Wolves of the Tesseract Collection

by Christopher D Schmitz

  The trail coiled through the ashen, desiccated city. Still, there were signs of Limbus’s proud and ancient origins. Here and there doors would open and close as vyrm onlookers came out to silently watch the prisoners parading by. Those openings gave tiny peeks into the vyrm living quarters; their culture blended highly advanced technology with ancient lifestyles. LED style lights illuminated the interiors enough that they could identify stone tools and other artisan items intermixed with circuit boards. Still, everything remained quiet under the pall of the sky-bound monstrosity.

  Slowly, the road rose and curled around a hill. The guards lead the prisoners through a less decayed part of the city where the path climbed steeply. It emptied just outside an immense, pillared building. Claire’s eyebrows rose as she took it in; it reminded her of so many Greek temples she had toured with her father.

  Claire sulked momentarily as the ground leveled off at a large garden of detailed stonework. Surely her father must be worried about her. By now he must have been notified that she had gone crazy, or else he’d been told whatever story James had fed the media in his efforts to hunt her down.

  Rob frowned as he looked from statue to statue in the rock garden. Not all of the statues were of vyrm; some were other types of humanoids from different planes and many of them were human. Some humans wore their garments in styles that indicated that they were from The Prime. Rob slid his hand over the form of a soldier who wore the old-style royal uniform his people wore during the Syzygyc War.

  “They’re so real looking,” Claire noted as they passed by, wandering as if through a maze.

  “They are real,” Rob stated, prompting another shove from the guard. They continued their march in relative silence.

  . . .

  Vivian spotted her prey from deep inside the canopy of the jungle. Heat and humidity clung to her like a wet blanket and plastered her hair to her face and flushed her cheeks.

  One of her two accomplices, both vyrm trackers, grinned at her with an arrogant smirk. Their physiology easily handled the excessive mid-day heat. She grinned back, matching his hubris with her own; the makeup paste of the creature’s skin had begun to slide like melting butter. Vivian chuckled and adjusted her position before retuning her eyes back to the job. At least her other contact, a spy from the ranks of the Black who’d infiltrated this region, had figured out how to keep his disguise from liquefying in the heat.

  The three lay prone on a platform they’d rigged high in the trees where they could overlook the clearing where the archaeologists worked. In Vivian’s scope she spotted Dr. Sam Jones excitedly directing the excavation.

  His team had uncovered a large section of buried ruins. They’d obviously been working at a fever pitch—not just due to the civil unrest which necessitated as speedy of a dig as possible, but also because of the enthusiasm of major discovery.

  The elated look on Dr. Jones’ face said it all. He’d found something big, something he didn’t understand but could rival the greatest discoveries ever made.

  Vivian zoomed her scope out until the larger picture began to make sense. Her jaw dropped in wonder when she recognized the capstone. The archaeologist had stumbled onto a temple she’d only read about in ancient texts; she recognized the symbol clearly upon the unearthed peak of the ancient, pyramid-like temple.

  “Kreephast. Do you see it?” She asked the local infiltrator. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

  “I do,” he responded. “The Lost Temple.” A moment of silent wonder passed between the three hunters… that and the realization that this is not what they had come here for. None of this would matter after The Awakening.

  “Do you see what brews further south?”

  Vivian scanned further, zooming her electronic crosshairs to their maximum ability. A dust cloud rose up above the verdant awning of the jungle where she knew a large trail stretched from the main city to Jones’ campsite. Intermittent breaks in the canopy gave her glimpses of the beat-up jeeps and cobbled-together heaps kept running with creative uses of chicken wire and riveted strapping.

  “What is it? Locals?”

  “The best I can tell,” Kreephast stated, “is that they are with the rebels.” He tapped the poorly sewed patch on his dark canvas vest.

  “What will they do to the researchers?”

  “Kill them most likely. Nothing sends a strong message to your government like murdering Americans.”

