by D C Tullis
“Onward,” Khail reaffirmed.
From our new path, we descended down the hill and over the next, the smallest yet, with little to no cause for distress. With the canyon right ahead our spirits once again finally began to improve even beneath the torrent of rain falling from the sky.
✽✽✽
The entrance to the canyon was a sprawling gap with a gradual decline in elevation. As it fed off onto flat land, the path continued on for nearly a mile before leading up onto an elevated platform which held the gate. I couldn’t get a clear view from here, but it appeared to be an arch reaching about twelve feet in diameter with a spheric construction jutting out of the platform about ten feet in front of it. It looked like something out of some 80’s sci-fi classic.
Unfortunately for us, we did have one obstacle: the water. The rain had slowly built up around the canyon base and was now nearly half a foot deep all around. It was going to be one painful slog to reach that platform.
“Watch out for the sharks,” Ellie called to me as she began humming the X-Files theme and splashing me.
“Cut it out,” I laughed. “You’re awfully upbeat.”
“I’m just looking forward to getting home and grabbing some grub. I also like really hope we didn’t miss out on the George Romero marathon on T.V., J,” Ellie replied. “When we get out of here, you should come over to my place.”
“I’m totally down,” I replied. “Coffee’s on me.”
“Yesssss,” she declared enthusiastically.
“Okay, birds of love, focus on the gate,” Irithril added.
“Whaaaa…,” Ellie began before Irithril turned to her and winked.
We were now only about an eighth of a mile away from the gate. We were so close, yet so far. If fate happens to be an entity, something guiding us along and ultimately dictating how our life goes, it seemed that we’d raided its liquor cabinet, impregnated its daughter, and keyed its car because somehow we’d royally pissed it off. Moments away from reaching the gate, Eldevui’s tablet began to beep loudly. The sound was a beautiful crossbreed between nails on a chalkboard and stepping on the tail of a cat that was toying around with auto-tune. Needless to say, it wasn’t a pleasant sound.
“Oh, blast it all!” Eldevui nearly screamed as he started sprinting the last fifty feet, nearly slipping and landing face first into the muddy water twice as he ran. “We are surrounded on all sides… we must make haste!”
“Wha.. how many?” Ellie shouted her question.
“Fourteen,” Eldevui called back as he finally reached the platform.
“Four-fucking-teen?” Ellie exclaimed, her positive excitement immediately drained. “A crazy death laboratory, alien spiders, and now the goddamn Eldritch again? Well hasn’t this just been a peaceful little adventure?”
“If death is what they want, then we shall give them a fight,” cut in Khail as we all made our way onto the platform. “Weapons ready! Eldevui, set up that blasted gate!”
Khail raised his hand, “Stand in a barrier formation!”
“What the hell is that?” Ellie asked frantically.
“Bodyshield the gate!” Khail replied with newfound vigor present in his eyes.
Eldevui reached the spheric device on the gate platform rapidly. It appeared to be constructed from some mineral that resembled marble. Fashioned into its face lay fifteen runes of varying colors jutting out of it. The exact moment Eldevui placed a hand on the sphere, a tiny neon-blue projected screen flickered into the air above it. From there, he began rapidly tapping the runes in specific orders. It appeared that each time he entered the correct sequence on the runes and then tapped a square on the projection, a rune around the gate would begin to glow. His expediency at doing this would be comforting except there seemed to be an awful lot of runes on the gate and an awful lot of creatures who wanted nothing more than for Thanksgiving dinner to come early.
In the brief moment that I was distracted by the gate, they appeared all around us. About two hundred feet away coming from three different directions, the beasts began to drop from rocks and crevices in the canyon walls. There seemed to be two classes of the lurking monstrosities. The light weight fast runners: bulging fish eyed horrors with thin wolf-like bodies nearing heights of six feet each and foaming, alligator-like mouths. They danced around in a frenzied manner, drawing attention and possibly gathering information. The heavy weight creatures were a garden variety of all sorts of large bipedal terrors. Creatures with countless eyes, exoskeletons, and slithering tentacles who though not visibly quick, certainly outnumbered us. As unnerving as these beasts were, they held nothing on the horrific demeanor of their leader.
