by Nazri Noor
From somewhere behind me, Bastion gasped. “What – what’s happening now?”
Thea spoke softly. “It has begun.”
Each of the six pillars around the city shot into the sky, meeting in the clouds and coalescing into a sphere far above us. The ball stilled, for a second, then unleashed a singular beam of illumination that fell shrieking back to earth, a half mile away. Backlit by the massive shaft of light, Thea looked like a goddess herself. A demon. An entity.
“This I do for the glory of the greatest of all beings, for those who came before the others, before us all. For the Old Ones. For the first among them, and the last among us, who shall survive when the sun dies and the stars wink out.”
The pillar wavered. A black spot at its heart began to grow, tearing larger and larger, like a hole in reality. It was a gateway. The wailing, the screaming, the cacophony of alien music built to a piercing pitch.
Thea smiled. “This I do for the memory of my children.” And from the rift probed a single tentacle. “This I do for the very Eldest.”
Chapter 20
The keening began again. The gap in reality widened ever larger as an unspeakable noise poured out of it, a clamor of shrieking metal, discordant music, of inhuman voices chattering and muttering. Thea floated higher above the ground, her hands clasped together as she watched the rift expectantly, a beatific smile on her face.
Then all at once, the screeching stopped.
Another tentacle curled out of the gateway, then another, and another, probing and feeling at nothing, so many glistening, black tendrils. They were covered in slime, as if the nether hell from which they were birthed was drenched in this matter, some infernal amniotic fluid.
The first of the black things stepped through the portal, and my heart fell through my stomach. The screaming began anew, but this time, it came from the people all around us.
The creature was like nothing I had ever seen. It was only the basest caricature of something humanoid, a mockery of life, pawing with its talons at the air, as if discovering the world for the very first time. Spindly black legs propelled it forward, with all the twitching, excitable discovery of a child learning to walk.
And it had no head. Where its neck should have been sprouted a nest of tentacles, an innumerable mass of them in various lengths and thicknesses, lashing and whipping at the air. And with a scream that came from some unseen mouth, the thing staggered, jerked forward, then broke into a run.
Two, three more of its brethren, then a dozen more poured out of the slit in reality. The alien horrors raced forward, their movements more feral than human, loping along on two legs or four, or all of their tentacles as they saw fit. They hurtled and howled, a gleaming, wriggling mass of leather-black standing out sickeningly against the city’s artificial pallor, like nightmarish drawings come to life.
A brilliant heat pulsed behind me, and instinctively I ducked as I turned to look. Romira – good old Romira from reception – had conjured a fireball the size of a truck, and with a spirited shout, sent it streaking towards the mass of abominations. It collided with them in a burst of crimson flame, and the tentacled creatures flailed horribly, ululating and gurgling, the smell of them like burnt rubber and human hair.
The flames ate at the squirming, screaming beasts as if they were kindling, and I felt a momentary swell of relief. But Thea was looking smug. The rift was still humming, screeching, and I knew that more of those creatures would come pouring out of the gap. Romira was standing off to the side, clutching at her chest, wheezing. Casting the fire must have taken a lot out of her.
There was no doubting the incredible feats of power mages were capable of, but we were still human after all. Once enough of these things came stumbling out and our Hands ran low on power, I knew they would overrun the city. And like clockwork, as if in answer, more of the monsters came screaming out of the portal, howling from mouths I couldn’t see.
But then I did see, and I regretted everything. I glimpsed their true mouths, the slits at the tips of their tentacles, hidden in the palms of their hands, all lined with points of yellowed teeth. What kind of mad god would create these abominations?
No time to think. They were closing in, and fast, rushing straight for the ranks of the Lorica, as if they knew instinctively to attack us first. The Hands launched into battle, bursts of light flashing from across the square as they deployed their spells.
Here, a crackle and sizzle as a bolt of lightning leapt in a chain, frying a dozen of the creatures to a crisp and leaving them in tangled, molten heaps. There, a woman shouted as she thrust her palms out, slick icicles the size of kitchen knives firing from her hands in a terrifying salvo of deadly frost.
