Death of a Dimension - Part 7
[This story has been co-authored with DawnCharger. Again I would also like to Thank Myrios “Malak” LeJeans player for allowing us to use his RP hub (The Rift) as the centre of many of these stories and for his input to the roleplay.
To recap: The Rift has suddenly become a dangerous place. Ceara has been physically propelled back into The Rift. While Aath, Brean and Alpharius have remained outside to face the encroaching filth.
Things are moving so very fast.
++ CONTENT WARNING: This scene contains a section that depicts self-harm. I have covered this section with a spoiler shield. ++]
Chapter 7
{{{A Dimension Dies}}}
+++Aath+++
Behind both Aath and Brean, slowly emerging … forming from the flow rises a monstrosity. It’s foetid, bloated, filth-dripping body lifting on spindly legs from which more filth oozes with every movement. It stands about 20 feet tall, its eyes afire with malice and purpose.
Ceara screams loudly as she’s thrust back into The Rift “Da! NO!” She crashes through the door and both her and her brother end up as a mess of tangled limbs on the floor. When Faolán’s foot obstacle is removed, Myrios is able to start to push the door closed as both he and Áinfean can see what is rising from the flood of filth descending on The Rift.
Aath, eyes streaming tears, watches as her Irishman pushes their daughter back into The Rift. The girl’s unexpected passage through the door has caused Myrios to be forced back a step, but he recovers quickly and seeing the horror emerging from the foetid black pool, makes a greater effort to close the door.
+++Al+++
Alpharius watches the fresh horror rise from the ocean of ink. A head twisting from the main body like a hentai teardrop, with too many ends at the bottom and yellow, blank eyes staring back; long, too-thin legs arcing out too wide like a crocodile stole a spider’s legs.
A shade stalker. He remembered the first one he ever encountered, in the Moon Bog–big bastard, enough to take down the CDC security detail and still have enough piss and vinegar left over for the nearby Orochi camp. Trouble on its own in the real world, but now it was in its element, and not even close to the biggest fish in this putrid ocean.
The three of them could take this thing. Easily, even. Problem was everything else that would and was starting to bubble up around them. Another wail rocked the world around them, everywhere at once as eldritch eyes opened to the wool around them and started peeling it away. Al wiped the blood from his nose as his Bee strained to keep his mind intact.
“Pick one. We can stay here, or we can save them.” He pauses, struggling to remember their twins’ names… fv<k “You have three kids left. You wanna help 'em, leave with 'em.”
looks to Alpharius and nods to the rapidly closing door. “That ship is sailing.”
Noting the direction of his gaze, she turns to look behind her almost at the same time as Brean shouts, “Ó mo ghrá! …Tá salachar anseo nach mór bás a fháil anois!”
(“Oh my love! … There’s filth here that needs to die now!”)
Things happen quickly. Faster than Al or his Bee can track, Aath changes, standing tall as a winged humanoid figure that might well have been exquisitely carved from ruby. Her hair is jet black with highlights of emerald green. Rather than Demonic, the wings appear as from a bird of prey, hawklike, each feather carved by the same master gemcutter. They are large enough to wrap in front of her, and if furled would stand two feet above her shoulders. A tail extends about six feet ending in a spade-shaped tip, prehensilely grasping a knife as it flicks from side to side
Her fingers now are tipped by razorlike talons, the left grasping the hilt of an ancient katana. The red-tinged blade wavers, as if filled with fluid. In her hand crackles barely contained elemental energy.
Her eyes blaze with a wild purple fire.
The changes aren’t restricted to Aath. To her right the ground shakes as Brean emits a deep, threatening growl that is as much felt as heard. He enlarges in stature as he rolls onto the balls of his feet, arms raising from his sides, his now-clawed hands erupting in magic. The right bathed in an icy mist, and intense flames roll about the left. Baring his teeth, the canines appeared more prominent. His eyes burn with an intense sapphire flame.
Brean sends both bolts of elemental magic straight into the head of the hideous spidery beast and leaps after them with an inhumanly loud guttural roar accompanying his charge.
Aath is not far behind, her bolt of lightning streaking across her mates left shoulder close enough to curl hair to finally discharge into the creature’s head moments after Brean’s magic connects
Her jump suggesting greater than human strength and agility, she lays into the Stalker’s body and legs with blade, talon and magic. The couples dance of death choreographed to near perfection.
Aath quickly looks back at Alpharius, the purple fire of her eyes boring into his. “The choice has been made for us–show us your mettle!”
+++The Rift+++
Through the shop front, the horror-scape dims as Áinfean watches. She screams for her parents as the door inches closer to the frame Faolán shouts from the floor, under a struggling Ceara “Mr. LeJean, WAIT!!”
Ceara has struggled to a kneeling position and also looks through the dimming shop front, whimpering. “No…”
+++Al+++
Had the Dreamers affected Brean and Aath too? That transformation … no, Alpharius thought they were more than human, if human at all. He’d suspected this for a while, but it was one thing to suspect it and another to see them replaced with Cú Chulainn and–and the–and a … prehensile succubwhateverthefv<ktopus that was.