“Not another one of you bastards,” Khail grumbled as he beheld the Eldritch group leader. It was a carbon copy of the humongous slug-like fiend from the laboratory, and it looked pissed.
“How is it coming, Eldevui?” Irithril asked him.
“I am working as quickly as I can, but the gate is only twenty percent activated,” Eldevui replied, the fear in his voice was no longer subtle.
“I really wish we had that big-ass railgun,” Ellie added.
“Me too, child, me too…,” Khail furthered. “Do not fire till they are within a range of a hundred feet. We are already low on ammo here, so do not waste it. ”
“Roger,” I announced trying my best to calm my nerves.
I’d barely spent any of my time firing a weapon and now I had to use it against a coordinated squad of bloodthirsty, suicidal alien maniacs. Oh boy…
“Now,” Khail shouted and we began the onslaught of gunfire.
That was when it went to shit. The leader simply vanished into thin air, and then the hodgepodge of Eldritch horrors began racing towards us. The scouts zipped by as they dodged bullets mid-air without ever missing a step, all while the other Eldritch leaped, swam, or merely charged towards us. It wasn’t completely one sided though, Ellie began taking the lead as she shot down one and then two. Irithril and Khail began pitching in too. I was still missing most of my shots, but when I finally landed a bullet right into the skull, or wherever the space between its fishy eyes led, of a scout I was ecstatic.
“Thirty-five percent,” Eldevui shouted from behind us as the gate began to emit a slow whirring sound.
“Keep up the suppressing fire! We just need to prevent them from reaching us up here. Keep your wits about you and do not forget to reload!”
“Fiends, the lot of you!” Enell wailed as one of the scouts managed to dart around his gunfire and close in just enough to scratch his right arm before he put a few rounds into its forehead. The wound on his arm didn’t appear all too deep at first glance, but within seconds it was clear from the look on his face that he was suffering.
“Keep firing,” Khail yelled to Enell. “We can not lose even one of our guns or they will have an opening!”
Left and right the beasts jumped and dived as they closed in on us at a rapid pace. The bloodthirsty snarls on their faces were nothing more than the byproduct of starving flesh puppets. I was certain I never wanted to come face to face with whatever controlled these fiends in a dark alley.
BOOM! Another smack of thunder rang out.
“Sixty percent,” Eldevui called from behind us. “I am setting it to randomize the location after the gate closes. We can not have these beasts coming in after us.”
“What about reconvening with the others?” Irithril called back to Eldevui.
“Have you lost your mind, Irithril? These creatures know where we are now. There is no way without gliders and with dwindling ammunition that we can make the journey all the way to Mt. Estellus. We are barely breathing now as it is!,” Eldevui shouted back before returning his gaze to the spheric console. “Sixty-five percent until gate activation!”
The remaining seven Eldritch were closing in at a rapid pace and every loss in their numbers seemed to increase their bloodlust and their ability to dodge our gunfire.
“Another down,” declared Irithril as bullets
whizzed through the body of a particularly gangly horror of what appeared to be aquatic origins. She reached into a side pouch and withdrew another magazine of ammunition.
“Likewise,” I announced as I was lucky enough to predict the sidestep of a stenchous Eldritch. Ooze began pouring from its sides and chest as it coated the ground below. “Wait… what no… I take that back,” I shouted as the beast miraculously raised itself from the watery ground where it had fallen. “Oh, come on. Just die already!” The second time was the charm as I launched a burst of rounds into its head and its whole body began to expand until it finally exploded, slathering its comrades with chunks of greasy alien meat. It was a definite stroke of good luck because at that moment my magazine clicked dry. I had only one more...
“We are at eighty percent,” Eldevui shouted almost breathless with excitement. “Come on now!”
