We'd been standing still for too long; Leo and Olivia were beginning to shift as more people began to glance our way.
I slung my bag over my shoulder, and remembered that Leo and I were still wearing the basic uniforms we'd acquired through Leo's contact and our wandering around with a bag over my shoulder and confused looks on Leo and Olivia's faces weren't helping us to look very soldier like.
I attempted a last minute save and straightened, pointed toward the next corner into an alley and barked "Move," in German. I doubted that it did much to improve the perception we were projecting, but at least I tried.
We got into the alley and Olivia asked, "What did they say about a man dying?"
I shrugged. "It wasn't much. Man died, a hermit I suppose, and his son has been stealing tranquilizers." I rubbed my head. "It reminds me of something, but I can't place it."
I had no sooner said that when two men came down the alley toward us. They weren't soldiers, but they were most definitely not students.
The man on the right was large, really large. His clothing was tight and his muscles bulged to the point of
his clothing looking on the verge of tearing. He had close cropped hair and a look that hadn't seen an emotion in years. The man on the left looked as if he hadn't slept in days. He was lanky with dirty clothes and wispy hair. His eyes screamed a lack of sanity.
The second man was more dangerous, and I knew this while my companions didn't. He'd touched the nether regions of the void and had come back as something more or less than human.
The smaller man raised his hand and a bolt of lightning hit me directly in the chest before I could raise a warning. I flew backward, dropping my bag in the process. As I slid across the ground, I watched as Olivia drew her gun from wherever she hid it and prepared to fire. The larger man swatted her gun away and hit her square in the jaw. She crumpled to the ground. I had no doubt that she was unconscious. I stopped sliding as Leo leapt at the larger man. They began trading blows and if my chest hadn't just been hit by a lightning bolt, I would have been impressed with Leo. He managed to get several hits in and avoid the major swings of the big guy while I was still trying to stand.
Having cast his lightning bolt at me, crazy and lanky didn't break his stride. Instead he raised his hand again. I was ready for it this time, and I raised mine, catching his next lightning bolt in my palm and holding it in a field of energy. He came at me physically then, swinging like a lumberjack. His swings arced wide and slow and I was able to duck the first two of them. His second left him open for a swing at his jaw, and I took it. He dropped hard, moaning, and barely conscious.
Leo's luck had turned while I was occupied with the littler man and now he was only standing because he was being held up by the brute.
"Hey!" I called out, and the big guy turned his head toward me. In German, I added, "He's a weak Frenchman. Why don't you try an American?"
The giant looked at Leo and then shrugged, dropping the bloodied man. He turned toward me, and I hoped my plan would work.
I let him come at me, his swing was nothing like his smaller companion's. He came in fast, and in that swing I could see pain like nothing I have ever experienced.
Somehow, I was just fast enough to duck that swing, and managed to have the presence of mind to swing in the gap he left in his own defenses. My own swing wasn't going to dent this monster and I knew that before I'd even challenged him, but I had an ace up my sleeve.
As my fist connected with the brute's side, I released the energy that I'd absorbed from his smaller partner's second lightning attack. The electrical energy exploded from my hand and the zap hurled him back and into the alley wall. He slumped next to the slowly rising form of Leo, and my companion gave his head a swift kick, ensuring that the giant was unconscious.
Leo ran to Olivia and I followed. We helped her up and already we could see her right cheek bone swelling from the knock. She seemed more or less fine aside from the blunt trauma to her face and showed none of the signs of concussion. Of this I was sure because Leo kept asking her, over and over again, how many fingers he was holding up.
Deciding that Leo could handle any sort of medical needs that Olivia might require, I stepped up to our slowly rising lanky man and grabbed him by the collar.
"Where's the book, Dr. Doran?" he shouted it at me in English, but the volume wasn't what surprised me.
"How the hell do you know who I am?" I demanded.
His only response became a chanted mantra. Loudly, he repeated, "Are we awake or are we dreaming? The book you seek is always scheming. Screams will echo and tears will fall. Through lands of dream we see all." He chanted this a handful of times before I shook him and tossed him at Leo. Leo eagerly accepted my shaking responsibility and set to work right away.
"The boy, he wakes. Keeper has died and the Earth quakes!" He yelled. I walked back up to him.
"What boy? What does the old man's death have to do with the Traum Kult?" The connection was there and I knew it. This man was a powerful magic user and had all but told me of his connections with the Dream Cult.
He smiled at me, and I knew then that his sanity was the price that he had paid for such power. "They hope my brother will delay you, might even be enough to slay you."
"This rhyming bullshit is getting damned annoying." I slapped him across the face. "One more time: How did you find me?"
Before he could answer there was a shake that rattled the ground and knocked me almost off my feet.
The lanky man continued to look at me as he said, "The boy is here, your end is near."
I stood and punched him in the face, sending him into the same oblivion as his larger comrade.
The ground shook again. "What the hell was that?" Leo asked, returning the conversation to French.
"I think it's the grieving son of a man murdered by the Traum Kult." I answered cautiously.
"What?" Leo and Olivia demanded at once.