  Vivian cursed under her breath. “We want Doctor Jones alive. I’ll go and collect him.” She began creeping towards the edge of the platform. “Charobv, give me a diversion in five minutes. Kreephast, go back to the rebels, just in case. Get them to lock down this sector and control it. If it all falls apart, The Lost Temple could prove a significant asset.”

  The pasty-faced vyrm nodded and locked his sights onto expendable targets between the approaching rebel convoy and the exuberant archaeologist. “You’d better make haste,” he chided. “The rebels are getting close and I want to see how many of these vermin I can put down before I run out of targets or ammo.”

  Kreephast raised one final question before she slid down her tree. “Preferred method for controlling this sector?”

  “Find something in their mythology or religions? Whatever. Make something up for all I care. Just keep the area secure and safe. I’m sure none of them will figure out how to get in.”

  Kreephast saluted and accepted the mission, as pointless as it was. It was a matter of duty for him, even though he assumed the sands of time had all but drained away with the impending coming of the agod.

  Vivian returned his salute and shimmied down the tree. A few minutes later, shots rang out over and over as Charobv killed person after person. The sniper fire caused a stampede of humans, sending the panicked herd straight for the location the Dunnischkte candidate intended as her intercept point.

  Claire had eluded her. But since then, every plan B had gone perfectly.

  . . .

  As the prisoners walked just a little further into the heart of Limbus, the mass of statues gave way to hundreds of waist-high pillars. Upon each rested a flat, checkered, gaming board with colored pieces. The tables hedged in the pillared building and created a border on the grounds between the building and the cliff face which gave way to a sheer drop down into the north side of the city.

  “It looks like chess,” Claire observed.

  Giving her a funny look, he wondering why the guard didn’t prod her for speaking, too. Rob playfully wondered if Claire was trying to bait him into receiving another slap from their vyrm chaperone.

  A stairway sloped upward and onto a large dais within the middle of the building. Between the pillared columns, more tables stood at random interspersed with other, newer statues. These statues appeared more dignified somehow; most of them possessed resolute, unyielding faces: less fear and more strength and dignity.

  Shuffling between the tables and talking with himself, a tall and skinny figure wandered between the tables, making move after move, playing both sides of the board until he had to take more than a moment’s thought between moves, and then he simply moved to the next table. As they neared his position, they spotted the most prominent statue. Upon an elevated podium, it stood taller than anything else.

  Claire noticed that the game-player was unlike the Black or the Tarkhūn. His skin looked less reptilian and his facial features more human. He appeared to be more of a human-vyrm hybrid.

  The hybrid’s tightly cropped hair ended in a ponytail that flopped slightly as he moved from location to location, each place tethered around that statue which loomed nearer and nearer as they picked through a path that led to the odd, somehow regal figure.

  “Basilisk?” Claire asked her companion. She looked at Rob, but he was transfixed by the object at the center of the room: the statue.

  Rob stopped despite the shoves of the vyrm who meant to push him forward. Rob’s jaw hung slack in awe and tears welled at the edge of hi
s eyes. He dropped to his knees and bowed low to the ground in respect. Then, he stood and continued the forced march.

  Claire, too, stared at the statue in awe. Its face was a very near perfect copy of her father’s. The man was perhaps taller, and of a larger build, but the resemblance was uncanny. His stony arms bent at the elbow and an intricately engraved kind of ancient longsword lay across his palms as if he offered it to her.

  “The Stone Glaive and the Architect King,” Rob whispered in awe. The guard shoved him again, but he barely noticed.

  Moments later, they had walked near enough that the game player whirled around to meet his guests. He bowed to their presence in greeting. Rob returned the gesture and Claire likewise fumbled her way through, following Rob’s queue.

  “Greetings, son of Zahaben, and Claire Jones,” Basilisk offered.

  Rob could hardly take his eyes off the proud statue, however. He forced himself to focus on the matter at hand and tried to quell the righteous fury that rose up within him; he’d never dared dream of coming so close to the progenitor of the Tesseract. “Greetings, Basilisk, Child of the Agod.” he managed a proper response.

