Corrosion: Terminal Horizon (The Portal Arcane Series - Book III)

by J. Thorn

  “How do you know for sure? What if the Great Cycle signs you up for another tour of duty?”

  “When you have been in the wheel for as long as I have, you can hear the Great Cycle whisper. The words come from within the wind and I have been told this could be my finality. I’m hoping to be released from Preta’s realm.”

  Kole shook his head, no longer concerned about tobacco or the horde outside his window.

  “What do Gakis do?”

  “They cannot satiate,” Shallna said. “They wander the land, sometimes in packs and other times alone. The creatures must move in darkness as their appearance is hideous and would draw undue attention.”

  “What do you look like?” Kole asked.

  “Like this,” Shallna said, pulling his hood back and opening his robe. A blue light pulsed from his chest and as it spread outward to his limbs, the light revealing the form beneath. It peeled back the thing known as Shallna and showed Kole the Gaki. Its head was large and bulbous with black, long eyes. The creature had a distended stomach with arms as thin as reeds. The creature’s skin was blue and he smelled of blood and human waste. Kole looked at Gaki’s mouth and saw rows of spiny teeth crammed into a tight mouth.

  “Fuck me,” Kole said as he leaned back.

  Shallna pulled the robe shut and flipped his hood over his head.

  “That is why the Gaki moves through the darkness of the night and why I remain robed.”

  Kole reached into his pocket for another cigarette. He wanted to get the smell of Gaki out of his mouth. He could almost taste the filth.

  “No matter how much I raped, beat or killed those on the earthly plane, it was never enough. That is the curse of the Gaki. That is what it means to be in Preta’s realm. It is a never-ending desire in a never-ending world. Death would have been a gift.

  Like the lion that hunts because it is its nature, so did I. I inhabited new bodies when the old one would break down. I spent hundreds of years taking the form of other creatures. I have been called zombie, vampire, ghost, demon, devil, ghoul—and those labels were all correct in some way. I feasted on the living and ran with the dead. I spent hundreds of years as the Serpent King while I slayed millions on each side of a vast ocean during the European conquest.

  Because I spent so many lifetimes this way, I began to observe the way the Great Cycle dripped from one universe into another, energy transferring like a leaky faucet. A few times I saw a portal, and had I known what I was seeing, I might have been able to slip into a reversion and free myself of the night hunting. The Great Cycle would have plucked me from the cloud and replaced my suffering, of that I have no doubt. The Great Cycle is like the universal force of correction one cannot break or disobey. It is the spiritual equivalent of gravity and rules over all beings in existence. It would not allow me to move through a portal until I had satisfied my ahimsa. When I possessed the one known as Drew Green, I had done so.”

  “Tell me about Drew Green and what you did,” Kole said.

  “I was Gaki and Gaki was Drew Green. In that moment, there was no distinction between us.”

  “Fine. Tell me what you did with the dude’s body.”

  “Although this was the most recent displacement of spirit, I don’t remember it all as I have been in countless reversions since.”

  Kole lit the cigarette after several attempts with an ancient match book. When the end turned into a yellow ember, he inhaled with a quick intake of air to keep the tobacco burning. It struggled for a moment. Kole inhaled and exhaled in rapid succession until the cigarette stayed lit.

  “I can still smoke it,” he said.

  Shallna waited for Kole to settle back into his chair before continuing.

  “I remember a wife, children. I remember a house upon a ridge where a portal remained hidden in a graveyard, until I found it. I remember a confrontation with Hunters, those on the earthly realms that seek the Gaki and attempt to destroy them.”

  Shallna laughed, a low, wet chuckle.

  “Of course that is not possible. Gaki can be removed and relocated but he cannot be killed. The last thing I remember is opening the portal and stepping through. And that was many lifetimes ago.”

  “Eh,” Kole said. “I was hoping for some good stories. Fights, murders, you know. You can’t remember any of that?”

  “You wanted to know how I arrived here and now you do. Rest, my lord. Each descension takes part of your soul.”

