Wolves of the Tesseract Collection

by Christopher D Schmitz

  Time didn’t seem to have any meaning as they traveled. They found a number of cracks as they made their way back to the portal location by the pyramids. A spiraling web of fractures surrounded the site.

  As they navigated the network of deadly, glassine splinters that seemed to hover in mid-air, another cosmic wave flashed through the realm, but to seemingly little effect. Then an ill mood seemed to settle over the three and each shivered in terror. The pall seemed to weigh most heavily upon Claire.

  “It must be some kind of psychic attack,” Zabe growled, the least affected by it.

  Claire suddenly collapsed, on the verge of fainting. She trembled, “I… I can feel him… his thoughts…”

  “Who’s thoughts?”

  “Sh’logath’s” she whispered. “His mind is a real thing, here—even though he may not exist.”

  She groaned as Zabe set her down and stood to his full lycan height. Tahnak followed Zabe’s eyes and turned his head.

  Someone approached in the distance: another lycan. The corporeal creature approached them from just beyond the thorny helicoid. The creature appeared every bit of a smaller copy of Zabe, right down to the Guardian Corps’ armor.

  Zabe’s jaw dropped. Even if he couldn’t recognize his brother, who was similarly transformed, there was no missing the mark scraped into the chest piece of the uniform. Zurrah. He’d etched the name so long ago—but he would never forget it.

  “Zurrah? Zurrah!” he shouted.

  “Father?” Zurrah responded. “No—Zabe?” The excited brother recognized the younger version of their father. “Zabe! It’s you!”

  He barreled headlong towards the three where they remained entangled by the jagged whorl of reality fissures.

  “No! Zurrah—no—don’t touch it!” Zabe howled as his long lost brother grabbed the outermost edge and ducked under it.

  The three stared in complete disbelief. They’d witnessed a different action each time someone had come in contact with a fracture—and each seemed totally random.

  Zurrah shrugged off their concern when they relaxed after his initial contact. They calmed down and he stepped under the next rung. Only a few feet away from a grand reunion he touched the next fissure.

  His eyes widened with surprise and the cochlear shape flashed with brilliant, violet light. In a burst of ozone, Zurrah’s body wreathed in glowing purple fire and he blinked out of existence.

  ***

  Jacob Sisyphus exited the private jet and deplaned on the rolling staircase. He strolled a little ways down the tarmac until he arrived at his private car. Those three minutes in the sun were plenty warm enough to make him break into a sweat. Luckily, the interior of the black sedan was frosty with the air conditioning turned to maximum.

  He crawled in where Charobv and General Nyagittari sat. Sisyphus would’ve preferred two scantily clad females, but he’d gone to Chiriquí on business, not on pleasure. As the leader of The Seven, the Heptobscurantum cult’s ruling body, he greeted them each with a nod as the car pulled away; he knew that both were vyrm plants and worked with Caivev, the commander of the Black, He also knew that General Nyagittari’s real name was Kreephast.

  Sisyphus grinned as he sat back and enjoyed the AC. The first time he’d met the hopeful Dunnischktet, a powerful hybrid with both human and vyrm forms, he'd shamelessly flirted with her. Now, he saw her as more of a coworker in service of Sh'logath—that is unless she suddenly desired he let his lecherous mood take over.

  The city gave way to the lush and verdant landscape as the car pulled away. Watching through the window, the wizard commented, “Almost a shame that it’s all gonna be devoured… but that’s the breaks,” he chuckled.

  Both of Caivev’s generals shot him unfavorable glances. They didn’t appreciate how he seemingly trivialized their faith—even if he shared their core doctrines.

  “So she left you two in charge while she is gone?”

  Charobv nodded. “We really expect her to arrive at any moment.”

  The former pro-wrestler turned-occultist smiled. “Good. I’m looking forward to working with her again.” His phone got service again and chirped with a bunch of incoming messages. “I’m getting detailed reports right now about how my Mexican Heptobscurantum slowed down the enemy.”

