“Booth?” Mercury turned around, unaffected.
I held my head as I saw past these new passages to other dimensions beyond the library made of angles that did not exist on Earth. The shapes were manifold and beautiful, containing colors entrancing to look upon. Looking through inhuman eyes I hadn’t known I possessed, I perceived the totality of the eldritch shapes around me. Enchanted by what I saw, I looked deeper. This was a foolish mistake because it revealed the things that lived there.
The geometrically impossible beings shifted, skulked, and moved across the space beyond in ways that perverted my understanding of how matter interacted with position. They were everywhere, nowhere, and somewhere at once, occupying both more and less than the space they inhabited. I could see their physical bodies, but like the Yithian, I could see more—and regretted it.
At three dimensions, the beings beyond were hulking, vaguely centaur-like things with four legs and two arms and hideous, whip-like bodies. They did not so much possess heads as gaping maws at the ends of their snake-like torsos. Their skin was covered in a chitinous material that was all too familiar. I’d seen it growing across my arm for over a year now. Sadly, this was not the end of my insights into their being. I saw the parts of their body that were four-dimensional, including humanoid and animal bodies of an infinite variety all superimposed onto a single moment in time. There were thousands of them, millions perhaps, and from them, I sensed a profound feeling of kinship.
I fell to my knees, overwhelmed by the stimuli surrounding me. Looking down, I saw the beings beyond watching me from below as if I were staring into a window. Slowly, they became more distinct, as if becoming real through my observation. One of them reached out a clawed hand identical to my own. I felt compelled to reach down toward it. When we were about to touch, the monsters vanished. The extra dimensions vanished. My right hand rested on firm luminescent white flooring. Blinking my eyes, I saw an ordinary, although massive, library. There were hundreds of bookshelves. The interior was larger than the exterior, but it was not quite so sanity-blasting. There were no walls in the building, any more than the white flooring or ceiling above us was solid, but I mentally insisted there were to drive away the images I’d just witnessed. I lied to myself in a repeated chant.
This is just an ordinary room. This is just an ordinary room. This is just an ordinary room. I did not deny the existence of the monsters beyond, lest I acknowledge their existence at all.
“Booth,” Mercury said beside me. “Are you OK?”
How could she not see it? I then realized that though it had felt like a lifetime, it had only been seconds. “Yes. I’m fine.”
“Forgive me,” Professor Armitage said. “I did not expect you to be able to see the library’s true nature. It requires several months of attuning one’s mind to the nature of the Other-Angled Place.”
“Other-Angled place?” I asked.
“It is what we call the interior of the Hinton Library,” Professor Armitage said. “It is a place that exists inside time.”
“Aren’t all things inside time?” Mercury asked, helping me to my feet.
“No,” Professor Armitage said. “All things are a part of time. I could try and explain it to you, but it would take hours we do not have. The short version is this is a place we feel is safe from the Great Old Ones and the damage they do to creation. Here, we attempt to restore all of humanity’s lost knowledge. If something is written down but missing, like the Tome of Itchus or Aristotle’s Second Poetics, we can use the library to travel to the past to recover it. Such missions are not undertaken often, but we have done enough to help patch a small measure of humanity’s lost records.”
I stared at him. “You can travel through time too?”
“Yes,” Professor Armitage said, nodding.
“Then—” I started to say.
“We tried to warn the people of the Pre-Rising world,” Professor Armitage cut me off. “We failed. Many times. What we perceive as history is but a drop of water in a great pool of possibilities.”
“Can you explain that in a bit more detail?” I asked.
“No,” Professor Armitage said. “Come, let us go.”
“I …” I hesitated to bring up what I’d seen. “I saw creatures. Things hidden behind the walls.”
“There are no walls, Booth,” Mercury said, still looking around at my words.
“The Eyes of Yog-Sothoth,” Professor Armitage said. “They are the neighbors to this room.”