  Shallna did not need to explain further. Kole fell asleep with a slowly burning cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  ***

  “Who the fuck shit in my mouth?” Kole asked.

  He blinked the meager light from his eyes and sat up, shaking the sleep from his head.

  “And how the hell did I sleep here?”

  Shallna was sitting in the same spot as the night before, but was now looking out the window at the empty streets.

  “The horde dispersed. I saw them part and allow passage. I do not know who commanded it.”

  Kole was too busy rubbing his thighs. His muscles felt tired, spent. His tongue pushed at a loose tooth that wasn’t loose the day before. He ran a hand over his head and shook clumps of hair from it.

  “Tommy.”

  The name came to him even though he did not see what Shallna did. Kole stood and stumbled into the wall. His head pounded and he bent over as if to puke.

  “Cigs musta made me sick.”

  “Descension,” Shallna said. “It is the toxicity of the descension and your body’s reaction to it.”

  “I wish I had a mirror.”

  Shallna raised his staff and pointed at the wall. Kole could smell something like smoke from a soldering iron. A streak of light shot from the end of Shallna’s staff and splattered on the wall. A pulsing circle formed with a reflective surface inside of it. Kole shook his head, too sick to question the mirror’s origins. Instead, he gazed at himself in it.

  A stranger stared back, although Kole recognized him. The man’s hair was streaked with silver and his eyes drooped low. The skin on the man’s face hung in wrinkles and his teeth looked the color of dried banana. Kole raised a finger to his nose and he noticed the man in the reflection mimicked him.

  “Holy shit,” Kole said. He realized it was his own reflection. “What happened to me?”

  “You said Tommy. You believe he parted the horde,” Shallna said.

  “Maybe.”

  “I feel Tommy’s proximity to Samuel, but I do not believe he commanded it.”

  Kole wanted to participate in the conversation and find out what Shallna meant, but his head throbbed as if electric currents were pushing through his brain.

  “No. Wait. Not Tommy. Brown. Someone Brown,” Kole said.

  Each master initiated a descension and his physical body would be punished for it. The process took years from the master’s life. However, with each decension came a new knowing, an ability to put a feeler into the undercurrent of energy running through the reversion and tap into its mysteries.

  Shallna waited, watching it morph Kole’s face from pain to satisfaction.

  “Yeah. Alex Brown and someone named Jack. And a panther.”

  Kole looked at Shallna hoping he would help explain the data stream filling his head.

  “Unusual, but not unheard of,” Shallna said. “Deva battled panthers before. Can you feel the reason behind Jack and Alex’s mission? What are they doing here?”

  “Revenge,” Kole said. “Jack wants revenge and Alex wants Lindsay.”

  Shallna reached for his staff and stood by the door.

  “We must leave.”

  The previous night, Kole would have complained and protested, insisting they stay and smoke the rest of the tobacco in the shop. But he felt different today, spent. A cigarette would do nothing but make him feel like vomiting.

  “To the cauldron?” Kole asked.

  “Yes, master.”

  Kole followed Shallna into the morning light that felt more like ev
ening. The cloud progressed further east and the sun struggled to rise above the surrounding mountains. The reversion passed the tipping point and Kole could feel it. The entropy accelerated and the world was now more than fifty percent gone. He knew from previous experience that the end would come quick. Time swirled like water in a bath. It was circling the drain and would disappear soon.

  “Why don’t we have the orb?”

  “We will need to stop and pick it up,” Shallna said.

  “Great. What else? Milk, eggs, bread?”

  Shallna stepped on to the asphalt and faced the city. He spent thousands of years wandering the multiverse and many lifetimes serving the lord of the reversion. Shallna desired nothing more than the restful, dark embrace of eternal death.

  Chapter 12

  Kole walked alongside Shallna. With each step, he felt better but not right. The zombie rain robbed him of his strength and the morning after took his youth. He remembered seeing Deva with white hair and a log beard and assumed he was ancient. While the former lord of the reversion might have been, Kole realized he also may have been young. It was possible Deva orchestrated many descensions and his body had the scars of aging to prove it.

