The Man Without Hands

by Eric Malikyte

  Sal’s eyes linked with his own, and it was as though he knew. “You know what it says, don’t you?”

  Kurt nodded.

  “What does it say?” Sal almost looked feverish in his need to know.

  “I don’t want to know,” Linda said.

  “I will spare you the names of the things,” Kurt said. “But, suffice it to say—” He pointed to the original being, Zhel’Azreth. “That thing gave birth to those three beings.”

  “I see.” Sal drew these things in his notebook. “Perhaps this original being caused the big bang then? That could be what the mural is trying to depict.”

  “The big bang?” Kurt’s eyebrow raised.

  “Our cosmologists believe that before our universe existed, there was a massive explosion of matter and energy to bring it into being,” Linda said. “And from the chaos of that explosion came our universe, galaxies and planets and stars.”

  “Interesting.” Kurt ran his hand over the first inscription. “We have a similar story about our world, but another being, the one that created the Shar, is said to have created it. But...we also think that story was a clever lie created by this being to make us think it a god.”

  “There’s more.” Sal moved over to the next image in the mural.

  There were six images now, repeats of the three previous beings, but from each of them them sprang a new being as well. The inscription was as clear as his own language in his mind, and Kurt knew that was impossible. From Zcenron’s mouth came the living fire, Zhelon—a being that is said to take its power from the consumption of stars and delights in the worship of its brilliance as though it were a god. Zhelon appeared to be a sphere of swirling fire with great segmented wings of cosmic light.

  Zhelon was also the name of the sun that warmed his world...it couldn’t be...

  He shook his head and moved on.

  From Yog’Elios came Oreseth: the Dream Eater, the Spider, the Deceiver who consumes and controls lesser gods and mortals. Oreseth’s carving sent chills running up Kurt’s spine. It was exactly as it had been presented to him in his nightmares. A large maggot-shaped body with six terrible limbs, hands reaching out of the bottom of its body and the pits of its legs, and a terrible eye at its front, crimson and disquieting.

  Then, Kurt’s eyes opened wide, and a shock went through him as he read the next inscription. From Abanozh came the great worm, Malo’thul, which seeps its tendrils deep into the worlds it infests like roots.

  This being was larger than the other two by only a small amount, a great worm with millions of holes in its body, and massive arms of tendrils shooting out from those holes, sinking deep into the ground it stood on.

  “This one here,” Kurt said, pointing to Malo’thul’s image. “That’s the being that created the Shar.”

  “Then our worlds are connected,” Sal said.

  “All the more reason to stop this insane quest of yours,” Linda said.

  Kurt ignored her and he and Sal moved down to the next image. It showed Malo’thul and Oreseth doing battle above a spherical world next to a single star. The inscription read: Great Malo’thul and Oreseth the Deceiver battled for many millions of years for dominance of the Earth.

  “This one shows the being you call the Spider, and the one from my world, let’s just call it the Worm, battling on the surface of the Earth for millions of years.” Kurt moved to the next image, which showed Malo’thul imprisoning Oreseth beneath the circle of the Earth. “And here the Worm finally manages to overcome the Spider, sealing it in the Astral Lands.” The next image showed Malo’thul vanishing into a void. “And this says that the Worm then vanished from the universe for some reason.”

  “That’s a curious way to word it,” Sal said, scratching his beard. “Why leave what he’d been fighting the Spider for millions of years for?”

  “Unless they weren’t fighting for control of the Earth,” Kurt said.

  “How do you figure?”

  “Think about it. I was born in the First City, near the end of my people’s great period of decadence. I was among the first to raise my fists to Malo’thul’s Seed and the first Shar. All throughout my life, the Elders always claimed that the Worm, even in its long slumber, communicated its story through its willing subjects. Claiming that the Worm had created all that we knew and could see. Why would the Worm say that it created our universe on my world? How does a dreaming god speak?”

