Of The Dark and The Deep

by Rink Wester

  We couldn’t follow the dragons so the little filly got away from us. Again. We tried to reach out and contact a few fella’s for a spot of help and wouldn’t you know it, all they mågÿckal phone lines is co’veniently tied up please try your call again thank you very much. The dragons got gone, yer brothers got gone, the Łöå and them elves got gone likewise. Now bossman we got to do somethin’ ‘bout all these people gettin' gone. And ‘bout these meddlesome ass dragons and shades and witches and such. We need to find Xiao Yu and them Bödhisåsshølês and wear ‘em out till their hide won’t hold shucks. Wear ‘em to a frazzle! And as fer’ Åpsät, well he’s up to something. Somethin’ big. The ether is all abuzz ‘bout him. Him and that ‘ol cunt-man elf husband o’ his. I don’ trust narry one o’ ‘em one bit. I’m waiting for a word back from our spys among the Łöå.

  But here lately tryin’ to get them ‘ol Bôkör to talk straight ain’t hittin’ on nuthin’ though. But I ‘spose ‘caint never could. Positive thoughts and all that.

  And well boss, that possum’s on the stump. That’s ‘bout as good as it’s ‘got wit is. We need them all to come on so yer plans and machinations can get on with the get on. Fast! Like a dose of salts through a widow woman.

  Gærüt looked up and tipped his head like a lost puppy. He knew Blähn was speaking english but still something was being lost in its translation. He had understood enough though. They had failed him. Twice. This time actually running away from the fight. Failure was something he could translate easily. Gærüt’s eyes coalesced and the atmosphere in the room changed suddenly. The ph becoming noxious and virulent to all things hopeful as his Ájøgün all began to melt and churn like playdoe in too much sunlight. Their bodies and features all thawed and faded, diffusing themselves and joining together in one inchoate ball of red, fettled egg yolk. That beast of body parts and organic animation staggered, sentient pieces rembering the self, attempting to escape the whole. Slowly resistance faded and where once four proud Ájøgün stood, now towered the merged hulking form of a mega-antlion göd. Gærüt had forced them into one body of mad diabolical purpose.

  -Now go Înköngönzélô. My Collected One. Find my brothers and bring them. Leave the girl and the boy to me.

  -Sire won’t your brothers put up a fight? They won’t come easily.

  -Are you refusing? Are you doubting your ability to succeed? I have made you a power among göds. Now go do as I have instructed.

  In one final moment of mind remembering the self, the mega antlion göd answered in Blähn’s southern twang, Your cow died last night bossman, so you don’t need our bull. You sit on down and have a cup of coffee…its already been saucered and blowed. We’ll handle this boss. Never you fear. If you tell me a rooster’ll pull a freight train, I’ll hook him up!

  *****************************************************

  His circus. His monkeys.

  Åpsät flew over Atlanta and knew the world beneath him. Detective Mozee flew beside him like a smoking meteor in effigy. The Mother was awake. The Darkness lived. They would be coming for him. But not if he got to them first.

  63

  The headache returned and he awakened from another blackout this time at a cave entrance high over the South African steppe from which the sweetest aroma emanated. There was death here. Death by so many hands on so many hands. A life sacrificed and perishing sickly on the altar was taboo bliss. He strained his neck to sniff the air and listen. Inside Nänå entertained the two little goslings she shared with Gærüt. They ate and made merry while the altar beckoned for more of that sweet velvety carnage. These children would meet the same sticky end as all the others. All their other illegitimate wretches. He would see to that. It was his boulder and his hill and Sisyphus shared shoulders with no one.

