Chapter 62 – Teller of Fate

Teller of Fate

Sixth Movement: The Fate of Stars

Chapter Sixty-Two

* * *

Bradwold had been stunned by his fall. His head had rebounded off a merlon and he didn’t remember landing on the flagstones.

The fourteen cards Brad carried flew out of his hand.

The world first began intruding on his blackout audibly. He heard a tumbling, rolling, grinding, grating sound. Then he felt the vibration through his cheekbone, hips, and kneecaps. He opened his eyes and saw flagstone and three somethings—cards, that’s what they were. He’d dropped them when he fell.

A sudden horror overtook him. What if he’d lost some over the edge?

He tried to stand.

Pushing his upper body away from the stone made his head swim. Blackness began to close in.

He held himself still until the spinning stopped. Then more slowly, he levered himself into a sitting position.

The disturbingly familiar noise continued. Brad also felt a distinct movement.

A throbbing sting just above his left ear caught his attention while he contemplated the horror of the situation. He gingerly put a hand to the spot.

A sizable lump he found. It was tender but not overly so. It was also damp. Taking his hand away, Brad was unsurprised to see blood. Not copious amounts, though. It could wait.

Getting to his feet took a couple of tries. Once there, he scouted for the cards, praying they were all here.

Bradwold had got up to thirteen and spent a panicky couple of minutes looking for the last card.

He finally found it, leaning against a merlon less than an inch from a drop to infinity.

Moving slowly, lest an errant wind from his movement cast it into the abyss, Brad crossed the distance and reached out for the card. He heaved a loud sigh as his fingers clasped it.

It was the Imagination of Fyre, the Ruler of Victory.

He gathered and arranged the cards. Only then did Brad take in his surroundings.

The city was still moving, but slowly. An awful, swishing in his gut and a tingling in his scalp accompanied the ugly thoughts associated with the swaying of the whole of Glyph.

In the Square below, there didn’t seem to be the panic Brad expected. It looked like someone was doing something besides run in circles screaming.

* * *

Dæv felt the trembling, heard the tumbling, rolling, grinding, grating. She was braced when the tremors started and maintained her balance when the city lurched. It brought her a moment’s fear.

The looks on her father’s face frightened her more.

The Templar was looking at a spot over the closed Effor Gate.

Following his gaze, Dæv saw a ripple in Nonspace. Like the air over a fire, a distortion was warping the stuff in which the spheres floated. A quick look round showed no such effect in any other direction.

Dævara’s father had remained upright, as had a few of the Hermetists in view.

Among the quarters of the city, she could hear the cries of rising panic as the swaying feeling continued. Mercenaries and armed magsmen were evidently beginning to have trouble maintaining order.

“Father?” She stepped out of place to move closer to him. No response.

His eyes were wide; he appeared to be muttering words in a language she didn’t recognize. She reached out and touched his arm. “Father, what is it?”

The Templar closed and opened his eyes, the interval a bit too long for a blink. He turned his head.

Black-on-black eyes regarded her with something resembling fear. “Something…something I’d hoped would never happen again.”

He turned to the Hermetists in the center of the Plaza of Dying Suns. Speaking over the noise and the cries of panic, “We’ve run out of time! Mercurius, we must get the Gates open now!”

Dæv moved quickly back to her place.

The Outer Head of the Order of Hermes was a professional in all ways. She asked no questions, gave no querying look.

Seen from above, the Plaza had an annoying shape. The mind wanted it to be an octagon. It had four sides square to the Street and Avenue. It had only three sides square to the Quarters. Where the mind insisted there be a fourth side square to the Mages Quarter, the adjacent sides continued until they met at right angles: seven sides in an irregular shape. Dæv had asked a dozen residents during her stay here and none had a satisfactory answer. Many had loony ones. Most only shook their heads.

The elf now realized the only people who might be able to explain this oddity were in the Plaza. This explanation was finally forthcoming, it seemed. As finally knowing it would be scratching an itch she’d had for years, Dævara eagerly anticipated their next move.

