Finally, with Basilisk’s back turned one of the vyrm pulled a shiv from his boot and leapt for leader with a howl. “For the Black!”
Within a split second, five of the statues sprang to life with weapons drawn. One of them tackled the assassin and the others executed his three companions with cold precision, cutting their necks without a moment’s thought.
Basilisk turned and grinned at the vyrm he’d baited into action. “You must be Chartarra,” he greeted warmly.
“Shades,” Chartarra hissed at the perfectly camouflaged soldiers. The skill was one of the two more common ones given to the gifted tarkhūn. He hissed again, this time chiding himself for not anticipating such protective measures.
“It must be true,” Basilisk absentmindedly combed his fingers through a long lock of hair which hung neatly from his head. “The chiefs from the five tribes of the Black must’ve arranged this attempt independent of Caivev. She would not have been so sloppy in its execution. But don’t worry—I’m taking steps to ensure that they won’t continue undermining their rightful leader, my brother’s successor.”
Chartarra stared ahead blankly. He refused the give his tarkhūn captors anything useful.
Basilisk continued, “I knew that the son of Charobv was among the Black’s assassination attempt. I also knew that the first attack was a ruse in order to get some of my would-be murderers close enough to strike.”
“I don’t know who Charobv is,” the young one hissed.
“Of course you do… and of course you’d have to say that,” Basilisk retorted calmly. “You and I both know that your father is one of Caivev’s primary generals on Earth. He is intimately involved in her affairs and is one of a few trusted soldiers capable of running her newest campaign.”
The haughty leader glared down at the restrained captive who wasn’t yet convinced. “I could name other names to show you exactly how much I know. Kreephast is your father’s partner along with a newer one named Idrakka and a race traitor named Skrom… another of my wayward tarkhūn committed to walking in Regorik’s footsteps.”
Chartarra looked into Basilisk’s eyes. He could tell the man knew every detail. “Then what do you need with me? I will never betray the Black.”
Basilisk stooped to one knee and met Chartarra’s gaze, “I would never expect you to.” He nodded to his shades who released the prisoner. “You stand at a crossroads, son of Charobv… will you help negotiate a peace between the Tarkhūn and the Black? I want only to unify our peoples once more—to bring an alliance such as we had during the Syzygyc War. Only then can we finally fulfill the destiny of our great race.” He took Chartarra’s face into his hands. “I have foreseen our fate and it is glorious!”
Chartarra looked into his eyes and believed him. “What do you need from me?”
“Just information. Caivev is vital to my plan, but she will not answer my summons.”
“I can do nothing against the leader of my people. Such a thing is too great a—”
“I would never ask it,” Basilisk feigned shock. “I only ask what portal she meets the other leaders of the Black through, and on which plane, so that I may pass on an invitation for palaver.” He paused and then reinforced his position. “Even if I meant for some nefarious ends to fall upon Caivev, the Black is far too resilient for a mere assassination to topple them. We have an ideological conflict that can only be resolved through conversation—not with bloodshed.”
The young vyrm muttered a curse under his breath and gave up a location.
Basilisk stared into his face while his new friend listed the few possible locations for the meeting. He gazed into Chartarra’s eyes and believed him.
Quick as a flash he raked his claws across the throat of the general’s son.
Chartarra grasped his neck and collapsed. He gurgled once in protest and then bled out next to one of Basilisk’s gaming tables in the statue garden.
“We finally have a location,” he said and signaled one of his shades to fetch his own battle planners and astrologers in order to draw up a plan.
***
Sam smiled as he entered his spacious office while holding his thermos full of coffee. He grinned and took a sip of the brew. Perhaps he couldn’t help his daughter with her romantic woes, but at least he’d been able to pass on a love of caffeine. He was sure she’d turn out fine.
Motion sensors picked up his presence on entry and everything in his historical research lab activated. The archaeologist slid into his seat and marveled at the advanced technology of the Prime. True, he sometimes missed Earth, but working in the Prime gave him a whole new set of mysteries to uncover, and quite honestly, discoveries made in this dimension unraveled so many of the questions asked after on Earth—plus he never had to worry about funding, limitations, or red tape. Claire’s high position had ensured that.
The massive computer screen awoke to display the ancient religious and mystic texts that he’d been researching last night. He still had trouble reconciling the dual nature of reality that residents from the Prime so readily embraced: natural and supernatural coexistence as different aspects of science. His earthly upbringing hadn’t prepared his mind to accept the fact that both forces were merely different faces of the same coin—each with its own approach and method of understanding.
Sliding over to the table at the center of the room he pinched the bridge of his nose and massaged away the headache gained by pouring over the historical texts he’d been working with. He’d immersed himself in the uncomfortable flip-side of reality yesterday; today he could give himself a break and deal with the more empirical side of things, the parts he was more at ease with.
Sam took another sip of coffee and leafed through the pages as he recalled his early conversation. He was quite familiar with Professor Jarfig, in fact, his surviving son, Jenner, had met with him to pass on his father’s work before he entered the Royal Military Academy.