The two of them tear into the noodle-faced monstrosity with primordial fury, magic and claws ripping the oily not-flesh apart faster than it can reform. Golden pinpricks of anima slow the horror’s regeneration further as it slowly dies and sinks back into the black ocean which spawned it. Around them, the tide boils; eyes and tendrils and limbs appear and hiss in delighted anger. Shapes take form, reform, undulate, and rise all around them like a dozen, dozen fingers curling around the last bastion of Gaia’s light. Alpharius hears the kids screaming behind hi–FV<K, the door! It’s so damn close to latching, and once it did…
Something runs through Al’s body, a tingle so alien, so far in the past that it takes him three heartbeats to put his finger on it.
Fear.
Not of death, his old friend… No, no, he’d died before. He’d been killed by knives, spears, gunfire, grenades, monsters both known and lost to human records, radiation poisoning, torpedoes–even torpedo fuel (not even his Bee had been able to stave off THAT hangover). He’d died and died and died again, and his tireless Bee brought him back.
But back to a sane world. A sunlit world. A world where Gaia’s Dream remained uninterrupted, where Filth doesn’t come up to snorkel-depth.
It had been a long time since Al had come across fates worse than death. The chill that runs up his spine reminds him he’s in the thick of one right now.
The metahuman thing that is apparently his sister-in-law’s true form had looked back to him. Amazingly, she had asked him to join their suicide run. “The choice has been made for us–show us your mettle!”
Fv<k no! He’d seen enough idiotic last stands that poetry painted heroic. Lost too many good people–otherwise smart, kind, loving people–to them. People with friends, families, children who needed them in their lives.
Like Alexandra.
Al shifts his sword to his off hand, then reaches into his waistband and withdraws his sidearm. A Glock 36 wouldn’t do more than tickle the Shade Stalker, even with .45 ACP hollow points, and he prefers his Ulfberht if he has to fight anyway. But … that’s the thing–he doesn’t have to fight. Not today.
Some part of him actually regrets what’s going to happen next–wishes he could pause time to explain to Aath that he is, in fact, going to protect her children. Tactical retreat can do more good than sending in the Light Brigade. Not that it would matter, probably, but for as happy as she’d made Roxana over the last few years…
Well, this isn’t even her, is it?
Alpharius shrugs and decides to leave that to the philosophers. His Glock is under his chin within a second, and within the next his grey matter scatters into the air at supersonic speed.
The Filth wave pours in towards his body as it falls, but the raking tendrils of unreality pounce on nothingness.
+++The Rift+++
Seemingly sensing Myrios’ intent, the store’s windows had started to darken even before he had managed to completely close the door. With a final shove the door closes forever on the doomed world, but not before a tiny sliver of golden light squeezes between the door and the jamb accompanied by an almost inaudible buzz and the faint scent of honey.
Myrios has shut the door before Al’s body hits the ground. It wasn’t that he lacked empathy for what had just happened. He had plenty of empathy. But he’d spent Ages separated from humanity at large and had several different viewpoints than humans.
He saw the value of Al’s actions and realised what would transpire next. Before the Filth could make its way to the door, the background fades to blackness. The dimension would, of course, carry onward. Things would continue to decline and end as so many other dimensions had, in darkness and Filth. But their access to that particular branch was now closed to them. There wasn’t an artefact in the entire storeroom that could bring that storefront back.
The dimension sealed, the windows clear to a void. There was no sky. There were no streets. There was only the inky blackness of a place between worlds. This void only lasted for a moment before there was the deepening evening sky of Ireland and the crowding of houses around a different but still familiar storefront.
Malak looked at the group of people and did a quick headcount. “Tea?”
Ceara starts to stand, tears streaming down her face, the storefront windows had gone dark as Myrios pushed the door closed. The last thing she saw as the blackness claimed the shop front, was her parents’ transformation and her mother looking coldly at Alpharius and saying something to him, then her Mum and Da turned to face the Stalker as it rose from the filth.
Faolán again shouts, his voice harsh with despair “NO! Mr LeJean, NO! You have to give them time…”
The blackness clears, revealing the distinctive street scape of the same Dublin store that all but Áinfean had entered what seemed an eternity ago.
Faolán looks incredulously at the peaceful panorama before turning accusing eyes back to Myrios, and with a rumbling, threatening growl. “Mum, Da … you’ve murdered them!”
Áinfean had been watching the same scene as her sister but had seen more. She hadn’t been knocked to the ground. She saw her parents’ transformation, her inaudible but cold words to Alpharius and their charge into battle as Alpharius drew his pistol. The rest of the story was lost to the darkening windows and the blinding demonstration of elemental power as her parents’ magics fired.
While also tearful, she quickly turns and embraces her brother, using the endearment of her parents “Liahund … Mr LeJean did not murder Mum and Da.” She stops, a shuddering breath stealing her words. “He fulfilled the task required of him. The three of them sacrificed themselves to give him the time to allow us to escape a certain death.” She glances to Myrios, then back to her brother. “Mr Lejean owes no blood price.”
Ceara also hugs her brother as he sobs into his sister’s shoulder. “Áiny is right, Poo, but … I think someone escaped. Did you smell the honey?”