The Wainsmith girl’s eyes jolted wide with panic and pain, and then all feeling slowly faded as she died on the Atlantean table.
He watched greedily as her blood drained into a bucket which he used to splash across the stone block where he playfully drew a smiling face in the dripping splatter of blood before tracing a large square shape around the edges.
“My dear Caivev,” he asked. “Please open the gate.”
Caivev made the series of hand motions she’d practiced under the beast’s tutelage. The edges where he’d drawn with blood seemed to ignite with supernatural flame and the center ruptured the lines of reality as it collapsed in on itself with a swirling pool of void.
Akko Soggathoth handed Caivev the book that he’d been toting with him since she found it in Koth. “Hold this until I return.” He stepped through the murky portal and disappeared.
Just enough time passed for them to feel nervous about their time limit before the goatman returned. Behind him, the portal burped out a shadowy blob like a writhing pool of ethereal, black and bubbling tentacles. An ethereal line of smoke trailed after where unbreakable fetters tied him to some arcane anchor within the Darque. His chains shimmered in the air, keeping the bound evil in check.
“My brother, the next youngest,” Akko Soggathoth announced. “This is Akko Nuggezeth.”
A palpable sense of doom filled the room and none could seem to locate the shadow with their eyes—only catch glimpses of him from the edges of their vision. The inky mass flitted through the party before returning.
[You have no body for me, brother,] it said in a disembodied, ancient dialect that each somehow understood in his or her mind.
“Correct,” Soggathoth hissed. “You must rest to regain a portion of your cosmic energies… I’ve already had that luxury. A suitable host will be located soon.” He took the tome from Caivev and unlocked the book’s darquematter lock before unfurling the pages. He took great care not to touch the mystic material inlaid at the books edges. “Until then, I will keep you safe in the ancient book. You know how I mean.”
The two heralds held a brief argument in their screeching tongue. This time the mortal minds did not interpret.
“You must act soon. The portal closes promptly and then the waters will cover the old city once again entombing you. If you don’t have a host, the Darque will reclaim you before you could hope to take a body.”
Even though they could not directly see him, the vyrm and Caivev could feel the begrudging tension roll off Nuggezeth as his younger brother forced him into the pages of the grimoire.
Akko Soggathoth held the book open. “Make your mark and write your name.”
A dark tentacle burned its sign into the parchment and the dire presence seemed to dissipate, sealed inside the pages of the locked grimoire. The beast disintegrated as the pages pulled him within and the eldritch chains released the creature and slowly retreated back within the tear between worlds.
Within a few more minutes the team rode the winch system to the surface. Moments later, the salty waters reclaimed the ancient location.
***
Sam had just finished explaining to Zabe what the ancient Vangandrans wrote about the transformation when the laboratory doors opened. Shandra entered with a figure cloaked in dark monk's robes that concealed his face. She wore a similar cloak which she tossed aside to reveal shiny battle armor, not unlike the Guardian Corps' battle suits.
“Expecting trouble?” Sam asked with a hint of worry in his voice.
“Uncertain,” she responded. “Basilisk was recently on our plane and so I will take no chances with the safety of my ward.”
Zabe glared suspiciously at the hooded figure. He shared Shandra’s misgivings but knew that someone had been funneling the tarkhūn information; any vyrm under the protection of the secretive monastic caste automatically had his suspicion. He already harbored a great deal of resentment for the Veritas who refused to engage the Black during Nitthogr's invasion, even if he was grateful for them when they lent his Grandfather Shardai access to their tunnels.
Tay-lore slumped as a sign of disappointment that his turn to share had been skipped. He had a lot to learn about sympathy, but his disappointed and pouty mannerisms proved accurate.
Shandra nodded to her guest. “This is Trenzlr.”
The vyrm pulled his cloak back and revealed his scaly, green face. He bowed in a sign of respect, but even that made Zabe’s hackles bristle; he’d been fighting this race his entire life and recognized that giving Trenzlr any benefit of the doubt would prove a difficult task.
