Wolves of the Tesseract Collection

by Christopher D Schmitz

  Zabe grimaced. “They don’t need to stop us—just slow us down enough to unleash Sh’logath.”

  ***

  Theera walked into the circle, drawing the eyes of all six of the horrendous creatures, and retrieved the blank book from atop the golden box where it had rested. He returned to his station near the doorway at the temple’s apex and waited.

  Sisyphus watched him the whole way. His eyes narrowed to accusatory slits. “Why did you do that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why did you take the book?”

  “The master willed it,” Theera spat, as if the question was beneath him.

  Caivev cocked her ear towards the conversation, suddenly curious at such a simple thing. “Answer him.”

  “I only know what I know—that the master wanted me to hold his book.”

  “I am your master,” Caivev glared at him. “You are a Blackborne vyrm.”

  “I was a vyrm of the Black. But now I am more. I belong to Akko Soggathoth.” He spoke matter of factly and with no fear.

  “Why do you hold the useless book?” Sisyphus stretched tall and put a growl into his voice—but intimidation was useless against the undying minion. “Why would he need that? Protecting the book is irrelevant once the Devourer is unleashed.”

  Theera bared his teeth. “You know nothing of the ceremony, human. My master is in charge here, not you, and if he wants a sacred ark dedicated to Mae’le-ggath, then he shall have it! If he wants me to hold his book, then I will.” He hugged the tome to his chest. “You may speak about it once you know the rituals and the old ways, preserved by the Followers of Krakkath.”

  Sisyphus traded skeptical looks with Caivev but kept his mouth shut. He wasn't aware of many specific ordinances or rites to be performed by the Brothers of the Winnowing. The wizard only knew that some of the lore survived through time and were considered holy by the modern vyrm rovers who called themselves the Followers of Krakkath. Their major pieces came from the collected scribblings of Rasthakka.

  In a huff, Jacob Sisyphus stepped back slightly and turned a cold shoulder to the indignant minion. He pulled out his smartphone and began scrolling. He didn't get any signal in the Darque but possessed scans of all the known works of Rasthakka, complete with translations courtesy of his occult contacts.

  He scowled at Theera's backside. He couldn't quite place it, but something didn't feel right… and he knew that, given a few minutes, he would be able to understand why.

  Chapter 24

  “Psst!” a familiar voice called out. Shandra waved at Zabe and Bithia from around a stack of clay-mired pallets.

  Zabe caught up to Bithia where she stood among the three drooling vegetables. He grabbed her hand. “Wait. How do we know it’s her? It could be a trap.”

  Shandra cocked her head. “I ran ahead to try and sneak in the back.”

  Zabe ignored anything she said and focused on the princess. He sniffed the air with his lycan nose but had never thought to memorize her scent. The lycan kept his voice down. "Can you sense her… I mean, psychically?”

  Bithia shook her head and whispered, “I barely have any energy left right now—I can’t tell—it might be a standard Veritas psychic shield—or something else entirely. I may have overdone it with these three, after all. I need a few minutes to regather my strength.”

  "Who else could hide from you—another psychic… Akko Soggathoth?”

  Bithia bit her lip anxiously.

  "Then we've got to do it the old-fashioned way," Zabe whispered as Shandra slinked closer to them, retaining the group's cover from any enemies on the perimeter.

  “Prove who you are. Tell me something that only you and I would know,” Bithia said.

  They were close enough to talk openly now and Shandra walked forward normally, though with measured steps. “I know that you wouldn’t approve of me replacing your mother—and I would never try, but you and I both know how your father looks at me… that might be a conversation we need to have, soon. You know, if we survive today.”

  Bithia sifted through Claire’s memories. She’d been training with Pollando and had grown in her abilities, but Claire hadn’t always shared everything with Bithia—she’d grown increasingly guarded of her time, especially intimate moments, and keeping the other half of her psyche in the dark. Any of Claire’s memories involving close family, her love life, or personal insecurities felt like looking in a mirror with the lights off: it was there, but difficult to see.