The Mercurius stood facing the weird statue in the center of the Plaza. She was directly opposite the offending angle that defaced the Mages Quarter.

At a gesture from the Kokkinos, Hermetists in a line from the statue to the right angle of the Mages Quarter moved slightly to form an open aisle between.

Holding her staff upright, the blue Hermetist touched the glowing spheres that capped its top and bottom to the statue and with no other ceremony, pushed lightly against it with her free hand.

Noiselessly, the weird sculpture began to move. It began slowly, gaining speed until it glided faster than a man could run.

It covered the half mile to the corner in less than a minute before slowing and stopping as gracefully as it had begun.

The result of this unprecedented action was nothing. Everything was completely still. The trembling, noise, and swaying of the city all had stopped.

Dævara moved to the spot lately occupied by the statue, facing the Effor Gate. She was now at the exact center of Glyph and would be the center of the mandala of Hermetists. The Mercurius joined her, standing just to her right.

The silence was broken by a sound from the Orloj, high pitched and soft. It filled the stillness.

The tone was pure and sweet and utterly captivating, recalling in its effect, the note a chime or a horn might make.

Dævara realized she’d stopped breathing to hear it better. ‘Foolish,’ she chid herself. It wasn’t necessary, anyway.

The tone swiftly became louder and, though it seemed impossible, sweeter: a sound to lead sailors to their deaths.

Glancing over at her father, the elf noticed his head was tilted back and swivelling side to side. The sky…

The spheres had stopped moving and were a uniform silver now, reflecting each other and the city below.

The silver horses continued to circle Glyph; the spheres did not deign to notice them by as much as a flicker of reflection.

There were also…ribbons?

Dæv couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing, at first. The spheres seemed to have dark stripes across them.

Only after careful observation did the elf realize that dark grey bands were floating free of the spheres, winding, merging, and splitting among them.

She was on the verge of asking what they were when a loud metal on metal bang! echoed all through the city, coming from every direction.

The Teller’s eyes snapped down to street level.

The Effor Gate was opening.

She looked around; they all were.

The Templar kept his eyes squarely on the Effor Gate. At five miles distant, little detail could be made out. What was clear was that the green sea of the world of Effor was absent.

As the twin gates swung slowly inward, the gap between them filled with the bright silver light of the spheres of Nonspace.

A ribbon spiralling out of the air became a road that lined up perfectly with the opening.

A quick look ’round confirmed that the other three Gates led similarly to winding, flying roads out into Nonspace.

Someone was on the Effor road, walking up to the now open gate.

“The Apian Roads are open,” said her father, in a flat, toneless voice that made her shiver.

* * *

Bradwold didn’t notice that the statue had shifted. It never occurred to him that it could. In any event, it would have been hard to tell from his distant vantage.

Total silence descended until the sound of a chime.

Then it became very bright.

A bang so loud it momentarily deafened him, came from left and right. The gates were opening.

Then all movement, all sound ceased again.

The adventurer finally noticed that the position of the monument that centered the City Glyph was different.

Brad looked out over the wall and saw the spheres had bled colour and stopped moving.

Prickles climbed his spine and made his hair feel like it was standing on end.

Mirrored balls hung motionless. Thin grey lines began to appear on them. No—not on them; beside them.

They twisted and wound all over the sky. He saw several fork into two or three. One got closer and closer until it touched the outer wall of Glyph, right at Effor Gate. A quick look confirmed the Consilium Gate to his left also had one of these roads leading to it.

‘They’re paths,’ he thought, ‘roads in Nonspace.’

The one leading to the Effor Gate already had a traveller on it, one he recognized from his trip to the Under. Tall he was and dressed in torn grey rags and a hood that covered him completely.

This was the one, the Wanderer, who had shut the gates and Portals of the city. Now, it seemed he meant to re-enter through one of them.

Brad wasn’t the only one who noticed. Mages and armed mercenaries had set up along the outer wall, most of them concentrated by the gates. Brad half expected them to take some offensive action.

From out in Nonspace, a flash of red out of the corner of his right eye. Bradwold turned.