And me, I huddled towards the back of the line, unsure of what the hell I could even begin to do to help.
“Hang back,” Prudence said, her hand across my chest, as if sensing my hesitation. She flew into action. Blazing blue energy wreathed her fists and her feet, and with every strike she obliterated another abomination with unflinching brutality. A single punch blew a hole through one creature’s chest, and a kick severed another’s body at the waist through sheer, devastating force.
Before I could even thank her a single black tentacle sailed into view. One of the things had come upon me somehow, its dozens of teeth clicking as it jerked ever closer, an alien chittering issuing from its many mouths. My heart leapt to my throat, and I eyed the monster’s shadow, ready to step.
It burst into a hundred pieces, tentacles falling to the concrete in limp tatters, its insides spattering the asphalt. I held my hand up against it, grimacing as cold, black blood splashed against the back of my arm.
“Graves!” Bastion shouted. “She said to hang back. Listen.”
“I – thanks,” I muttered, unsure that he could even hear me. I knew it didn’t matter anymore, watching as he held his hand out, as stray rocks and debris from the street lifted at his command. On their own, they were just pebbles, but under Bastion’s power, everything became a weapon. He spread his fingers and the rubble shot forth, spraying at the oncoming horrors, ripping them apart like a hail of bullets.
Stumbling backwards, letting the fighters surge ahead of me, I wondered how long Bastion or any of the Hands could keep this up. There was no stemming the endless tide spilling from the rift. And somehow, things went from bad to worse. Sensing that there were enough of their brethren to keep the Lorica occupied, the newest batch of creatures from the portal broke away from the procession and flooded into the square, clearly meaning to spread throughout the city.
“No,” I shouted, amid screams of warning and horror from around me, from all the others who had spotted the stragglers. From somewhere above us, Thea was laughing to herself, triumphant. She hadn’t even joined the fray, I realized, saving her energies for whatever dark, unknowable purpose. This was bad. She was getting what she wanted: a bloodbath on the scale of an entire city, a grisly offering for her chthonic masters.
Then a cold, commanding voice rang out to drown out all the others.
“Stop.”
It was Odessa, the Scion I had met at Thea’s office. Heads turned at the sound of her voice, and I watched as she lifted a single delicate hand to the sky. Threads of light emanated from each of her fingers, drifting lazily into the clouds as they wove themselves into a translucent sphere that covered the very extent of the square. She was conjuring a dome, a massive, transparent field meant, I began to understand, to keep the abominations from breaking out into the city.
But it was also meant to keep the innocents out. By the Lorica’s definition I knew that it also meant the peacekeepers. Responders had only now reached Central Square, but all around the perimeter of the dome, squad cars and ambulances were parked helplessly, unable to penetrate Odessa’s field. A few officers fired into the shield, attempting to shatter it. I watched, open mouthed as they were, as the bullets simply disappeared.
Trapped, the beasts pounded at the shimmering wall with their appendag
es, gibbering in rage. My sweat ran cold when I understood that this meant we were trapped in here with them, too. The sensation in my stomach was very much like the feeling of being stuck in a room that was slowly filling up with water, only instead of water, I was contending with a frothing mass of razor-toothed octopus mutants set on tearing me apart.
“Heads up,” Bastion cried.
I stifled a gasp as he wrenched a telephone pole right out of the ground, sending it hurtling through the air like a missile, cleanly impaling five of the abominations in a single strike. It was a strange time to better understand his power, how he worked around the limitations of his range by using his magic to throw objects like projectiles, the way he might with an especially powerful invisible limb.
But it was also a reminder of how limited my own abilities were. I groped around on the ground, desperate to contribute at least in some way to the fight. My fingers closed around a lead pipe. Close enough. I wielded it like a club and charged forth, the scream coming out of my mouth sounding so far away. I was afraid, but I had to fight.