  “Telepathy?” Sal said, scratching his head. “How the hell should I know?”

  “Perhaps it is not as our history tomes say,” Kurt said, running his hands over the metallic mural. “Maybe Malo’thul’s Seed have never been able to communicate with Malo’Thul. Maybe they merely manipulated us into thinking that they were its emissaries.”

  Kurt walked back to the first image. “This inscription says that if this original being ever decided to leave, that your universe would wither and die. What might happen to the original being’s offspring if that were to happen?”

  “So, the Worm tried to escape this world so that it could escape destruction?” Sal said.

  Kurt nodded. “That’s what I believe.”

  “That’s a stretch,” Linda said. “How can you claim to understand the motives of these beings or the events transcribed here?”

  “I just know,” Kurt said. “It came to me.”

  Her eyes went wide, and that look of dread came onto her face again. “The Spider. It’s telling you.”

  “It must be,” Kurt said.

  “What would happen if the Worm woke up in your universe?” Sal asked.

  “I don’t know...” Kurt rubbed his eyes. “Everything we were told about ourselves might well have been a lie. Perhaps it was not the Worm who created us, or the Shar, but Malo’thul’s Seed?”

  “If that’s the case, why?” Sal asked.

  “I do not know,” Kurt said.

  Linda backed away, shaking her head and biting her nails. “Why did this have to happen to me? Why!”

  “You’ve seen the Spider before in your nightmares,” Kurt said, approaching her slowly. “You know as well as I do that your world, your species, are nothing more than playthings to these beings.”

  “And what about yours?” Linda said. “How do you know that you’re not as human as us, just with a few genetic augmentations?”

  “Maybe that’s the way of it?” Kurt said, glancing back at the mural. “But the fact remains that my people have far more power than yours do, which puts us above yours in—what is it your scientists call it? Ah, yes, the food chain.”

  “Shut up.” She averted her eyes.

  Sal had already moved ahead to the next room, where the tendrils continued to twist around another series of images in the wall. This time, Kurt fed his Sulen directly into the wall, allowing it to come to life in a brilliant display of images that animated before his eyes.

  “From the Spider’s prison beneath the circle of the Earth—” Kurt pointed to an image of the Earth’s sphere, where six legs stabbed out of the ground and strange creatures roamed the land, similar to the insect-like things featured in the statues before the bridge to the pyramid. “—came our creators. The Uleketh roamed the Earth blind for millions of years, seeding the soil and creating many beings to serve their purposes.” Kurt moved to the next image, which showed the Uleketh creating a strange spider-like being with two heads. “They created we Null last of all, in the image of their creator the Spider. We grew to rival the Uleketh, creating great cities of our own.”

  The next image showed the Null devouring their creators. “We turned on our creators, ending their reign on this world. We filled their cities and populated the rest of the world.”

  The next image showed a great meteor hitting the Earth, shattering it to pieces. “But then the cataclysm came, and the result of the impact nearly ended we Null. The few that survived clung to the places our creators had built, while the rest of the world smoldered and reformed itself.” The final image in the diagram showed the Nu
ll standing on a new world, staring at the image of a moon that featured no scars on its face. “When we awoke, strange creatures came to dwell upon the land, and a strange moon filled the sky. It was as though we had been taken to a world completely alien to us.”

  The inscriptions ended there, and the tendrils twisted into another triangular door. Sal found another circular depression in the wall next to the door and retrieved the artifact from his pack.

  “This place,” Sal said, the confidence in his voice undermined by his own madness. “It’s not three hundred million years old...it’s billions of years old. From a time before the moon. But. But that’s not possible.”

  “Where’s the rest of the story?” Linda said.

  “Perhaps that’s all the Null in this city participated in?” Sal said. “Maybe they died out soon after?”

  “What she’s really asking is, where’s the part about the humans,” Kurt said. “It’s not always about you.”