  He held the dagger of Ädårønh Tir and his mind rolled back the clock. He was once again there in Hiklorim that day when the firmament cracked and that glorious first child, Lêlwåni Ädår, emerged, fully formed and raging in appetite and deadly device. Nänå had loved him uncontrollably from umbilical to destruction but Gærüt had from first breath to last thought him abominable. He had never witnessed such overwhelming love and sacrifice. Nor so much hatred. Not since The Mother and Father. He was there when Gærüt and Lêlwåni Ädår battled and ripped down the curtain of existence. They battled and that battle raged for a thousand years. Five thousand. A hundred thousand. In the end, Gærüt ripped off his mantis appendage, their tibial spines piercing the Sky Father and marring his beauty. One of those spines cast down but later reclaimed by Gærüt he now held in his hand, now fashioned into the dagger of Ädårønh Tir. He grabbed handfuls of poisoned bone and Sihiosian mågÿck and slammed them into Lêlwåni Ädår‘s face, blinding his only son. After a millenia of millenia battling, his mågÿcks finally closed ranks and Ôlörûn, the immortal Sky Father, felled that great majestic beast.

  Nänå was beside herself in anguished frenzy. She mutilated her own being in horrid acts of fermented agony. She gathered her dying son in her arms, caressing away his final moments, kissing him while her powers spilled out of her. Then she did the most devilishly peculiar thing. Peculiar to most he had assumed but had now come to suppose the love of predators never ends at motherhood. She gathered all of Lêlwåni Ädår handful by clawing handful and then she ate him. She tore him into hundreds of celestial bits and devoured her first born. All save that single horn she kept, out of which she fashioned a pan dimensional totem pendant. She called it Ëhiå. Eternal Woe.

  I saw it all.

  He had seen the 10 other bastard göds she had birthed over millions of years of the most brutal trial and error. She had taken Gærüt’s original seed and the eggs originally gifted in hateful concept by Aeyitria and manipulated their damp glory, impregnating herself ad hoc in an estrus no longer bound by the prolicidal whims of the Sky Father. Millions of years before words like genome and in vitro made cosmic sense she had wrought her own dark miracles. Hermaphrodite göddess in an age of her own new mågÿcks. Gærüt had slain them all. One by one. Riddance and rubbish culminating in altars of dole and pang that still burned in his mind eons of afterlives long past.

  He would rekindle the Sky Father’s sorrow with new embers ignited and plucked from the tree of fate growing in that cave. From those two saplings sitting here with their mother, Ûlghänå Ÿêmøjá, smelling of annihilation and sweeter things still, just as happy as you please.

  He would cull and prune and season the fire when the time was right. That time was not now, he somehow knew, teleporting away. Machine revenge like any act of pruning is all about delicate timing. The technique of removing the dead, damaged and diseased was precise. Orgasmic. That decision tree would die section by section until nothing was left but the fruit of the master.

  Delicious and sweet.

  64

  Çhêrÿl Åÿn called her sisters and immediately let loose a string of well woven elvish curses when they arrived.

  Vêll Llæin Ùd’Råånãr! Quènt Güütåin Drô Dræä Ekéèîn! Clanless son of a demon whore! Mud crawling ass of a warg! How dare he??? That fucking cur! That liar!

  Sister, sister calm yourself, soothed Jøłëtâ Ånnët, ever the adjudicator, What pallor is this? What ails thee so? Speak quickly and bring us all to know thy upset.

  Our beloved Viscount, our exalted Chÿnáriøn, has decided that a sacrifice is to be made to break The Vœrtëx and secure our freedom from this torturous bondage. A sacifice of blood and oath mågÿck. He plans to sacrifice one of our Tel’Seldarine! Faithless tit! Thief of favor!

  Jøłëtâ and Çåthÿ both paled, skin turning sallow at the thought that anyone would do harm to one of the elven spirits of light trapped with them there in Ever. They had only been present at the war that found them all punished and banished from the upworld because Chÿnáriøn had lied and tricked them into mounting their powers with the horde for all of elfdom against the Sky Father. With words dipped in poisoned truth and bespelled with a disillusionment
charm he had cajoled and seduced their queen, Aerdrie Fænya, elven göddess of red lightning and mist and Keeper of the Cœrrëlôn Light of Lîöthiél. Pride and foolishness had trapped them here where it was their light, in the absence of an actual sun, that warmed Ever and kept most tethered to their elven sorcery. To kill one would dimenish and destroy whole pantheons of elves who drew their countenance and lifeforce from the Light of Liothiel. The thought of killing one was the greatest sacrilege. It was unconscionable. They were all Bôkör but their hearts still beat elven blood. Chÿnáriøn must indeed be mad and breaching the limits of desperation to consider such, Çåthÿ hastily surmised.

