by J M Bannon
Rome, Italy
Rose pushed open the heavy double doors. The smell had been intensifying with every step down into the lower levels but with the door opening, it hit her like a steam lorry. As she entered the dank catacomb she was reminded of her vision of where Prufas resided below a temple in a similar room. As she moved forward, she saw the shadow of the mass that held Caiaphas.
The room lit with a blue glow from her necklace. The apotropaic amulet she wore was created from the relic of a saint, and it provided protection from attacks on the mind. Rose had never seen it react so violently. The glow it threw off was enough illumination for her to see the blob of rancid flesh and Azul’s metal body wrapped in its slime and tentacles.
Audacious Action.
She pulled the trigger, and the projectile flew with a pressurized hiss. Then it struck the aetheric crystal at the end, shattering and exploding in a violent burst of energy. In watching the display, Rose almost forgot that for her device to work she needed to release the alchemical gases to produce the metaphysical vacuum that would pull him into the vessel. She slammed down on the plunger and saw the bellows expand. The glow from her amulet dissipated.
She stood in silence wondering had it worked. Then the whole building shuddered. Finally, something.
Azul moved. It was awkward at first, fighting out of the filth he was tangled in.
Rose moved to help him.
“No, no I can do this,” he crawled out on his hands and knees out of the pool, then stood.
Looking over himself he shook his head, “Rose, I have to go!” said Azul as he marched towards the exit.
“Where?” asked Rose.
“To the aether, he sent Gerrard into the aether.” Replied Azul.
“But I trapped Caiaphas, he’s in the Cannon Arcana. With your help and Angelica, we should be able to imprison him.”
“That shudder did you feel that? It’s the gate. Help me get through,” Azul did not stop, he continued out of the chamber to the stairwell.
Rose stopped just outside the room and looked at the cannon she held. She couldn’t keep up with him carrying this monstrosity, and she needed Azul to invoke the binding, “Damn,” she said as she set down the gun and marched after Azul. He was already up the stairs.
Rose jogged up the stairs to catch him, but his long stride had propelled him down the hall. He was already entering the laboratory.
When Rose stepped into the room, and Azul stood before the gate, the portal no longer opened to the clock tower. It was different. A long swirling tube, and at the far end, Rose could see the bizarre landscape of some other world.
As Rose peered through, it looked as if something was coming towards them, balls of energy. Rose stepped up to get a closer look. She dropped her goggles over her eyes for a different view, and it was clear that there were several wisps of energy making their way and picking up speed. The first popped through and flew directly towards her hitting her in the chest. She sensed the incantations that laced her coat engage and defend her from its attack. More than just being fashion forward the crimson coat was lined with threads taken from the death shrouds of sixteen saints and augmented with wards of protection. About the size of a cricket ball, the wisp skittered up towards her face, each bounce off her jacket caused sparks. Then her skin sizzled when the energy wisp hit her face. She screamed, and her nose filled with the smell of burning flesh and her mind was flooded with strange thoughts. She was again bathed in the blue glow of her amulet as it tried to protect her consciousness from the attack.
The wisp fell to the ground and when she looked down her stomach turned. The energy ball had a piece of her skin attached to it. This thing was like Caiaphas and Pruflas, it was becoming substantial by connecting to organic material. She watched in awe as the thin piece of her flesh writhed on the floor.
“Rose, help!”
She turned to see other wisps swarming on Azul as if looking for a place to sneak into the suit.
Throwing back the side of her coat she drew the Rod of Raziel and called forth his holy fire with the words, “Sanctus ignis.”
It was as if barrels of fiery pitch poured out from Rose’s coat engulfing the room. Rose clenched her teeth concentrating as she controlled the mystic flame guiding it towards Azul and consuming the balls of energy. She could sense through the flames these creature’s destruction. Looking down she saw the one that had stripped off a piece of her skin vaporized, and the piece of flesh burn in the eldritch flame.
“Those are the same kind as the Outcasts, what if they have Gerrard?” said Azul.
Rose turned to the gate she saw more coming down the swirling tunnel. The fires died off as she entered the gate.
“Audacious action, Rose!” hollered Azul as he strode towards the gate entering the tunnel. Rose followed. Ahead she saw more of the wisps knowing Azul was defenseless she pushed past him. He stepped aside.
Her mind's eye focused on the glyphs of warding and defense. She used the Rod to write them in the air before her. Her motions translated to control of etheric energies that swirled and followed the patterns she traced. As she wrote in the air the glyphs appeared and moved about a flowing wall of coalesced energy in her control. The force of her will propelled the wall forward. The wisps slammed into it and were pushed back. She could feel the force of them trying to counter her push ahead. She kept writing creating more and more glyphs in a rainbow of colors and shapes. The wards swam and darted to stop her adversaries from breaking through.
Rose felt a sudden boost. Looking from the corner of her eye she saw Azul with his shoulder and hands pressing against her spell wall. He was somehow augmenting her spell. Azul pressed on pushing the wall through the tube this allowed Rose to focus more on creating added wards as earlier ones were beginning to evaporate.
