CHAPTER 28 - VISIONS OF N'Z'Z'AZTH

  The slimy backpack could hold x250 Oracle Sand, x15 Thassal Stone, and x5 Deepstalk Logs.

  Levan knew this because he’d filled it thrice.

  “Aetherize,” he whispered from his little ventilation chamber.

  [ Skill Activated: Aetherize ]

  [ Items Added to Aetherial Stores: ]

  > Sand (Oracle), x250

  > Stone (Thassal), x15

  > Logs (Deepstalk), x5

  [ Total in Aetherial Stores: ]

  > Sand (Oracle), x750

  > Stone (Thassal), x45

  > Logs (Deepstalk), x15

  And now, thrice, he had Aetherized them.

  [ Time Remaining: 18 Hours ]

  Walking, gathering, building a vent chamber, Aetherizing, and then back to exploring. Three times. He had to be careful. The time was getting away from him.

  He was, horrible as it was, starting to get used to the eerie twilight of the Lost One’s plane.

  He’d lost track of time and just focused on filling up his Aetherial Stores with materials whose uses he hadn’t even determined yet.

  He took a step, and peace came over him.

  Nothing special about the step—more of the same.

  Press of boot.

  Squish of silt.

  But this was the step that brought him peace.

  Levan stopped and took a trembling breath. This was a piece of trades—going from unsettled uncertainty to understanding something he’d already decided—already settled on—a while ago.

  A nervousness he hadn’t been able to quell, no matter how many shovel-fulls of sand he put in his backpack and aetherized, telling himself it would come in handy.

  As far as Levan could tell, this ocean plane stretched long into the horizon, far beyond what he was willing to explore within the time limit he had. But the plateau—well, “conquered” surely wasn’t the word for it. But he’d seen what there was to see here, and there were really just two more aspects of the plane left to “conquer,” as it were.

  There was the ocean itself—the depths. To wade into the sea, hold his breath, and—well, that wasn’t worth thinking about.

  Then there…

  Levan swallowed, resumed his walking, and felt once again the attention of something in the distance—something floating in the sky.

  The temple.

  The Leviathan.

  Not all the temples led to submerged depths.

  Some dragged against the sand, the majority of their containment exposed. Others, like the Leviathan Temple, the size of cities, moved like behemoths in the sky.

  That’s what he had decided.

  That’s what he’d been moving towards without realizing.

  That was the trade-off.

  Peace—that he’d realized what was stirring his anxiety:

  He’d decided to go into one of the bismuth temples.

  And the trade-off:

  He’d decided to go into one of the bismuth temples.

  Not only that, but he was going to explore one that had been floating towards him for the last six hours.

  If he could, he would explore the Leviathan. The massive city floating on the plateau. But it was a mile into the sky, as far as he could see.

  Not like this one.

  The temple grazed above the black sands like an herbivore beast, an upside-down pyramid of deep-toned metal. It wasn’t the difficult-to-understand size of the temple Levan called Leviathan—but it was large enough to hold buildings and streets.

  “Is this a bad idea, Codex?”

  [ Not for me to analyze, ] Codex responded.

  “Why does that feel like a ‘yes’?” Levan asked, approaching the temple.

  The Codex didn’t answer.

  They met on the field of dark blue sand like opposing generals before the battle: Levan, with his second, the Codex, in his mind.

  The Temple, with its second being whatever waited inside, within, above, or below.

  Or maybe this is the second.

  It drifted before him, and Levan waited.

  I think it’s an animal.

  He shook his head.

  So alien. But the behavior, the way it approached, hovering in the air, barely disturbing the sand and water, it—it was an animal, of some kind. Creature. Monster. Sentient. Whatever.

  The gap between them narrowed, and eventually Levan had to force his feet to carry him, step by step.

  You don’t have to force yourself to do this, he thought. You could run.

  But the temple called to him.

  The Leviathan.

  And when the temple opened a small door, revealing nothing but more metal on the other side, Levan walked in.

  And when the temple’s door of green-blue metal closed after him, he was not surprised.

  When it was hollow, he was not surprised.