  Fret not sisters. I have a new plan. It is in me that you now must put your faith. I am old in power and its many conceits and the decrees of our Viscount hold no sway over me, she announced. She studied her sisters’ faces looking for any sign of challenge. Finding none she told them of a ritual that only the Bælrøg know. A ritual to together channel their powers and with the gathering blood of the Gröötslâng and the awakening of the Mother, Aeyitria, call forth the 3 winds of the eastern Gâtes of Ëvèr to break the seal of The Vœrtëx.

  She grabbed their hands, mågÿckally apparating with them to the massive eastern Gâte of the Ëvèrien realm. Holding firmly onto her sisters hands she took from them what power she needed to launch her spell, forcing them to join her in release, unlocking the dark forces that inhabited that great portal of The Vœrtëx. Suddenly 3 beings of pure maelstrom and tempest shot forth knocking them all to the ground. They recovered and following their eldest sisters lead, Queens Çhêrÿl Åÿn and Jøłëtâ Ånnët and the elven göddess Queen Çåthÿ Liin each pulled from their skins their own personal totems of power and sent them into the winds calling forth their own cryptid beast mågÿcks. Embued with Minåthrian charms they poured into those raging wind göds the full fount of their elven darkness turning them into the Ëndæråücø demon Wölf, jackal and tiger winds of The Thräll, now called to the hunt. Queen Çåthÿ Liin’s hunt.

  Go now my demon göds of the gail! My Ëndæråücø! Go and gather the blood of the fallen Gröötslâng and the taint of Mother Darkness! Bring them to me and make glad your witch queen of Ëvèr and all of Elfdom!

  Her words hung on the winds as the Ëndæråücø shot through The Vœrtëx and into the world of the living. Queen Çåthÿ’s mågÿcks carried them through undimenished and set them to the swain and court of their task. Çhêrÿl and Jøłëtâ both stepped away from their eldest sister. They sensed a growing evil and ambition in their Queen sister that frightened and troubled them. Queen of Ëvèr and all of Elfdom.

  They had no idea what game their sister was playing at but only fools stood back and watched trouble trouble on.

  Jøłëtâ turned to Çhêrÿl and whispered low enough for the winds to secret away their growing concern, What fools mortals may be. We, however, are not mortals and foolishness is no path I frequent. Our sister is up to something nefarious and I fear it may fall to us to stop her. Ëzrå Mãiz help us all!

  65

  January 8, 2018. 5:25 p.m. Night of the third quarter moon.

  The Küqålä Corporate office was typically bustling at this time of night. Tonight it was oddly deserted as if some silent alarm had been tripped and the prey scattered while their predator was still busy perfecting its pounce. Even the Irish night sprites and business transfer chupacabra cryptids in the advertising department had all gone home early or to whatever haunts such creatures were given to. The entire Sallie Douglas building seemed abandoned like a derelict hiccup holding its own breath. Åpsät, Khæ’dîm Çåril and Detective Mozee found themselves in seamless darkness waiting for the other members of the Cryptid Council to arrive.

  They had hidden in Khæ’dîm Çåril’s kingdom for the last few days until Detective Tony Mozee learned to handle the powers of his new “occupant”. That bone-deep bit of the Mothers prophetic sorcery residing within him came with more than a learning curve attached.

  It’s time. Åpsät had told both Tony and Khæ’dîm Çåril, sending out a psychic invitation to his brothers to join him tonight at the transdimensional temple chamber of their Cryptid Council headquarter offices. This was where decisions governing the whole of the Cryptid universe of göds and monsters were made. He had reassured them this plan and it’s phase two would have to begin with the unwitting cooperation of his brothers if there was any hope of success. Marginal or otherwise.