He saw nothing.

Again, a quick flash of red light, lasting a little longer this time.

He looked again. Again nothing.

Third time he was ready for it.

Down below the level of the Effor Gate and way out in Nonspace. A bright red light. It flickered a moment before going out. Brad kept watching.

His patience was rewarded. There it was again. It was on one of the paths for sure. It had travelled quite a way in a short span of time.

The adventurer watched for a while. As it got closer, it became steadier, though he still couldn’t determine what it was. It had to be coming to the city. The presence of the Wanderer in the Wastes made that a near certainty.

He turned to watch the latter who had passed the open gate past which the bulk of the Mages Quarter hid him from view. Bradwold thought the Wanderer in the Wastes must be headed to the Plaza of Dying Suns.

Much more quickly than he thought, Brad spied the distant form of the Wanderer as he emerged from the shadow of the Mages Quarter. He was already most of the way there. Those in the square did not appear to be agitated. Perhaps they had not recognized him, yet.

Something was off. There seemed to be something in front of Brad’s eyes, like gauze. He put his hands to his face to make sure there wasn’t. It was the air. It was getting foggy.

But it never got foggy in Glyph.

Colour was bleeding out of the city like it had from the spheres. Everything was turning white.

Brad looked down at himself. His clothing, the flagstones, everything was now bone white.

Only the cards retained any colour. He fanned them out with hands that looked like they’d been bleached. All of them were still as brilliantly coloured as they had been.

Looking at the Plaza, Bradwold could see that the Wanderer who had just reached it, hadn’t faded to white either. Bugger had made incredible time, covering five miles in about as many minutes.

Bradwold’s hands began to itch. He absently scratched the backs of them, one after the other. It didn’t help. In fact, it got worse.

The itch intensified and spread to his arms and face. Itching became burning, mild at first then more severe.

He couldn’t stand it.

All trace of decorum fled before growing agony. In seconds, Brad was clawing at his armour, trying to get it off.

Within seconds, he was screaming and thrashing, his whole body on fire. He fell to the ground, twitching and yelling.

The pain vanished long after he’d thought it would drive him mad.

The adventurer lay panting and sweating for several moments. He heard the screams of others in similar pain dying down now.

After a time, he opened his eyes and levered himself to his feet. The red whatever-it-was was still making its steady progress along the path to the city gate.

The cards had again scattered, though not as far. Everything was still white, which made gathering brightly coloured cards easier.

He almost dropped them again as the voice of the Templar, amplified by magick, boomed over the city: “The White God is come! Prepare the Working!”

* * *

Dævara watched with the others as the figure passed the Effor Gate and moved too quickly toward the Plaza of Dying Suns.

It should have taken the better part of an hour to get to then, but it was halfway there in a few moments; close enough to identify.

Nyarlathotep, the Wanderer in the Wastes, the Crawling Chaos, had come to claim a victory.

The elf noticed the itch before she noticed the colour. She wasn’t the only one, either. The Templar glanced at his own hand and around the city. His mouth pressed together, lips turned up slightly, as he looked for something.

A mage, hovering at the edge of the Plaza, turned to the group at the center of the square and ran up to them—up to her father.

A whispered dialogue ensued.

The itch Dæv felt was becoming pain and the world was almost white by the time that mage left at a run again. The Templar raised his hands and whispered a few syllables under his breath. The discomfort vanished. The others around them, who had been squirming and yelling in pain, stopped.

The symphony of cries and screams echoed across the city. It soon dissipated as well.

Some bits of colour remained.

The Wanderer hadn’t changed. Neither had the uniforms of the Hermetists, though they themselves had faded to white. Her clothing was now all white as was her hair, and her skin had lost its sparkle and blue tinge. The Templar was similarly all white except for his eyes, which continued back.

When asked, he assured her that her eyes were their usual sparkling crimson.

The Wanderer reached the Plaza, towering over the nearest mages some distance outside the circle.

He stopped just short of entering and remained still. Still too was the air, yet his rags rippled if in a gale. Dirty gauze still hid his face.