  “I… I can see that is very likely,” she said haltingly as she crawled through Claire’s now unguarded thoughts. Bithia marked a few to come back to later… Claire secretly wondered if Bithia might ever vie with her for control of their joint person—she was scared of maintaining such a struggle to retain herself if that ever came to pass. It’s the main reason why she’d begun training with Pollando in the first place.

  Shandra kept her voice low. “You have to know I would never do that—take your mother’s place. And I would never hurt your father.” Her face twisted with rage, “But I would!” Shandra’s shape morphed into one identical to the Princess’s and she leapt for her, tackling Bithia.

  Zabe snatched his blaster and leveled it at the girls, but they’d already rolled across the ground with such violence and fury that he didn’t know which was which. Every detail was identical, right down to the clothing.

  They traded blows, growling with feminine fury, baring tooth and claw with primal rage. Crashing through a survey tent, the girls nearly brought the whole thing down as they tumbled through, busting through the support poles.

  Zabe stretched out his lycan senses, but the two even smelled the same. It had to be a talented shade too so fully complete the disguise.

  The girls held each other firmly in a grapple, snarling. They each looked at Zabe, begging him for help in subduing the other.

  “You’re good,” he muttered, catching a glimpse of the tiny mark behind the copy’s ear, “but not good enough!” He snapped his pistol to aim for her, but the shade rolled to the ground with Bithia atop of her as a human shield.

  The shade roared and touched Bithia’s neck and she screamed as they rolled across the ground again confusing the two. Each rolled to their haunches in a fighting stance, facing off against each other.

  At the same time, they looked to Zabe, touching their necks. Each bore the mark, now. "It must be some kind of magic!" Their voices and mannerisms had synced completely and they spoke in chorus. The girls stared each other down as Zabe shifted his aim from one to the other.

  “My psionic senses are returning,” they said. “It’s Akko Soggathoth!”

  Suddenly, they both went mute, even though their lips still moved. They each looked at him, beckoning with their eyes—more dark magic, some kind of silent bubble! Bithia also lost her voice.

  ***

  Jenner stood in Respan’s lab and rubbed the soreness from his shoulder. The scientist puttered away in the background, still tinkering and trying and reverse the statue’s stone-form state. The work undoubtedly kept his mind off the fact that all reality might meet a Sh’logathian fate at any second.

  The young soldier stared at the petrified body of General Zahaben. Anger boiled in his belly: the feeling of inadequacy, the desire to fight and overcome his enemies, sorrow for accidentally shooting Gita, resentment for his overall lot in life.

  He wished he’d had even this much of his father left. Jenner’s mother and siblings were in the ground and his father was somewhere unknown; the young soldier promised himself he’d continue believing his father still lived, but each passing day passed chiseled that hope away.

  Jenner stared at Zahaben’s living monument. He memorized every detail of his face. Every ripple of the great commander’s clothing. His heart similarly hardened as he watched the frozen figure.

  Seconds, minutes, hours ticked by as the young man stared outward and inward. He scowled at the pus leaking down his chest. T
he world had made enemies of him by taking away something important—and this stupid wound had cost him his ability for revenge!

  What if that big man—Earth’s version of my father who is not my father—is there? I’m missing my chance to beat him and recover my father.

  His face darkened and the rage in his heart took root like a seed. Jenner was convinced the world would forget Professor Jarfig and pledged to become as great of a warrior as Jarfig had been an intellect. He vowed to do whatever it took to bring him justice.

  Someone will pay, someday. I will either find my family or I will have revenge… better yet to have both!

  ***

  “Where did you get that?” Caivev asked Sisyphus as he scrolled down the pages and pages of scans overlaid with text translations.

  “Vikrum Whiltshire,” he mumbled absentmindedly as he read. “Well… indirectly. He could use a stronger password on his computer.”

  Akko Soggathoth’s avatar struggled against Skrom’s grip. He tried to turn his head as if he heard a familiar name.

  “An earth man who’s been playing at a game he knows nothing of.” Sisyphus looked up from the screen and meandered slowly around the carved circle, glancing from screen to floor and back again. Caivev followed him nonchalantly.