I ushered them toward where we entered the alley. "We need to move. The plan is the same, we need to find a place to hunker down for the night."
Another shudder of the ground almost sent Olivia sprawling and I grabbed her, righting her. "We need to move now." I said.
In the crashing caused by the earthquakes, we found that not very many of the buildings in our currently location were structurally sound. The entire neighborhood must have been hit early and frequently by the bombings. Clean up had been ongoing, and a lot of the architecture looked complete at first glance. On second glance, we were in prime real estate for abandoned places to stay.
Leo took us into a two story building that looked like a shop on the outside, but inside was a wrecked mess. Pieces of the roof and the second flood were littered across the floor of the ground level.
Leo began to run up the crumbling stairs and I stopped him. "What are you doing? The quakes could bring the entire building down on us."
Leo indicated the second floor and then the first. "I would rather fall through the floor than let the floor fall on me." His point was compelling enough that Olivia and I were behind him in a flash.
We found a portion of the second floor that seemed the most stable and crouched down in the dark.
Olivia looked at me as we all settled down. "Those men back there were rhyming. What was that about?"
"I don't know about the larger man, but the smaller man was a member of the Traum Kult. His rhyming was meant to be a kind of scare tactic. It worked, we're still thinking about it." I answered.
Leo frowned, "If he was Traum Kult, why did he ask you where the book was? Don't they have it?"
I shook my head. "Not yet, but they will have it before we reach Berlin."
"How do you know that?" Leo asked, and I could see the question reflected in Olivia's gaze.
I hadn't told them anything about what I had discovered in Berne through the Cthulhu prophet other than the specific fact that we were on the right path; the book would be found in Berlin. I hadn't told them the rest of what
I had learned because I still had no idea of how to process it myself. Explaining to my allies that it was foreseen that I would use the Necronomicon to lay waste to humanity and call up the dark lord would more than likely hinder my progress. If Leo or Olivia were to tell me the same, I'd think it my duty to stop them from ever reaching the book.
And I certainly could not tell them about the suspicions that the Berne cultist had raised regarding Olivia. He'd implied that she wasn't human and that her goals were the polar opposite of my own. My concern was in the validity of the revelation. I'd examined her humanity...thoroughly, and I received no sense of an otherworldly presence about her. As a matter of fact, I only sensed a normal human there.
Maybe that is what should have had me concerned.
The answer I gave was, "It was part of what the cultist told me in Berne. The book would arrive in Berlin before us."
They accepted that, although Olivia's look turned slightly sour at the mention of the cultist. She'd been giving that same reaction at every mention of the cultist since we left Berne. She knew that he'd told me more than I was giving up and our relationship had lost much of the camaraderie and comfort that we'd shared before my speaking to him.
"We learned something from what they didn't say though." I provided.
Both of them looked at me with confusion and hope. "That the German's grow them big?" Leo joked. I nodded, "That, but also that the Traum Kult doesn't know how they are getting the book." I smiled. "They only know that they are going to get the book and that I'm after it, too. Someone is bringing them the book, but they don't have a clue who it could be."
"How is that possible?" Olivia asked.
I shrugged. "Maybe it was taken by a spy, someone who was forced to keep their existence secret. Or maybe whoever is dealing with it suspects a division in the loyalty of the Traum Kult. Whatever the reason, this is an opportunity that we need to turn to our advantage."
Leo steadied himself as the building shook again. "What did any of that have to do with this dead hermit and the 'boy'?'
I wasn't sure of this myself, and worked it out verbally. "They were with the Traum Kult, but I think that this smaller man was also the madman running around Munich stealing tranquilizers." The building shook again. "I'm not so sure that the boy is actually a person. I think it might be something a lot scarier." Leo and Olivia were watching me with intense looks. "I think the hermit was taking care of the smaller man and this 'boy'. I'll bet that the Traum Kult learned what this 'boy' was and what would happen if they killed the boy's caretaker. After knowing those two things, they only had to time it for when we were in town." I shrugged. "This is all a guess, but it works with what the man said about the boy delaying me."
Screams echoed through the building that we hunkered down in. People in the streets were becoming terrified and the quakes were increasing in intensity.
Not willing to sit around during the constant shaking, we scooped up our gear and climbed down the fragile stairs before exiting the building.
In the streets people ran in every direction. Nothing made much of any sense. They didn't seem to be running away from anything, but they were definitely terrified by something, and it was more than just the quakes.
I grabbed a German man, bearded like my but with tiny glasses and no hair on his scalp, and asked him, "What is everyone running from?"
He looked about to tell me, but then a loud crash and another quake came, causing any words he was going to say to come out as only gibberish. Through his non-words, he only pointed down the street. My two companions and I looked in the direction of the pointing finger.
At first we saw nothing extraordinary. It was the street we had exited the building to, and people were screaming and running in a full panic.
Then a truck along the side of the road flattened for absolutely no discernible reason.
I dropped my bag and began putting my weapons on. The sword and the scabbard had become an extension of my body and they were on me fairly quickly.
Leo was checking his ammo as I drew my pistol. Olivia had a gun drawn, but looked too surprised to say anything.
