by Lee Isserow
“Entertainment is rare in this place, and unrest is the most amusing of occurrences. Whilst granting you access to the Eyes Between Worlds will itself not lead to unrest, the journey to come for you will most certainly cause a most satisfying disruption. . .”
The glowing orbs blinked out of existence one by one, and the darkness rushed towards Shaman Kahgo. It held him tight, latched on to each of his mouths, and began to force its way down every one of his throats. He tried to close his eyes as it penetrated him, but it tugged his eyelids open and slid under them, grating against his eyeballs with the texture of sandpaper, and drilled through each of his ears and the slits of his noses.
He could not longer see or hear Aiueb Gnshal, but he could feel how much the Old One delighted in the pain it caused as it began to burrow into his waste passages and tore through each of the pores across his skin.
The pain felt as though it lasted an eternity in and of itself, and were his intent to return to the Natural World not as concrete as it was, he might well have died then and there from the sheer agony. But he would not let himself die, he could not, not when such a gift had been granted to him by one that had no reason to grant such things.
When Shaman Kahgo opened his eyes, he took solace in the notion that the pain had been worth it. He could see all with the Eyes Between the Worlds. . . And the sights they offered him were greater than he ever could have expected. They saw not just what was, but what would be. Not only there in the Outer Realms, but across all realms, all realities. They saw not only the physical manifestations of all that lived in every state, but also their thoughts, their motivations, their desires. It was a power unlike any other he had experienced, and the infinite possibilities of the knowledge he had at his command terrified him.
He took a breath, he would not let himself become overwhelmed, and focussed on what he needed to know. He learned that only months had passed in the Natural World, learned that the Circle would soon need him to aid them. . . And most importantly, he learned where he needed to travel in order to traverse back to the realm he called his home.
10
The new mandate
EPICENTRE, THE CIRCLE
Isaiah Faith had barely been at his desk for ten minutes when Tali knocked at his door. He pitched himself in his chair, straightened his back, and gestured for her to enter.
“Seen the latest feeds yet?”
He sighed. “I've barely had time to get a bloody coffee. . .”
“Bunch of potential portents are stacked up at the top, might be worth sending teams out.”
“Cliff notes?”
“Dunstable, a horse gave birth to twins.”
“Scraping the barrel, ain't you? It's not odd for a horse to have twins.”
“Sorry, should have been clearer: A horse gave birth to twin humans.”
Faith's eyes said more than his mouth could without caffeine at that moment.
“Want to ignore it?”
He thought for a moment, then shook his head.
Tali couldn't help but be surprised at the approval of such a ridiculous small-scale investigation. “Right, yes. I'll get Jacobian and Leopold on it.”
He gave her the smallest of nods in agreement.
“Then we've got a bunch of reports of heavy rain in places that weren't meant to have rain. . . clear skies suddenly clouding over in New York, London, Egypt, Benares, list goes on. . .”
Once again she decided to read his expression for a response, but he seemed less concerned in weather systems than he did with the horse-birth.
“Ignore those, right. . . Los Angeles has a forest fire that's burning blue?”
“Sabre and Singh,” he grunted, as he cast over his mug to fill it with coffee, and took a heavy glug.
Tali nodded and made a mental note to send them off as soon as they reported in. “River in Cape Town has had its water turned into what looks and smells and apparently burns like olive oil. . .”
“Gali and Talyn.”
“Got it. . . Next, just outside of Madrid there's a bee-keeper that found his hives full of pig's blood. . .”
“Send whoever finishes up first. Doesn't sound too pressing. . . “
“Right, and then we've got word from New York that the bodies of two sewage workers have been found, mostly eaten, bones cracked, teeth in what was left of one of their stomachs. . .”
“Your girl in yet?”
Tali nodded.
“Her and Raven doing okay?”
She shrugged, and shot off another nod.
“Send them in, with backup on standby if it's anything bigger than a dachshund. We done?”
“Yes sir.” Tali turned on her heel and returned to her desk.
Faith gestured to the bulb above his desk and read through the reports as he refilled his coffee. Apart from the incident in New York, none of the potential portents seemed as though they warranted any investigation, at least not by the Circle. Most of them sounded as though they were the kind of small scale curiosities that freelancers usually dealt with―but maybe that was the direction the agency needed to move in order to change. For millennia, they had stood as the last line of defence for any threats upon the Natural World, and ignored the smaller or non-apocalyptic infractions.
He was certain that the teams he was sending out would all complain about the tasks that had been allotted to them, but was also coming to realise that this was how he could make his administration of the Circle different to those that came before him. Of course, they would still be the last line of defence, but their work could go way beyond simple damage control for the myriad 'end of the worlds' that beset them on a semi-regular basis. The smaller investigations could perhaps even be some kind of method by which they could officially-but-unofficially gauge whether operatives that were reborn anew were actually fit for larger missions.
If he wanted to make his leadership worth a damn, he needed to start thinking outside of the box, and altering the mandate of the organisation seemed as good a way as any to do so. . . And checking out horses and bees and rivers was certainly different to what came before.