The gate was now in full effect as a spinning seafoam green vortex was emerging within its previously hollow frame. It had yet to fill the entire area of the arch, but it was close to reaching there.
“Another one down,” Enell painfully yelped. It was clear that his cut was either deeper than it looked, or worse, it contained something... living.
“Four left,” Khail announced. “They are almost all dead!”
“Eighty-five percent,” Eldevui nearly screamed. “It is in autocompletion mode now. Give me something to fire!”
Ellie quickly tossed back her pistol towards him. Eldevui dived and caught it awkwardly right before it would have slid off the dripping ledge and into the flooded ground below. The rain was growing even fiercer at this point. You could nearly hear Thor beating against the skies viciously with his hammer Mjolnir. The lightning was nearly as violent as the rain as it pounded and pounded endlessly against the canyon walls.
“Ninety percent,” Eldevui announced as he aimed the pistol and let it charge to maximum percentage. “Here goes nothing!”
He blasted Ellie’s pistol towards a lingering scout in the back, however, it narrowly sidestepped and avoided the shot entirely. The ground however did not as a stream of water launched fifteen feet into the air. It was as if a grenade went off.
“Ninety-five perc...,” he began to shout before suddenly his voice cut halfway through.
Lightning struck as soon as I looked back and what I saw terrified me. A scout had managed to avoid our gunfire and was now holding Eldevui’s quivering body with his neck halfway lodged between its jaws.
“God-fucking-damnit,” I wailed as I placed two careful shots into the creature’s rot-ridden skull. It was dead in seconds, but so was Eldevui. His body fell limp as the beast relaxed Eldevui’s neck from its jaw.
“He’s dead,” Ellie screamed as soon as she turned.
Once again, that incestual cunt, fate, decided to whip out it’s dick and proverbially fuck us over. Within seconds of Ellie’s desperate scream, the leader of the pack reappeared. He had been cloaked in camo and was now a foot from Anairen’s turned head.
“Look out,” I yelled just a moment too late.
The sluggish horror made a clapping motion as it crushed her head beneath its monstrous hands. Bits of brain, blood, and bone spewed everywhere. It coated Enell’s petrified figure from head to toe. The leader unmasked an inhuman grin just as horrifying as when its comrade had torn off Khail’s arm.
Eldevui didn’t need to tell us that the gateway was fully activated as it emitted a loud ding and the swirling seafoam green vortex launched out a few feet before settling back into its now filled parameters.
“Run,” Ellie shouted as she began to sprint towards the portal at top speed.
“Enell,” I shouted to the stunned Fae, but he was too terrified to move. His sister’s headless corpse now lay convulsing next to him as her blood slowly streamed out onto the platform’s floor.
“ENELL!” Irithril shouted as she fired towards the beast, but was restrained by Khail mid-air as he pulled her writhing body towards the portal. Her bullets failed to cause damage anyway, as the creature simply lifted a hand and stopped them at impact.
I wanted to do something ever so badly, but before I even had a chance to fire at the beast it was over. Tears had begun streaming down from Enell’s unblinking eyes seconds before his head was swallowed by the leading Eldritch behemoth. I will never forget the sound it made. It was like a watermelon being crushed by a junkyard compressor.
“Run, you damned fool,” Khail called as he dived through the open gate after Ellie, pulling a screaming Irithril through the gate with him.
The slave master made direct gleaming eye contact with me as I watched it slowly swallow the head of my fallen comrade and lick its withered lips. I just couldn’t take it anymore and dived as fast as I could through that spinning vortex of safety.
✽✽✽
The fall was different than when I had been pulled through the mirror. My body was flung wildly around as I descended through the warping pull of indigo luminescence at a far quicker pace. My stomach was doing kickflips and I could hardly catch my breath under the blinding floral hues. After a blisteringly quick thirty seconds, I saw what appeared to be another portal of seafoam green hue at the end of my stream, and I was hurtling right towards it.