The Hermetists all remained in place. Those that could watched the Wanderer with varying expressions of disdain. Dæv was facing him directly. He seemed to be staring at her.

Footsteps to her left: the Templar was moving to confront the foe.

The Templar began to grow as he walked. By the time he reached the Wanderer, her father was eye-to-eye with him.

Dævara was too far away to hear. She suddenly had to know what they were saying. Impulsively, she loosened the anchors of her mind to her flesh and astrally zipped to her father’s side.

Not only could she see and hear anything they might say, but the elf could also access the surface of her father’s mind. She made sure she didn’t look at the Wanderer’s mind at all.

Her father noticed her. Dævara had a panicked moment when she thought he would be angry but before she could withdraw, she felt the Templar gently tug her farther into his mind.

He wanted her to witness.

From her close vantage, the Wanderer’s rags whipped forward, slapping the thighs of her father as he stood. It was as if hurricane winds were hitting his back.

The tattered edges of the hood he wore fluttered and snapped in the torrent, at times obscuring the dirty gauze that concealed his face.

And he stank of old crypts.

Before her father could say anything, the enemy spoke. “Help me.” His deep voice seemed to be coming from far away and from his face at once. There was a reverberation, as of two contrasting notes. It made her shiver.

The determination she felt in her father changed to one of concern. The plea had surprised him as well. She could see a dozen responses flicker through his mind, from the incredulous to the disparaging. His worry won out. “What ails you?”

“It’s coming for me. I tried, but I cannot escape it. Please, it will end me. I who cannot end will end. Existence will end with me.”

In her father’s mind, a scene of the silver spheres and a small group of people all in white opening one. A bright white light jumping out, engulfing them all. This, she divined, was the release of the White God so long ago.

Juxtaposed on this memory was the recent one of the shaking and swaying of Glyph. “What have you released?” he asked. Fear prickled Dæv’s body as she felt her father’s unease.

“Another.”

Anger from her father. “You intended to gift us with a thousand White Gods. You were overcome by your own master’s greed. Why would I want to help you avoid the doom you have earned?”

“You treasure Life. All Life will end if I do.”

“Liar. I know what you intend. You tried three times. You failed. Now you seek to destroy everything because you cannot stand to lose again.” With that the Templar made to strike the Wanderer only to have his hand pass through it as if it were only a shade.

The Wanderer whimpered as the Templar turned quickly and began walking back to the center of the Plaza at a pace just short of running. Dæv fled back to her body.

The Wanderer remained standing, just short of the point where the Street met the square.

Behind him, through the open Gate, there seemed to be some commotion. Flickers of silver and red light could be seen. She looked up. The silver horses had stopped circling the city. They all seemed to be streaming toward the site of what she now assumed was a struggle. The new god had come.

The Templar arrived. Before he spoke to anyone, he shouted to the sky: “The White God is come! Prepare the Working!” Magick amplified his voice until it echoed all through the city.

Her father resumed the march to his place near the center. The Mercurius and the Governors of the Hermetists stood in their places as the Templar came up.

“What is coming down the road, Elder Brother?” asked the Kokkinos.

“Another god. The Crawling Chaos has opened the way again.” Not even their training could hide the Hermetist’s despair at the news. They had barely the resources to attempt the end of one.

“Can the Rakhesh stop it?” asked Abram.

“They can only slow it, I deem.”

“How should we proceed?”

“Stick with the plan.” A brilliant golden ball of light arced from the Mages Tower, sizzled, and faded.

Dævara turned to look at it. ‘Well done, love,’ she thought.

‘Thanks. Ready here.’

The elf started. She had forgotten the Conjunxes. She felt comforted knowing that her love was so close as to enable mental conversation.

From deep in the Mercenaries Quarter behind and to her right came another flare. Five more followed in rapid succession: from the heart of the Merchants Quarter; the top of the Mercenaries Guild tower; the top of the Magsmens; the Street in front of Dæv, and finally, from the Tower of the Merchant’s Guild.

— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, August 2026

© Gideon Jagged
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