Zabe bit his lip during the introductions and bowed diplomatically. He silently uttered a few choice curses for his position, again. “I thought I was supposed to find you at the monastery?”
Shandra nodded measuredly and checked the clock nearby. “Yes, a short while from now. Trenzlr has not been out of the cloister since he arrived here years ago. Much like Doctor Jones, he is a foreigner in our lands and wished to see the Prime—and also to meet Sam.”
Zabe raised an eyebrow. “How long has he been here?”
Shandra realized from his tone that she may have overshared. She wordlessly worked her mouth in fear that his anger might bubble over if the Guardian Corps learned Trenzlr had been on the Prime since before Nitthogr’s assault.
“What’s more important is how he got here,” Sam deflected, coming to Shandra’s aid. “Tell us that story, Trenzlr.”
Shandra locked eyes with Sam and silently thanked him.
"I was with my people, my tribe, when it happened." He spoke sincerely and Zabe's interest in history and the vyrm rovers won out over his ire. Zabe crossed his arms and bid Trenzlr continue.
“We were traveling like we often did. Rovers are nomadic and victimized by both the Black and the tarkhūn wherever they find us. They usually leave us alone as long as we don’t get too close to any of their communities, but this time, they came out of nowhere, like they were hunting us. They slaughtered my people, my family. We scattered and fled; there was so much blood… I remember running, and then I was suddenly here. I don’t quite know how. I wandered for a few days until I was discovered by the Veritas who took me in.”
Shandra interjected, “We believe that between the blood and all of the activity, a dormant gate might have been activated by pure coincidence and Trenzlr was whisked away… either by accident or by divine providence. I suppose that it is entirely up to a person’s perspective and how sincerely you adhere to faith.”
Sam asked, “What kind of rover are you?”
“A good one,” he responded.
“I meant are you a Follower of Krakkath or a Seeker of Maetha?”
Trenzlr smiled through his scaly lips. “I would answer the same, but add that my tribe is loyal to Maetha: the promised one who will bring about peace and restore us to the Tesseract as an adopted lineage.”
“How is that different from Krakkath?” Sam asked. “Very little information is available to us about the rover tribes.”
“That is probably because forces have been systematically destroying our people since before the Thousand Elders’ Sacrifice—ever since the Great Schism when Rasthakka and Kadrist set a new tone in religion and deviated from the earliest cult teachings by focusing more on Sh’logath instead of on his Templars and chosen ones, the children of the void who sowed systematic destruction: the Seven Brothers of the Winnowing.
“Rasthakka spoke in conjecture and Sh’logathian devotion during a sort of cultic renaissance. Kadrist took a more liberal approach and ignored almost all of the old legends, twisting them into myths with less literal meaning—at least inasmuch as the Seven Brothers were concerned. While Rasthakka taught a kind of peace and began to drift from Sh’logath—and perhaps even advocated for Maetha, Kadrist taught that peace was destruction.
“While Rasthakka is remembered fondly for helping defray the first war that brewed between the first tarkhūn king Chirasq I and his
brother Akroth who posed as an Earth Pharaoh during her people’s infancy, people often mistake him as the Maetha—the great restorer.”
“I thought the Seven Brothers of the Winnowing were a vyrm fairy tale,” Zabe finally spoke up. “They have almost nothing to do with the Sh’logath cult.”
“That’s because they were a part of Sh’logath worship long before Rasthakka came on the scene, when it was called Mae’le-ggath—but Maetha is older than that, even. Also, because their origins come from the Darque dimension. Very few vyrm know about the Darque anymore—the cult has downplayed it for years because if there is a Darque then there is a need for Maetha, and if Maetha is real, then Sh’logath is a force of evil, not of peace.”
Zabe’s head spun as if he’d begun the conversation at the wrong point. He had no context for Maetha or the myriad of other names Trenzlr had mentioned. He finally knew how Claire must’ve felt when he first told her about the Prime. “The Darque?”
