Teller of Fate
Fourth Movement: Custodians of the Incunabulum
Chapter Thirty-Two
* * *
‘Nightmares are made of this,’ John thought.
Arms wrapped tightly around his chest, legs crossed at the ankle, thighs beginning to cramp from the effort of keeping them together, the Custodian dared not open his eyes for fear of losing them to some sharp bit of the debris being hurled at him from every direction.
The screech of the wind was terrific. His hair was blowing upward and the sensation of being sucked up was making him physically sick.
John knew he was dead. It didn’t matter if he avoided getting pulverized by a chunk of the city being sucked into the void or not. He had fallen into a trap laid by the Thief who had stolen the Incunabulum. He would soon be out of the atmosphere.
Cold and vacuum would claim his life in seconds. Already he could hear the wind die down.
He waited for the silence and the pain of ruptured eardrums. Instead, he began to hear pipes playing badly and drums beating arrhythmically.
Nothing beat at him anymore. No wind devilled his hair and clothes. He chanced opening his eyes.
John Airkhart was floating in space.
The world he’d been sucked from was far enough away that he could see the curvature of it.
He should be dead. There was no air. He tried breathing. His lungs went through the motions, but he could not feel any air move.
He wasn’t cold or warm. He could move. He was in no discomfort at all. None of this made any sense.
Maybe he was unconscious or already dead. John wasn’t even frightened, though he should be out of his mind with fear. Maybe that was shock.
There was no gravity; he couldn’t figure what ‘up’ was.
Looking around, he caught a glimpse of the glowing red funnel cloud that had pulled him from the planet’s surface.
It was moving to engulf him, or he was moving into it. It seemed as big as the world itself. It wasn’t one thing, but looked like a tower of thin, translucent ruby rings, spinning and vibrating. Flashes of golden light, like chains of sparks, shot around the rings at fantastic speeds.
He, along with a lot of debris, was moving steadily along this tunnel away from the world.
Over the next hour, John witnessed that planet’s death.
It was either spinning rapidly or the vortex was sliding around it. Occasionally there would be a pause and more of the surface of the world would be suctioned up. After the third stop, John was certain, from the chunks of stuff floating by, that it was scooping up cities.
It left large reddish black patches on the face of the planet, like scabrous wounds. It might have been imagination, but the world itself seemed paler as it went along, as if it was being bled to death.
Finally, it was done.
A livid, dead planet lay in front of him. Something happened then that he would never fully understand. The world and the whole galaxy of stars around it retreated from him at incredible speed, while also passing by him through the glittering ruby tunnel, leaving NOTHING behind. John had never seen NOTHING before. He hoped never to see it again.
That momentary glimpse of it, before he was carried along to wherever this ride led, John knew would come back to haunt him, likely about three a.m. on sleepless nights.
* * *
He wasn’t aware of anything for the next few minutes or centuries except the sound of drums and flutes. His vision bled colour that soon faded altogether. It would have preyed on his nerves had he still possessed any.
John had the distinct impression that he was no longer a physical being. Dead, alive—he didn’t seem to be either.
The ‘music’ began to change, warbling and bubbling like it was being played underwater. It slowed and sped up, raised then lowered in pitch, like a recording being distorted by the machine on which it was played.
Colour again manifested.
It took some time for him to remember the colour was red and a few more to remember it as the colour of the tunnel he was travelling in.
The Custodian’s journey was reaching its end. The world swallowing vortex was dumping him somewhere.
With a final cacophonous blast, the music ceased, and John was ejected from the ruby tunnel.
The echo of the sound clung to him as he floated free in a dim-lit space. The first thing he recognized was the planet he’d come from an eternity ago.
It looked just as dead. Beyond was another corpse of a world, covered with city-sores.
Another. Now, three more. More than could be counted.
Each was different. Each was dead.
There were other things in this space; grey suggestions of something. Wisps of gas hanging down, they seemed fuzzy, out of focus. He approached one, the trail of dead worlds flowing around it ahead of him.
It was a pillar of grey fluted stone wider by far than the worlds that sped past it. It had no visible top or bottom.
He was past it and on to more, each getting closer to its neighbors the farther he went.
John was floating in a vast hypostyle hall, a temple the size of a galaxy. ‘What horror awaits at its center?’ John wondered.
He found out and wished he hadn’t.
The flutes and drums began again. Ahead, he could see flickers of light beyond the pillars, the terminus of the river of dead worlds.
The Custodian felt small and fragile.
He was the only speck of life left, sure to be to be snuffed out.
He was sucked into the light, facing its source.
* * *
No sound, no sight.
John came to himself and was aware of an ache in his left hip and cheekbone. He opened his right eye. His left eye was against a rough stone surface. He was lying on the ground.
He tried to spring to his feet. After almost falling back twice, he managed on his third attempt. He felt light-headed and stiff. He’d obviously been out for a while.
John had momentarily forgotten what preceded his unlooked-for nap. The grey stone pillars brought it back to him.
They were still huge, but only by human standards. He could now imagine them actually having been built, though not how.
He was at the edge of a large open space formed by the ultimate circle of pillars.
Bright, colourless light shone down from far above. Descending from it was…snow? John held out his hand. Tiny glowing points of light fell onto his palm. They burned up before dissolving, but no heat did he feel.
