The Knowledge (The Circle Book 2)

by Lee Isserow

  “Water adepts! How much of this slimy git do you reckon is aqua?”

  She could feel the smiles appearing on the adepts' faces, now that the creature was partly on their side of the rift, they could feel the water that made up a significant portion of its mass. . . and there was a hell of a lot of water inside it. Half of them continued to control the icy tentacles, in a bid to bind the beast and stop it from flailing at them, whilst the other half took hold of the water in its body. The could feel the molecules―it was not water as they knew it in the Natural World, but it was similar enough. They locked the molecules together as best they could, making its flesh hard and rigid as it began to freeze.

  “Earthers! Your time to shine!”

  The earth adepts wasted no time in taking command of the silt and rock that lay miles upon miles beneath their feet. The pure azure sea swiftly became darker, as the mud rose to the surface, great spikes of it launching from under the water and pummelling through the soft meat. As they got deeper into the creature, the earth forked off again and again, tearing through the insides of the monolithic beast.

  Its screams gave the aural adepts yet more sounds to work with, to keep its breath in its throats―but despite the battle going in their favour thus far, all those present on the ground could feel the anger radiating out from the creature. . . it wasn't going to give up that easily.

  Tendrils shot from its core, slashing through the silty spears, towards the water adepts on the front line. As they neared, each of them slammed into thin air, a ripple of prismatic phosphorescence cascading across the barriers cast ahead of them. It batted again and again at the barely-visible walls that surrounded it.

  “Are they holding?” Tali asked in their periphery.

  The only responses she could hear were grunts of exertion. They were holding, for now. . . But it was clear that they would not last long. Each of the assaults upon the barrier's surface had the force of ten bunker busters, and would have easily penetrated a hundred feet of concrete.

  Despite the intense strain they were under, the sheer force they were battling against, the barrier magickians held fast. They would not allow themselves to be the reason the assault failed.

  Tali surveyed the scene, fire and water and earth and sound were all being used to full effect. . . there was something she was missing, another rarer adept that could be turned on the beast to stop its assault. And from somewhere in the back of her mind, it came to her.

  “Weathermen, time for a forecast!”

  The lightning adepts did not appreciate being called weathermen, but it was hardly the time to complain. They w aited until one of the water adepts had a moment to harness the moisture in the atmosphere, and as soon as the clear blue skies became thick with heavy, dark clouds, they set about manipulating the charge at their core, dividing the positive and negative, building up the polarity until they got the order.

  “Light him up!”

  Electricity shot through the air and forked out towards each of the arms that were attacking the barrier. As the lightning vanished, long, intricate, wavy burns were left on the beast's skin, and its limbs froze, as if in shock.

  “Shay, you doing okay in there? Could really use you out here. . . Got some sushi needs slicing up. . .”

  *

  In the Wind Realm, Shaman Kahgo was struggling for breath. He had only used the God's End for barely a few fractions of a second at a time to slice through the tentacles. . . And yet, those fractions had taken a toll. He had not expected the loss of his lifespan to be this agonizing, let alone have so much life sapped from him with such little use of the blade.

  But he would have to get used to it. . . Those on the ground were doing their best, but no mere magickians could truly take down an Old One of this size. Only one with the blood of a god, armed with the weapon of a god, could kill a god. . .

  He grit his teeth and growled through the pain as he rose to his feet. The others could not see him weak, and so he cast to push the pain away. He could not relieve it, but at the very least he could try and ignore it. On top of that, he cast a glamour, so the face he wore did not reflect the ageing that the use of the blade was inflicting upon him. . . He did not wish for the magickians of The Circle to know that the use of the blade was weakening him He was their secret weapon, their morale boost, and he was going to be that until his last breath.

  “Three,” he whispered. “It is time, old friend. I must return to the fray.”

  “You must,” the three voices whispered in his periphery, as light shot across his vision.

  *

  “Go again!” Tali shouted, and it appeared that the lightning adepts were well ahead of her, another strike tearing through the air and pummelling the tendrils all over again.

  In the flash of lightning, Shaman appeared back on the battlefield. He stood on the surface of the water, as if it were solid land, and raised the God's End as strode across the crashing waves towards the tentacles.

  His skin began to glimmer, glowing in the darkness of the overcast sky. He no longer needed to walk to move forwards, the light was levitating him, bringing him closer to the tentacles. They were twenty metres from the surface of the water, and he lifted himself into the air, the light pouring out around him as he drifted towards it. He raised the God's End aloft and brought it down with all his might―not that might was required to wield it. . . but he hoped that the faster he swung it, the quicker it tore through the appendages, the less of his own lifeforce he would lose in the process.

  The theory did not prove itself correct, and he faltered, the light on his skin dimming as he dropped through the air for a moment, the muscles in his body tensing, a tightness grabbing hold in his chest. He regained control, threw more light out as he flew faster through the air―the others would not have noticed, and the more of a show he put on, the less chance they would have of thinking something was wrong.

