With stiff legs, a young man approached from down the hall, bypassing the two lanes of soldiers and corpsmen. Jenner walked with his head held high. A bright, red patch of skin was held together by staples; the inflamed area spread to the neck exposed around his collarbone. “Permission to come along?”
“Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?” Wulftone barked.
“It didn’t take. Please, let me come.”
“You were just impaled, days ago.”
“The doc says it missed everything vital—lucky me. I’ll hold together… but I’ve got a bone to pick with the vyrm. They skewered me and killed my friends.”
Respan handed the young corpsman a scanning device as Wulftone nodded. “As long as you don’t fall apart on me, soldier.”
He turned back to the troops and gazed at them for one more second. Finally, he saluted. Wulftone, still in his human form turned around and rushed through the mystic glass and translated beyond the Prime.
A split second later he shook off the rushing pain that shocked his system with a kind of cold, electric energy. Warm light poured onto his face through the open door.
The tiny room's walls threatened to squish him as Jackie suddenly burst into existence with a crackle of power. He stepped backward through the door, still looking at the old stonework which boasted holy scrawling, text etched upon every brick.
Jackie accompanied him as Shandra and then Chira planeswalked to Earth. “It’s a monastic prayer room,” she recognized as she joined Wulftone on the steps outside to make room.
They descended the short stair from the cell. It rested upon a dais at the center of the inner cloister. A trio of very bewildered monks watched their approach; the youngest of them ran off to retrieve their elder.
One of the others asked them a question and Jackie cocked her head.
“You understand them?” Wulftone asked.
“Some,” she said. “I speak a little Italian, and many of the words are the same as Romanian.” She hedged a little, “But honestly, even my Italian is pretty bad.”
“What is he saying?” Wulftone asked as a few others approached them down the stairs.
She scrunched up her face as she tried to parse the words. “Something about a prophecy and us coming from the sacred prayer room to defeat a great evil.”
“Well tell them yes!” he said.
An old, wizened monk approached with cautious steps, unsure of the weight placed upon each footing. The younger monk held his master’s arm for support. The aged leader’s eyes belied the rest of his condition and remained bright and vibrant with the light of life.
In all the excitement, he began speaking as he approached. Jackie struggled to keep up with his flurry of words.
“He says something about a growing evil in the black woods.” They all caught the annunciation of the Hoia Baciu.
Even though Jackie was the only one who could converse with the headmaster, they could each sense the disappointment in his voice. “He says the evil is very great—large—and wants to know if this is all the soldiers we brought.”
Jackie shook her head and smiled as a few more soldiers finally descended the steps. “No.”
The old man grinned. “Nu,” he restated with a thick accent and smiled as the soldiers kept coming.
***
“You didn’t think I’d miss such an important trip, did you?” Percival Wainsmith asked his wife, Theresa, as they left the cathedral. “It was one of Holly’s favorite places and there was no way I was going to let you light a candle in her honor all by yourself.”
Theresa leaned against her husband. “I’m just so amazed that you got here so quickly. I was sure you would miss it. I’m sorry for what I said when you told me you had business to conduct—I was just so sure that you wouldn’t make it.”
Percival kissed her forehead and opened the car door for her. “Forget that. And of course, this was important. But all is forgotten—we are both grieving, after all.”
He joined her in the back and signaled the driver. Theresa’s fingers intertwined with Percival’s and she squinted away the grief in her eyes and sobbed only slightly.
Pouring her a chilled glass of wine, he handed it to her by the stem and then poured a scotch for himself.
“Whatever will we do without her?” Pain cracked her voice and she drank the red liquid in gulps before resting her head on her husband’s shoulder. She waved a finger over the glass and signaled for another.
“We will live our lives with a higher purpose,” he stated as he poured. “You’ve always been so compassionate and selfless,” Percival told her. “Surely you saw how much Holly was just like you in that regard.”