  Basilisk nodded to the trio of guards. The largest of them dropped Rob’s duffel bag which he’d confiscated. And then, the guards departed, leaving the humans in the hands of the vyrm ruler.

  An awkward silence passed as Basilisk silently looked them over. His eyes radiated glee.

  Breaking the silence, Rob asked, “Does this mean you don’t intend to kill us today?”

  A sorcerer in his own right, Basilisk grinned mischievously and waved a finger while hissing a word of power. The manacles fell from his prisoners’ wrists. “I find I’d rather parley, today. You two are potentially important pieces in a far grander game than you might realize.” He wrung his hands with nervous enthusiasm. “I’m interested in seeing how your roles play out.”

  Basilisk stepped closer and swatted all the pieces from an unfinished game at the nearest table. He snapped his fingers emphatically and one of the statues jumped to life, startling Claire who stood nearby. The Tarkhūn servant bowed to his master and nimbly scurried off.

  Claire inspected the next nearest statue more closely, trying to discern if it too was a vyrm decoy or an actual statue. Rob also meandered through the collection, but his eyes fixed on the figure of the Architect King.

  “Are these all statues?” Claire asked Basilisk, an unmistakable tone of awe crept into her voice.

  Loving the flattery of her inflection, Basilisk replied. “None of these are mere ‘statues,’ my dear.”

  Rob shot her a look and a gentle nod to corroborate that fact. He drew ever nearer the king as he wandered.

  “They are living stone,” Basilisk explained. “It is a little talent of mine,” he bragged. “My brother may have unraveled the mystery of dimensional travel via the Tesseract’s vertices, but I alone deciphered the glyphs upon the Architect King’s sword and learned to transmute flesh to stone.”

  Claire touched the face of a nearby figure. “They’re alive?”

  “Yes. They are quite conscious: immortal but completely immobile. Trapped with only their thoughts and loneliness, yet unable to retreat completely into their minds; they are ever present and fully awake.”

  “That sounds horrible,” Claire lamented, sympathetically pulling her hand from the statues face. “Then these are all your prisoners?”

  Basilisk whirled around and bellowed with a supernaturally loud voice, “By what right do you touch the Stone Glaive?”

  Rob quickly pulled his hand back from the blade which he’d been inexplicably drawn to like a moth to fire. He turned and bowed apologetically. “I apologize. I never thought I would see such a grand thing in person.”

  Not taking his eyes from it he whispered from the histories in a voice just loud enough to be heard. “A divine shard broken off the very engines of the heavens—the machine that churns out life and the fabric of reality. A piece of the chariot of the Creator God.”

  Basilisk shrugged off the breach of protocol and beckoned him to come closer; the vyrm servant returned with a large platter of exotic foods and set it on the cleared table. “Come, Zabe. Join us as we lunch. I have much I’d like to discuss.”

  Rob and Claire stood opposite the ruler and waited for him to reach for any of the items first. Basilisk popped a tiny fruit into his mouth and began chewing while they hesitated; he gave them an incredulous look as he did so. “If I had intended you harm, I would’ve done so already. I didn’t bring you all the way up here to merely poison you.”

  The two guests politely ate from the platter at Basilisk’s insistence.

  “You both understand that my brother and I each have spies everywhere?”

  Rob nodded.

  “And yet, we still cannot see and hear everything, everywhere. So tell me Zabe, new Captain of the Royal Guard… yes, I heard of your father’s heroic passing… what is your plan?”

  Rob swallowed hard. “Just keep moving,” he said honestly.

  Basilisk moved away from the table and leaned against a statue. The rocky figure appeared to have been frozen in mid-motion, as if he’d been running when Basilisk cursed him. “That plan doesn’t have much of an end-game,” he observed. “You are the leader of a force pledged to protect a woman already in your enemy’s custody.”

  “I’m routing a greater concern.”

  “You’re willing to sacrifice the woman you love in order to forestall the inevitable?”

  Rob glared at him.