  When it began to move, with him inside, he was not surprised.

  When it began to rise, he was not surprised.

  And when it departed the plateau, and began carrying him higher, and higher, closer and closer toward the Leviathan…

  He was not surprised.

  And somehow, he knew, it’s exactly what it was going to do.

  ****

  The small pyramid carried him into the air.

  Thousands of feet into the air.

  Barely large enough to contain him, Levan pressed himself against a sunken corner of the metallic steps, each foot on a different side and butt-scooted all the way back while the exposed bottom of the pyramid. It was this one inverted section of his taxi that provided a surface for him to sit on, and Levan had the eerie feeling it clung to him just as he clung to it.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  At least neither of us wants me falling out, he thought.

  Though maybe that wasn’t a good thing.

  Beneath him, a square window and an ever-climbing empty drop struck fear into his heart like a harp with a single note, hammering again and again.

  They rose from the plateau. There was another drop off that he would have found if he had traveled west for another twenty minutes or so—but beneath that drop off was yet another plateau with the same shadowy blue pools.

  The beach snaked a line down the dark coast, and the stillness of the ocean played tricks on his eyes.

  Was he thousands of feet in the air, peering down at miles?

  Or was he just a child, peering down at the sand beneath his feet?

  Twisted fractals, this place.

  A Mandelbrot Set teetering on eldritch insanity.

  Slowly, the inverse-pyramid that marked their destination came into view beneath them. It looked like they were going to land somewhere in the center of the thing.

  Bismuth eclipsed the floor of the taxi suddenly, and everything went suddenly dark.

  Then, like a gala-attendee letting her dress fall from her shoulders, the bismuth steps of the structure that had carried him just…fell away.

  They fell to the floor, and with the change of light level affecting his eyes, Levan couldn’t see where they went.

  They were just…gone.

  Like he’d appeared here already standing.

  And where was here?

  “Okay, Codex,” Levan whispered in barely more than a breath. “You cannot let me forget where we parked.”

  [ Confirmed. ]

  That was reassuring, at least.

  They were parked in the…

  He looked up.

  The pillar chamber, he decided, was a good name for the high-ceilinged room.

  Between the pillar with the…

  He looked left.

  …Elephant-Plesiosaur thing statue coiled around it.

  And the…

  He looked right.

  He followed the marble pillar up, and then the and the and then the and the patch of darkness with the and and face in the dark if if if he he he he looked closely and he he he he he looked looked looked closely and and and and and and and and he and and he he he he and the is it squid and and and and and and and and and no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

  Levan blinked, suddenly back to himself.

  [ Effect Ended: Visions of N’z’z’azth ]

  “Okay,” he thought, staring down at his boots. “Parked between the Elephant-Plesiosaur statue and the unspeakable horror/memetic hazard thing. Noted.”

  Levan strode forward, driven more by a desire to get the right-hand pillar out of his vision—including peripheral—before he he he he

  He drew in a sharp breath.

  He was further down the corridor now.

  His feet—his blessed feet—had kept on walking. It hadn’t been as bad this time.

  [ Effect Ended: Visions of N’z’z’ath ]

  Bracing himself, Levan peered around the room one more time.

  There were a few sickening corners. Ones that made him feel like he maybe skipped a bit of time, here and there.

  [ Codex > Resistances | Your resistances increase from time, exposure, and other sources. Increase your Inner Workings knowledge to view your own resistances and see the resistances of allies and enemies. ]

  “There you go,” Levan said, gathering his senses. “In the words of the immortal Maury Ballstein: What do we do when we fall off the horse?”

  He answered his own--Maury Ballstein’s—question.

  “We get back on the horse.”

  The chamber around him was starting to settle in, somehow. Seeming more familiar, and it wasn’t until Levan reached a few short steps that he realized just how.

  The pillars holding up the walls, the high ceilings, the dimensions were…the same.

  It was the same as the temple he had been summoned to when called along the Emberlaines. The temple in Sandesar.