  As it had been with the other door, the artifact spun around in the depression in the wall and the triangular door eroded away with a harsh light. Sal retrieved the floating artifact without hesitation. The next room was pyramid-shaped, with a single altar in the middle and thousands of tendrils molded from the floor. Sal and Kurt stepped through, but Linda hesitated to enter the room, staring at the ceiling—her face twisted into a horrified grimace.

  “T-they, they look like they’re moving,” Linda said.

  “The artifacts exist in every dimension,” Kurt said. “No doubt they attract things from the Astral Lands.”

  Linda swallowed her own saliva. “T-the Astral Lands?”

  Kurt looked up just in time to see something crawl across the ceiling and vanish through the doorway ahead of them.

  “What the fuck was that!” Sal said, his back slapping up against the wall of the chamber.

  “I suspect it was a Null,” Kurt said, walking into the center of the chamber. “Perhaps they are not as dead as you think.”

  “How the fuck is that possible?” Sal said, scratching at his track marks. “They’d be billions of years old!”

  “Perhaps, in here, time moves differently?” Kurt said. “In the distant past, there were Sulekiel capable of using the Astral Lands as a means of travel. The legends say that this mode of travel fell out of favor when one Sulekiel vanished for hundreds of processions, re-emerging only feeling like moments had passed.”

  “Do you think that’s true?” Sal asked, desperation filling his voice.

  “I do not doubt it,” Kurt said.

  The second artifact was fixed into the altar. This one was slightly different than the slab that featured the symbol of Oreseth. The disk slab showed an explosion in the center of two warring beings . He suspected it was Oreseth and Malo’thul, but they’d know for sure when they found the third. He retrieved the circular slab of metal and handed it off to Sal, who placed it inside his own pack.

  Then, what little light there was in the pyramid quieted to absolute darkness. The walls no longer drank at the light of his aura or Sal’s flashlight. The door behind them sealed.

  Linda screamed.

  The only doorway that remained open was the one that the strange creature had crawled through.

  “No.” Linda shook her head again and again. “No, I don’t want to go that way! I don’t want to go that way!”

  “In the grimoire Sal’s friends gave me, it spoke of a being that dwelled upon a land that appeared to have the consistency of decaying flesh, with open mouths filled with yellowing teeth scattered across the landscape. This creature stalked from the shadows into our world to find prey, its seven eyes pulsing in the dark before snatching unsuspecting fools up to drag back to the Astral Lands where they would be devoured by the land.”

  “Why is he saying that?” Linda said, apparently to Sal.

  “The author of this grimoire was a researcher here,” Kurt said, grinning in the dark. “As it were, I would not linger in the darkness for too long.”

  He moved toward the door, leaving Sal and Linda behind. Whatever hatred they had for him must have been overshadowed by the need to be protected by him, he surmised, because they came running moments later. Panic and fatigue had worked its way into every movement they made. Even Sal, who had been excited to pore over the wall inscriptions earlier, was stuttering and mumbling to himself.

  The next corridor went on for what seemed like miles, twisting and curving. The sounds of their footsteps echoed endlessly into the darkness. And there was something else. A tapping, or a clicking sound that underscored each of their steps.

  “Do you hear that?” Sal said.

  “It is watching us,” Kurt said, grinning.

  “Don’t say that!” Linda said.

  “Why, because it might be true?” Kurt laughed. “Perhaps it’s the last of its kind? A lone sentinel charged with guarding the artifact from looters?”

  Sal clutched his pack tightly, as though he were cradling an infant close to his chest.

  They came to a large bridge within the pyramid, where another abyss stretched far beneath them into nothingness. The bridge was at least a thousand feet long and fifteen feet wide, just a slab of stone. It would be extremely easy to fall off.

  Halfway across, Kurt stopped. Sal and Linda almost barreled into him, the clumsy fools.

  “What is it?” Sal said.

  “They’re here,” Kurt said, his eyes straining to make out the scene.