  "I understand enough to translate those writings," he smirked and pointed to the alien etchings written on the floor in the thick, straight lines of the seven-pointed star.

  The man in Skrom’s grip squirmed and writhed. Squeezing him tighter, the behemoth tarkhūn settled him down, but his impatience grated against his nerves. Skrom scowled at Theera. “What is taking your master so long, worm?” He rattled off a bunch of curse words in the high-speech vyrm dialect. Theera ignored him.

  “This mirrors what it says on one of the Tablets of Rasthakka,” Sisyphus stated. He scrolled to a new image of a carbon rubbing. Key phrases repeated, allowing them to make sense of the floor’s text. “Through the deaths of the demigods, their progenitor will rise, rebirthed in Darque, snuffing the light of life, unmaking creation.”

  The five goat-like heads turned to stare at Sisyphus as he read the English translation. Unnerved, he angled his shoulders away from them. He followed his notes and tracked a finger across the rubbing before summarizing the text.

  “Each of the Brothers of the Winnowing must sacrifice themselves. Through the surrendering of their flesh, the portal will open and Sh'logath will be released to devour. In his consumption, all reality will be unmade. These… beasts… are creatures of pure void."

  Akko Sxkakzacros grimaced at Caivev and Sisyphus. “You are being played, mortals. Tricked by the deceiver.”

  Sisyphus turned to Theera. “Why does Akko Soggathoth need a book—why won’t he just finish this?”

  Theera sneered and refused to look at the man.

  Sisyphus snarled a string of profanity and then yanked a chrome plated 1911 from his waistband. "I've had enough of your smug attitude!" He snapped off a trio of forty-five caliber rounds that slammed into the vyrm's chest, spraying blood and effluence across the temple floor. The gunshots echoed across the parched landscape of the Darque and distant thunder grumbled in response.

  Everyone stared at the spectacle. The Brothers watched as if it entertained.

  Theera lay sprawled out on his back. The blank tome he held in trust laid near his feet. A moment later Theera gasped and jolted back to life. He cackled with glee. “Fools! My master has made me undying!”

  Akko Soggathoth’s minion stood and dusted himself off. He bent to retrieve the book when Sisyphus shoved him back.

  “You don’t know what you’re meddling with, human,” Theera hissed. “You cannot kill me.”

  The former pro wrestler punched Theera in the scaly snout and rocked him backward. "Well, I'll enjoy all the trying, then. I'll show you what power I do wield!” He grabbed his hooked, patinaed sword by its darquematter hilt and telekinetically lifted the insolent minion. With a roar, he smashed Theera into the ground over and over with his unseen hand before dropping him back down to the stone.

  Theera staggered to his feet on grinding, broken bones, barely conscious. He opened his mouth to speak, but Sisyphus had already made his hand motions and muttered a string of words to complete his incantation.

  Sisyphus blasted Theera with a jolt of eldritch fire like a laser cannon. He funneled his rage and pride into it, pouring on the fire and melting his enemy’s skin. Chunks of flesh blasted away from blackened, slagged bone. Finally, the burst blew Theera clear of the pyramid’s ledge where and he tumbled into the darkened distance, barely more than a ragged piece of scorched meat.

  “Was that entirely necessary?” Caivev asked as Sisyphus hunched over with a touch of fatigue. “What if we needed your magic energies for something else?”

  Sisyphus winked and pulled a vial from his pocket. The lines of chemical coolant glowed faintly, making the container look like a chemical glow stick. He broke the top off and drained the ampoule of Jarfig’s blood into his mouth. “I’ve got that covered,” he smirked as he stole the energies from the Prime version of himself that he’d held as a hostage for years. “I don’t make the same mistakes over and over again.” He rubbed the long scar on his neck from where he’d lost a fight against Nitthogr several years ago when his power ran dry. “I always keep spares.”

  ***

  Zabe kept his pistol trained on the two women as the rolled through a grapple, beating on each other at every opportunity. They both looked at him and silently shouted for him to shoot the other one.

