Twice Taken – The Silvergrey Sea

The Silvergrey Sea

Part One: A Little Excitement

Twice Taken

* * *

A roar and a tumult.

The reaction of the rogue Hermetists to his appearance was pleasing, he had to admit. The sudden incarnation of a Great Soul into the poor sod they’d trussed up for sacrifice caused exactly the sort of panic for which he’d hoped. Not that it would do to let them know that. Concealing his glee behind a feigned terror and rage required little in the way of stagecraft.

More difficult to achieve was surviving their attempts to kill him while making them think they had succeeded. This was a bit harder, but not overly so.

The thoroughly demoralized conspirators dropped what they sincerely thought was a corpse over the side of their ship, a day’s sail out from the hidden islands called the Evanescents.

So far so good.

Now, to make sure he was in the right spot. Letting his senses play out, the Great Soul found one of his possible candidates quite close. They weren’t his first choice but would do. The being he was pretending to would need to drift with the tides to his intended destination and his chosen agent. Projecting his senses again, he felt the Silvergrey Sea’s current and wind direction.

The place he needed to be was close, though not close enough. He began stroking his current meat suit in the proper direction.

He was lucky. The host spirit remained stunned and unaware until he had reached the right spot before waking and storming into his own forebrain to take back control of his body.

The unexpected ferocity of the attack made the Great Soul lose a mental step, but that was enough. He was thrown into the back of his host’s mind.

* * *

Drago came to himself amid no sensations at all.

A familiarity with the feeling puzzled him, as he had no memories.

The first of his recollections returned and he knew this was what it had been like at the beginning, before his birth.

That meant another birth must be in his future.

But wait.

Wouldn’t there have to have been an end to another life?

More memories came. His youth and young adulthood; the anxious wait for his anticipated capture. It was then that everything had gone so very wrong.

He began to feel motion. Opening his eyes, he saw nothing, though he felt a blinding pain in them. Closing his eyelids didn’t help. Excruciation woke up all other sensations and all emotions, each adding its particular ache to the mix. He began flailing, his limbs moving slowly, as if something was holding them.

No, that wasn’t it.

He was immersed in something too thick to be water with no way to tell which way was up. His lungs were reporting to him a dearth of air. He needed to do something fast.

Coordinating his arms and legs, he struck out in a random direction.

His arm left the medium he was in very quickly; he felt the cold running down it. His legs kicked strongly once. Again.

He was out!

A loud gasp and sweet air filled his lungs. His eyes were still afire, but the pain had diminished. He tried wiping the goop off them. It didn’t seem to help much, but he was desperate to see where he was.

Opening his eyes actually diminished the pain. Or perhaps it was the sight that greeted them, as the latter made all other concerns trivial by contrast.

The air was an ill-defined colour, resembling grey. It was filled with…stars? No, it couldn’t be. There were far too many for one thing. They didn’t twinkle, either. The sky seemed coated with sparkles of light, like silver dust.

He was floating in something he couldn’t see. Grey, like the sky—exactly like, in fact—with a suggestion of waves felt though unseen. His body was invisible beneath the hypothesized plane of the liquid.

Turning as fast as he was able, he scanned for a horizon.

The sight of the ship stopped him. It was only a dark shape of sails and rigging at this distance, but it was visibly retreating.

Then he remembered.

Hoping it would carry, he vented a scream of rage.

Wasn’t there another?

Yes, the one who grabbed his mind and threw him tumbling back into his own unconscious. He remembered fighting furiously to see, to feel, to be.

Now he has back, but how and why? And where was the other?

He rummaged around in the back of his mind.

Nothing.

Gone!

Something happened to him then. A point of light and an intense pleasure.

What had he been thinking?

The ship. The hanging.

Wasn’t there something else?

No. Probably not.

* * *

He had no idea how long he floated in the sea. The Silvergrey Sea, as he recollected. He should be dead. Contact with the stuff of the Sea was invariably fatal, so he’d been told.

There was no sense of time here. He thought he lost consciousness at one point. He came to himself still floating when common sense told him he should have sunk and drowned. Maybe he was still dead or had died after his plunge into the liquid of the Silvergrey. This whole experience certainly seemed dream-like enough to be an afterlife.

He was still halfway between dream and death when he felt a tugging sensation and then cold as someone lifted him out of the Sea. Naked and shivering, he lay on a hard surface while raven-like figures fluttered across sparkling greyness above.

Who were they? He felt he should know, but his exhausted mind refused to work properly.

Movement again. He was going somewhere. Again, the figures, people in black clothing he now saw, were carrying him. Who were they?

Home? Life? Death? Were these reapers, come to take him to hell?

He closed his eyes…

* * *

…and opened them to a view of grey again. No sparkles this time.

A humming noise. He turned toward it. Something sticking out of a window.

Window.

Wall.