The vyrm winked at him. "Not all things, in reality, come from the Tesseract or were designed by the Architect King. Where do you think the vyrm originally came from?"
Dumbfounded, the group could do nothing except blink. Such a radical idea had never entered any of their minds before.
“Is that true?” Tay-lore asked. “There is nothing in my data banks to corroborate your claim.”
Trenzlr shrugged. “It is a theory—my theory. I’ve been studying ancient texts for as long as I’ve been alive, forbidden texts from Edenya…”
Zabe traded confused glances with Sam. “Desolation,” Shandra quietly clarified for them.
“…I’ve developed my thoughts free of encumbrance by the teachings of the Sh’logath cult, and the archives of the Veritas have helped me a great deal. I truly wish to be a resource for the Prime—the royal family and the Veritas. I believe that Maetha is tied to the fate of the Prime.”
Zabe nodded politely, although he had no intention of letting Trenzlr, the least threatening vyrm he’d ever met, meet his betrothed. The risks were too great.
Tay-lore held up his hand to beg a question. “You are well versed in the myth of the Seven Brothers of the Winnowing?”
Trenzlr nodded.
“We have scarce data on them. Can you write down everything you know for our records?”
The vyrm nodded curiously. “I can. Is there anything specific you want to know?”
An alert chimed behind the android who accessed the warning remotely and called its information to the large flat-panel view screen. “I’ve been monitoring news from Earth and lately some troubling information has come up. The name Sh’logath has appeared in a number of texts and other places I monitor, which is not uncommon and indicates that the Heptobscurantum has rebuilt more quickly than expected.”
This time Trenzlr cocked his head inquisitively.
“The human branch of the Sh’logath cult,” Zabe informed him.
Tay-lore continued. "I've found another name alongside his, lately. Do you know anything about the Akko Soggathoth?" He pointed to the display and a spike in power alongside data readings from the Tesseract. "Amid a flurry of his references I recorded this anomaly's energy signature." He turned back to the chirping noise and overlaid another, similar reading. "This new event just occurred."
Trenzlr looked at them all very seriously. “If Akko Soggathoth is at work, I think we may have a very real and serious problem.”
Chapter 7
Sam Jones stood in front of the newly repaired glass in the Hall of Mirrors. His daughter and Zabe stood by his side.
“I really do wish that you’d take a small escort along with you,” Zabe said.
Claire vigorously nodded her agreement.
“I said it already,” Sam stubbornly stated, “It’s just a short visit to a small city in Minnesota. There’s hardly any chance something could go wrong.”
Claire raised an eyebrow. “Like three years ago with the Heptobscurantum and mad scientists?”
Sam batted the notion away. “It’s not like that—and besides, I’m not important enough to target anymore.”
His words hung in the air. He hadn’t been a significant player in the war before, either, but he was a leverage piece because of who he was important to. Sam hugged his daughter. “I’ll be careful,” he promised, “but Miles is on his deathbed and I don’t think he could take explanations of interdimensional bodyguards at face value.”
Claire surrendered the battle and let her father go. “You’d be surprised. All the same, give Professor Jecima my regards. Tell him I’m still thankful for how he helped me years ago… Tell him my cheek still hurts,” she laughed. “He’ll know what it means.”
Sam nodded as his daughter activated the mirror. He smiled at her and then a moment later disappeared through the looking glass.
***
Tay-lore clutched the ream of print-outs that quantified and supported his assumptions regarding the strange readings he’d collected. He felt certain that the power spikes rippling through the dimensions were not natural—and had drawn the only logical conclusion.
He entered the royal throne room and hoped that his friends would see it the same way. The android felt an odd sort of trepidation as he approached the Prime’s throne. Tay-lore’s awe was partly due to the massive, locked doors to the Chamber of Mysteries which towered several paces behind the seats. The other part was his affinity for Claire and Bithia before her.
