadn’t been able to reach him seemed to indicate he had planeswalked beyond his home. If so, it worked perfectly into Nitthogr’s plans; this time he would do more than guard the dimensional doors—he would shut them down entirely—he’d bend them to his will so only he could use them.
For now, Nitthogr had a different purpose. Basilisk was always known as the Great Games-keeper, a master strategist who could not be beaten… but Nitthogr would bring pieces to the table that his brother did not know were in play.
He stepped onto the secret portal site. The sorcerer could feel the attunement hum within his spirit; the activation point called out to him and he felt the runic carvings on the rocky platform.
Nitthogr cut Shjikara’s flesh and spilled a trickle of blood to power the arcane device. The subsequent portal split him to shreds at a molecular level, filling him with a cold, familiar lance of electric ice and simultaneously rebuilt him inside the Desolation realm.
He smelled ancient dust in the chamber. This place was familiar. The first time and last time he had seen it was before the merging—his name had been Keldric and the place had been glorious… and then Keldric died to birth Nitthogr—just like existence had to die in order to awaken Sh’logath.
The air was thick inside the old atrium, even though a section of the roof had been broken away; rubble littered the floor of the tomb-like facility. A breeze swirled through the ancient place where stony podiums rose above the sand-strewn floor. Many aisles of altars had been placed with the mummified bodies of the Thousand Elders laid to rest in torpor upon them.
Nitthogr looked down at the metal chair where the corrupted form of The Voice, or what was left of him, sat in cadaverous repose. The Voice was an honorary title—a kind of hold-over for the prophet role that the Sh’logath cult stole from the ancient religion that existed prior them, and which the rovers still practiced. Nitthogr remembered the old vyrm; The Voice who had been a part of his dunnischkte ceremony, his and Basilisk’s both.
There was no longer meaning in this. Sentiment was not the vyrm way, he told himself.
Exiting the ceremonial chamber, he strolled out and into the streets of Straruck. The long dead city that become infested with carrion worms. Nitthogr let his terrifying aura extend as a ward to the vermin nearby to keep the lesser ones away and then he called out to one nearby: a queen.
Rumbling towards him in the loose sand and scree, the massive beast answered his summons and crawled from the shadows, carried along by thousands of cilia-like legs. Nitthogr enslaved her mind with a burst of black sorcery. Docile to his touch, he leapt upon her chitinous, multi-segmented hide and stood upon the flat section of her head, taking a seat as if it were a saddle.
His worm surged forward and cleared the edge of the Straruck, dashing into the Plains of Neggath at speeds faster than most land vehicles were capable of producing in these badlands.
They rolled across jagged, glassine scree and copses of razorbrush shrubs. A short while later Nitthogr arrived by wormback at the ghostly city of Sharonash: one more ruined town that suffered a total and catastrophic loss during the Syzygyc War. His mount stopped at the outskirts of Sharonash. Another territorial worm screeched a challenge in the distance and the ground rumbled as it charged for them, unseen except by worm senses.
Finally, it crested the soil and gave a blood-curdling screech.
Nitthogr shrieked a warning of his own in a language that the beast would understand. It halted dead in its tracks. The sorcerer howled again and the enemy vermin retreated to cower in the dark, afraid of whatever stronger predator it had dared challenge.
Beyond the edge of the Sharonash ruins, a vale sloped away; stone bodies littered the landscape where thousands of vyrm warriors had fallen to the Architect King and his Stone Glaive, the mythic blade now wielded by Zabe—wherever he may have gone.
This was the place where the war had ended so long ago. This was where Sh’logath’s entry into reality had been halted. It was fitting that his return to this site would hasten his agod’s arrival.
The sorcerer’s mount ambled down into the midst of the petrified army and Nitthogr stood tall upon the creature’s crest. He held high his stone fist.
“Hear me, brothers, sisters, loyal servants of the dark! You were each preserved for this very hour… a dark moment that our enemies do not even know is upon them.”
He growled and exerted the power of the rune stone. Skin cracked and peeled. His sleeping army awoke, thousands strong.
One vyrm in particular bore Nitthogr’s face and dress. The impostor approached the true sorcerer and allowed his flesh to revert to its actual shape.
“Ah, Krenyr,” Nitthogr welcomed him. “my loyal hunter. You were not destroyed in the war, after all.” The talented shade had been sent on a diversion mission during the final battle.
“I was successful in the first task, my lord… I failed in the second.” Krenyr bowed. He was supposed to have lured the Architect King in with the promise of peace talks. Once he was close enough, Krenyr was supposed to have plunged his dagger into the heart of their enemy.
“Do not worry, my friend. There will be more opportunities to strike from the shadows—especially for a shade as talented and irreplaceable as you. I have rescued you for this very purpose and you alone possess the power to redeem yourself in the eyes of Sh’logath.”