The Hands were doing the bulk of the damage, clearing out whatever else was streaming in through the portal. On the ground around us, it looked like at least fifty of the monsters had been slain, but it didn’t seem like there’d be an end to the wave of horrors. Up ahead, someone screamed as one of the creatures finally found home with its tentacles. Blood pounded in my temples as I watched the thing bury its limbs in a man’s chest, ripping at flesh and bone, killing him in a flurry of writhing, glistening appendages.
More yelling filled the plaza as more of the Lorica fell to the monsters. What was this all in service of? Was this the sacrifice that Thea wanted? I eyed her as she floated above the proceedings, hovering in midair like a noble watching over the peasantry. I gripped my pipe harder. She was responsible for the portal’s existence. If we could take her out of the picture, even just distract her, we could loosen her hold on it, and find a way to shut it down from there.
“Thea,” I screamed, my hackles rising as she turned to favor me with a slitted gaze and the smuggest of smiles. “Why are you doing this?”
She flew nearer, still infuriatingly out of reach, but close enough that I could hear her voice and her taunting.
“Call it an offering. Call it a sacrifice. Magic can only take you so far, Dustin, and what I want, only the Eldest can give.”
“And what is that? Death? Mayhem? Look around you. They’re destroying everything. Why do this?”
Thea’s smile was angelic, so far removed from the terror and carnage around us. “Because they are the only true Gods. If I do as they ask, then they will grant me anything, even dominion over life. And death.” She pursed her lips. “Magic,” she repeated, as if in some sort of trance, “can only take you so far, Dustin.”
Life, death? Magic had its limitations, the way the Lorica couldn’t simply bring me back to my father. But then it came to me, how Thea had lied about casting a massive circle. “That’s how you get an apocalypse going,” she told me. The dead don’t just come back – unless, perhaps, through a contract with an entity so powerful that it demanded blood on an equally massive scale.
The memory of her children. The Eldest. That was what she meant.
“That’s why you’re doing this,” I said. “Your son, your daughter. You’re trying to bring them back.”
Thea’s face twisted into a furious mask. “Do not speak to me of my children,” she hissed. But I knew I had hit the mark. Whoever these Eldest were – whatever they were – she was only doing this to earn their favor, to resurrect her children.
“There has to be another way, Thea.”
“There isn’t,” she snarled. “You fool. I know so much more of our world than you ever will. Don’t you think I’ve exhausted every possibility? No. This is the only way.” She lifted further off the ground, raising her head to the portal. “Fare well, Dustin. Live, if you can.”
I puzzled this out for the briefest second – was she really expecting me to survive any of this? – when I realized what she meant. I narrowly dodged as another tentacle whipped past my face. Twisting from the hip, I smashed the pipe across where the creature’s head would be, the nest of tentacles between its shoulders.
Upon impact, the thing gave a series of screeches from its many mouths – but it didn’t go limp as I’d hoped. Three of its tentacles reached out, entangling my wrists, wrenching the pipe from out of my grasp, hurling it away. Ichor and saliva dripped from more of its tentacles as it took aim for my chest, and –
A blur of green and gold streaked across the night, shearing through the air and slicing at the monster’s tentacles. I felt the appendages go limp as they were severed in a singular arc, a masterful slice that, at first, I assumed had come from Bastion. Then the blur struck again, cleaving the abomination in half, rending its torso asunder.
“Vanitas,” I breathed.
The sword’s voice pulsed in a corner of my mind. “You’re going to get yourself killed. Idiot.”
“You can call me whatever you want. How did you – ”
“I don’t know,” he said hurriedly, repositioning himself in time to hack at another of the oncoming creatures. “Our bond, perhaps. I couldn’t control it. Just came smashing out of the glass, and here I am.”
“Thanks,” I said, reaching for my lead pipe and diving back into the fray with Vanitas, fighting inexpertly alongside the animated sword. His scabbard joined the battle too, bluntly crushing and smashing with quiet relish. From above us Thea bellowed her rage, whether at the sword’s very existence or its ability to continue carving up her fell army, I couldn’t tell.