  Kole thought about the consequences and decided he’d rather burn out than fade away, just like the Neil Young song. He had no great plans for the reversion, no scheme to rule these sick worlds. There wasn’t much to do and the tobacco sucked.

  “Up here.”

  Shallna’s words snapped Kole from his thoughts. He looked to the left and right to see the buildings growing in size the closer they came to the center of the city. He could not understand what Shallna was talking about until he remembered the orb.

  “It looks like an old tavern. Why the fuck is the orb in there?”

  Shallna walked in silence, unable to answer either question. “In order to possess the orb you will have to do battle.”

  Kole’s eyes flickered and his biceps rippled despite the rapid aging of the night before.

  “Fuck yeah, bro. Who?”

  “Yourself,” Shallna said.

  ***

  Kole stepped through the open doorway and the unending darkness morphed into the Penn Monroe Inn. He shook his head, blinked and looked again, unable to comprehend how the bar materialized in the reversion. He took a step through the vestibule and pulled the glass door open. Bob Seger and smoke of Marlboro Reds floated in the air. He inhaled the aroma of cheese fries and chicken wings before walking to the bar and pulling out a stool.

  “Reflection. Gotta be,” he said.

  “Feels the same. At least while you’re in it.”

  Kole looked to his right where a young man sat, his coat on and his shoulder hunched. A shot of whiskey and an Iron City beer sat between his folded arms on the top of the bar.

  “I know you,” Kole said.

  The bartender walked over. He had a stained dishrag over one shoulder and specks of food in his beard. The man looked at Kole, waiting for his order, but he did not speak.

  “I.C. Light,” he said to the bartender.

  “Pussy,” the man at the bar said.

  “Never mind. Gimme an Iron,” Kole said.

  The bartender reached into the cooler below the bar. He twisted the cap off the Iron City beer and dropped the brown bottle down on top of a paper coaster.

  “One seventy five,” the bartender said.

  Kole’s hand went to his pockets. His fingers brushed against his ripped jeans as he fished for his Velcro wallet. Kole flipped through the contents of his pockets – a guitar pick, a quarter and a ticket stub for a new underground band he saw at Graffiti's with a few hundred other people. He could not understand why they called themselves something as silly as “Nirvana” but they could always change the band name later.

  “Keep the change,” he said, while dropping two dollar bills on the bar next to the beer.

  A color TV hung from a bracket in the corner of the bar. The sound was muted and a red line bobbed through the picture. The bartender grabbed a remote, punched a few buttons and cursed about the quality of the reception. After several attempts, the interference on the screen disappeared and Kole saw an anchorman. The camera shifted and the insert appeared, revealing the tease for the news story.

  “Gorbachev steps down. U.S.S.R. breaks up,” Kole read aloud from the screen.

  “Can you believe that shit? Whoever woulda thought we’d see the day when the Commies lose? Ain’t like they lost a war. They just tapped out.” The man kept his head down when he spoke and Kole was not sure if he was speaking to him or mumbling in a drunken rant.

  “I don’t believe it,” Kole said. “Maybe they got it wrong. I’m sure the Politburo is going to make a statement, put a new Rooskie in charge.”

  The man reached for the shot glass and tilted his head back. The light in the Penn Monroe was dim and the man wore a hat and a hood, but there was no mistaking that he was Kole too. An older version of himself, transported to a moment in his past. Kole walked in to the Penn Monroe as the 1991 version of himself, and the old man he was in the reversion sat at the bar waiting for him.

  Holy fucking shit, 1991, Kole thought.

  “How long you been here?” he asked Old Man Kole.

  “Long enough.” He slammed the shot glass down and chased it with a swig from his bottle of Iron City.

  “I didn’t hang at the Penn Monroe too often. I left Monroeville in the early 90s. Why do you think we’re here?” 1991 Kole asked.

