We Stand at the Gate (2 page)

“Desperation’s made men do some pretty stupid
things, me included. Course in my case, a woman was usually
involved. A man has needs, you know.”

“Uncle Tobin told me that’s what prostitutes
and fancy boys are for. Anyway, Professor Sturgis decided to try
astral projection. That’s when you project your consciousness
outside your body. Your astral form is invisible, can fly, and even
pass through solid objects. It’s like becoming a ghost without the
dying part. Professor Sturgis figured that would let him circumvent
the remote viewing problem without physically entering the Blight.
Theoretically, anyway, He had no idea what affect the Blight would
have on astral forms but as we’ve already established, desperate
times call for desperate measures.”

“That same night,” Critchler continued, “I
received a visitor at well past midnight. It was Professor Sturgis
who wanted me to document what he saw in case something happened
and he wasn’t able to return to his body. When astral projecting,
the astral self remains tethered to one’s physical form and so the
professor would be able to communicate with me through his
otherwise insensate body and describe everything he witnessed. We
began making preparations and within an hour, the professor’s
astral form was streaking toward the southern frontier while his
physical body remained safely locked away in his quarters with
me.”

“Could somebody’s astral form be watching us
right now?” Heinrich asked, poking the empty air with his
spear.

“It’s possible, I guess. So anyway, astral
travel is quick and it didn’t take the professor long to reach the
Blight. I could tell when he crossed over. His entire body spasmed
and for a moment I thought he was having some sort of attack but
then he started speaking. It was strange, hearing him talk while
knowing his mind was really thousands of miles away. This is what
he said. The moment he crossed over, the sky went dark and was
filled with constellations he didn’t recognize. All around him
strange, ethereal shapes swam through the air. He said they
reminded him of the creatures that sometimes wash up on the shores
of the Western Sea; weird, semi-transparent things all teeth and
tentacles, no two alike.”

Heinrich squinted into the darkness. “These
things are floating around out there?”

“On the other side of the pillars, yes. Don’t
worry. The pillars hold back extra-dimensional creatures like the
astral horrors, which is what Professor Sturgis called them.
Blighted mutants can still get through because they’re native to
this world, and by the same token can usually be killed with plain
old steel. Anyway, the thing about astral creatures is this. If you
can see them, they can see you too. And if they can see you, they
can touch you.”

“Magic has silly rules.” Heinrich shivered.
If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn the temperature had
dropped significantly since the start of their conversation. “I’m
assuming he didn’t turn around and go home.”

“Nope. That’s what a sane man would do, but
Professor Sturgis went a little crazy that night. And then a lot
crazy. So he kept going, hoping that the astral horrors would leave
him alone, and the farther he went the stranger things became. He
saw a forest of dead trees whose twisted limbs reached hungrily
toward the sky as he passed overhead. Cancers with human faces that
screamed and howled as they were devoured by their own ravenous
flesh. Gelatinous things aglow with the ghost-light of their own
luminescent organs that left a burning snail trail of acid slime as
they oozed across the ash-gray earth. Towering behemoths less
animal than vegetable, at war with flickering black shapes filled
with glittering stars.

“And on he went,” Critchler continued,
“deeper and deeper into the Blight. And still things got stranger
and stranger. He saw the ruins of a village where the buildings had
come to life and wore the bones of their former inhabitants like
jewelry. Sometimes the ground traded places with the sky, and
sometimes it was impossible to tell where one stopped and the other
started. Time and distance aren’t fixed in the Blight and so he
wasn’t sure how long he traveled before he finally saw it.”

A few moments passed before Heinrich realized
Critchler was taking a dramatic pause. “Saw what?”

“The rift. Actually he said ‘a jagged,
city-sized tear in the curtain of night’ but I like rift
better.”

“What, the hole? I thought you said you it
was a hole. Then you said it was a crack. Make up your mind,
man.”

“Well, now I’m saying it’s a rift. It’s
storyteller’s prerogative. So anyway, the space around the rift was
fuzzy and distorted, like a heat mirage, and swarming with astral
horrors like the ones he’d seen when he first passed into the
Blight. Far below he saw explosions of indescribable color and
heard the mad beating of drums and tuneless whine of flutes.
Curious, he flew down to take a look and saw a carnival of the
damned.”

Heinrich suddenly perked up. “A carnival?
Were there any dancing girls?”

“There weren’t any girls, dancing or
otherwise.”

“I haven’t seen a girl in almost ten years,”
Heinrich said, frowning. “Doesn’t sound like much of a carnival to
me.”

“It wasn’t really a carnival. When Professor
Sturgis close enough to take a good look, he thought he was getting
a glimpse of hell itself. But it wasn’t hell. It was worse.”

Heinirich snorted. “What’s worse than
hell?”

