Boundless Abyss

12th Day of Autumn

767 Karloman’s Peace

Ekkehard fell backwards and crawled to the cave wall. Pressed up against it with nowhere else to go, he helplessly shielded his face with his arms. He knew fighting the creature would be pointless.

Whatever it was, it was far more than he.

He gritted his teeth, hissing his final breaths through them.

These were the last moments of his life. His heart pounded in his ears, and he held his eyes shut tightly, hoping it would be quick. His last thoughts were not of the events that had led him here.

Instead, he thought about the life his family had once upon a time.

He thought of the pride he had felt the day he, Audomar, and their father had left to join the war effort against the Merchants' Rebellion. He thought of the happiness he felt the day he returned home from that war and was greeted by his mother. He remembered the day he first met his wife. He remembered the joy, the overwhelming, painful amount of love he felt looking into the eyes of his newborn son. He even thought fondly of his time in the scriptoriums among the priests in his youth.

He thought of all the things life had taken from him.

What more could this creature really do?

What harm could it do that far more real and far viler monsters had not already done ten times over? With that thought, his racing heart began to slow, and his breathing calmed.

It occurred to him that he had encountered many strange apparitions this night, and he wondered if perhaps he was foolishly being startled by another trick of his mind. Perhaps the creature wasn’t real at all. Perhaps he was simply mad.

Ekkehard opened his eyes and peeked through his fingers.

The creature was very real indeed.

It did not stand but levitated, tall and lithe, before him.

A black void formed its body, a light-consuming oblivion that swirled and fluctuated, snarling and snapping angrily at the existence around it. Each formless tendril that darted from the body snatched and snared the strands of reality, pulling them in to be devoured by the darkness. As Ekkehard’s vision was slowly drawn into the creature, the dying light formed and created an aura around it, framing the creature in the eerie blue and green light of the cave’s alien plant life.

It was as if the creature couldn’t quite remember its own form. It was merely the final fleeting thought of a being before it was forgotten. It was what remained of a man when no one is left to remember them.

The afterimage of something once divine.

The only divergence from the blackness of the creature’s ethereal body was a small half mask of bone that fit over the space where the being's face might have been. It was pearl-white and flawlessly clean, except for a crimson etching in its centre. Three bloody tendrils swirled endlessly from a centre point to form a triskelion upon the mask’s forehead.

As Ekkehard looked upon the creature, he involuntarily dropped his arms, preventing him from shielding himself against the creature’s sight. Like the light drawn into its form, Ekkehard was pulled toward the pitiless, haunting abyss of the eyeless creature’s gaze.

The nothingness behind it called to him.

It yearned for him.

It begged for him.

Then, the creature hissed.

It wasn't the type of hiss a feline predator might make, or that of a serpent. It was something altogether more foreign and benign. It was guttural and vicious and seemed not to emerge from any singular part of the creature, but from the entirety of the space which it violated with its presence. It rushed in and through the creature, sucking in all the air around it as it went, before flooding its surroundings and cutting through Ekkehard's entire body.

He flinched in response, the movement jerking new awareness into Ekkehard, and he suddenly realised he was standing before the creature.

Ekkehard wasn't sure when he had gotten to his feet. Yet, he was standing mere inches from the creature.

Its stare had become mesmerising.

Some form of meaning, a type of understanding unknown to Ekkehard, rested behind the creature's mask.

Ekkehard saw himself turning in its gaze.

He was facing the lectern.

How had he gotten there?

Had the creature not been barring his way only seconds before?

He paced toward the stone structure, climbing its two giant steps. Upon its surface, there were no longer seven tomes. Now, there was only a single tome resting in its centre. The tome bearing the depiction of the perfect golden city.

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He gazed upon the cover of the Book of Heaven and saw a world dancing in the shimmer of its golden reflection.

Whispers, malevolently melodic, issued around Ekkehard, and the more he watched the world before him come to life, the louder the whispering resonated in his mind.

His eyes rolled as images flashed before him in their billions.

He struggled to make sense of their multitudes.

In the boundless abyss, Ekkehard glimpsed a cosmic tapestry, sputtering embers of life on fragmented isles, each a lonely vigil against the devouring dark. Drifting in celestial choreography, the flickering flames coalesced into seven astral crowns, a radiant union driving the shadows to the fringes.

Within one crown, a tenebrous seed unfurled. Its once golden flames mutated, first from green, then to blue, then to void-black. Seven became six, as one crown fell to negation. The lurking void feasted on this newfound alliance, its gnawing tendrils collapsing crown after crown into cold emptiness until none remained.

Then, a sudden descent. A spiralling fall and Ekkehard was ensnared in a web, not of silk but of grasping limbs. One by one, then ten by ten, then by the thousands, they clutched and clawed, pulling him into an abyss within an abyss.

He found himself standing on the outskirts of a mirage: a city golden and resplendent, set against barren lands. An ephemeral sanctuary, it oscillated between majesty and devastation. Like a harbinger of its own doom, a single arrow of flame plummeted, reducing it to cinder and ash.

In this crumbling utopia, indescribable entities revelled in grotesque feasts, gnawing on anguished cries. Above them, the epitome of malevolence sat, enthroned in a cathedral of sorrow, surveying his realm of captive souls. Beyond charred walls, silver-clad warriors waged a futile war against an endless siege of darkness. Above, luminous beings, mantled in pearlescent wings, duelled with creatures wrought of flame and murk.