He looked up…ceiling! A grey painted ceiling.

He sat up. He was in a bed. Judging by its appearance, he was in an inn of some sort.

How had he gotten here? As his mind cleared, he remembered more. Being lifted out of the Silvergrey Sea; the endless journey in it; being dumped off the ship after…after being hanged!

He felt for the noose around his neck as the sharp memory of pain—rough hemp biting into his neck, crushing his throat, his mouth filling with blood—flooded his mind. No rope, but a band of roughened skin: a scar where it had been. No pain did he feel. The wound was healed. There was no mistaking that memory, though.

Who had done it?

The ones in black. Hermetists.

He knew them, now. They’d taken him and…what?

Before that, before he died, there had been…?

Begin again, he told himself.

His name was Drago. He had been waiting his turn on Hyborea in the village of his birth. Most of the other young men had already been taken. His father had told him not to worry; they’d never hurt him. That was the deal, part of the treaty that had ended the war.

Finally, he had been snatched, but by men and women in black. Some with white as well and there had been one all in blue.

Then nothing that he could remember, until he had been dropped into the hold on the deck of a ship, the rope snapping taut; the noose tightening so fast, he was sure his head would pop off. Searing pain. Couldn’t breathe!

What had happened in between those moments?

He thought he remembered voices, calling, crying, screaming. Was there one calm one, talking under the rest? People in black with wide-brimmed hats. Hermetists.

A memory of being pulled from the Sea before his hanging. The one in blue—was that the owner of the calming voice?

No. That voice was within him. But how was that possible? Drago was alone in his head, always had been. He’d heard of people with other voices in their minds. Poor souls. Mad most called them. But that had never been him. It must be the trauma making him misremember.

Fear, panic, and violence Drago remembered coming from him, but not by him. He remembered being terrified and things happening, things he made happened that he couldn’t stop. Many deaths, bodies flying apart. Then the ship, the hold, and his death. Another death. Had he lived before? He thought he had, but he recalled only his one birth, on Hyborea. Only one life there before everything went to hell.

Bits and pieces of memories was all Drago had left. Most of it was scrambled non-sense that likely had no truth. He sighed.

No help there. His memories would return, or they wouldn’t; there was nothing to be done about it. For now, he needed to figure out where he was.

The Hyborean got out of the bed. It took a couple of tries, as he was weak. His legs had trouble supporting him. His vision went fuzzily dark, his head spinning as he tried to balance. Drago leaned on the nearest wall and waited for it to stop. It felt warm, that wall, and a bit sticky.

Inside a frosted glass dome in the ceiling was a wan, cheerless light.

Its glow revealed a room that was a dull grey, floor carpet, ceiling. Only the one window to his right, lower half-blocked by a humming machine blasting cool and painfully dry air into the space. The upper part of the window, partially obscured by a tan curtain, revealed only blackness beyond.

A door to his left looked like wood, but a wrinkle in it suggested it was only painted paper made to look like wood. The Hyborean thought it must lead out of the room.

Ahead, past the end of the bed was another, slightly ajar. A light brighter than the one here shone from the crack. Hoping he might find something to clothe his nudity there, Drago decided to try it first.

He waited until he felt strong enough to try walking. Though it wasn’t exactly an epic journey to what turned out to be the bathroom, it was an exercise in concentration. The Hyborean’s legs were rubbery, his balance questionable. It was like learning to walk all over again. His exertions made his throat sore as the desiccated air, smelling of tin, scraped it and burned his nostrils on its way down. Finally, though, Drago was able to grip the jamb and pilot his way into the room.

It was white and dingy at the edges of the walls. Fungus stained tile floor. A shower cubby, whose glass enclosure either frosted or mineral-stained opaque, was in one corner. Shelves with towels and a bare selection of soaps in the other. Immediately in front of him was a toilet, porcelain gleaming he was surprised to see. A mirror over a sink completed the fixtures.

The Hyborean took a step in and turned to his right to face the bathroom mirror. The only light in the room was directly above it. Drago had to squint, at first.

His face was unfamiliar, which caused a momentary panic. The scar across his neck was no darker than the rest of his skin. It looked old, like the wound had been inflicted years ago, which made as little sense as everything, just now.

While he stared at the stranger in the reflective glass, something emerged from behind his eyes. By the time he noticed, it was too late for Drago to do anything; he’d already been shoved into the back of his own mind.

* * *

After a brief, ugly struggle, the Hyborean was once again contained away from his conscious self. Wasting no time, the Great Soul headed back to the room, to the closet at the far end. Dressing and grabbing the cash and ID left by the thoughtful Hermetists for him—or more likely the hotel staff they expected to find his corpse later—the spirit pretending to be Drago headed out. He needed to get to this man Tranker and activate him. It was only the first step in a long, dangerous process.

— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, September 2026

© Gideon Jagged
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