Maybe it was the concentration of scripting the spell wall, but Rose wasn’t prepared for the snap and the sudden change in the environment when she and Azul finally breached the gate.
* * *
The Aether
Rose was in another world. Her best guess was another plane of existence. She and Azul were now in a space only made of energy, the immaterial was visible and somehow had substance. She didn't have time to explore or interpret her surroundings. Across this crimson plane that supported them was another gate and pouring through it, creatures. No longer just balls of energy these were like ethereal jellyfish, and there were hundreds of them pouring out of the other entrance and crossing the plane towards them.
“There, you see,” Azul said pointing at the gate in the distance.
Rose stopped her spell scribing to concentrate, and it looked like human figures were fighting their way out of the distant gate. It appeared as if they were getting a break that the translucent creatures were breaking away from fighting with them, but the bad news was that Rose and Azul were their focus.
“They’re coming for us,” said Rose.
It was quite beautiful, the luminescent spectral beings floating across towards them. It seemed like hundreds, maybe thousands when they smashed into the spell wall. It shattered, and Rose was thrown to the ground. While the beings began piling on her and Azul, she could see that more were going through the gate.
Again, she called upon Raziel's fire. This conflagration came down from above a torrent of flame poured down consuming the ghosts. When the flames subsided, the area was cleared of creatures that had charged across, but a new supply of them was pouring from the gate.
Rose didn’t know what to do. She looked to see another wave of these creatures forming up. Gripping the rod, she looked for it to provide understanding. Maybe this was one of those times that subtlety was the way forward.
Nothing.
Rose had put more concentration and energy into what she had done in the last hour that all of her gift use before. She was spent. Looking across the field, she saw waves of these creatures pouring through th
e opposite gate, and the group of armored figures surrounded. Looking down the tunnel back to earth she saw that some of the creatures had made it past her and we're going to breach the gate. Beyond them she saw the equipment of the portal projector and the long glass Nexus tube that stretched from floor to ceiling, pulsing with energy.
Audacious action.
Rose raised her goggles the amber hue lifted, and the world she was in was even more dazzling. Her eyes locked on the gas tube. She hurled the Rod. It flew with speed and grace as if guided by her sight alone and then; pop, the gate closed. She never saw if it hit, but the gate disappearing led her to believe the Rod found its mark.
She turned to see that the other portal had also closed and the few scores of the jellyfish ghosts were in combat with the group of humans on the other side of the field. She watched the group battle it was vicious close combat, and this group looked like they were seasoned warriors all decked out is a strange green armor. As she watched, Rose’s vision tunneled, and she had the most peculiar sensation.
“Rose are you alright?” asked Azul.
Just before Rose blacked out she was able to utter, “there’s no air to breathe.”
36
The Aether
Rose came into consciousness and gasped for air. Rather than the feel of air rushing in her mouth and her lungs filling she had a bizarre sensation of energy coming in. It was disconcerting as she felt that she would choke but instead what she breathed in, while not air, it somehow kept her from suffocating.
She was being awakened by a man in a greenish tinted armor suit. The outfit looked to be a hybrid of a diver’s suit and medieval plate armor. She caught a glint of his face behind the colored faceplate as he helped her up.
“Are you alright?” the armored man asked.
She didn’t answer because she wasn’t sure. Rose didn’t feel right at all. The atmosphere all around her was bathed in a red glow of aetheric energy. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the flashes and movement of energy on the horizon. The surface she lay on was a plane of red energy that reminded her of the first time she saw the aether in that field outside of Chester. She took the assistance given and struggled up to her feet.
Her skin tingled strangely. She pulled up her sleeve and looked on the inside of her forearm where she had tattooed glyphs of warding. The ink had a faint shimmer, and there seemed to be movement. She checked her other arm, and it was the same.
“I don’t feel alright,” said Rose. She noticed that there was a group of automatons similar to the constructs she had seen at Haddon Hall. These were moving, their eyes glowed with eerie energy.
“This is the aether, everything is possible now for you,” counseled Azul. He stood at the edge of the plane looking out watching the colors change and waves and swells of energy move across space.
“What were those things?” asked Rose.
“In English, the closest their name can be pronounced is Yan Hannanii,” said Azul.
Out of Azul’s back seeped out a yellowish white light. It formed into a translucent apparition that looked like the Yan Hannanii that had come through the portal. Like the ghost of a jellyfish. As is materialized, Azul fell to the ground.
“I told you that this wasn’t about your earth or justice, it was about what I wanted. I wanted to be free of your reality and able to roam the Aether again.” a voice projected.
“Azul?” asked Rose, confused.
“Caiaphas,” replied the man in the armor.
“Yes, I am the one you call Caiaphas, but that is not my name. Again, your limited minds cannot comprehend my name as it is a sum of all my experiences. Rose, as your gift for helping me escape I give you what you have sought; to find the boy. There he is in all his glory, Earth’s first aether warrior,” said the apparition.
“As I told my ward Gerrard, I couldn’t see outcomes on this side of the aether. I postulated you would have been shredded by the maelstrom of energy once here. Yet there you stand, for how long who knows but you are unprotected here in the aether.”