The sorcerer conjured a shape out of light and molded it into the face of Respan the scientist. “This man must die, secretly. Make sure none are suspicious of the death, not for several days, at least. We shall need some time to prepare without more prying eyes.” He figured he should explain, “Respan has developed a technology that allows its wearers to see aura’s from darque-born creatures, including vyrm. He could potentially unmask every shade with its use, and we are not yet ready to step out from the shadows.”
Krenyr’s face took the shape of Respan. “I think I would like to take a holiday… perhaps visit the crystal sea and reflect upon the grandeur of the universe. I’ll be gone for some time… hold all my packages, please,” he spoke with a slightly foppish tone.
Nitthogr smiled. “Perfect. As usual.”
Krenyr took a knee and bowed, the first among the reclaimed vyrm. “For the sake of my own redemption in the eyes of the Devourer, you have my allegiance, Krenyr the Hunter is at your service,” he hissed.
***
Earth
Wiltshire yawned to reset the pressure building between his ears as the private jet descended towards the small, regional airport. He re-examined the short message f
rom his contact, Tay-lore. The detective silently thanked both the Hepobscurantum and the Canon Foundation which had made him rich enough to afford things like last minute private jets to Duluth, Minnesota, even if he’d had to blackmail them to get the cash they owed him for services rendered.
Tay-lore’s last line bothered him. Get to the coordinates immediately; I am sending a package with a followup message and more details. Life or death importance!
He’d never heard Tay-lore speak so forcefully or urgently. This might be the only time I’ve ever seen him use an exclamation mark, Wiltshire thought, and they’d been communicating for years off and on.
The detective felt the weighty bulge of his sidearm and absentmindedly checked that all of his magazines were in their place. He had known Tay-lore long enough to guess that, whatever he was, he was not a human. Wiltshire never breached etiquette and asked, he merely prepared for the situation to turn foul.
He scrolled back up and read the digital message. Tay-lore had laid out a map for a system of astral gates and alternate dimensions. The whole network was mind boggling, but the individual pieces of the puzzle lined up with things that Wiltshire already knew to be true, even if they each seemed far-fetched enough to sound crazy to any folk not wearing tinfoil hats.
The plane touched down with expert ease as he continued reading and a few minutes later Wiltshire found his rental car and sped downtown where he found an abandoned church at Tay-lore’s coordinates. The old cathedral had been boarded up and scraps of police tape still fluttered against the door, though the brittleness of the plastic suggested they’d been out in the elements for well-over a year.
Wiltshire stood atop the stairs in the entry and fingered the yellow, plastic barrier. A scrap of tape broke easily and fell to the concrete when a tiny symbol engraved there caught the detective’s eye: a seven-pointed star.
“The Heptobscurantum… I should have known,” he said, pushing his way though the doors. The fall chill was brisk and so he shut the way behind him.
His footsteps echoed through the sanctuary. Pews were scattered and left in disarray. Forensic markers lay where they’d been forgotten, circling brown stains and indicating bullet holes and angles of shots.
Wiltshire remembered reading about the church massacre a few years back. The crime had never been solved. Guessing that with the Seven’s involvement, it never would be.
He continued his walk up to the lectern; Wiltshire shoved aside a podium and found what Tay-lore had sent him after: some kind of drone. Two pincer-like vices were mounted on its undercarriage and one of them clutched a busted flute of glass.
Besides the clamp-like grips, it had a compartment hatch that he had to force open. He disconnected and removed a display device that was internally affixed to the drone.
“Huh. Looks like a small iPad or something,” Wiltshire said aloud. He took a seat on a derelict pew and activated the display.
A blank humanoid face greeted him. It looked more like a mannequin than a person. “Greetings,” the recording said, “I am Tay-lore. I apologize for the hastiness and nature of my message and hope that my appearance does not startle you… I would assume that by now you had suspected that I was not entirely like you…”
“Understatement of the year, there, buddy,” Wiltshire mumbled.
He nodded along as Tay-lore explained the network of astronomically linked portal projectors that tied to the lunar and solar phases through a series of complicated algorithms. Wiltshire noted that Tay-lore’s body never moved aside from his face. It’s some kind of video simulation with a manufactured voice transmitting data… more like one of those auto-readers for the blind than an actual video recording.
“So this isn’t even a recording,” Wiltshire sighed.
“Not exactly,” Tay-lore responded.
Wiltshire blinked. “Wait. What?”
“I am a limited but interactive AI interface that Tay-lore quickly encoded for you. My name is Beta-lore, an extension of Tay-lore’s mind, and all that now remains of him.”
“Huh? What do you mean—what happened to Tay-lore?”
“The video of his fate is what follows. I represent a limited subset of data that he chose to send to you in the final seconds before his demise,” Beta-lore said. “He certainly would have helped you locate your thief and the stolen page. The page’s thief is not unknown to us.”
“I don’t understand,” Wiltshire said, dragging a hand through his shaggy hair, “why did he send all of this to me of all people?”