  There were minor differences, even in layout—unlike the temple at Sandesar, the ceiling above the dais here was brought down significantly, sloping until reaching a mere ten or fifteen feet in height.

  Light hit his cheek, his eye, and he gazed up at the ceiling, realizing too late that it might be another mistake.

  It was glass, supported overhead—or at least decorated—with spirals within spirals of wrought black iron and the now familiar bismuth-shaded metal.

  Above him were what must have been tons, tons upon metric tons of water.

  A pale light shone from the oculus of the glass, undulating slightly, as if it were he himself gazing at the sun from beneath the waves.

  And there was…

  There was…

  Something there.

  His heart caught, and for a moment he was sure the same eldritch fingers would wrap once more around his heart, drag it down, down, down—

  But not.

  Just a flitting thing.

  A shadow, even, mostly.

  Small.

  A squid, or something squid-like, propelling itself, opening and closing, jetting across the roof of the aquarium. It was dark brown, with spots of black. One eye was large, glowing a deep orange, and the other was much smaller, and glowed a light amber color. It corkscrewed across the water to get view after view down at him.

  “Leg….walker,” a gentle voice said in his mind.

  Then his heart caught again.

  The voice was gentle, soft, and curious, hesitant—a feather on the dusty shelves of his mind.

  “Yes?” Levan responded, so many tones competing on that single word that none took priority, and he answered with complete neutrality.

  “No one…for a long time,” the gentle voice said, almost nervous, and as he stared at the squid in the tank, he was sure it was the squid talking to him.

  “The…squid?” the squid questioned. “Forgive me,” it said a moment later in his mind, as the creature jetted off, only to re-enter the watery window a moment later, this time from a different angle.

  “Rude to…seek thoughts,” it said in his mind. “Forgive me.”

  “I forgive you,” Levan said, still trying to remain neutral.

  “No one…for a long time,” it said.

  “What are you? Who are you? What is this place?” Levan asked.

  “My mother wished for me to be called Saln’n’n’saath. My…clutch mates she…made them call me Saln’n’n’saath,” the squid said. There was a beat. “And if they called me anything else, she would…eat them,” he said, and Levan thought he detected a bit of fond nostalgia from the squid, as it darted left and right in the glass above him. “I wished to be called Sal.”

  “Sal, then? Or…” Levan’s eyes grew wide. “I’ll maybe call you Sal…rn’n’n’…saath….if your mother is around,” Levan said, hoping he got the name right.

  “No,” the squid said with a chuckle. “Do not fear her, she will not eat you. She is long dead.”

  There was a beat, and the chuckle turned sad.

  “All are…long…dead,” Sal said in his mind.

  A pit began to grow in Levan’s stomach.

  “Leg walker,” Sal began. “I would…trouble you with…a task.”

  Chills ran along Levan’s arms as the squid looked at him with that glowing amber iris, banded around a black pupil too large for the squid’s head.

  “Unless you have….other business,” the squid said. There was another chuckle. “What other business, I cannot fathom. But perhaps you have it.”

  “I don’t have very long,” Levan said, “Less than a day.”

  The squid began to deflate, letting itself drift across the plane of the window sadly.

  “Less than a day,” it echoed in that gentle, soft voice, drifting. “You know, as the eons marched on, I always assumed time would be a thing I could…grasp, confront, like the pulling of the tide. You know the tides? You have been among the water?”

  Levan nodded.

  “But it doesn’t,” the small squid said, resuming its usual propulsion, swimming back and further. “The more time passes…the more I become horrified of the horror beyond horrors.”

  “The horror beyond horrors?” Levan asked.

  Sal stopped mid propulsion and turned to him.

  “Eternity,” he said, and resumed swimming.

  “Oh,” Levan said, clearing his throat, as the squid resumed swimming.

  “A day, and I’ve wasted it, taken it from you, perhaps out of politeness. Is it over?”

  “Is what over?”

  “The day,” the squid said.

  “No, there’s—”

  [ 16 hours remaining ]

  “Most of it still,” Levan supplied.