  They struggled against each other's arms and hands, each locking hands around the other's throats to choke out their opponent like some twisted kind of mirror. The girl on the bottom looked pleadingly into Zabe's eyes and dropped one hand to her attacker's chest.

  Zabe realized she was holding onto her enemy’s pendant. That gift from her father had been made out of darquematter and Akko Soggathoth could not touch it—it had to be fake! He snapped his barrel to attention and fired a jolt of burning energy through the imposter’s cranium.

  Bithia coughed and gasped for air as she regained her voice. The dead shade toppled limply to the ground. Black ether rose from the corpse and seemed to evaporate as their true enemy escaped.

  “Come on,” Zabe hauled her to her feet. “We’ve got to hurry even more, now—they know we’re coming.” He slung her across his back and she wrapped her fists in his fur for a grip, sandwiching the Stone Glaive between them. “Hang on!”

  He surged forward on all fours and shot up the hidden stairway in a matter of seconds. The climb barely winded him.

  Cresting the peak, they slowed at the top, deferring to the side of stealth. After a moment of searching, they spotted a discolored panel where the builders had mortared a veneer over the access hatch.

  Zabe shrank into his human figure. The two intruders crawled across the roofline and kicked in the hidden entry. They glanced down the slope, finding their army advancing down the trail; brilliant flashes of color lit up the jagged seam which cut through the greenery as the trail meandered. The army advanced at a better pace than expected—but still slower than needed to stop the Awakening.

  “I’ll go first.” Zabe cleared away the broken debris and laid his immense weapon down upon the lip of the steep slide.

  “That doesn’t look safe,” Bithia groaned as Zabe sat on the broad like a deadly, narrow toboggan.

  He winked at her. “Good thing I heal fast.”

  She kissed him. “Just don’t get killed before you have the chance.”

  Zabe kissed her back. “Don’t worry about it—you just worry about your own ride down.” He grinned at her and then launched himself into the dark and narrow chimney like a luge rider. The grating sounds echoed into the distance as screeching stone on stone noise faded away.

  Bithia steeled herself and then slid in after him, albeit at a slower pace than Zabe. She popped out and landed on her rump in the big room
.

  A number of vyrm wore surprised looks that had been preserved in stone. Zabe, again in his lycan form, had neatly dispatched the lot of them; his newly earned wounds healed before her eyes, though he winced slightly to her touch.

  He sheathed the ancient weapon and pointed the way. A massive set of double doors towered before them and opened to an identical looking room which radiated an ill kind of light. The air made their skin crawl and they knew they were in the Darque.

  “Koth,” Bithia whispered, wondering aloud, “Those shards of darquematter in your pouch are supposed to stop them—but how can they banish them back to the Darque dimension if we’re already in the Darque?” Bithia fixed her eyes on her champion. “Will they have any effect here—can we stop the Awakening?”

  Zabe did his best to flash a confident grin. “I guess if they don’t work, then it’s back to my original plan.”

  “Use your ‘really big sword?’”

  “That’s the one.” He sighed, bit his lip, and then pressed on until they arrived at a central narthex. A few corridors split off, one terminated in an opening that allowed them to see the sky outside.

  “Shall we take the direct route and not risk getting lost in the tunnels?”

  Zabe nodded and they hurried for the door.

  ***

  Jackie snapped a few rounds off and into the trees knocking the vyrm snipers out of the branches. A bomb exploded on their left and exposed their flank to a shrieking band of blade-wielding zealots. The vyrm madmen burst out of the foliage on a suicide mission.

  Metallic packages strapped to their backs looped around their bodies with gnarled conduit. Mechanical, sharp edges cut through their scaled flesh but they paid their burdens no mind as they focused on their singular purpose.

  With eyes narrowed to pinpricks they charged into the fray, hacking at soldiers and clerics with jagged cleavers. They shrugged off bullets and blasters with a snarl of drug-fueled rage that promised to burn the Sh’logathian zealots out from the inside.

  One of them laughed maniacally and threw himself into a group of soldiers. He detonated his pack, erupting in a fireball that further collapsed the shield wall.