Theresa offered a sad, flat smile and acknowledged that fact. She took the refill and sipped it—still draining it quickly. “But what kind of mission and purpose? We’ve been so involved in charity work for so long it seems we have done it all…”
"There is more we can do," Percival said—perhaps speaking more transparently with his wife than he ever had before. Her eyes widened as she recognized his newfound sense of vulnerability. Some renewed purpose had finally found him. "We can do more than give money to fund organizations!"
“Like… actual volunteerism? Working with lepers or feeding children in India? There are so many good church works we could partner with.” She knocked back the rest of her glass and her words began to slur.
He drained the expensive glass of scotch. “So much more,” Percival said with a smile. “But the church is not the only one with a grand mission and purpose.”
“Like what?” She fluttered her eyes groggily and laid her head back on Percival’s shoulders—heavy with sleep.
Percival patted her hair and set the errant glass aside, replacing it near the drugged bottle of wine. “I will show you.” He said as their car went around a turn and left the city. “I will show you everything.”
Chapter 18
Claire hunched over and shuddered as the core emanated a powerful, astral aura. The disembodied creatures poured their energy into the sickly crystalline root at the heart of the Darque and attacked her through her psychic senses.
“How do we get out of here?” Zabe asked, worried that this fallen realm took far too great a toll on his beloved.
“I don’t know,” Claire stammered breathlessly. “But I’m certain that it must be through here.” She cried out again and groaned as the crack glowed. It looked more like a jagged, spewed igneous formation—or a carving of some microscopic organism blown up on a giant scale.
The black spires surrounding the malfeasant dimensional gate crackled with mystic energy as the core powered up. Zabe howled, fed up with the psychic attacks he had no power over, and swung the Stone Glaive. It severed the reality crack, shattering it into millions of glassine pieces which rained to the ground. The shards were obviously made up of the same stuff as the darquematter they’d seen before.
Shrieking with defiance, the central helix thrummed with anger. A host of the ethereal spirit beings swarmed Zabe, gnashing and slashing at their attacker; their attacks did nothing but blind his vision as they dove through his head and chest trying to assault him on the psychic plane—he was somehow immune to their touch, either by his nature or the fact that he held the weapon of the Architect King. Zabe didn’t care whichever the case might have been; he slashed through the cloud with the blade and the things burst into pieces, bleeding vapor that might have been their insides.
The horde of enemies rushed towards the glowing obelisks and melted inside of them. Seconds later they whined with a shrill tone and then a burst of power exploded out from the black towers—the same kind of pulses they’d experienced before.
Claire cried out and fell to her knees as the wave slammed through her—tearing through her psychic self and flipping astral switches that few could’ve ever known about. Zabe bent over and vomited, gripped by intense nausea. Tahnak stared into the distant sky as if he’d been turned into a vegetab
le.
Standing on her feet again, she pushed her shoulders back with a more regal stance. "What… where am I. How in the name of my Father did I get here?"
Zabe wiped his chin and stared at her wild-eyed. He recognized Bithia immediately—something deeply wrong had happened to Claire. He could only stare at her for a long moment, not knowing what to say or do.
“Tahnak?” Bithia asked for an outside opinion.
Tahnak’s head snapped to the side and he caught her in his empty, feral gaze. Frothy saliva spilled from the edges of his mouth and he snarled before hissing one word in the wake of the eldritch wave. “Sh’logath.”
Completely emptied of his humanity, he shrieked with murderous rage and sprinted with uncanny speed. Tahnak leapt for Bithia, baring his teeth like an animal.
***
Akko Soggathoth, in his human form, approached Idrakka and Sisyphus. His shapeshifted Rottweiler trotted happily at his side. "Restrain me," he stated.
The men responded with confused looks.
“I’m about to temporarily abandon this form,” he said. “Don’t let my prisoner escape. I’ve grown comfortable in him.”
Idrakka looked at the demon with suspicion. “Where are you going.” He looked about the well-known forest circle where nothing grew but choked, ragged weeds. The vyrm looked for any threats to their well-being.
