The Figure: Memory of a Madman

I opened my eyes, gazing through the green-blue glass. The massive expanse of blackness, inky and deep, swallowing up any light, choking it out not far past its origin. A long forgotten memory darted along the surface thoughts, interrupting any thoughts on the subject of the actual darkened landscape outside, or the fantastical nothing of dead gods. Starkly different but all the same. Long forgotten, or perhaps buried for better or worse. One of his first excursions in plain jumping. All the reading in the world on the subject would not, or could not prepare you for the actual undertaking. At the time he was not knowledgeable enough in the subject or practiced, but Theodosia was. At least in the practical sense, she could open a gateway and leave the ‘door cracked’ so to speak for an hour on a good day, and the right conditions in the plain of reality she planned to jump to, on a bad day she could hold it open long enough to peek in before it snapped shut. The most disappointing part was the worlds that refused to open were the most interesting ones by far. Ever unexplored, tucked away like some long forgotten treasure. By the Hells, some could even hold the answers I need to save Theodosia. I would never know.

I let the memory swallow my thoughts, bringing my mind back to a time both painful and beautiful. A moment locked in time, just Theodosia and I.

–

The sharp smell of salt assaulted my nostrils. Far, far below the black shale cliffs a wave crashed loudly then the sea went glass still. The air here felt different. Colder, heavier not in the sense of weight but something oppressive in it. Like an omen. But neither of us paid that much mind to it. It was breathable, even if your lungs didn’t ever feel quite full. Or focus was elsewhere. The impossible ziggurat, standing on the sea, far far from shore, still looked massive. Like an optical illusion, it shifted, seeming to wobble and bubble as the light caught the odd black stone that it was carved from. A black opal, catching every bit of the rainbow on its inky surface. The stairs on the side facing us seemed to go straight into the water, and down. As if we were only seeing the tip of something so unimaginably massive. Something so against anything rational it made me shiver. The idea that the sea could be deep enough to hide something like that. Or even how it got there. Was it built first then the sea…was that possible. Even after the millions of ‘impossible’ things I’d seen with my wife. I never stopped asking myself that question.

“It is quite strange that the sea calmed so quickly, after such a violent wave.” Theodosia said, taking a note.

I was about to respond when there was a sound, as close to a proxy I can relate it would be like a deep guttural throat singing of a deep deep base note filled the air. I could feel it in my chest, my feet, bones and even inside my head. Theodosia could feel it too. I looked at her, eyes wide with a new kind of fear. As the sound swept out over the sea, it rippled and a wave raced for the cliff. Slamming hard, the sound of stone falling into the sea followed shortly after. But the rumbling sound had gone as quickly as it had come. Over the course of the next maybe thirty minutes they gradually increased in frequency, the time between them growing ever shorter. Like something was getting closer. Then like it was never there at all the sound stopped.

“What was that?” I asked. Perhaps I am smart, smarter than most by a long shot but Theodosia was…is a genius.

“You didn’t hear it?” she asked.

“That rumbling sound? Of course I did.” I told her.

The hair on my neck stood when she looked at me with genuine deep confusion. “You didn’t hear it speaking?”

“Speaking?” I asked, facing her to check her eyes. I’d never seen a possession first hand but I knew the signs to look for. “What do you mean by speaking? What did you hear?”

Theodosia shrugged slightly, “I couldn’t understand it. It was just garbled nonsense. Like speaking a language I don't know underwater. I don’t even think I could make my tongue or lips do the shapes of the sounds I heard. I wouldn’t even know where to start.” she explained.

I looked out at the ziggurat, “It’s probably best if you don’t try.” I said.

Theodosia shook her head left to right like she was trying to get water out of her ears. “Yeah. My head feels strange.” she said. Theodosia started to write something in her notes when that sound came again, this time accompanied by the sea beginning to roil, swell and foam. Then recede like someone getting out of a bathtub, slowly. A mass began to pull itself from the sea and over the ziggurat. A mass of writhing things, a sickening middle point between tentacles and vines. A twisted perversion of a squid, a jellyfish and a star fish. The thing bent itself backward. A thing like a beak in the center of its body, a cluster of eyes sat in an asymmetrical half circle around it. “O-ou-outer god…” Theodosia babbled. She hurriedly pulled her chalk from her back and with shaking hands tried to make a circle on the ground to escape. The thing began to speak, I do not remember or know what it said, but I could feel its malice, it’s hate. Theodosia managed to get the circle drawn and the portal opened when the thing leapt from the ziggurat. I tackled Theodosia through the portal. We were more than a few feet but I managed to get under her to take the blow from the fall. But as I fell I saw the thing’s beak breach the portal just as it snapped closed. Sending strange shale and the cut tip of its beak falling in with us. When my back hit the ground I snapped out of my memory.

“Maybe that old piece of beak has some answers…maybe…” I ground my teeth. “If I’m dealing with an Outer God…things just got a whole lot worse.”