Jenner seemed like such a driven young man—conducting himself as if he’d grown up far too quickly. Witnessing your family’s murder would certainly do that. Jarfig had seen it as his obligation to the historical record to chronicle the vyrm’s taking of the Prime; Jenner made sure to honor his father’s memory by delivering those fastidious notes to those who could put them into the annals of history.
The doors eventually slid open again and his lab-mate entered. Wearing his ever-present Guardian Corps armor, Tay-lore crossed the room in perfect human fashion, even giving a cordial nod to Sam who nodded back.
Tay-lore stopped at the far side of the room. “How did I do, Sam Jones?”
Sam chuckled and nodded, “You’re getting better every day.”
With a slightly robotic voice, Tay-lore confessed, "I have been practicing."
“I can tell.” He’d been helping Tay-lore try to become more human—or at least appear that way.
The android tilted his torso to peer at his friend’s documents. “Have you learned all you had hoped to about the supernatural nature of the universe?”
Sam sighed. “It’s not quite so simple for us,” he reminded the automaton. Tay-lore had always been a little too human for his own robotic species, making him too glitchy for his own kind. That had likely been what preserved him as the sole survivor of the uprising many centuries prior when the Guardian Corps spared him. However, his glitchy forgetfulness was often inconvenient.
“Then perhaps it is good that Shandra is waiting for you outside.” The construct took his seat at a neighboring console where he resumed monitoring a million sources of data from across the planes as only the android could. “I think I meant to say that when I came in.”
Sam opened the door for the cleric of Veritas and welcomed her in. “Sorry about the wait,” he told her.
The middle-aged blonde woman tried not to look perturbed, although Sam always felt a little intimidated by clerical uniforms and robes like the ones she wore. Shandra pushed through with a smile, recognizing the irony of the
situation. “I’m partly to blame. I was supposed to come yesterday to help you work through some of your research.”
He nodded, figuring that today would now be another filled with arcane research, instead. Shandra was responsible for cataloging, managing, and sometimes responding to crises involving arcane artifacts. If something needed collecting by the Guardian Corps so that it could be hidden within Chamber of Mysteries, she was one of the people making that decision.
“I was really hoping that you could help bring me up to speed on things.”
“Things?” She raised an eyebrow inquisitively.
“So many things,” he laughed. “I must admit that I am so poorly versed in the arcane that I might need some serious tutoring. I’m especially trying to make sense of pre-Sh’logath cult beliefs of the people of Edenya—before it became known as Desolation.”
Shandra bobbed her head measuredly. “I can help somewhat—the old Mae’le-ggath can be confusing and there is much we don’t know,” she told him. “First, let me show you something that might interest you, specifically. It is in the tower.”
“Ooooh,” Tay-lore said luridly.
He turned to address them in the awkward silence that followed. “My apologies. I have been working on humor. Perhaps Sam Jones is not the only one requiring a tutor.”
***
You are lovely my child, and I know you’ve been inside my home.
Caivev whirled around the sweaty marketplace at the edge of Changuinola. In one fluid motion, she'd drawn her concealed vyrm disruptor pistol and waved it at the whispers behind her.
The locals yelped and dove for cover. Vendors snapped up handles on their rickshaws and carted away their goods as fast as possible. People shielded their face from her as a sign that they wouldn’t be able to recognize her if the policia came: an unspoken request to spare them.
She spun around again as the whisper laughed at her. The marketplace cleared out within seconds leaving only the confused Caivev.
Residents of the war-torn country of Chiriquí didn’t mess around when it came to violence. Too many of their loved ones had fallen to the civil war that followed the secession of the Chiriquí and Bosca Del Toro provinces when they’d declared their independence under the brilliant leadership of General Nyagittari’s guerillas.
Caivev understood their fragile state more than any could realize. Her vyrm generals had been largely responsible for the war. Retaining control over the Lost Temple was her number one priority at the moment—that and locating the source of the voice that she was so sure she’d heard.
“Show yourself,” she demanded to the empty air.
You’ve seen my house, daughter. I’ve watched you from afar.
“Ya-rawr!” she yelled, spinning again and firing her alien blaster. Her bolt of energy struck an abandoned chicken coop; it exploded in flaming debris.
You are a true believer and I’ve marked you for a special purpose.
She turned again, this time under more control. Caivev was certain she’d pinpointed his direction, but the voice grew fainter.
“Purpose? What purpose?”
The voice grew quieter, but didn’t change direction.
You know. The purpose—the only purpose.
Caivev dashed forward and found a rickety door left half ajar near a retaining wall. She peeked inside and found a low-ceilinged hovel with a floor covered in used straw. Based on the animals tied outside she could only assume the room was a shelter for a local farmer’s goats.
“Come in, come in,” an elderly woman crooned from her seat behind a badly distressed table. She beckoned widely with her hands, obviously unable to exactly locate the guest with her milky, white eyes. “He said you would come.”
“Who said I would come.”
“He refused to tell me his name. But I know how he whispers.”
The old crone beckoned for her to take a seat.
Out of curiosity, Caivev complied. She glanced down at the rune-marked bones the old woman had been recently using for some arcane purpose. They lay arranged haphazardly upon a poorly carved image of a skull.
“You are a fortune teller?”
She nodded, slowly. “That is what some have called me.”