  “Most of it still!” Sal marveled. “You have done me such service even to…talk with me, to have someone to talk to…” he said. It paused. “But…I must ask this, or I shall never forgive myself. And never,” Sal said, lingering in front of the glass, “Is a long time.”

  “I’ll help you if I can.”

  “You’ll help me if you can,” Sal repeated, still marveling. “I can carry the words of that kindness a long time—oh, even the words, leg-walker! Even your…politeness, I could….treasure for…the duration of stars. The bright-burning ones, perhaps. They are…only words.”

  “This is not the kind of person you mess with,” Levan thought to himself. “What if I can’t help?”

  “Leg Walker,” Sal interrupted, “It is difficult for me to know what you wish me to…pretend I did not hear, when you do not move your lips.”

  Gulp.

  “Alright, well, might as well—out with it, I guess. What do you need help with?” Levan asked.

  “You will not agree first?” Sal asked.

  Levan’s gut reaction was apparently communicated to the creature.

  “A pragmatist. Beneath it all, a pragmatist? Though I suppose to a Leg-walker, to an air-breather, beneath it all, well…the weight of the world isn’t quite so heavy.”

  Levan thought something. A complex thought.

  One that Sal seemed to parse.

  “So it is, so it is,” the squid said, again with that gentle, dry, kind, whispering chuckle as it swam from end to end of the tank.

  “This was my home, once,” Sal thought to him. “I was Called here, away from my clutch, away from my…starving mother. And…they kept me here. I was brought along a fiery way, along a column of water.”

  “A Chosen Soul,” Levan said, a sudden anxiety filling him. “Called along the Emberlaines.”

  The drifting squid stopped.

  Turned to face him—not with the one large dark orange eye, but with the small amber eye. The creature seemed suddenly old, then. Suddenly very old.

  “Words I am tempted to say I shall never forget,” the squid said. “Though of course…”

  “Never is a long time,” Levan finished.

  “You…understand.”

  Levan started wondering if he didn’t know what exactly the squid wanted. What did entities like this in the stories crave?

  Release.

  Death.

  “Oh, well, I suppose,” Sal said. His gentle voice had a fray to it, like a rope split into a thousand bits and falling apart at the end.

  Levan’s train of thought moved before he could help himself.

  He thought of the glass above him, of the pickaxe strapped to his back.

  Squids can fit through small spaces right? They don’t have a lot of bones.

  He imagined swinging the pickaxe at the glass, imagining the small squid squeezing between the bismuth Mandelbrot curls, twitching and drawing on the floor.

  What he heard in his head was a laugh.

  “Oh, no, I—I’m afraid that won’t work,” Sal said in his mind. “Though I appreciate your willingness to try.”

  “Is the glass…enchanted or something?” Levan asked.

  “It is,” Sal allowed. “But that is not why.”

  Levan frowned.

  “I am...well, do you remember your star?”

  “My star?”

  “The…lifeblood of your world,” the squid said. “Golden-white….the explosions, happening over and over again.”

  “Sure, I remember the sun.”

  “The sun,” Sal marveled. He looked down at Levan from the top of the tank, and its tentacles expanded, and it propulsed out of view. “A wonderful name for a star,” it mused. “Millennia, I could ponder that name.”

  “What about the sun?” Levan gently reminded the squid.

  “Ah,” it thought to him, mild embarrassment momentarily coloring its tone. It was still out of frame, out of view from the window of the tank.

  “It seems so small, and to some stars, perhaps it is,” Sal said.

  Then something touched at the corner of the window above his head. He thought it was a…blanket, at first. A blanket wavering from off-screen, off-window. A dark brown blanket, with jellied skin, and texture and…and chromatophors that blinked like eyes.

  “But…,” Sal began in his mind, as the dark brown skin moved to cover the entirety of the aquarium window above him. It passed through, dizzyingly, blocking the temple from the light of the tank.

  Then, slowly, Levan felt an orange glow upon his arms, the walls, his face.

  “In truth, your sun is not so small at all,” Sal said with his gentle whisper, and the orange glow passed, and was replaced by a chilling darkness, as a dark black void loomed by the window on the other side.

  “Just very far away.”