  Kreephast nodded and moved on to the more important matters of business. “A new awakening is at hand. Wainsmith is ready?”

  Sisyphus bobbed his head vigorously. “He is already on his way. He is one of the faithful. Percival Wainsmith knows what to do.”

  ***

  “Zabe? Zabe?” His hearing finally came back to him amid the shock of rediscovering his brother—only to lose him again just as quickly. He rubbed his eyes and tried to determine whether or not the whole thing had just been a hallucination.

  “Did you all see him?”

  Claire and Tahnak agreed with him. In this place, though, shared dreams might have been possible.

  They coaxed the bewildered lycan back on task, however reluctantly. None of them were sure of their ability to think straight within the muddled madness tugging at the edges of their thoughts.

  Zabe wrung his powerful hands with worry and doubt. They would have to return to the mystery of Zurrah once they were free of the Darque and its sanity draining effects.

  Slipping between petrified and desiccated husks of long-dead trees, the team navigated the last few strands of the broken helix which ensconced the portal location. Zabe raked a talon across his hand and they activated the portal as normal and set it for the Prime, the only location they could be certain of on the confusing runes engraved upon a flagstone-like clearing.

  The portal burbled and pulsed like a swampy ichor. Claire looked at the gateway apprehensively. In the distance, another wave rushed towards them and she launched herself into the void; her two companions likewise followed, just before the next random plague wave struck.

  An acrid stench like burning hair hung in the heat that clung to the blackened version of the Prime they arrived within. Seams of magmic fire burned just below the hot surface. Puddles of tar hissed nearby and cracks opened in the crust where they zigzagged across the surface in streams of fire and crunchy, igneous embankments.

  “This is not what I imagined,” Claire confessed.

  Tahnak pointed towards the ruins of the Royal castle and capital city. “Nothing’s left,” he said, awestruck.

  Few of the sky-stretching monoliths that shored up the foundation remained. Most of the outer wall had been turned to slag. Old damage from some ancient war had strewn rubble from the castle for as far as the eye could see.

  Zabe tried to melt his form back into a human one, but still could not. He stepped away from the portal site and his foot grinded against something chitinous.

  Claire joined him and untangled his foot from the threadbare scraps of cloth that bound a bleached-bone skeleton. Zabe’s foot had punctured the chest cavity and caught between the bones like a Chinese finger-trap. She snapped the strapping and pulled away an old satchel that still wrapped around the desiccated body.

  The worm-eaten purse burst and a collection of darquematter trinkets poured from the bag. An old journal also tumbled out amidst the collection. Before anyone could reach for it, the sky flashed with a pulse of energy.

  A new wave of psychic terror gripped them with an intense dread that neither had ever experienced. Claire screamed and collapsed, panicking as if her chest were squeezed by a vice.

  “I hear him again! His mind… it’s as if we’re trapped within his belly!”

  Zabe was least affected by it. He scooped Claire up into his arms. She shuddered as if a seizure had taken hold.

  Tahnak groaned and pushed his fingers against his temples, trying to resist the madness creeping about between the lobes of his brain. Finally, he broke. Tahnak howled like an animal and ran off, screaming with lunatic ravings.

  Zabe held Claire for a few moments longer until he felt cert
ain Tahnak wouldn’t return and injure them. He crouched and leafed through the journal. The letters were nonsense and unlike anything he’d ever seen before and so he tossed it aside.

  He scooped up two of the metallic baubles in case they held some significance, and then took Claire back to the portal site. He wasn’t certain it would even work, but he felt sure that whatever dark machinations were in operation had been amplified in that realm.

  Zabe breathed a sigh of relief when the portal opened back to the same location they’d come from. He gently lifted Claire into his arms and walked through.

  ***

  Akko Soggathoth zapped into existence at the end of the crack where it terminated near the Temple of Koth. Despite the steep incline, he could see its crown of obelisks where the tall spires raked the sky. Above them turned a gigantic, fiendish device, the Nihil Bridge—it hung in the sky like a thorny halo—an ancient machine of hellish purpose.