"Andrew," she finally said, "what is going on? Is it a weapon?" I shook my head. "Not yet it isn't."
"But what is it?" Leo begged.
"Think outside the box. Be simple. Things are rarely more than they seem."
Olivia remained quiet, but Leo answered. "It is a giant invisible monster."
"Exactly. We need to kill it."
Leo lowered his gun, looking around for a minute. "Why? If it is only a distraction from our goal, what do we care if a couple of Germans die?"
It was a good point, but I felt it necessary to clarify something that I had to remind myself of on a regular basis. "None of these people asked to be part of Hitler's war." He seemed to silently agree with that and raised his gun back up. "Besides, I think it is hunting me."
Neither Olivia or Leo reacted to that. They had obviously already come to the same conclusion.
I was nervous as I said, "I'm going to take a look at it."
Olivia asked, "It is invisible. You cannot see it."
I shook my head. "It isn't actually invisible. We humans are fragile beings and we have defenses to protect us from most of our weaknesses. The monster isn't invisible, it is only so horrible that our minds would rather perceive an invisible monster than a sanity-shattering horror."
The words "sanity-shattering' made both of them look at me. "If I look like I'm going to shoot myself, stop me."
They sensed the sincerity in my words.
Having said my piece, I looked at where I was sure the monster was standing and pressed my finger tips to my temples, hoping to focus my concentration.
The beast stood around the same height as the buildings it walked between. Limbs and eyes and mouths met in places that should never have existed. Tentacles protruded from every orifice, pulling things in and taking them out.
I collapsed then, incapable of making the odd shapes and misplaced limbs come together in any sort of sense. My mind threatened to fail me, and suddenly I was begging to fall into the Dream Lands. I wanted to leave my body forever and begin a life on the plains of Borea, riding the two-headed wolves and hunting the wanderers in the dark.
I was slapped then, and looked up to see Olivia's face. It made so much sense, seeing this human thing in front of me, that it was like salve on a fresh burn. The sensation of normalcy bringing shock and intensity to my burned psyche. I grabbed my head again, but kept staring through the tears at her beautiful face. After what felt like years, I could feel the burn recede, and my brain reassembled itself into something that felt like Dr. Andrew Doran.
I sat up and shook away the last of my terror.
I didn't need to tell them what I saw. They could see it through the twisting of my face.
"We need to kill it now." I said, and they agreed, but Leo stepped forward.
"It is my turn." The Frenchman said, and I wasn't sure what he meant.
He pointed at the roof of a nearby building. "You will need to go up there. With your sword and gun you can attack it from above while I attack it from below, but I need your help."
"My help?" I asked.
"Let me take a peek at it. If I can see it, even for only a second, I'll know where to properly shoot it." He looked scared, which was the correct response for what he was asking me to do.
"I've been looking at monsters like that for almost twenty years and that almost destroyed me." I pointed at Leo. "What chance would you have?"
"It is the only way to be of any good use." Leo wasn't looking at me anymore. Instead, he was watching the ground crumble under the footsteps of the monster.
"If you survive it, you won't come back the same person." It was a fact, not some sort of deep
psychological analysis. If he survived looking at the monster, he wouldn't come out of it as he had been. He would be forever changed: constantly questioning all of reality, touched by the void, his soul warpe
d by the very idea of what he had seen. He could come back just as much a monster in mind as that thing before us was in body.
"I understand that, but if I come back, I'll be able to kill that damned thing with far less bullets, and hopefully not shoot you in the process." His argument was valid, and no one had allowed me a choice when I had been thrust into this world. He'd heard the consequences and still demanded to have the veil pulled aside for him.
I reached forward as he continued to look where the monster was, and I touched his temple. It was only a brief touch, but in that moment his eyes widened in terror and he fell to the ground, seemingly unconscious.
"Grab his ankles!" I shouted to Olivia. The beautiful woman grabbed him and together we pulled him backward and into the false sanctity of the building that we had just exited.
I slapped Leo hard across the face, and to my surprise he opened his eyes.
He was terrified and for that I was relieved.
His mind seemed to be reassembling itself, as only a strong mind could do. I was impressed. He seemed to be handling his first actual encounter with the other side much better than I ever had. Being terrified was the most sane reaction to what he had just seen.
I decided to give him something to focus on and thrust his machine gun into his arms. "I'm going to the roof. Shoot it and don't stop until it's dead."
Leo nodded at me, and I could see that the order had helped him. He slowly stood with his own strength as I took off toward the building Leo had previously motioned for me to take.
The building was three stories tall, and Leo had chosen well. From it I would be just barely high enough to empty my magical pistol into the creature while staying out of its monstrous reach. That wasn't my only plan, though.
Olivia was behind me as we crossed the street to the building. I knew she'd follow me instead of ask where she should go. I didn't know this because of my suspicions; I knew it because I knew Olivia. If Leo had already claimed distraction, she would most definitely choose to back me up, although I didn't think she understood what exactly my plan would consist of. If she had, I assume she would have stayed with Leo.
The Adventures of Andrew Doran: Box Set Page 17