  Tony had yet to meet any of the Øgdöåd göds except Åpsät. This universe of beings that literally created the chicken soup and the soul he had settled in was all extremely and unnervingly new. Now that he was a göd or a demigöd...half of a quarter göd...whatever it was being here made him, this world had now become his world. For better or worse. He hoped it couldn’t get any worse.

  Hope? Ha. Satan’s bumper sticker.

  The first to arrive was Aren White. The göd Obàtálá. Göd of all humankind, spirituality and moral uprightness. Åpsät had described his brothers before arriving and to a detailed T there he stood. The kwasa kwasa king of the white cloth.

  Kwasa kwasa? What in the world? I really need my iPad and google search to keep all these motherfuckers straight, Tony chuckled to no one in particular.

  Aren White circled that council room in full göd form. His entire body, down to the blanched irises of his eyes, was the color of pure cloud matter in a sky dipped in chalk and covered in layer upon layer of pearly frosted paint. It had been his nexal fount Nänå had fused with her own mågÿcks to create the first men. He was the onikuma demon bear of legend. The pallid child-eating hobgoblin of Stephen Kings wettest dreams.

  His presence sounding the psychic all clear, his brothers all appeared in rapid lighting rod procession in complete göd regalia, all glaring at Åpsät Õsòòsi. Sphelix Thorne. The göd Ågänjû. Bæbäl Richmand. The göd Bæbälúayé. Hlünin Såtûri. The göd Osänyìn. Dr. Örên Marcuse. The göd Òrúnmìlà. Xiao Yu Shizi. The trickster göd Yuhuang Dadi. The gang had arrived as Åpsät had predicted and the room sagged and dipped in elastic resentments and incarnate power spilling over the edges.

  In mounted poise Aren looked at his brother, Åpsät, and blinked in Khæ’dîm Çåril’s general direction, complete dismissing Detective Mozee, his mind discrediting what he saw and attempting to adjust their reception as he asked regally, To what do we owe this summons little doe? And why have you brought your elven footman and this human in our presence?

  We will have the truth, you little shit!, shouted Hlünin Såtûri, his shadow looming in seething vapor as his words wove silk threads of molecule rich stars and tangible fate that stalked the room like the nightmare panther he was.

  Truth Osanyin? Truth? That old chestnut? Now you all want to call a tittle a turtle? How about this nugget for truth...You’ve never respected me. None of you. Not even you Sphelix that I love best of all. Coddled pity isn’t respect. I see the looks you all are even now giving my companions and I. Giving my Khæ’dîm Çåril most especially and most egregiously. I won’t have it. Not anymore. For thousands of years you’ve disrespected not only my love but the man I love. You’ve shit on our intimacy and our relationship and why? To loathe for loathing’s sake. Because he’s different? Lesser somehow in your eyes? A craven elf to be spat upon but not worthy of the rich purity of the Øgdöåd göds? How pathetic the each of you I see. You all have infiltrated and exfiltrated my love in eternal disgust. You’ve executed my husband and I on pyres of disapproval and revulsion for far too long. This enlightened homophobia or xenophobia or whatever phobia you’ve chosen to couch hate and coach your bullying stops today. It stops now. Enough is enough my brothers. And too much is good for no one’s nothing. I want you all off my balance sheet. My well is finally empty and no chain will ever help Jack or Jill lift that pail. I am foul-hooked to your judgments no longer. Khæ’dîm Çåril, my beloved, I am so sorry. You are the absolute deepest most profound part of my existence and I am ashamed that it has taken me this long in yo
ur presence and theirs to tell my brothers, collectively and separately, to kiss our whole asses baby with their tongues out if they can’t dig it. Did you all catch that? I’m happy to repeat it. I only wish Gærüt were here as well. He belongs to this message as much as any of you. If not more. Actually, he and Nänå are the real reason I summoned you all. Everything else I said was merely icing on a cake I should have baked thousands of years ago. Luckily fate has returned the recipe and you all will help me deliver just the right slice to our oldest brother and his bitch queen. You all are in fact the main ingredients. You know what they say. The enemy of my enemy et cetera et cetera. There’s that of course...and...well...also the fact that I’ve tricked you all here to take from you the weapon Mother left each of us.