“I’ve grown more powerful every moment I’ve walked this plane and I can feel a growing presence that threatens our power. Forces of the Architect King are mustering nearby. I am finally strong enough to hex their entry point and block them—if I don’t deal with them soon, they might arrive before the sacrifice and with overwhelming numbers.”
Idrakka still looked at him distrustfully, but Sisyphus nodded. The former pro wrestler grappled the smaller man in a chokehold, ready to lock it in as soon as the human began to struggle.
The avatar's eyes rolled back into his head and he wheezed with a death rattle. From the corner of their eyes, they caught a glimpse of the vile spirit departing—like a cloud of volcanic ash escaping on super-heated eddies.
Barely visible, the roiling black bubble of inky, tentacle mist shot away through the shadows of the haunted Hoia Baciu forest.
Jolting suddenly awake and lucid, the restrained man screamed. “I am Quintin Hall! I am Quintin Hall, please, somebody help me before it takes my mind again!” He sobbed uncontrollably and begged them for help.
Idrakka looked on while Sisyphus sneered and flexed his powerful grip, squeezing the breath out of the man. After a few short moments, Quintin relaxed and stopped struggling while the Heptobscurantum's wizard switched between relaxing and tensing the chokehold to keep their guest conscious but compliant.
The desolate ring in the south-west section of the forest remained quiet. Members of both the Heptobscurantum and The Black milled about, waiting for the return of Percival Wainsmith and Theera, the goatman's slave. No insects chirped; the wind did not rustle the leaves. Every sense, natural and otherwise, reeked of death and horror as they guarded a hierophanticus they'd placed at the center: a carved figurine in the form of a goat with four horns and covered in eyes.
Idrakka cocked his head. “I hear someone coming.” A moment later the rest heard it too: the approach of an off-road vehicle.
Percival Wainsmith and Theera sat in the UTV as they transported the cultist’s wife who remained unconscious. They drove cautiously so as not to damage the sacrifice.
The abyssal auraphage, still looking like a large dog, lifted its snout and eagerly watched their approach. Sisyphus chuckled and his hostage stared with bewildered, panicked eyes. “Things are about to get real interesting.”
***
Tay-lore stood watch from the center of the room in the Hall of Mirrors. The high-strung android’s circuits burned with worry; if he’d had a stomach, he felt certain he’d have an ulcer by now.
Soldiers of the Royal Military and members of the Guardian Corps still lined the corridor, ready to make the journey. The last of the Veritas that accompanied them had just finished planeswalking.
“Hey, um, Mister Tay-lore,” a soldier called.
The android turned to face him. “Just Tay-lore. What is it?”
Putting his hand on the mirror he said, “It won’t let me through. The glass is solid.”
Tay-lore scanned the activation points on the eldritch device’s frame—the places that had to be touched with blood to power the artifact. They seemed fine.
“Yow—ouch!” the soldier said as he yanked his hand away from the glass. “It’s hot!”
Suddenly the mirror burst into black flames that flickered with supernatural power. The mirror warped and then began to melt as the arcane fire jumped to the other twenty-nine mirrors. Each one melted into a puddle of warped slag before their eyes.
The automaton stepped into the chamber a few minutes later. Nothing else had been damaged by the fire; no smoke damage or charring touched the room, but the Hall of Mirrors had been reduced to an empty room with no power or purpose.
Tay-lore suddenly wished he could turn off the emotion subroutines in his programming. His internal systems suddenly experienced a very real sense of panic—the soldiers on Earth were on their own and the central gate could not be properly aligned to open a portal anywhere near the Hoia Baciu forest for quite some time.
He turned and fled from the room. Tay-lore had to find Shjikara immediately. With no military commanders and no royalty, only the head of the Veritas would know how to proceed.
***
Jackie stood with Wulftone and Chira as Shandra approached with Sam Jones and her contingent of clerics. Jenner and Gita descended the steps and waited. They’d come in teams and groups of individuals, just in case they met opposition immediately, as they had in Antarctica.