  “Oh, come now. Everyone knows about your ‘secret’ relationship with Princess Bithia.”

  “Sh’logath is not a great eventuality,” Rob accused. “Even you, one of the Brothers of the Apocalypse, a herald of the Devourer, dare not awaken him!”

  “That’s quite an accusation!”

  “I have heard the prophecies and I’ve read the scriptures that tell of your meeting with the Architect King!”

  Basilisk held up a hand to silence Rob. Rob paused, cut short, and Basilisk gave a hand signal. Nearly a dozen vyrm assassins had been holding as still as stone and hidden amongst the statue garden; at his signal, they stood and departed to give their leader his confidentiality.

  His eyes counted to ensure their total privacy. “Now then, we are utterly alone. Tell me what they say on the Prime?” He turned his back to Rob and stared at his grandest prize positioned upon the platform.

  “They say that at our darkest hour, as you and Nitthogr led the vyrm against our forces in the Syzygyc War, the Architect King reappeared and went to you. They say that you had a conversation and that even as Sh’logath encroached upon the membrane of reality he offered himself to you in sacrifice and that you accepted his terms, learning the secret to freeze people as stone in the process.”

  Standing still, retaining his poise, he asked over his shoulder, “Do they say anything specific of this conversation?”

  “That he showed you how you still valued life—reality; that you saw the struggles of all peoples—that the struggle is worth it. They say that you saw the weakness of Sh’logath’s theology: annihilation is not the answer to the eternal struggle. It’s said that the King offered his life up for all others. That he would remain your hostage for as long as Sh’logath continued to slumber, but that his sons and daughters would forever rule the Prime until he one day reclaims his authority over all creation.”

  “Why would someone accept those terms,” Basilisk retorted. “One life for many? That doesn’t make sense… if it happened as you say. I still remember when my brother and I stood together over the profane alter, inviting Sh’logath into our realm!”

  “It does not make sense,” Rob agreed. “Unless you, Basilisk, doubted some of the tenants of the Sh’logath cult… unless you do value the struggle of life which the agod promised to remove… unless there is still some shred of the old man that still remains: clinging to hope in your original faith—in the old relig
ion of the Prime. Perhaps you were never fully converted to the vyrm ways?”

  “And what if I’m not,” he snapped at Rob who had obviously touched a nerve.

  Behind them, Claire approached the central statue in wonder, taking in the glory of the King.

  “And neither is my brother! He would use Sh’logath as a means to his own ends! To mingle his own blood within the line of the Architect King, as if such harlotry might be tolerated!” Basilisk stared at Claire who fingered the hilt of the royal Stone Glaive. He paid her actions little mind. “Even though, his plans might have some merit.”

  “So you know he will release Sh’logath if he does not achieve satisfaction,” Rob warned, curiously eyeing Claire who took hold of the sword by the excessively long handle. “And then, all your plans and efforts here will have been for naught. The Destroyer will obliterate all existence, the Tesseract will shatter; reality—life—everything will cease, everywhere and all at once!”

  Basilisk sighed, staring at Claire who pulled the heavy sword from the hands of the statue, tugging against its weight. “If so, then all your prophecies will have all failed,” he replied.

  Claire awkwardly locked eyes with Basilisk. “I can take this? I remember only a little of the Prime histories from Bithia’s mind.”

  “You have claim to the sword,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  She snatched the old leather sheathe that lay at the feet of the Architect King and inserted the ancient blade. “Will this help us fight against Nitthogr?”

  Rob replied, “I’m not sure. But it may be a rallying symbol. I think it will take more than an ancient sword to overmatch the warlock. It may inspire my kin in the hill country, though; we will need to enter the Prime and rescue the princess.”

  Basilisk scoffed with a snort of derision. “Strong hearts are the most easily deceived; their inherent confidence is just the first lie that they will believe. All the rest that follow find root that much more easily.

  “You know that you cannot defeat my brother, don’t you?” He tipped over a piece on the nearest game board.