Amidst this pandemonium, Ekkehard discerned the cruellest falsehood. A detached sovereign, ensconced in nihilistic regalia.

Then, as if life itself had yielded, flames and light gave way, and the void encroached once more. In the distant darkness, the tiniest glimmer of light shone upon the faint outline of a tree and birdsong called to him.

The song of day could not compete with the whispers of night.

As each vision passed by him, the whispering grew louder in his mind, turning into a crescendo of chants, a billion voices strong. ‘Ender Infi Aqirancend,’ the chorus shouted. ‘Net Fore Infi Aqirancore,’ they screamed ever louder. ‘Infi Aqirancel I,’ their final words resounded as Ekkehard's mind broke.

Empty silence took him.

Emerging from this final nothingness, a figure approached.

It was gaunt, hairless, its eyes empty chasms of blanched white. An apparition born from the very fabric of the void, it walked towards him, a herald of unknown fates.

The Thin Man had come for him.

Ekkehard crashed upon the cave floor.

He was clutching the golden tome to his chest. He didn't remember taking hold of it. Yet, he knew he had fought with all his might to pull it free from its resting place.

He was panting. The sweat on his body caused his dirty rags to cling to him, and Ekkehard wondered how long he had struggled to free himself from his vision.

He clambered awkwardly to his feet and looked around the cave chambers.

The thing was gone.

The cave was empty again.

He looked down at the oversized golden tome held in his arms, gazed upon it in wonder.

It was real. He could feel it. Solid and heavy, its metal-plated cover cold. He could even smell it, that dusty scent of old parchment and the earthy richness of ink. It smelt of the scriptoriums of the temples.

He did not understand what had happened. He still wasn’t sure it had been real. But something now was different. He understood that. He knew that he had been chosen for something.

Something grander than himself.

‘What was it?’ he wondered to himself.

His head hurt, and he closed his eyes, trying to push the pain away.

As he tried to focus his mind, he heard a faint sound.

The trickling of water.

Ekkehard opened his eyes and tried to find the source of the noise. At the back of the cave, Ekkehard spotted a thin trail of liquid that had made its way through the stone of the wall. Reaching out with one hand, he touched it. Pulling his hand back, Ekkehard examined the wetness on his fingers.

The liquid was jet black.

Then the sound grew as the flow of water increased.

New trails of water began to emerge from various points across the back wall of the cave. The pressure of the water increased, and, in places, it no longer trickled but sprayed from cracks, showering Ekkehard in the black fluid.

Then, a new sound, buckling stone.

The wall would give way at any moment.

He clutched the Book of Heaven to his chest and ran back down the platform, racing towards the cave exit. As he passed the cloudy blue water of the pool, it erupted. Black water rushed upwards towards the hidden ceiling of the cave. It rained down upon him.

Then the back wall of the cave burst.

As if from a broken dam, torrents of lightless water rushed after him.

He ran as fast as he could through the winding tunnel of the cave, the waters chasing him as he went.

Risking a glance behind, Ekkehard saw the tidal wave of swirling death and felt his heart race. His eyes widened with terror, and he pushed his legs to carry him faster. Just as the waters started to lap at his heels, he spotted a pale light ahead.

The cave exit.

Bursting free of the darkness, Ekkehard jumped into the light of a newly dawning day.

He landed on the dirt of a mountain trail, the book flying free of his arms as he fell.

He expected water to strike him. To wash him back into the forest below.

It did not.

Panting, Ekkehard slowly and cautiously turned to inspect the cave exit. There was nothing but mountainside.

The entrance to the cave was gone.

Ekkehard sat and stared at a featureless wall before him. He pulled his knees into his chest, and hugged them against himself, resting his chin upon them.

'What is happening to me?' he asked himself.

There was no answer, and he had none for himself either.

He tried to focus his mind on the things he had seen in the cave. The visions that had fluttered before his eyes with such rapidity.

Did they have meaning?

Were they a message? A memory? A prophecy? A deception?

He didn't know.

He didn't understand what he was being told. He wasn't even sure it had been real.

Had it been real?

He was sat on the cliff edge now, the sun rising at his back. He wondered if perhaps it had been a dream. Maybe exhaustion had taken him last night and he had simply collapsed from the effort of climbing the mountain. That would explain it all. He had been through a lot, maybe grief had simply poisoned his mind.

He thought of the book.

The book he had carried from the cave and which he had just thrown in his desperation.

If what had happened was real, that book would be behind him, resting upon the mountain trail. If the book was real, the cave was real.

He hesitated, unsure of whether to check.

He turned his head regardless, eyes closed at first, and slowly, he opened his eyes.

There it was. The book. Teetering on the edge of the mountain trail, threatening to fall.

It was real.

Ekkehard slowly crawled to the book and meekly pulled it to him, away from the mountain's edge. It was heavy and it was real. He rested it in his lap.

He held the massive golden tome and gazed upon its cover. The golden city was just as intricate as it had been the first time he looked upon it, but Ekkehard was pleased to discover it was now mercifully lifeless.

He looked over the edge of the cliff, down the wall he had climbed the night before, and he considered chucking the book over the edge.

He did not.

A gold clasp upon its side sealed the tome. Slowly, with trembling fingers, he undid the clasp.

Then, finally, Ekkehard Reubke, opened the Book of Heaven.