of Horde.
'CONSUME!'
'You're funny,' said the grubling. Air passed over the grubling's vocal cords and made a melody, not unlike the shrike-hounds of the howling gates and it made the Exile feel stop. New sound, word list on mammals called it giggle made the Exile feel not to devour the grubling. The grubling held up with its opposable thumbs an image of a tiny earth beast, made of cloth, stuffed with fibers. 'This is Cuddle Bunny. Want to play?'
'CONSUME?'
'No. Play, silly.' The grubling used its pathetic leg limbs to hop away. 'Come on. You're my friend. You're like a big trash bag.'
The Exile was confounded. The other mammals were made of hate and burning. The master-TERRIBLE SHRIEKING DOOM- was made of pain and orders. This grubling was of not kill. Suddenly the grubling changed to the Exile's current eyes and the Exile saw that this mammal was made of stars.
Confused. The Exile followed. The Exile became Friend.
At the time I had thought that the gnome's memory had been slightly alien. Mr. Trash Bags had just shown me what a real alien was. My head ached with haunting sounds, thought bubbles that popped like dynamite, and the lingering image of a tiny, perfect, glowing angel, with pigtails and a stuffed rabbit.
'Destroy them!' Hood shouted at the hesitating shoggoth.
'NOOO!' The simple beast remembered what was probably the only thing that had ever loved it. Two tentacles cracked like whips, splitting the automatons flanking Hood in half. The limbs tore through the shadow man, pulverizing the ground at his feet, but he merely re-formed in place.
Snarling, he extended one hand. 'Traitorous amorph!' A bolt of fire leapt from his amulet, down his arm, and from his hand, bursting into the shoggoth, engulfing it in flames. 'How dare you!'
'PROTECT CUDDLE BUNNY,' the shoggoth thundered as it carelessly tossed Julie behind it. The burning blob surged over me, across the portal, and at the shadow man. I was released, and spun wildly through the tar. The flaming beast collided with Hood, burning bits flying in every direction. Already it seemed to shrink as it turned to ash. I slid through the goo, trying to get to my feet. The blob hardened and shattered into burning shards. There was a terrible piercing squeal as Mr. Trash Bags exploded.
Hood dusted the ash from his robe. 'Never trust a blob to do a man's work.' He took three steps and leapt across the portal, landing effortlessly beside me. I fired my shotgun into his head and he merely swatted it aside before grabbing me around the throat and lifting me off the ground. Half man, half darkness, the hole in his face quickly closed. 'We already said our good-byes.'
There was a mighty yell. 'Pitt!' I glanced up in time to see Agent Franks sprinting toward us, leaping between the massive roots. He would never make it in time.
'Too late,' Hood said as he heaved me into the center of the portal.
Chapter 21
I broke the surface.
Time was different.
It was difficult to comprehend. Our existence doesn't really encompass this kind of experience. Time passed, but in different directions simultaneously. My brain hurt just trying to function.
My eyes still worked. The light was primarily red, but didn't seem to come from any particular source. It was utterly strange, alien. The air entering my lungs wasn't made of what I thought of as air, but it didn't matter, as enough time hadn't passed yet to breathe. I was floating in place, in a haze, almost like being on a cloud in some alternate hellish version of heaven.
Which according to the Condition, I probably was.
A creature made entirely of eyeballs floated past. It was tiny, but then I realized that with no scale, it might have been miles away and the size of a subway train. It was eating hornets made of razor blades and steam, but it didn't matter, because time wasn't passing. It just was.
Oh God. I'm scared.
The whole universe moved. It was the Dread Master blinking. A yellow slit appeared through the red. It was looking at me.
Time wasn't right, but at the same time I could see a million years in the past, and a million years into the future, and in other directions into dimensions that I couldn't comprehend, and I was going to die repeatedly through all of them, forever. This epic thing honestly believed that I was the first mortal being to ever harm it. I just knew that this being had waged millennia of war between stars against things even more diabolical than it was, but somehow a mere human had hurt it. And I was going to pay for that. A lot.
'That whole thing with the nuke, that wasn't me. The guy you want to talk to is Dwayne Myers. That's Special Agent Dwayne Myers of the Monster Control Bureau. M-Y-E-R-S.' I didn't know if I just thought that, or if I could actually speak in this place, but even if I could, I'm sure my pitiful utterances were like a mosquito buzzing around its ear.
That giant eye kept regarding me. I could feel it in my mind, poking around as it figured out what would hurt me the most. I was a bubble of linear time in this ageless place, an oddity. My universe was poison to the Dread Master, but consuming me would be the equivalent of a healthy person eating a single jelly bean. Not exactly good for you, but it wasn't like you were going to notice.
Then it spoke. The entire universe thundered with its incomprehensible voice. All I could understand was the pain. The message itself was beyond me. But it didn't matter, because this was how I was going to spend eternity.
A few minutes in this place had shattered Ray Shackleford's mind before Earl had pulled him out. Ray had never been the same. For the first time, I had nothing but pity for him. The Dread Master said something else. I experienced agony beyond anything I had ever imagined. Turning into a zombie was Christmas at Disneyland with all-you-can-eat ice cream and a free ride on the space shuttle in comparison.
When it was done, I floated there, wishing to die.
I was mortal at home. Here I was an infinite chew toy. It hadn't even started yet. It got closer. Ten thousand feet of sleek carapace attached to millipede tentacles crackling with electricity. The eyeball creature was snagged by the forest of limbs and absorbed, digested for eternity to fuel the fires of chaos.
Then, in the abyss of confusion, there was a presence of something familiar, another bubble of familiar reality. A blue light intruded into the red, and it was as if time began to move again. It was coming from the opposite direction of the Dread Overlord. 'I've never failed a mission,' the presence said as I turned.
'Agent Franks?'
He was different here. The physical body was just a shell, housing a spirit that was clearly not that of a normal human, but rather something simpler and older. The recycled organs, bones, and sinew that served as Frank's avatar showed me the ward stone. It boiled with the power of pure reality. 'Won't start now.' There was a clear trail of energy connected to the ward stone stretching back to our universe.
Julie had explained it to me. As far as I understand how the ward works, it's basically a focus point for our reality. Like a magnifying glass under the sun. Undead are an unnatural thing in this world, so it just blasts them. Things from outside this reality can't take the heat. And now that I could see what it really was, I could tell that it was far more powerful than any of us had realized. The ward was huge, crackling with potential. The alchemists of old hadn't just created a defensive device. They'd created a doomsday weapon. It was like the seventeenth century's version of Mutually Assured Destruction.
If our reality was poison to the Old Ones, then Franks had just brought a keg of VX nerve gas into their living room.
The Dread Master assaulted us both with hate. As alien as we were to it, it probably didn't even understand what was going on, but it didn't like it one bit. Terrible visions and alien memories pounded my psyche. Bombarded by pain, Franks still pushed toward me, finally shoving the ward stone into my waiting hands. 'Break it,' Franks ordered. 'I can't.'
Of course not. It had been built by a human, for humans.