  “It’s a reflection. You know that, Mr. Reversion. You’re King Shit out there. Don’t tell me you don’t know what’s going down.”

  1991 Kole listened to Old Man Kole and decided it was time to take a swig from his own beer. The implications of this conversation made his forehead ache.

  “I walked through that door and into the 1991 version of myself and I’m talking to me, I mean you, as an old version of myself.”

  Old Man Kole remained silent as 1991 Kole tried to talk through the situation. Shallna said he was here to get the orb and yet he was at the Penn Monroe in December of 1991.

  “I need the orb,” 1991 Kole said.

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Shallna says you do. He sent me in here.”

  “Fuck him and fuck you,” Old Man Kole said. “I’m getting shitfaced and then I’m gonna walk around back and sleep in my car.”

  The bartender appeared in front of 1991 Kole and glanced at the bottle.

  “How you doing?” he asked, clearly seeing that 1991 Kole barely touched his beer.

  “Fine,” 1991 Kole said. He grabbed the neck of the bottle and downed half of his beer in one drink as if to prove he wasn’t nursing it.

  1991 Kole looked around the bar and did not see anyone else besides the bartender and Old Man Kole. The CD jukebox finished with Seger and served up “Outshined” off of Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger.

  “Where is it?” 1991 Kole asked.

  “The orb? I already told you. I don’t have it.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” 1991 Kole said. “I asked you where it is.”

  Old Man Kole lifted his head and looked at 1991 Kole for the first time. 1991 Kole felt an odd tingling sensation, as though he was looking at a mirrored reflection of himself from another universe, because that’s exactly what was happening.

  “I. Don’t. Know.”

  1991 Kole sighed and stood up. He knocked the bar stool aside and the jukebox stopped playing. The TV screen went dark and the bartender disappeared. 1991 Kole felt the pressure of the reversion closing in, shaking the Penn Monroe like a fierce winter wind rattling the windows of an old house. It was tugging at the reflection and prodding him to take action.

  He walked over to Old Man Kole and waited for the man to stand up. They stood nose to nose, a reflection of each other spanning decades.

  “I’m going to the cauldron to protect it from Samuel. He wants to destroy it, destroy me. I will not let that happen. My release from this shithole of an existen
ce depends on my ability to protect the reversion. Shallna is going to teach me to use the orb. If you don’t give it to me, I will destroy you.”

  Old Man Kole’s lip trembled and his eyes began to twitch. He took a half-step backwards before a ragged, boisterous sound erupted from his throat. Old Man Kole doubled-over with laughter, coughing while trying to catch his breath.

  “Are you threatening me?” he asked through watery eyes and gasps of laughter. “Seriously, you tryin’ to scare me?”

  1991 Kole’s fists came up to his chest and his brain released adrenaline into his bloodstream. He savored the tension that came right before a fight. 1991 Kole loved the sensation, the paradoxical feeling of strength and fear that would peak right before the first blow.

  “Last chance,” he said.

  Old Man Kole put his hand over his stomach as if to settle the laughter. He wiped both eyes and nodded at 1991 Kole.

  “Hit me with your best shot.”

  “I’ve always hated that song,” 1991 Kole said.

  He threw a punch hoping to connect with Old Man Kole’s face, but his fist moved through the air and came all the way across his body without making contact. 1991 Kole blinked and Old Man Kole had not moved. He stood there, smirking at 1991 Kole.

  “I know I hate that song. That’s why I said it.”

  1991 Kole re-cocked his right fist and tried delivering an uppercut to Old Man Kole’s chin. Again, his hand moved through the air, missing Old Man Kole’s face entirely.

  “Let me know when you’re done.”

  1991 Kole stepped back, his face red and his chest heaving. He screamed and the sound rattled the glasses hanging above the bar. The Penn Monroe shimmied as if 1991 Kole was looking at it from behind a stream of natural gas. He released a fury of punches at Old Man Kole, each one passing right through the man. It was as if 1991 Kole was fighting a hologram of himself.