  Shadows danced in the darkness. Many shadows, thousands of sharp stabbing legs and globular bodies with many heads. Their eyes glowed yellow in the dark. The tapping grew louder.

  They must have been clinging to the ceiling.

  The sounds were coming from every direction.

  “All of them,” Linda said, falling to the floor, tears leaking out her eyes in rivers. “No! No! We shouldn’t have come here!”

  “Do me a favor and put a gag in her mouth,” Kurt said, stepping forward.

  But Sal was shaking too. In the light of his aura, Kurt could see a stream of wetness appear on Sal’s pant leg and travel all the way down to the floor, where a puddle was forming beneath him.

  Kurt scoffed. “Cowards.”

  The creatures continued to stir in the dark. Kurt’s aura became brighter, and the creatures moved closer.

  “Yes, come closer, allow me to see you for what you truly are, creatures!” Kurt beckoned them closer with his transparent hands. “And I will show you what it’s like for an immortal to die!”

  “Insane,” Linda said. “He’s insane. That’s the only explanation!”

  One of the creatures dropped to the bridge, slinking and crawling up to the very edge of where Kurt’s circle of light ended. He could see a slimy exoskeleton, the color of brown ink, and three eyes set atop each of its two heads. Its legs clawed and stabbed at the ground around the edge of the light.

  “You probably don’t understand me, creature,” Kurt said.

  The creature betrayed no sense of knowing, just moved back and forth along the circle of light, as though it feared it. And maybe it did.

  “You’re in our way.” Kurt walked forward, and the creature backed up as the edge of light advanced.

  He could feel a powerful presence within the creature, and for that matter, the rest of the Null whose eyes gleamed in the distant dark reaches of the chamber. Kurt thought for a second that he saw faint lines of electric arcs spark between the creature’s many legs. He could not chance letting it attack, if it had the ability to control its Sulen—no, if all of the creatures had this ability, then all would be lost.

  He’d used up quite a bit of stamina killing the men who guarded the entrance to this place.

  His eyes found the triangular doorway at the end of the path. He glanced back at Sal and Linda.

  “You two are going to have to run,” Kurt said.

  Sal’s head jerked up, shaking with a physical sense of madness to it. Linda’s gaze was poisoned as well. She was rocking back and forth,
only daring to stare forth at the creature for brief moments, as if she were checking to make sure it was real. Perhaps their mental faculties would never return to them?

  Kurt formed a barrier sword at the end of his right stump. The creature’s constant swaying along the circle of light stopped. Its yellow-white globules of eyes seemed to focus on him, regarding him, and the potential threat that he represented against it.

  He bent his knees, summoning all of his strength to his right hand and his legs. The blue transparent blade extended until it was nearly six feet in length.

  The creature bent low, as a cat might prepare to pounce on a mouse.

  He wasn’t sure which one moved first. Was it he who leapt into the air first—or the creature? His blade came down on the creature, cutting several of its legs off in a clean arc. He fell to the surface of the bridge and glanced back at the creature, as it tried desperately to stand up.

  “RUN!” Kurt’s shout rang through the abyssal chamber, and the other creatures moved as though they were of one will. Sal and Linda finally snapped to and bolted for the door, carefully dodging around the creature and himself. “OPEN THE DOOR AT ALL COSTS!”

  The creatures dropped down around him, stabbing at him with electrified legs and pincers as he bobbed and weaved through their numbers, stabbing and slashing. There seemed to be a madness to their movements. Perhaps conscious thought had long since eroded away in their minds, giving way to absolute animalistic instinct?

  One by one, the creatures fell to his blade.

  He was almost to the door, and he was breathing heavily. He saw Sal and Linda fumbling to place the artifact in the last circular depression when one of the creatures leapt at him. His reflexes were just slow enough that he caught a slash across his chest. The shock from the electricity nearly caused his legs to buckle and cave, but he held his ground and shoved the barrier blade into the creature’s skull.