  He and his pet strode up the incline of the blasted landscape until he came to the tunnel that led through the superstructure and into its bowels. Akko Soggathoth paused at the sealed door which led upwards and to the rooftop. He grinned and then descended by the main hall, the mirror of Kith’s narthex, and then walked to where the doorway remained open, but barely.

  The goatman strolled through the aperture. His pet followed him through the breach.

  Akko Soggathoth gazed around the room and locked eyes upon Theera, the vyrm he’d tasked with keeping the gate alive. He paid no attention to the vyrm corpse on the floor that had obviously been harvested to keep the door active.

  Terrified, Theera backpedaled when the tentacle animal began sniffing him. He didn’t know what to do except submit. As the auraphage fondled the vyrm with its facial appendages, Akko Soggathoth leaned in and whispered.

  “He likes you. You need not ever be afraid again—you served me well and so you will continue to serve, evermore… Theera.” He breathed on the terrified sentry who suddenly calmed—never more fearless and never as dedicated to a cause as before. “Theera the Undying,” Akko Soggathoth whispered into his ear.

  The congealed blood on the gateway finished drying and the door clicked shut with a subtle rumble. Eldritch locks held it fast.

  Theera stood straight and postured himself at his master’s service. He bowed, altogether changed.

  The abyssal tentacle creature suddenly stopped and looked up as if it sensed some other, more interesting thing approaching. Akko Soggathoth turned his gaze as well; in a blur of stygian mist, he transformed into the handsome visage of his human acolyte.

  Footsteps clacked in the nearby hall. Charobv, Kreephast, and a large human descended the stair. Their voices reverberated and announced their presence as they approached; the human insisted how eager he was to see the fabled door.

  Charobv and Kreephast merely stared at the beast’s human form. Sisyphus looked back and forth from the door to the man, equally impressed with both.

  "You are the Herald?" Sisyphus beamed with glee as the wizard identified him.

  Akko Soggathoth nodded with slow deliberation. “I sense power in you—both learned and… innate.” His eyes fixed on the jacket pockets of the large man.

  Sisyphus withdrew a medical bag from his pocket. It appeared dull and ruddy in the low light of the interior chamber, but it was obviously a device used to hold the blood of his Prime doppelganger. “You are correct,” he grinned and brandished his false vampiric tooth implants which were a holdover gimmick from his wrestling days.

  The shapeshifter immediately understood that the human thaumaturge siphoned power off of his own variant from the Prime. Akko Soggathoth grinned mischievously at the thought.

  “Where are Caivev and the others?” Charobv asked.

  Akko Soggathoth shrugged. “They are lost in the Darque and the way is shut. Perhaps we will see them again yet before the Awakening of Sh’logath.”

  Charobv and Kreephast looked towards each other apprehensively. In her absence, they were instructed to carry out her detailed plans. She'd given them her wishes in the time-locked chamber to keep them private—fearing that the demon might not remain entirely trustworthy.

  “Will she return,” Kreephast asked directly, “or must we make other arrangements?”

  Akko Soggathoth shrugged again. “We shall see.” He eyed Jacob Sisyphus with optimistic scrutiny. “Do you know the signs required to open the hidden doors?”

  Sisyphus smiled confidently. He perfectly performed the series of hand gestures required. “Now if you’d have marked that door with fresh reagents it would have unlocked.”

  “Excellent,” Akko Soggathoth stated. “You will accompany us to retrieve my final brother,” he hissed. “Theera—is Akko Nuggezeth returned?”

  Theera bowed. “Yes. He returned with Idrakka some time ago and was returned to the codex.”

  He carefully handed his servant his half of the book of names and tossed the colorful oven mitt aside. “Excellent. Carry this—we must go and retrieve the other half before someone meddles with the astral plane.”

  Again Theera bowed and then led the way.

  Sisyphus asked, “And then to Romania?”

  Akko Soggathoth looked at the cultist with dead, hollow eyes. He flashed a mischievous grin that did not align with those hard, dead eyes and then nodded.