“You two had history,” said the program. “Tay-lore knew that you could find anything, given the right resources. You are tenacious, committed, and loyal. He’d hoped that these combinations of traits which he, too, admired, would mean you would help stop the great and coming destruction.”
“What do you mean—the Solomonari? This wizard who attacked the Scholomance? The Heptobscurantums’ Seven?”
Beta-Lore merely stared. He issued a beeping noise. “Unfamiliar terms,” he reported.
“Ok, then what did he mean?” Wiltshire asked.
“An evil far greater than what is known on Earth, except from scholars of obscure works. Sh’logath rises and his Acolyte has returned from the void. Nitthogr.”
Wiltshire drew his lips together thinly. He’d heard both names before, but knew only scraps of lore. He was sure that the program could fill in the gaps. After all, it was part of Tay-lore’s purpose in sending the carrier drone, right? The purpose… the purpose… what am I forgetting?
He remembered. “Tay-lore needed me to find something; what is it?”
“There is a device left inside of the drone. It will help you find the only person who we believe can stop Nitthogr from wiping out all life from each of the thirty-three dimensions of the multi-verse,” Beta-lore stated. The screen filled with a series of still images of a man.
“He looks suspiciously like the kid I am chasing… the guy who stole a Codex Gigas page from Old Man Wainsmith’s sealed vault,” Wiltshire stated.
“Tay-lore believed that your quarry is this man’s wayward brother. He was lost some time ago and may have fallen in with malefactors, since. You must find Zabe, the older brother. Zabe can help you find Zurrah and help you retrieve your lost page, after you stop Nitthogr, that is.”
Wiltshire raised a brow. “Hold up. Tay-lore was always better at finding stuff than I was… why can’t he find this Zabe guy? I’ve got a lot on my plate already between ancient strigoi, my parter’s murder, and some kind of wizard interfering with his triangle-based portal magic.”
“Because Tay-lore is dead,” Beta-lore said with a hint of snark. “Surely your species also stops functioning when your life ceases to…”
Wiltshire interrupted the cheeky AI. “That’s not what I meant. I mean why did this Zabe guy leave—where did he go?”
“Zabe left on his own terms and in mourning after his father was murdered by one of his apprentices. Much has transpired in a matter of so few weeks. Zabe does not know that the Tesseract is again in peril—or that the woman he loves is in grave danger. If he knew…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Wiltshire grumbled. “Alright. I’ll look into it, but I don’t know where to begin.”
A schematic came on screen with a picture of an eyepiece scanner that appeared like something from a Google tech lab. Beta-lore explained that the device could help locate and track individuals that gave off a Darque aura.
“It will only work when Zabe is shape-shifted into his lycan form. He otherwise looks like he does in his photos and reads as normal through the sensor,” Beta-lore instructed.
“Of course he’s got to be a werewolf,” Wiltshire muttered, mounting the sensor over his brow and activating it.
Beta-lore continued, “Tay-lore knew it would be a long-shot, but strongly felt that you were all of reality’s best hope to find Zabe and warn him of the High Priest’s betrayal.”
“What betrayal?” Wiltshire asked. Not all the pieces had come together for him
yet. He looked up and got a very strong reading on Respan’s scanner.
“Did you not watch all of the materials yet?”
Wiltshire clicked to lock onto the aura’s location. It was not far, and he hoped he’d gotten lucky—he did just fly halfway across the country, after all, and would love for the mission to be a short one. “Of course I didn’t. You should know that. I only turned you on like ten minutes ago.”
“Shall I show you the final footage Tay-lore attached?”
“Go ahead.”
Video played from the drone’s point of view. It sat silent and inert, motionless on the shelf as a secret observer not tied to any main systems.
The occult detective watched the monitor for several minutes. Wiltshire blanched at what he saw. He’d just finally learned his long-distance friend’s face and then watched as it was violently ruined.
Video captured the whole grisly scene and the attempted cover up as Tay-lore’s murderer erased any surveillance footage in the security files and then destroyed most of the tech connected to the central computer where Tay-lore had operated from before his killer had entered. The drone had been left on a shelf across the room, neatly tucked away.
At the end, the motion lights eventually went dark in the room and the drone lifted from its perch. Using its pincer hands it snatched a vial of blood from one of the science labs many sample bays and flew to a portal location several miles away. The drone descended rapidly and shook as it bounced off the ground with an intentionally bad landing to bust the glass tube and activate the portal with the blood it carried. The video flashed and then ended with a glitchy shot of graphics as the device planeswalked.
“I’ve got to find this Zabe guy,” Wiltshire said breathlessly, the footage of the murder still fresh in his mind.
Chapter 11
Desolation
Caivev strolled through the Limbus streets. She felt something that bordered on contentment as she walked, flanked by her guards from both the Black and Tarkhūn factions.
The Architect King Page 13