She showed him her forearm the tattoos that adorned her body. Rose could feel the aether charging them as if it were forming a second skin.
“Hmm, some wardings of protection embedded in your dermal layer. How fortunate.”
“Years ago, I had this done, but that’s another story. I’m not dead, and it appears neither are you,” said Rose.
“My kind is one of the few that can travel the aether unharmed, and as far as that silly weapon and procedure of yours in the catacombs, no, it did not work. I was already inside Azul’s gemulet when you fired.” Caiaphas retorted.
“I should have known when you said, ‘audacious action’ and my amulet was protecting me that you were reading my thoughts,” said Rose.
“When I was banished to earth my kind created a non-return valve on reality. A way to keep me trapped on earth. They had to break it; I could not. You helped to put all the pieces in place and Gerrard’s actions caused them to retaliate; you see, the two of you instigated a war. Now I plan to go and broker a peace in trade for my being left to roam. After that, Gerrard, you will start an amazing adventure traveling by my side. Now come along,” The apparition began to open up a rift in the aether. A swirling of motion began to form a window of another world.
“I’m not going back there, I almost died,” said Gerrard as he lunged forward and grabbed Caiaphas. It was strange to witness as his hand clasped on the insubstantial form. Rose saw energy form around his hand as if it were a glove of ethereal gas, it moved and as if sigils and symbols were moving through the energy.
Where Gerrard’s grip touched Caiaphas with this energy, it appeared as if it caused the creature to become material. Gerard twisted his body and threw Caiaphas towards his cadre of automatons.
When Caiaphas hit them the group of metal men were able to grab and hold Caiaphas. They too were generating this energy around them that could interact and carry Caiaphas. Rose watched this jellyfish ghost fight back, and his struggling would excite the eldritch power that Gerrard's automatons were generating. It dawned on Rose that the tiny symbols in the energy she had witnessed before. Back when Rose had first read one of the Enochean verses from the scrolls Enzo had given her. While she couldn’t make out the words, she knew that it was the same writing her hand instinctively went to her belt for the Rod, but the holster was empty. It was somewhere back on earth, or at least she hoped it was there.
Gerrard walked up to the creature, “You said it yourself, you had no vision beyond the aether. You didn’t see what your actions put me through and the existence you have damned us all to for your whims.”
“What existence?” said Caiaphas.
We had fought here for years, before that you took those poor souls and had them ripped from their life on earth,” said Gerrard.
“And you enslaved them in these metal shells,” said Caiaphas.
“They are not slaves, they follow me because I made them the promise that we would have our revenge on you,” said Gerrard. His helmet made a nodding motion, and the pack of metal men began to rip Caiaphas apart.
* * *
The Aether
Rose watched in shock as the automatons ripped the Caiaphas being to bits. The creature torn apart handful by handful. As automatons let go of what they tore away, the ghostly chunk would fall to the ground and absorb into the plane Rose stood upon. After piling on Caiaphas and tearing at him the pack stopped, and Caiaphas was no more.
Rose ran over to Azul. His body was worn and battle damaged but looked intact.
“Is he — it dead?” asked Azul.
“Is that you Azul? Really you…” gushed Rose.
“I am so sorry, but he had me beguiled.”
Gerrard turned to Azul, “He is dead. We’ve killed enough of his kind to know when they’re gone. As powerful as he was on earth, here in the tween, he was as weak as you.”
“Gerrard, your mother has been looking for you,” Rose thought how funny that sounded sp
eaking to a suit of armor.
“Yes, we came here for you,” added Azul.
“My mother is dead, and I would trust nothing you say after being under Caiaphas’s control,” Gerrard said to Azul.
“No, it’s true. Angelica has been resurrected into the body of another, but her spirit lives, and she has had only one purpose, to be reunited with you. I tell you her heart is broken,” said Rose.
“Did you already forget what happened to the last one to play mind games with me, Witch? I’ve had enough of being deceived. If you think that you can apprehend me with some story about my dead mother you’re a fool,” said Gerrard.
Rose shrugged and held her hands out. “I don’t know what to tell you other than the truth. Seeing as we are in-between the fabric of reality having a conversation you might want to rethink what is believable. Let’s just go back, and you have a chat with her. I swear, I have no interest in you other than my promise to your mother to reunite you to her. The only reason I came here was to see you.”
The metal men began to form up behind Gerrard. Rose was concerned at the posture they were taking. She wasn’t sure who to trust, Gerrard certainly didn’t trust her, and she just saw that creature come out of Azul. Could the Vizier still be under his control?
“Azul, do you have an idea as to how we can get back to earth?” asked Rose.
“No I don’t, but I fear I need to return rather soon,” said Azul. He was looking at his hand that he held out before his face. Tiny wisps were coming off the metal, and some strange corrosion was beginning to form on his brass skin.
“You’ll eventually break down from exposure to the aether. I could just leave you two here to waste away in the between, but you’ll just keep pursuing me, won’t you?” said Gerrard. His troop of metal men began to move towards Rose, “I’ll make this quick, just like I did at Haddon Hall!”