“Then tell me my future, old woman.”
The blind mystic dropped a handful of bones as she breathed laboriously. Using her hands and fingers, she touched the arrangement of her tools and traced the edges of the engraved skull to get a sense of their location.
“You do not have a future.” She grumbled confusedly under her breath. “Not you… there is no future in you?”
“What do you mean?”
The old woman looked suddenly frightened. “All future ends with you!”
Caivev stared at her while she suddenly began to convulse and the woman’s white eyes began to cloud and turn red. Her voice dropped several octaves.
“Through you, there is no future!”
Caivev met the hag’s gaze and grinned. “Who are you?”
The old woman shuddered violently enough that her neck snapped and she collapsed, falling utterly still.
Behind Caivev she heard the voice again. “I am Akko Soggathoth.”
Caivev spun and found a hovering mass of blackness. The writhing pool of inky, ethereal tentacles and bubbles pulsed as it spoke, shimmering and quasi-transparent.
She could only see him from the corner of her eyes as if he were the shadow beast from some child’s nightmare vision, only visible in the blind the spots of the eye—elusively disappearing under any scrutiny. And yet he certainly existed somewhere between seeing and non-seeing.
“I am the true Herald of Sh’logath,” he said. “We have a common goal, you and I.” The inky mass laughed as his voice took a tone of mirth. “I am the first of my kind to awaken: the first of the seven brothers.”
“The Seven Brothers of the Winnowing?” Caivev asked breathlessly.
“Very good. We must awaken the others,” he said.
“How? So much of your prophecy was hidden by Nitthogr after he proclaimed himself the Herald of Sh’logath.”
Akko Soggathoth laughed again. “The pretender did not destroy everything—he kept many things hidden away within the Temple and its twin—I even know about the boy. Everything you need is inside my house. Well, almost everything.”
Caivev felt inexplicably drawn to the dead woman's pile of bones. One of her nine ivory carvings was not a bone at all but something else entirely.
It felt metallic to Caivev as she picked it up. She could feel the innate power of the weird charm; the carving had a lead-like sheen and bore a certain resemblance to Bithia's dimensional inversion pendant.
“Darquematter?” she asked. Caivev only knew scraps of the legend, but she was sure she could locate more details with little effort. “Is this a hierophanticus?” The seven keys could each open the prison doors to the fractured realms of the Darque dimension where the brothers slumbered.
“Correct. But you will need more than just elements from my world to complete your task.”
The door swung open as a goat walked inside. Caivev watched it for a second, and then she caught movement from the corner of her eye as something leapt from the shadows at the edge of the room.
A black creature snarled from its tentacled face. It crouched to pounce with heavy scales bunching up like flexible scale-mail. It snatched up the prey and with its clawed feet and powerful mandibular appendages, the dog-sized beast ripped the goat to shreds in seconds.
“The abyssal auraphage is native to the Darque dimension. It will help you find a sacrifice appropriate to awaken each brother.”
Sticking a tongue-like proboscis through its tentacles the auraphage sampled the air. It gave a kind of growling whine and retreat backward into the shadow.
A man burst through the door wildly. “You! Do you speak English? The monsters—they took me! Please, you’ve got to help me,” he raved.
&n
bsp; “I speak English,” she responded.
“Oh thank God! It’s after me! The thing—the goatman! I don’t even know how I got here—the last thing I remember was infiltrating a cult in Peco, Texas—is this Mexico?”
Caivev only regarded him coolly.
“My name is Quintin Hall and I’m a paranormal investigator. You’ve got to believe me!” He caught a glance of the dead bone-thrower and then spotted the hierophanticus in Caivev’s hand. “No! Not again.”
Caivev glanced down at the auraphage as it growled from nearby. She just barely caught sight of the twisting mass of black that was Akko Soggathoth as it snatched Hall around the neck with a squid-like arm.
The man shrieked, “No!”
She looked back up to find Quintin Hall standing completely calm.
“I have my vessel,” he said. With a grin, a sudden shadow came over his body and the man transformed into a fiendish goatman—like some necrotic, decaying faun. Smiling devilishly he transformed back into a humanoid appearance and took a leash from his pocket.
The auraphage had also transformed. It was every bit of a Rottweiler and it obediently sat for its master who hooked a leash to its collar.
“Now please, we should get going. We have so much to do before we can awaken my brother. Once I bring you up to speed, my little pet and I will go in search of the next sacrifice: the person whose blood tastes right to open the gates. ”
***
Tay-lore peeked through the threshold of the door and fidgeted nervously. He glanced at the princess and at Zabe who appeared to enjoy some much needed time together. For all his humanistic defects, he couldn’t stop being either a human or a robot.
He knew he was deeply flawed. The fact that he was pacing anxiously reminded him of how flawed he was as a robot—the cold hard logic of his programming should have insisted that he interrupt whatever moment they’d finally stolen for themselves. But it would sadden him to intrude. The fact that he felt emotions, or had friends, or went by the pronoun "he," were all facts to him and their implications ran deep. Tay-lore did not know how to be anything else than what he was: something more than either human or automaton.
Wolves of the Tesseract Collection Page 28