  But something was wrong, and the aural adepts told Tali as much. Their enemy was no longer screaming. . . it was laughing. . . As if all this, them feeling as if they were winning, was exactly what it wanted.

  56

  Before it's too late

  Kahgo heard the warning go out, but continued to hack through the tentacles. They were right there, it was all so easy. As soon as he severed them, the amputated ends plummeted into the depths of the water, the remaining tendrils dropping to the surface and bobbing serenely as they leaked thick, black blood into the waters. But the blood itself did not follow the will of the current.

  It slicked back towards the rift, where it joined the rest of the fluids that had been leaking out of the beast. They had been pooling at the tear between realms, and now it appeared as though they had enough volume to do as the creature had intended.

  The slick ooze lifted from the ocean, creating dark fingers of inky black that wound their way up the sides of the rift and wrapped around the edges.

  “Blood adepts!” Tali screamed “Stop it before it's too late. . .”

  It was already too late. . .The magickians watched in horror as it tugged at the tear into the Outer Realms, and with the combined force of the tentacles on the other side, they ripped through the fabric of reality, stretching it wider and wider, taller and taller.

  For the first time, they got a look at just how massive the creature was. They couldn't even see its full height, for it disappeared into the clouds above.

  Kahgo turned, and stared the beast down, glaring at its myriad eyes one by one. But the eyes were not looking at him. . . each of them was trained on one of the magickians that faced off against it.

  “Wake up, people!” Tali's voice chimed across the army. “Give it everything you've got!”

  Lightning shot from the sky, spears of earth from beneath the water. Fire shot through the air, water from the ocean, wind and sound battered at the impossibly massive beast's body. The adepts opened rifts into their realms that assaulted the god further, cutting and burning into its flesh. But it did not seem the slightest b
it perturbed by any of these attempts to harm it. In the grand scheme of its grand size, each of the attacks was nothing more than an inconvenience.

  And despite Tali's command to keep firing, the attacks became fewer in number, as one by one the magickians on the battlefield caught sight of the eye that was trained on them, and became transfixed by its stare.

  Before too long there was no more barrier surrounding the rift. There was no more fire or water, earth or air, no lightning or sound. There were no further offensive strikes. For every single one of them was mesmerised by the glory of Yog-Sothoth, and there was nothing more they could do to put a stop to its incursion.

  57

  A stand-off

  “Shay. . .” Tali mumbled, “nobody else is responding. . . please tell me you're still there. . .”

  “I am.”

  “I screwed up. . . all we did was make it easier for the damn thing to cross!”

  “That may be, but it is slow to move such a large body. . . We still have plenty of time, if you have a command for me. . .”

  Tali took a breath and focussed her thoughts. They might no longer have had an army with a myriad destructive talents, but they still had the God's End, and it was in the hands of the most powerful magickian in all the lands. She forced herself to smile, and gave the order.

  “Tear that bitch apart!”

  Light poured out of Shaman Kahgo's skin as he whipped through the air, the blade ahead of him as he tore towards the rift. He shot up one side of it, slicing through the tentacles that held on to the edges, then as he came to the peak of the tear, miles and miles above the ocean, he threw himself upside-down and flew head first along the other side, cutting through each of the tentacles that clutched to that half of the rift.

  The pain that rocketed through his body with each incision was more than the casting to gate that pain could handle, and on top of that, his joints and muscles ached, the breath was becoming increasingly tight in his chest. He had lost hundreds of years from his lifespan already, and was going to lose hundreds, if not thousands more as he continued the onslaught.

  Tendrils shot towards him from the beast's bulk, as it tried to grab hold of him. He dodged them as best he could, countering and severing limbs wherever possible. The god growled with anger and frustration, as yet more of its limbs became amputated. Tentacles burst across the threshold as it lashed out―but these were not aiming for Kahgo, they tore towards the mesmerised magickians and threw them from their reclaimed land.

  The crunch of broken bones on each impact sent a shiver down Tali's spine, and she felt sick to her stomach when she saw their bodies fly across the ocean and begin to sink to the depths below. . .

  This was all her fault.

  A grunt in her periphery brought her attention back to Kahgo. For a moment, the briefest of moments, she could sense how much pain he was in.

  “Did it get you?” she asked, with a desperate tone.

  She could feel him shake his head, and without words, he imparted the truth about the blade. . . forged by gods to kill gods, and yet infused with a magickal caveat to prevent its use as anything other than a last resort.

  “Why didn't you tell me?” she asked, with tears in her eyes as she watched him swooping through the air on the scrying pools, taking out yet more limbs in the process.

  “You would have not wished me to wield it. . .”

  “Of course I wouldn't have! You're an idiot, killing yourself for us. . . ”

  “An argument for another time, Talika Rei.”