“Were a fellow to find himself in hell, at
least he’d know where he stood. But what Professor Sturgis saw,
that was something else entirely. Speaking of hell, there’s an
interesting theory going around regarding the whole
infernal/celestial dichotomy which states-”

“Dammit, Critchler, just finish the
story.”

“Okay, okay. There’s not much more to tell.
Professor Sturgis said the performers were the strangest things of
all. Not nightmarish monstrosities like before but something much
more bizarre. They were real enough yet somehow incomplete, like
concepts of things rather than the things themselves. Not
shape-shifters, exactly, but constantly changing, always hinting at
something else but never really becoming anything. What was it the
professor said? They were like ideas that had become real before
becoming fully realized, if that makes any sense.”

Heinrich shook his head. “It does not. You
sure this Professor Sturgis wasn’t just making this stuff up? Or
maybe smoking night-root or sniffing ether dust or something?”

“Anything’s possible, I suppose,” Critchler
replied, shrugging. “But I don’t know what he would have had to
gain by making up a story like that. And someone with his knowledge
would know the difference between a hallucination and a genuine
out-of-body experience.”

“Heh. I’ve had some out-of-body experiences
of my own and they seemed pretty gobbing real at the time. So what
happened next?”

“Professor Sturgis decided it was time to
look into the rift. He willed his astral self to rise up into the
sky and after a moment’s hesitation approached the rift. And then
he looked in and saw…”

“Out with it, man! What did he see?”

Himself.”

Heinrich blinked. “What? What do you mean he
saw himself?”

“He saw himself, reflected back as if in a
stagnant pond. And then the reflection quivered and the very edges
of the rift trembled and widened just the tiniest bit. And as the
idiot music below played even more furiously, the professor’s
confusion became fear and he retreated. But as he flew away he
turned back for one last glimpse and saw the rift from a new angle.
And then he said he finally knew what it really was.”

“What was it?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Didn’t say? What do you mean he didn’t
say?”

“He was practically screaming at this point.
Then his body jerked and his eyes opened wide and I knew his astral
self was back. He started shaking and foaming at the mouth like a
rabid dog. I was all set to go for help when he grabbed my sleeve
and pulled me close. For a second I thought he was going to go for
my throat, but instead he whispered something in my ear. He said,
‘It sees us, even in its dreams. And it’s waking up. It’s been
asleep since forever and it’s finally waking up’.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have no idea. That was the last thing he
said to me. As far as I know it’s the last thing he ever said
period. But that’s why I’m here. I want to be here when it finally
wakes up.”

“When what wakes up?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m here to find
out.”

Heinrich sighed. “Okay, so what will happen
when…’it’ wakes up?”

“I don’t know that either. The end of the
world, maybe. That’s usually how it works.”

“Let me get this straight,” Heinrich said,
scratching his head. “You gave up a free ride at a fancy college
based on unverifiable events described in a story told by a lunatic
and traveled to the ass end of civilization in hopes of getting a
front row seat to the end of the world?”

Critchler nodded. “Pretty much.”

Heinrich stared at Critchler open-mouthed.
“Why?” he finally asked.

Critchler was silent for a moment, and when
he turned to Heinrich there was a strange look in his eyes. “Some
wizards spend their entire lives in a virtual self-imposed exile,
hunched over their cauldrons and spell books like cloistered nuns.
They know plenty about magical theory and planar cosmologies but
they don’t know the first thing about life. But me, I didn’t want
to read about the Blight. I wanted to see if for myself. And I
have. I’ve stood before the guardian pillars which have held back
the Blight since before human history and fought against mutant
horrors as alien as anything that could be summoned from the outer
dark. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve already accomplished more than
most of my instructors combined. And if Professor Sturgis was right
about something that’s been asleep since forever finally waking up,
then I’ll be here to witness it with my own eyes. And if the end is
really nigh, then I’ll have a front row seat to a show so
spectacular they can only do it once.”

“You know something, Critchler?” Heinrich
asked. “I was wondering what a level-headed guy like you was doing
down here. Now I know. You’re just as crazy as the rest of us.
Maybe even crazier.”

Critchler smiled. “That’s a definite
possibility.”

Heinrich stared at Critchler for a moment
then did something he hadn’t done since his childhood in the
labyrinthine slums of Varshan, the capital city of Drakenwald.
“Well, in that case I guess we can be friends,” he said, offering a
grubby hand with a stub where the pinky once sat.

“A man can always use more friends,”
Critchler said as he shook Heinrich’s hand.

Out in the no-man’s land, a dark shape,
fox-sized but with too many legs, snatched up a rabbit and dragged
it back into the Blight.

“Not a bad night, all things considered,”
Critchler said.

Heinrich nodded. “Nope, not bad at all.”

#####

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