The outside world hit me like a deer in the headlights as I was launched from the portal into a tumble of people all wrapped together on some form of grassy forest floor. I was completely boggled when the shouting started seconds later. Confused yelps rang out from Irithril and Ellie, along with just as confused shouts by the voices of humans...!?! I pulled myself from the tumble to get a better view on what was happening around me. We had landed in a forest. Possibly somewhere in the pacific northwest or maybe Canada, judging by the flourishing western hemlock trees all around us. I couldn’t see much from where I lay as we had emerged from the gate sometime passed sunset, but I noticed two military personnel laying trapped under Ellie, Khail, Irithril, and the weight of three beach chairs. Another person wearing military garb was off in the distance sprinting away from the gate while screaming something wildly. I couldn’t make out what it was as my head was a mess. My ear’s were clouded by this overwhelming ringing and my stomach felt like I had eaten a truckload of expired corn dogs. I also noticed something out of the corner of my eye, a sc… no it couldn’t be. I thought I saw an Eldritch scout dash into the woods behind the gate. I rubbed my eyes for a moment before getting a second glance, but I didn’t see anything anymore. Hopefully I was imagining things because if it had gotten through someone somewhere was about to experience a bump in the night. Suddenly, flood lights came on from all around us and a siren began to further beat my head into submission.
“Everybody, freeze!” A voice shouted over some form of loudspeaker as six men began sprinting towards the gate with rifles.
The blaring of sirens and a loud automated voice announced: “Alert One! Alert One! Gate Incursion! Gate Incursion!” roared out.
“Locking down the gate now!” A youthful voice rang out over the intercom.
“Are you two humans?” A relatively burly man, around the age of thirty, with a patchy ginger beard asked me as the other five men closed in. It was evident he was clearly in control of these forces.
“Ye… yes. Where are we? This is Earth right?” I asked in response.
“It is. This portal has been inactive for fourteen years. Now tell me why was it made active without a request for arrival being made, and further why were you two on the other side of it?” The man asked, singling out Ellie and myself.
“I can answer that,” Khail declared. “Our world has been under siege by…,” Khail began to speak but silenced himself as a blood curdling shriek came from the gate. The locking mechanism had begun to close into place. As it finally shut, its bladed edges had severed something trying to reach through the portal. It was a massive butter yellow tentacle, and not just any massive butter yellow alien tentacle. It was the leader’s.
“...by that,” Khail continued. “By the Eldritch.
We sent out a signal requesting assistance and informing the other worlds of the assault. Did you not receive it?”
The burly man pulled out a military grade radio and relaid Khail’s question as the two privates pulled themselves out from underneath Ellie, Irithril and the beach chairs.
After awaiting a response for about thirty seconds or so, his eyes tightened a little bit and he spoke, “No such signal was ever received. We keep our communication towers open at all times, so it is impossible that we had not intercepted the transmission.”
“What?” Irithril muttered to herself.
“We’re humans, so can we just get access to a phone or something so we can call our folks?” Ellie asked a little timidly.
“It’s not quite that easy, missy. You’ve found yourself on government property, and after using a device of extraterrestrial origins without a government permit. You and your friend over here…,” he declared as he pointed to me. “...well it looks like you two might have found yourselves in a load of trouble. You’re going to have to be brought in for interrogation.”
I’d learned to read Ellie fairly well over the years and right then I could see how firmly she was restraining herself from tackling the guy right then and there. I perfectly understood what she was feeling. It was like being betrayed, surviving what we just did and then being brought into military custody with no way to contact the people you know. It felt like shit.
“May we contact the Fae consulate here?” Irithril asked the burly man who wore the garb of a Military Corporal.
He chuckled for a moment, “Certainly, after the interrogation that is.”
We all shared the same look at that moment. Khail, Irithril, Ellie and I, all of us. What had we gotten ourselves into?
✽✽✽
Ellie
Willapa, Washington
“Well, that’s quite the story you’ve got there Ellie,” remarked Amelia as she lit another cigarette.