But she wasn’t finished. Thea thrust her hand at the portal, a thin ray of light emanating from her fingers. I swallowed nervously, watching as the gap widened – no, doubled in size. Fuck. Her minions flooded in faster, in greater numbers than before.
I glanced around. Even with Vanitas at my side, we couldn’t hope to stop them all. Prudence was panting as she fought, her motions less fluid, driven with less power. Bastion hung back from a safe distance, swatting and sweeping at the things with a telephone pole. Romira’s flames didn’t burn as bright. In time I knew that Vanitas would lose momentum too. It was happening. Mages didn’t draw from some limitless well of power. We were running out of ammunition.
The Hands fell back. From around us fearful screams issued from the stray normals. We were trapped under the dome, unless Odessa lifted her shield. But what good would that do? It would only send the abominations out into the city. There had to be some way I could help to stop it all. I squeezed the pipe, the metal of it rough and icy against my hand, sobering. Think, Dustin. Think.
I laughed to myself haughtily, soft and low. Step. That was all I could do, was shadowstep away and out of there. Maybe find my father, tell him there was no time to explain, then just head the fuck out of Valero as fast as we could go, before the creatures could catch up to us. But wouldn’t that just be delaying the inevitable?
I hated my helplessness. I hated that my thoughts turned to running. Everyone was right. The school counsellors, dad, fuck, even Hecate, who didn’t know me from Adam, read what hid in my heart. All I’d ever done was run. Turn and face the darkness, she said. Easy for her to say.
But that was all I had to do: find the nearest shadow, walk into it, and enter the Dark Room. But I would be leaving all these people behind, all of them to die, these men and women who had become my colleagues, dare I say friends. Even Vanitas, whoever, whatever he truly was.
Hah. Hecate had the truth of it all along. Even she knew that my first instinct would be to run. Here I was facing down this horde of alien death, and all I had was a lead pipe. My bones yearned for the safety of the Dark Room. All I had to do was close my eyes and open the door.
“But the door opens from both ends.”
My spine shivered. I couldn’t rightly tell if I’d recalled Hecate’s words at that precise moment, or if she had spoken them directly into
my mind, but it was starting to make sense. All this time I had been pulling on the Dark Room’s door to use it as an escape hatch. What if the answer wasn’t to go into the shadows, but to throw that same door open – and bring the roiling, hideous denizens of the Dark Room to this reality?
“Stand back,” I shouted, dropping the pipe. The sound it made as it clanged against the asphalt was fitting. If I was wrong, this would be my death knell.
“And what the hell do you expect to do against all that?” Bastion screamed, thrusting a finger at the newest oncoming rank of creatures. A hail of pebbles flew feebly as he threw his hand out, barely denting the leathery hides of the abominations.
“Trust me on this,” I shouted back, though I had no reason to trust even myself. The blistering light of the portal cast such intense brilliance across everything that all that stood before it was shadow, the entire square shrouded in a writhing, undulating mass of limbs and tentacles.
I focused on that darkness, homing in on the sensation of peeling back the veil between Here and the Dark Room, only this time, I had no intention of stepping through. Whatever dwelled in that nether place – it was time to let them out.
“Dustin, we need to get out of here,” Prudence shouted, so close to my ear that it nearly broke my concentration. I shook my head. “You idiot, we need to go before – ”
A black mist rose from the shadows cast against the street, climbing, at first, in thin wisps, delicate tendrils that seemed to be made of smoke, or darkness. That smoke began to stir, and to churn. Still the horrors stampeded for the living, howling, frothing. All at once the mists and shadows hardened, coalescing into a baleful, bladed solidity that glimmered like crushed velvet and gleamed with the unmistakeable sharpness of steel. Something in my chest burned, low and slow, but it built into an agony so intense, like an ember forcing its way out of my body. I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth to fight the pain, but to no avail. My heart was on fire. I threw my head back and screamed.