Despite the light, there seemed to be a huge shadow over the center of the space. At least, no light fell there. The flat greyness of the space made it difficult for John to apprehend what he was seeing. He kept squinting, trying to focus on the distance.
A planet flew by him, right over his head, and sailed toward the middle of the space.
Others followed. They seemed huge, but again, not planet sized. The thought came to John that he had grown somehow but not having any way to determine an absolute scale, he didn’t bother speculating. Still, it disturbed.
All the worlds were wound-covered and lifeless. They entered the shadow in the center of the space and vanished.
John spotted movement along the edge of the dark. He fancied it was human. A dread of the process taking place here settled over him. Whatever was happening was not for mortal eyes to see.
As he had already violated that stricture he thought, ‘in for a penny, in for a pound,’ and walked toward the sepulchre of expired worlds.
It was farther away than it seemed. After ten minutes walking, he was finally there. As he went, the white sparks fell more heavily, still disconcertingly neutral in temperature.
As the Custodian approached, the darkness became merely a dimness, as if the light had trouble penetrating the air over that one spot.
His destination was a massive hole in the stone floor. It sloped gently until it was a vertical shaft.
The dead worlds were sucked into it. From this abyss, the strange echoing sound of distorted fifes and drums rose. The discordancy of it still jangled John’s nerves.
Off to one side, barely more than a shadow itself, there stood the man-shape. It moved as he saw it.
Then a voice. “Hello, John.”
It had a strange tone, that voice; an accent John couldn’t place; a sense of presences unseen, like faint echoes of the voice itself.
The figure noiselessly advanced towards him until it appeared from beneath the concealing shadow. It was bigger than he in every dimension.
A dirty grey robe, deeply hooded, it wore.
He threw the cowl back as John approached. The face was tanned, also long and narrow, with black eyes and a heavy brow. The hair was silver and quite short.
Faced with this figure after what he had been through, John couldn’t think of a way to begin a conversation that wouldn’t sound inane. With a mental shrug, he asked the question most worrying him, “Am I dead?”
There was no change in expression; John was looking for one. Nevertheless, a sense of mirth radiated from it, “That is not a question easily answered. You should be. It was almost certainly intended by the one who set the trap for you.”
“You are the reason I’m not?”
“My master is the reason, though he granted your stay at my request.”
“Your master?”
“His name would mean nothing to you.”
“What is he, then?”
“He is the end of all things—the Lord of Entropy.”
“Then this place—?”
“Is the place where comes everything that dies.”
John looked at the hole more worlds were falling into.
“Okay,” He turned back to his host, “Who are you and why have I been spared?”
“I am a Wanderer in the Wastes of the Multiverse. I see to it that all things end at their appointed time. The world you were on ended too soon. Someone rewrote its life and the only disorder I will tolerate is my master’s. The Templar you are pursuing must not reach his destination with his treasure.”
“I know—wait, ‘Templar’?”
A slow single nod. “Indeed. The last free Templar.”
That was quite a bit to digest. Why would a Templar pursue a book about an artefact that was anathema to its entire race? Not that it mattered. The Incunabulum must be retrieved.
“Are you proposing to help me catch him?”
Again, the slow head bob.
“Why?”
“The Incunabulum brings disorder to the Aions every time it is used, no matter how skilled the user. Things die before their appointed time and that cannot be tolerated.”
“Why, exactly?”
“There is a delicate balance to Reality. The disruption of that balance may cause a cascade of disaster that could end everything.”
“Okay. Why hasn’t this Book simply been destroyed?” This was a question every Airkhart had pondered. Fear of the consequences was the only answer arrived at.
“I dare not destroy it.”
Same reason, then.
“It must be kept from use,” the Wanderer went on. “The Templar is headed for a city named Glyph, where he intends to sell it. You must be there before him to stop him and retrieve the Book. Worlds and Time hinge upon your success.”
“I know about this city, but I have no idea where it is.”
“If you know of Glyph, you must know that the city rests on the Spire.” The Wanderer pointed up.
John took a couple of steps back and looked up. Squinting into the light he asked, “Where?”
“The light you see is its base.”
“I thought the Spire had no nether end. You’re telling me we’re under it?”
The Wanderer nodded before continuing, “This is important. When you have retrieved the Incunabulum, you will give it to me. It will not be safe in any other hands.”
“I think not.” The Custodian knew suddenly that the Wanderer’s presence was not the boon it had appeared to be. Death awaited, as he’d always feared. He would face it squarely. “I and my family swore an oath to protect it many generations ago. I will not surrender my sworn obligation.”
“You have no choice, Custodian. Your failure has proven that the Incunabulum is no longer safe with your clan. Only here—” a gesture to the space they were in—“will it be safe.”
“And if I refuse?”
A smile dripping venom. “You will stay here, never to age, never to die.”
“Then that is what will be.”
A brief expression of pique. “Enough. I will send you to Glyph and when the Book is in your hands, you will gift it to me, willingly or no.”
A flick of the Wanderer’s wrist and John was hurled up so quickly he felt no sense of movement before the light overwhelmed his mind.
— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, August 2026
© Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved
