All the evil in the universe was concentrated in the monster’s lean, hungry body. Or did it even have a body? I had seen a lot of inexplicable shit in my time as a Ranger and caravan guard, but this terrified me beyond reason. I also recognized it from the mad descriptions of such creatures in the Re’Kithnid.
It was a Hound of Tindalos, monsters who hunted the living through the angles of time and space. The Hounds of Tindalos were creatures consisting of living geometry. I do not mean to say their bodies were angular, for this would give you the wrong impression.
If one were trying to picture it, they could do worse than a hunting dog made of a million separate mirrored squares linked together by some invisible force. The pieces of its body constantly shifted position and size while maintaining the same general shape. This does not convey what the creature truly looked like, but when dealing with my increasingly inhuman perceptions, it’s the closest an earthly language can convey.
The thing appeared above our heads and landed on the table, causing it to split into dozens of pieces spread across the floor. Its first attack was beyond lethal, striking not at a man’s flesh and bone but the spaces between his cells. I know this because poor Mathew, one of the few remaining well-educated men in the world, was struck by the creature before we could react. His head, arms, and legs fell into hundreds of perfectly cubed pieces on the floor. I could not fathom the kind of strike that could inflict such a perfect death.
“Hit the floor!” Jessica shouted, falling to the ground. Others pulled away from the table or threw themselves to the ground. None of these individuals would have survived so long as they had if not for their ability to get away from the monsters that preyed on humanity.
“Where are our weapons!” Thom shouted, running to the side and pushing over a library shelf onto the creature. The shelf exploded into hundreds of papers and pieces of wood, flying in every direction.
The Hound let out an inhuman screech, half animal call, half shout from another dimension. That sound penetrated my soul and was as loud as the cry of a beast a hundred times its size. I would have covered my ears to drown out the hellish cacophony, but was too busy aiming my gun at it.
I was out of orihalcum ammunition but fired anyway, the bullets disappearing into the gaps between the monster’s angles. They ricocheted and bounced around the library about us.
“Put that away!” Thom cried out.
“Have you got any better ideas?” I shouted, ceasing my attack anyway.
The Hound’s tail pulled back as if to strike them, only for the back end to disappear and then reappear behind Thom.
“Behind you!” I shouted.
Thom hit the ground as the monster’s tail shot over his head. The creature was able to stretch its impossible body in directions beyond anything I’d seen in the Wasteland. Thom rolled to the side as the squares making up the tail separated and fell down on the ground like knives, trying but failing to impale him.
“Nodens, I call upon your power to protect me! I’phek Re’Kithnid K’a!” Bobbie shouted, waving her hand around in the air before, much to my surprise, a flaming whip appeared inside her hand. As she cracked it against the Hound of Tindalos, the creature let forth another inhuman cry. This one, however, was a screech of pain.
I hoped.
August, meanwhile, had moved a safe distance away. Making a series of strange hand gestures, he shouted to Mercury, “Do you know the Breath of Ithaqua?”
“Yes!” Mercury shouted, hiding behind another shelf. My lover was already preparing another spell, having ignored my request not to study sorcery beyond banishment and protection spells.
“Then let us strike with it!” August cried out, trying to rally his courage.
The Hound, however, had other ideas. Hit repeatedly by Bobbie’s flaming whip, which seemed to draw the creature’s angles together rather than separate them, the creature split into a hundred different shards before they vanished. Then the Hound appeared right behind her.
I charged forward but was unable to keep the creature from slashing across her chest and taking three square ribbons out of it before it leapt at my throat. I threw my arm in front of my face and the massive creature landed on me. The Hound slashed its claws and gnashed its jaws against my arm, biting, snapping, and howling, but the monster didn’t tear through me as with Mathew. I felt tremendous pain, but the claws on my arm and chest were no worse than any other animal attack. Though the Hound of Tindalos had no recognizable expressions, its next cry sounded frustrated and confused.
The creature might not have experienced anything like a human being, but I suspected it was in anything but a good mood when Jessica smashed it across the face with a table leg she’d broken off. Momentum, more than force, sent the creature flying off me. It disappeared in midair and reappeared right side up, once more ready for battle. That was when Thom smashed a chair over its head like we were having a bar fight in a saloon rather than a battle with an otherworldly horror. The Hound turned its head toward him, making a hissing noise. That reaction, at least, was unmistakable.
“Nice doggie,” Thom muttered, wincing and backing away.
The monster opened its mouth, which expanded to a size capable of swallowing Thom whole, and its entire body seemed to shake. Alien words filled the air, seeming to disrupt reality with their presence. A miniature twister caused the bookshelves around us to blow over as books went flying. Mystical energies ran thick and cool around us, easier to access in this strange place than cursed Earth.
Mercury and August were casting their spell together, their voices speaking in unison. “Na’ck thul nu’ll al’zul Ithaqua! Mock’thall Mock’thall ck’eb Ithaqua ner’zhul kabthan!”
The temperature dropped to freezing levels around us while the Hound of Tindalos grew more and more physical substance. I speculate, now that I have a moment to think about it, that the creature existed in multiple points of time at once. Moving through time was as easy to it as a fish swimming downstream, and presence in a single point of time was painful.
“Ithaqua mock’thul akrthas khack-mul za!” August and Mercury continued their chant. Every utterance of the magic spell tortured the Hound, the creature seeming almost of this Earth when it began glowing with Saint Elmo’s fire.