Yog-Sothoth was a name frequently mentioned in the Necronomicon, even more so than Cthulhu or Azathoth, if you could believe it. Unfortunately, even among the many occult texts I’d read, there was no clear definition of what it was. Yog-Sothoth was everywhere and everywhen in the universe but somehow separate. Per legend, Yog-Sothoth wanted to become a part of our world and experience it through the eyes of mortals. It was an act that would turn reality inside out. Maybe his succeeding was the action that had caused the stars to change and the Great Old Ones to rise.
“They seemed … familiar,” I said.
“Interesting,” Professor Armitage said, smiling.
Bastard.
“Is this place where you got that power to walk miles in an instant?” Mercury asked, thankfully changing the subject.
“Yes,” Professor Armitage said, reassuring us. “One cannot travel through an environment without becoming a part of it in time. The consequences for some of our researchers have been … troublesome … but most enjoy the sense of power it gives.”
“Lovely,” I muttered, shaking my head. “The Yithians gave you this place?”
“No,” Professor Armitage said, surprising me. “Marcus Whateley made it for us.”
“Suddenly, I’m a lot less convinced of its security,” I muttered.
Professor Armitage just sneered.
I really didn’t like him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just shoot him like I could any other asshole I disliked in the Wasteland. We had a deal and that was one of the few things still sacred. Still, I imagined gunning him in the street when he tried to reach for his wand.
“Charming, Captain,” Professor Armitage said, revealing he could read my thoughts.
“This suddenly got a lot more complicated,” Mercury said, eyes straining as if trying to see what was really around her. “Do you think you could help me perceive these creatures? I’ve learned to expand my sight with the spells found in the Necronomicon.”
“Don’t,” I said, lifting my left hand. “Please.”
Mercury shrugged. “I’m a scientist, Booth. I want to learn, even if it costs me what remains of my sanity.”
I gave a half-pained smile. “It’s madness that allows us to live, Mercury. I’m not afraid you’ll go crazy. I’m afraid you’ll go sane.”
Mercury stared at me, unsure how to respond to my heartfelt statement. That was when she did a double take and looked at my arm. “Booth!”
I dropped my gaze and saw what she was looking at. Where my arm had once been corrupted by perverse forces, it was now bronze and human-like. Veins were visible underneath my skin and I could see my fingerprints on the ends of each digit. Looking at it made me want to cry.
But it didn’t feel different.
Mercury gave me a hug and a kiss, but I just stared at the offending appendage. Something wasn’t right.
“I’m afraid your arm hasn’t healed.” Professor Armitage causally destroyed our moment of happiness. “I have covered your arm in an illusion. Our other contractors may not be as understanding of your mutation as those here at the University. Let alone the people in the Wasteland you might have to deal with.”
Hope fled from Mercury’s eyes as she looked down at my human-looking arm and saw the trick it was.
I stared death at Armitage. “You could have just given me some bandages and a coat.”
“Thanks for nothing,” Mercury said.
“You’re welcome.” Professor Armitage turned around and started walking again.
> Tired of talking to Armitage, I walked behind him and focused on the bookshelves and their contents around me as to not lose myself in the physics-defying architecture that had overwhelmed me moments before. There were books on medicine, science, history, famous figures of the past, and all manner of other topics that would be invaluable to rebuilding civilization should humanity somehow retake the Earth from its neighbors. However, my attention was not piqued until we arrived at the section of the library dealing with occult topics. There were an immense number of books on the supernatural, dwarfing the other topics I’d seen in variety, only a handful of which I recognized (and I was something of an expert on the subject).
The shelves contained mainstays like multiple translations of the Necronomicon, varied editions of the Book of Eibon, the Pnakotic Manuscripts, The Black Keys of Solomon, and so on, but rarer texts too. I saw the first three volumes of Cthulhu Unbound, the Re’Kitnid, the Cythallapendium, The Sorcerer Kings of Stygia, The King in Yellow (musical version), The Hyperborean Cycle, The Dark Corners of the Earth, Doctor Dominique O’Brien’s Unnatural Mathematics, The Testimonials of Aphra Marsh, The Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, a perhaps-useful The Unimaginable Horror, In the Shadow of the Dark Tower, and even a complete set of horror novelist Sutter Cane’s works.
I was a seasoned-enough occultist to know the majority of books that surrounded these tomes were worth less than the paper they were printed on. Here among the books that had a glimmer of the truth were mad misunderstandings of the beings’ true nature, attributing elemental classifications or a struggle between good and evil which humanity might survive by siding with the right deity. Yet I wanted to spend a year poring over them and their secrets.
“I don’t see how you expect us to track this guy down if he can build something like this,” Mercury said, marching between me and Professor Armitage. “You crossed a couple of hundred miles in a few seconds. We won’t be able to catch up.”
“He will travel on foot with no magic. That is the only way he can protect himself from our science,” Professor Armitage replied. “You will also be able to identify him at a glance.”
“Why?” I asked, growing increasingly frustrated with these word games.
At least when I was an R&E Ranger, people had been willing to give me straight answers. Ever since he’d murdered my companions at the caravan, Armitage and his cohorts had been trying to manipulate me. If they wanted me to succeed in this quest and stop their wayward scientist, they’d drop the act and talk to me man-to-man.
Instead, I got the impression they were doing this begrudgingly at best. Did they want the world destroyed? Or was it because they’d get their consciousnesses preserved in some Dreamlands zoo that they didn’t really care what happened to the planet Earth? I hoped he could hear my doubts, because I wasn’t about to play his games. I also projected some nasty images of my horribly murdering Armitage and the rest of the Miskatonic University staff for emphasis.
I could do it, too.
Armitage, however, didn’t rise to my bait. “You’ll recognize Marcus Whately because he’s nine feet tall and has other distinguishing characteristics. Believe me, any locals you question will find him memorable,” Professor Armitage said, his voice cold and businesslike.
“He’s a half-human then,” I said.
“He’s a half-god,” Professor Armitage corrected. “The child of a Dunwych priestess and Yog-Sothoth conceived during an ancient and forbidden rite. The other Dunwych were so horrified by what they had created, they slaughtered the entirety of the royal lineage in retribution. They did not dare kill their god’s child, though, and left him to die by exposure. Instead, one of them brought him to us to raise.”
“How very Moses in the bullrushes,” I muttered.
“More like the serpent in the garden,” Professor Armitage replied. “I would have rather handled this in-house, but the Great Race predicted you had the greatest chance of success. I only believe them because they have never been wrong before. Frankly, your reputation as monster slayers seems a trifle exaggerated.”
“Says the guy who butchered a caravan of innocents for no reason,” Mercury said, disgusted. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your opinion on who has the true grit all that seriously.”
“You’re forgiven,” Professor Armitage said. “As for innocents, I don’t believe they exist.”
“Spoken like a true bandit,” I said. “I have killed many men and women to survive. That doesn’t mean I’m an assassin. The only people I’ve ever hunted down to kill were Alan Ward and Peter Goodhill. Both men who needed killing. I’m not an assassin.”
It was perhaps not the best defense ever spoken. Still, I hated Armitage’s attitude and I didn’t entirely believe the story they’d fed me about Marcus Whateley. The Great One had already proven itself a liar, and only the fact that I was over a barrel with my imminent transformation into a monster kept me working for them.
“Not an assassin? Even to save your world?” Professor Armitage said. “I killed your people because they stood in the way of stopping Whateley, however briefly.”
“I think you did it because you liked it,” Mercury said.
“You don’t know me at all,” Professor Armitage said. “However, thankfully, we’re almost where we have to be.”
“And where the hell is that?” I asked.
“With our guests,” Professor Armitage said. He stopped again and raised his crystal rod to point at a nearby table in a space between shelves. There, five figures were standing or sitting, looking bored.