  She grunted in agreement. There were more pressing, cosmically-proportioned matters to attend to before she could tell him off properly. She scanned the scene again, moving her perspectives so she could see the beast's progress crossing through the realms.

  “Its body is still on the other side. . . we're not going to be able to do much damage until it gets over here―all we're doing is cutting off limbs, and it doesn't seem to mind that so much.”

  “You have a suggestion?”

  “Not a good one. . .”

  At Tali's request, Kahgo retreated from the rift. Tentacles shot out after him in pursuit as he rocketed across the surface of the ocean. He travelled far beyond the lines of mesmerised magickians, and when he sensed he had come far enough, Shaman stopped his fleeing and turned. The tendrils continued to thrash back and forth in an attempt to knock him from the air, but he was out of their reach. The only way they would be able to stretch far enough to attack him, was if the Old One ventured through the rift. The tentacles ceased their frantic movement, and hung in the air, gently snaking back and forth.

  Tali pushed her perspectives deeper, lining up with the side of the rift. She watched intently, waited for any signs of movement. If it was moving, it was indiscernible, as subtle as the migration of continents.

  “I don't think this is working. . .” she whispered.

  “Patience,” Kahgo replied, his eyes fixed on the snaking arms.

  They stretched again, trying to reach him, and still could not. They were in a stand-off. The ancient monstrosity did not appear to wish to move into the Natural World before the God's End was out of play―and Kahgo would not use it again, or come within its grasp, until it made it worth the loss of his life.

  58

  Nothing to fear

  Night fell, day dawned, and still the beast did not appear to be moving.

  Tali watched with exhausted eyes as the god's bulk continued to expunge slime, its massive tendrils slinking across the surface of its own body as it spread the moisture around. Its eyes were still fixed on the magickians, keeping them mesmerised with its gaze. And it appeared to be in no hurry to make its journey across the divide.

  Day became night became day again, and Tali was sleeping soundly with her head on her desk, following Kahgo's advice to take a nap, as there was no telling how long this would take.

  Her dreams had not been pleasant. Having now seen a living nightmare with her own eyes, her subconscious appeared to have taken that as inspiration.

  “Tali.” Her name echoed through the dream, taking on a life of its own, sprouting from the mouth of a creature the likes of which she had never seen. It bore some small resemblance to the hideous Shothoth, but only some. As if they shared some common ancestor, but it had taken a disparate evolutionary path that gave it a much different form. Smaller for one thing, fewer tentacles and eyes. And she felt no malevolence from it, as if all it wanted to offer was peace and love. “Tali,” it said again, this time it was a voice she knew. This creature, this beast, spoke with the voice of Shaman Kahgo.

  It was not a beast, she understood that as it said her name a third time. This was him, who he truly was, the man who was a legend, the legend who had no reason to be as humble a man as he was. The man, who was not a man at all, but was this thing. . . She understood it all, his reasons for hiding what he was, for fear of how the world, magickal or otherwise, might react. All she wanted in the world was to be able to tell him that he had nothing to fear, certainly not from her.

  “Tali.”

  Talika Rei picked her head up from her desk, and tried with all her might to recall the dream she had just been taken from. But she could not recall it. As if the memory of it was sacrosanct, and could not be taken away from the Dream Realm, a secret that would remain there until she next returned.

  “It is moving. . .”

  She shifted the perspective on the scrying pools and Kahgo was correct. The Old One was slowly making its way across the threshold. It was taking the bait. And soon, they would turn the tables on the damn thing.

  59

  Somewhat unorthodox

  At Tali's instruction, Three teleported Kahgo from his position, levitating miles from the creature, to directly over the centre of the rift.

  He continued to hover in the air for the second it took to raise the God's End ahead of him, then allowed himself to succumb to the will of gravity. The creature's great bulk was directly beneath him, closer with every pas
sing moment, but all too soon it would become aware of his presence and intent. Light poured from his skin as he cascaded downwards, his magick increasing the speed at which he fell back to earth.

  The blade struck the Old One's slimy skin, and sliced straight through the otherworldly beast's flesh as if it were mere water, a torrent of thick, black blood gushed out above Kahgo as he slid down the creature's side, tearing a great gash as he continued his descent.

  With no aural adepts to quash the sound, its screams bellowed out, like a foghorn straight from the depths of hell. The ungodly volume from the myriad mouths shook through Shaman's bones, weakening his increasingly frail grip on the blade. But he would not allow himself to falter, not when real damage was finally being done to the damn thing.

  He grit his teeth and fought through the increasing pain that was spreading across his body. Breathing was becoming hard, sweat was pouring from his brow. His muscles felt old and withered, his bones brittle, but this was only the first true strike. . . there would be many more to come if he was to fulfil his purpose and keep the Natural World safe.