After all, they were the protectors of the Natural World―not just of the realm itself, but of those that resided within it. That would be the new mandate, he decided, safety and security for all who dwelled in the Natural World
The more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself that this was the correct course of action, and he called Tali to send the message out to one and all. No longer would the Circle wait until the brink of destruction to intervene. They were going to take a stand, make a difference, and make the world a better place for magickal and mundane alike.
Tali couldn't help wonder if he had been drinking. . . but had to admit that she liked the idea. If it had been up to her, they would have made that change a long time ago. If nothing else, it would certainly mean that the handful of freelancers she knew would get themselves in trouble a hell of a lot less often. . .
11
A powerful stench
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
A glossy black door pushed itself out of the wall in the morgue that lay adjacent to the coroner's office, and Shana and Raven walked out into the room. It was cold, tiled, sterile, and Raven immediately expressed her disdain for the place with a heavy grunt.
“Any idea which one they're in?” she asked, as she eyed up the myriad metal doors to the refrigerated compartments.
Shana glanced from one to the next, and lay her fingers out ahead of her. She thought of the descriptions of the injuries, and laid out her intent to find them amongst the corpses that were on ice. With a simple gesture, the handles on two doors clicked and they swung open, the trays rolling out with a soft clatter, revealing what was left of the bodies upon them, like grisly prizes on a game show.
Raven made the mistake of inhaling through her nose, and made her dissatisfaction known with a deep and heavy growl.
Shana chose to ignore this, and looked at the bodies. There was little meat left on the bone,
and bite marks coming from different directions. This did not look like the attack of any one animal, it was as if a pack of sharp-toothed beasts tore at the men, ripping the flesh and gnawing at their skeletons.
She took a breath, trying her best to ignore the stench, and exhaled over the broken ribs of one of the men. Warm smoke left her lips and hovered around the dent in his chest. At her command, it took the form of what had made the damage, and a pit formed in her stomach.
“It looks. . . like a tentacle. . .”
Raven's attention was elsewhere, her eyes fixed on the door to the outer office, as the handle turned, and it began to swing open with a silken sigh.
Before it had completed its arc, her hands had already flown into action. Her fist held a casting to mesmerise, and as soon as the four visitors had stepped across the threshold into the morgue, she released it. In an instant, their pupils had been reduced to the size of pinpricks. Their minds were blank. And she had total control of their bodies.
“We were never here,” she instructed. The two coroners and two police officers instantly forgot they had ever glimpsed Shana and Raven. “Also, stand on one leg.”
They did as instructed, all four of them hoisting a leg into the air.
“I said one leg. . . I see four. . .”
The more muscular of the officers stood still on his leg, whilst the other climbed on to his shoulders. The two coroners somersaulted through the air and landed on arms, and he held the three aloft with every iota of might he had, his entire body shaking as the weight of his colleagues was laid upon him.
Shana had no words with which to exclaim just how much she disapproved of Raven's actions, but she decided that was a disagreement for another time.
“We should investigate the scene,” she said.
Raven shrugged and shouted “Tali, door!”
Once again, a door pushed its way out from the tiles of the morgue, and the two operatives walked through it. The four mundanes remained in their acrobatic formation until the mesmerisation wore off twenty minutes later. They decided they would never speak of what happened.
*
“Can only bloody hope it's alligators. . .” Raven grunted, as she stepped through the door into the sewers, and once again found herself overcome by a powerful stench. She cast over her olfactory system, to turn all odours into the sweet smell of lavender.
“Alligators do not have tentacles. . .” Shana said. As much as she also found the fetid odour repellent, she did not see disguising it as a useful tool. The smells of the sewer system were many and varied, and whatever was responsible for this assault upon the mundanes would likely change that smell.
She did however cast for light, and a thin mist of glowing embers clung to the ceiling to allow them to see what lay ahead. The area where the bodies were found was not hard to miss. There was police tape sitting in the shallow water, that had not stuck to the walls as intended. The walls themselves were slick with blood and viscera, but not completely covered as Shana would have expected. There were a series of two-inch wide lines that were completely clear of blood, as if it had been licked from the walls. In those places where there was no blood, there was a thin layer of slime that glistened ever so slightly.
Shana leaned in and sniffed it, aware that Raven was making a face in her periphery. She chose to ignore it, and tried to recall why it smelled so familiar. Through the filth of the sewer, there were traces of something that reminded her of scenes from childhood. . . The scent of the sea.
There was a splash from somewhere deeper in the tunnel, somewhere beyond the reach of the light, and Shana strained to see ahead. Six orbs burst into life amidst the darkness, and seemed to focus on her and Raven. The pit in her gut burrowed itself deep once again, and she gestured to the embers at the ceiling to shoot forward to reveal what lay in the shadows. The light found the source of the noise, and turned it into a silhouette, a swirling mass of tentacles, prisms of light glinting off its myriad teeth.
“Oh, this is going to be fun!” Raven cackled as she threw her fingers ahead of her to cast.
Fire roared down the tunnel towards the beast, sending the waters en route sizzling, and the viscera on the walls smoking. The smell of effluence and cooked meat filled the air as the fire exploded upon impact, and smoke wafted out from where she had laid waste to the creature.