With no one in the room, he retreated and began the trek towards the Guardian Corps' keep: a walled partition where they kept their barracks, offices, and a few other specialized rooms. Tay-lore caught Jenner in the hallway.
“Excuse me. Do you know where I can find Commander Zabe?”
Jenner bit his lip. “That depends on how important it is.”
“Quite,” Tay-lore replied. “Is he on a mission of some secrecy?”
“You might say that.” Jenner shrugged. “He’s stealing a few hours away with the Princess at the Old Keep ruins, so I wouldn’t intrude unless it’s a matter of life and death.”
Tay-lore nodded. His conversation could wait a couple hours… he hoped. It was time sensitive, but the android knew Zabe and Claire needed regular breaks to recharge just as he sometimes required a power cycle of his own. He turned to leave, thinking about how odd it was that a low-ranking corpsman knew the secret location of the Prime’s princess and highest military commander. He nearly bumped into Shandra.
He bent with a short bow for respect. “Cleric Shandra.”
She jabbed him in the chest where he held his notes. “Is this true?”
Tay-lore cocked his head with confusion.
“Your recommendations for response measures?” She clarified her ire while they walked down the corridor and towards a more secure location. “I don’t like it.”
“You read my report,” Tay-lore sounded impressed, “so soon? I just sent it very recently.”
Shandra shrugged. "With Sam away for a few days, I feel like I've got a little more free time than I've had of late." Her voice conveyed confusion and uncertainty over what that meant. "It came as a welcome distraction to my thoughts."
“Did you have trouble understanding the scan data? It is a very complex process that…”
She held up her hand. “I trust how you collected the data. The Veritas has also been monitoring power emanations from the Tesseract—but by a different process. We agree with you; there's something happening across the dimensions—something new and scary.”
Tay-lore pressed the issue. “Similar readings have been noted before—when artifacts of power came into close proximity to the royal gem.”
“Similar or identical?”
“Very similar. Items such as the dimensional inversion pendant or other mystic items containing the darquematter substance… it’s almost as if darquematter readings have increased in strength and number.”
“Where did you hear those words?” Shandra snapped at
him, pulling him aside and looking around to make sure nobody else had overheard. “The existence of such an element is not one of public knowledge.”
Tay-lore felt a kind of nervousness in his emotion circuits. “I first encountered it in the old book—Zabe’s book which I translated, The History of Vangandra, it was titled.” He trailed off and felt a little guilty that he didn’t tell her he’d also accessed the Veritas’s secure library without permission and corroborated what the book said against the Order’s records. “Trenzlr was also a wealth of information regarding my research. He provided me with many translation keys that helped unlock ancient vyrm texts never before decoded. Many of them seemed written as Edenyaic myths: a series of folktales about the ancient days and the Brothers of the Winnowing—long before they were trapped in the Darque when the vyrm race translated their existence and abandoned their own reality in favor of Edenya… the Desolation realm of the Tesseract.”
Shandra eyed him suspiciously, suspecting that he’d delved into forbidden libraries and collections to uncover the texts he would have needed. Without any proof she let it slide and concentrated on her primary concern. “‘Very similar,’ you said. Explain the differences.”
“Minute frequency and pitch shifts in ambient waves if you compile the emanations versus the regular sine wave pattern of the…”
Shandra held up a hand to stop him. “Explain it in a relatable way to humans.”
Tay-lore played a pleasant musical scale up and down through his audio box. He played that same scale again except on the middle and last notes he played the note flat.
The cleric scowled, but she understood; they arrived at Tay-lore’s lab. As an expert on mystic artifacts, she knew exactly what had caused the disruptions and it was time to come clean. “It is hypothesized within the Veritas that all darquematter reacts violently with the Tesseract… What I’m about to tell you is absolutely confidential.” She stared at him sternly. “We’ve not even shared this with the Royal family.”
Wolves of the Tesseract Collection Page 33