  ***

  Zabe carried Claire through the widening spiral of jagged, glassine edges. She’d only gotten worse since warping back from the forsaken version of the Prime. His normally strong and resilient fiancée trembled with frailty.

  She opened her eyes and gasped a ragged breath. He saw Bithia in her pupils, trying to keep the dual-mind stitched together.

  “Where are we going?” she asked weakly.

  “I don’t know—I just know I’ve got to get us out of here!”

  She reached up and stroked the fur of his face. “I’m falling.” Her voice trailed off as if she lost consciousness and her pupils dilated until the blackness overtook the entire eye as if some foreign invader finally succeeded in hollowing her out.

  Zabe shut her eyelids and finally burst out of the winding spiral. A flash of light zapped behind them—at the portal.

  “Zabe! Stop,” a voice yelled.

  He crooked his head back and spotted Tahnak. The man waved as he hollered, holding a book in his hands—the journal.

  Zabe didn’t respond—he thought it too risky to stop for a man whose mind might’ve been overtaken by the will of the Devourer. Claire was too important to him to risk her further harm, even if that meant leaving behind one of his soldiers his highest duty was due to the crown.

  The long, jagged line of broken reality flashed amaranthine and Tahnak suddenly stood next to them. His grizzled face and torn up clothes seemed to have aged far longer than the fifteen minutes or so that it must’ve been since parting.

  “Zabe! Claire!” he exclaimed with relief. “How long has it been? It must’ve been ages. I’m so glad I found you so soon.”

  Zabe crouched low so that he could set Claire down gently and respond to any attack should Tahnak’s disposition suddenly change again. “How did you do that?” Zabe demanded. “How did you get over here?”

  Tahnak held up his hands. He grasped the old journal in his fist. One of the darquematter trinkets hung from his neck on a leather thong.

  “Less than half an hour ago you ran off, struck by madness.”

  Tahnak tilted his head in confusion. "I remember that. It happened years ago. I don't think this place affects us all the same, but I think I know a way out."

  Zabe cocked his snout towards Claire, “She is not alright,” he said, not taking his eyes off of Tahnak. “We’ve got to get her out of here, now. You’ve only got a few seconds to tell me why I should listen to you.”

  “I remember roaming the burning hills for years as my mind slowly came back to me—like I said—time must’ve been different for me. The madness, dark voices with
no discernible language, they consumed me for so long that I began to make sense of them. Once I’d finally regained my mind I hurried back to the gate. On my way I found this journal and this,” he fidgeted with the necklace.

  “The journal is gibberish.”

  Tahnak agreed. “But somehow, those voices that plagued me taught me the language. This book talks about how those with ties to the Darque can travel the cracks like energy conduits, or rivers. A note in the margin suggested a shard of darquematter could create that bond.”

  Zabe stared at him for a long moment, weighing the options. He looked into Tahnak’s eyes and judged him quite lucid—plus he’d already seen the man translated through the crack once already.

  He took out the two shards from his pocket and put one into Claire’s grasp, just in case it was somehow different than the pendant that she always wore. The trio walked over to the craggy seam through reality, reached out, and grabbed ahold.

  With a burst of ozone and a flash of energy, they disappeared.

  Chapter 17

  Caivev ran ahead of the pack of Black vyrm and even her Tarkhūn general. Her rage sustained her as she pulled away from the group. Skrom finally called out to her.

  The large, muscled reptilian hunched over as if he might puke. Even he needed a break.

  “How long have we been traveling?” she demanded.

  Skrom shrugged through his labored breaths. “Hours… days? Maybe years—I don’t know. Time doesn’t feel real here… especially after that last pulse wave washed over us.”

  The leader offered a tight-lipped smile: neither a frown nor a pleased gesture. Caivev felt deep down that she knew what those pulses were—the heartbeat of Sh’logath—waves of terror and madness birthed by the coming annihilation.

  “We’re never going to make it,” she spat at a derelict vehicle nearby. It had long ago succumbed to age and atrophy; her vyrm had tried already to fix a few others, but the technology proved too foreign to be an expedient use of their time.