I recognized them all.
“Those are the people you recruited?” Mercury asked, horrified.
“Yes,” Professor Armitage said. “I’m afraid so.”
“We are screwed.” I felt my face. “Completely.”
The Yithians had recruited four of the worst criminals in the Wasteland. Oh, and one of my ex-squad mates.
Yeah, this mission was off to a great start.
Chapter Seven
You could identify everyone here by their wanted posters. In the Wasteland of New England, there were almost no laws, and life was cheap. This meant the people who were considered outlaws were doubly dangerous.
Standing to the left of the table was a Hispanic-looking man with a neat, well-trimmed beard and messy hair. He was dressed in the attire of a rancher but it was of a finer cut than most, showing he’d gone to great lengths to make sure he appeared dashing when most had long since ceased to care about such things.
This was Thom Braddock, the gunslinger. Thom had marauded his way all the way up from the former state of Texas, a feat I could scarcely imagine since I’d been a professional explorer once and only made it as far as the ruins of Ohio. We’d encountered each other once before, and I considered it a testament to my skill that I’d made it out alive.
Sitting at the table was a woman with thick dreadlocks, chocolate-brown skin, larger-than-normal eyes, and a lovely face with full lips. She was wearing the leather vest, white shirt, and brown linen pants of a typical Wasteland scavenger. A pair of goggles rested around her neck, and I saw a breath-mask for Dust Zone exploration as well. It was Bobbie Merriweather, a Deep One Hybrid who was a former member of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. I remembered her because that cult had murdered dozens of travelers seeking to drink at their oasis. Bobbie had ended up slaughtering half of them and betraying the rest to Alpha Team of the R&E Rangers. Apparently, she’d had some sort of religious experience that had turned her against her people and their religion.
I wasn’t intimately familiar with the woman, but I knew her hatred for her race’s religion was almost as deep as mine for whatever I was turning into. The fact Bobbie hadn’t yet progressed into a full Deep One surprised me. Indeed, she looked like she’d only begun the transformation, and we’d first met a decade before. Of this group, Bobbie had the least history of criminal activity, but that still didn’t mean I’d relax around her. She had killed several Cthulhu worshipers who’d been well-resp
ected in their community.
Beside Bobbie, wearing a gray robe like the Yithian cultists but more tattered and careworn, was August Bierce. August was a well-known practitioner of the occult arts and known in some circles as “The Dreadful Summoner.” A story had been circulated that a community had driven him and his husband out for their mystical practices, only for a gigantic claw to rise from the ground and drag an entire town down into the depths of the Earth.
I believed it.
August was a smug-looking chocolate-skinned man in his late thirties. He radiated the kind of attitude I got from Professor Armitage. The gaze August received from the latter told me they were not friends, though. Its intensity and heat told me that Professor Armitage hated him even more than he despised us. If August was a former student of the University, he’d parted with it on poor terms.
The fourth member of the group, sitting beside August, was the one most familiar to me. Once, I’d been willing to call her my best friend, but our parting had not been pleasant. Jessica O’Reilly was a pretty brown-haired woman the same age as me who now possessed a long scar on her right cheek. She was wearing a faded blue unadorned New Arkham military uniform that she’d obviously scavenged.
Jessica and I had grown up together, attended school together, trained together, and been friends since well before we’d been in the same unit. In many ways, her life was far more tragic than mine. She’d been married once with two children but lost all three to the horrors of the Wasteland. A former R&E Ranger, she’d turned on me when I started to turn. I won our duel, but spared her life.
Last I heard, Jessica had been leading a group of bandits preying on travelers out of the Boston Ash Fields. There were rumors she killed anyone with the slightest trace of inhuman blood. I found that difficult to believe. Not for my sake, but the fact that she, too, had been Richard Jameson’s friend. Jessica’s look of surprise at my appearance and my human-seeming arm was covered quickly, and she remained seated.
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