Raven looked very proud of herself.
Shana did not approve. “You did not want to say hello? Ask if it was friendly?”
“Toothy tentacle things are never friendly,” she grunted, with a sardonic matter-of-fact tone.
There was a growl from somewhere beyond the cloud of smoke.
“Oh, you want to go for round two?”
Her hands whipped around again, and Shana grabbed them.
“Let us not make it even harder to see what lies beyond. . .” she said, trying to keep her tone even and mannered.
She cast to take hold of the smoke, to shape it, pulling it from the centre of the tunnel to the walls. The creature was revealed, like the curtains on a stage opening to reveal the main players, as the fiend snarled with a lustful and hungry anger. It did not appear to have been harmed, but its skin was scarred and dry―as if Raven's fire did nothing but evaporate the natural slimy sheen that it excreted.
At Shana's command, the smoke took on the shape of sharp spikes, and as the beast launched itself towards them, the smokey lances tore from the walls and skewered the creature. It screamed with an ungodly roar as its flesh was torn, but it continued to move onwards. The rips of its skin and musculature reverberated through the tunnel as it held in the pain. It seemed that getting to them, devouring them, was of more interest to the monstrosity than any concern it had for its own suffering.
“Tali!” Shana shouted, as the monster shook off the last of the spikes, gnashed its teeth and began to barrel towards them again. “Emergency evac!”
12
Under any other circumstances
THE OUTER REALMS
It took weeks for Shaman Kahgo to pass every last iota of Aiueb Gnshal from his system. As much as the great Old One claimed it was not interested in traversing through to the Natural World, he needed to be certain that the gaseous fiend had not remained within him in some capacity. Even the slightest puff of the god's smoke could sow seeds on the other side of the veil that would allow it to grow and fester, and one day, perhaps claim the realm for itself. As much as he was willing to risk his own life to return home, and as much as he offered the realm as collateral, he would not truly allow it to fall for such a selfish desire.
Once again, Kahgo chose to drift through the void, travelling in a fashion that expunged as little energy as possible. As much as it had been confirmed by the Eyes that Yog Sothoth was not the only gateway, he also understood that the ancient beast was the preferred method of passage because the doorway in its guts was the easiest of the available paths―easier, and yet it had the nasty caveat of disfiguring those that passed through it, not to mention sapping the strength of all who attempted to use that method of travel. He could not risk emerging back in the Natural World in any fashion that would weaken him to that degree. . . he was already weak, and the journey ahead would be long.
A glimmer in his periphery caught his attention, and he ceased his movement. There was something else moving in the abyss, something smaller than the myriad gods that resided in the endless black. Larger than he, that was more than likely, but certainly smaller than the great beasts that had been born to the darkness. He diverted course to investigate this fellow traveller of the void. At the very least―assuming it was not hostile―there was the possibility he could hitch a ride. . . but that was not the only thought that crossed his mind.
He threw all his might into propelling himself forward through the endless night. The creature he was heading towards was not fast, but it was far, and as its destination was unknown, it could change direction at any moment. He decided to expend all the energy he had in order to catch up with it, in ca
se it was soon to arrive at its intended resting place. . . and catch up with it he did.
To Kahgo's surprise, the thing was not as large as he expected. Its body with spherical and pink, a mess of pustules and boils. It had many tentacles, but they were all short and stumpy, barely a few inches long, and seemed to be mostly used to provide forward momentum, rather than be of any use for attack or defence. It only had the one eye, which was staring directly ahead, unblinking, fixed on its intended target, however far away that might be.
The thought crossed Shaman's mind again. . . Not a thought he allowed to exist lightly, not one that he would have been prone to under any other circumstances. It was not the right thing to do, it was not moral. . . But this was not a place of morals. This was a place of darkness, and if he was to ever return to the Natural World, he would have to tap into that darkness. . . The Old Ones survived in the void because of the pure and impossible bulk they possessed. They could survive indefinitely upon their own body mass, whilst also feeding their followers and children. . . Or they could feed upon their followers or children. . . For one of his small stature, there was little in terms of sources of sustenance in this place. Kahgo did not take the decision lightly, and flit through the abyss with his tentacles splayed. They wrapped around the spherical body of his fellow-traveller, and gripped as hard as they could. Many of its pustules and boils burst, releasing a thick, foul-smelling goop. He lost his grasp with one tentacle, but held on all the more with the others.
The creature let out a scream, and Kahgo whispered an apology to it, begging it, and the Fates to forgive him for what he was about to do. The desperate beast tried to shake him off, desperately veering left and right, wildly banking and rolling, but Shaman's grip was too strong. His jaws burst open and he tore into the creature's flesh. The sludge and slime of its outer skins filled his mouths, and he spat it out, biting again, ripping deeper into the terrified thing, gorging himself on the flesh of a creature that might as well have been his brother, for the limited gene pool of those that lived in this place. He tried not to think about it, tried to force himself not to recall that they were all descended from the one ancestor, the blind idiot god who sleeps to a cacophony of drumbeats and whining flutes, somewhere far beyond even the Outer Realms.