The two corpsmen waited for the next group of people to exit the old cell, but none came. “I don’t get it,” Jenner said as Gita shot her friends a worried look. “They were right behind us.”
Leaning heavily on the young monk at his side, the monastery leader asked Jackie again if this was all she brought. Jackie shot him a worried look which required no translation.
After another five minutes of silence from the portal, Wulftone, Chira, and Shandra called their respective subordinates over to form up. "Something is amiss. Whatever it is, we'll have to trust that Tay-lore can handle it in our absence." He fired a disappointed look at Sam who he'd asked to stay back in the Prime to keep an eye on things. Sam refused to be apart from Shandra again—even though her combat training far exceeded his. "It looks like this is all of us." He mentally calculated their number at about sixty—barely a fifth of what he'd intended to muster before sending that first wave into the woods and then reinforce them with a second wave.
Wulftone scowled. The Royal family used to keep cells of soldiers on the different planes that they could call on for help in times of need—but that practice ended during the Syzygyc war. He pushed the regret from his mind and focused on the mission. It wouldn't have mattered anyway; Earth had always been off-limits and never boasted an emergency reserve of secret soldiers.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the old man interrupted him with his raspy, aged baritone. With outspread arms and closed eyes, he pronounced a blessing over the planeswalking invaders.
When he finally ended his prayer, the soldiers echoed his “amin” in chorus unison.
Wulftone stood and faced the forest. A looming cloud of supernatural darkness had gathered over top of the trees. He made a show of setting the coordinates on his wrist monitor. The troops of the three factions followed suit.
He yelled a simple charge. “We must not let the beast free Akko Sxkakzacros. You know what to do. Roll out!”
Under the watchful gaze of the monastery, the sixty outlanders rushed into the forest as darkness fell at midday.
***
From the black heart of the evil forest, Akko Soggathoth felt the s
eeds of old curses: ancient, eldritch ties to the Darque—a foundation of hexes and incantations laid down over generations by wicked arcanists. The demigod sent his will through the micro-fractures in the Tesseract and beyond, calling to the wraiths that lived in the fallen realm he once called home.
Summoning any and all incorporeal creatures capable of answering his appeal, the herald drew them into the darkness that blanketed the woods. They leaked through the leylines and into whatever vessels would take them: gnarled trees, malignant shadows, and corpses abandoned by time.
Akko Soggathoth squealed with delight. His laughter reverberated through the trees as he watched his plans unfold. As his crowing mirth caught his own ear, the demon’s thoughts turned inward. How he would miss the games once Sh’logath finally arrived.
A scream pierced the air and filled his heart with perverse glee. It would all prove worth it once the master arrived—he hoped.
***
Jackie dashed through the woods and ducked behind the strange, S-curved trunks of the trees the Hoia Baciu was known for. She poked around the corner and fired a burst of rounds into the chest of a vyrm warrior.
Pulling back behind her cover she spotted Wulftone tearing through a group of enemies in his lycan form. He dashed the enemies into submission with a growl and then went to all four, charging into a team of flanking vyrm.
Gita dashed to her tree and skidded to her knees opposite of her friend. She snapped off a few rounds of her own and dropped a pair of human cultists harassing her from thirty meters away.
In the distance, Wulftone’s voice rose above the din. “We’ve got to break through and get to the circle!”
Jackie nodded to her friend, thanking her for the assist. Pockets of dirt erupted around them and fragments of the tree they hunkered behind blasted away under the force of the line of enemy blasters hidden in the trees. Suddenly, the cultist’s assault stopped and they retreated.
The trees around them groaned and howled as some kind of haunted ethereal monster stepped out from it. Jackie heard her companions panic behind her. Soldiers of the Prime and fellow Corpsmen opened fire on the spirit creatures.
Wolves of the Tesseract Collection Page 48