Its claws and mouth clenched, but it made a low chuckling noise from every part of the library around us.
“Yeah, that’s not good,” Thom said, having taken a table leg off the floor.
“Argh!” August hissed, a glowing angle shooting from the Hound’s side and going through his stomach out the other side.
“No!” Mercury said. The spell ended as yet another square struck her in the hand, causing blood to pour onto the floor.
The Hound growled, looking more menacing than ever. The library’s ambient light dimmed as it continued to grow brighter. Soon, everything was dark in the room except for the blazing-white inferno of the Hound. Its squares started to separate, bit by bit, and I knew we were going to die. So I charged and grabbed it by the throat, slamming its head into the strange matter floor and walls around me with my right hand. The creature was so surprised by my sudden action that it did not react as I concentrated and sought the impossible moments of time all around us. Then I fed the Hound to them.
Like a piece of meat thrown in a grinder, the Hound of Tindalos was crushed under the weight of dimensions beyond pressed on top of one another. I’d chosen a space that bent upon itself for infinity, and while it can travel through the angles about us, curves seemed to cause it immense pain. I don’t know where the knowledge came from, but I calculate the Hound was broken under the force of a thousand micro-singularities.
The Eyes of Yog-Sothoth hooted and hollered from their place beyond our universe, finding my destruction of the Hound to be the height of comedy. I could no longer see them, but instead saw another world. Images of a boiling sea world and cities of strange geometry filled my head like memories of a distant past. I fell back on my ass, stunned by the sight I’d witnessed through the dimensional barriers, which were paper thin in this place. I’d seen some seriously messed-up shit in my time ranging from a color from outer space, a mass sacrifice of children to create an artificial paradise for their spirits, and a tower of Elder Things in the Dreamlands. Seeing the world was full of terrible things just one frequency of reality over and that I had some link to them was almost one revelation too many.
“Did you see any of that?” I asked, wondering how it had appeared to them. My eyes were apparently monster eyes now, perceiving the world in a way unlike the way of humans. I wished to God I could pluck them out, but I needed them if I was going to plug Whateley.
“You just stuck the demon-dog thing into the white-space around me, then withdrew your hand. It was gone,” Mercury said, looking at me in mixed fear and wonder.
“I guess that arm is useful for something after all,” Jessica said, trying to make a joke and failing badly.
I looked down to my right arm. Its illusion was now broken, having returned to its previous horrific state. “Fuck.”
“Well, good job anyway. Want to share how you killed it?” Thom asked, waving his makeshift club as if it was dangerous.
I looked at the club’s round base and made a guess as to why it worked when so much else didn’t. “Curves. The Hounds hate curves.”
Thom blinked. “Curves.”
“They are as unsettling to them as its universe would be to you … us.” I tried to imagine what it was like for a creature of a purely flat universe or a million more dimensions than me coming into our world and what a terrible experience that would be. It would be like a fish coming up from the depths of Cthulhu’s grave to explode when it reached the surface, all that pressure and water around it being necessary for its survival. It almost made me feel sorry for the varmint.
Almost.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Thom started looking around for round objects to arm himself.
“Curves, right,” Mercury said, going to the side of the fallen August. Mercury was trained as a medical doctor and might be able to save one of our two patients. Except it didn’t prove necessary.
Much to my surprise, August sat up, and not only did the terrible hole in his stomach seal over, but his gray and tattered robes also knit over the now-healed wound. Even the stains from his blood disappeared, making me wonder at his robes’ dilapidated state.
“A useful tidbit of lore,” August said, dusting himself off. “I was about ready to summon something bigger and nastier to eat it—which might have compounded our problems—but I’m glad that didn’t prove necessary.”
“We need to exchange notes,” Mercury said, looking hungry. August had the real magic, not this ‘technology of the mind’ business, and I knew my lover would latch onto him like a tick until she sucked him dry. Which perhaps wasn’t the most flattering of descriptions to apply to the woman you loved, but it was accurate.
August smiled. “I’ll teach you, perhaps, little witch—provided you come up with something interesting to offer me. Sadly, you’re not my type.”
“I’ll try and hide my disappointment.” Mercury rolled her eyes. “I’m many things, but not a whore.”
“Then you haven’t been offered enough,” Thom said, tempting me to punch him. “Everyone has their price. Look at us.”
Jessica was at the side of Bobbie Merriweather. Contrary to what I’d expected after all the rumors of her newfound devotion to human purity, she seemed to be trying to help the Deep One hybrid. I didn’t think there was anything she could do. Bobbie had a brutal series of cuts across her chest, and they would have been fatal to a human.
But she wasn’t human.
“Get away,” Bobbie said, clutching her wounds closed. “I was born from the womb of Mother Hydra. These scratches will be healed in minutes.”
I questioned how that worked, since it looked like her hands were all that was keeping her intestines from falling out from her body. Yet despite this, she stood up and the wounds were already starting to look like scratches.
“Huh,” Thom said, looking at her. “I’ve killed plenty of Deep Ones over the years. None of them could do that. You must be a double freak.”
Jessica glared. “Knock it off, asshole.”
“I owe the Captain and you guys my life. So, I suppose I can. Consider my lips sealed about you all being unnatural abominations.” Thom shrugged, then made a key-turning gesture in front of his mouth. “You realize Professor Asshole summoned this thing to kill us, right?”
“What?” Mercury said, turning her head. “Why the hell would he do that?”
“The man’s been giving me the stink eye since I got here, and I was the first. He treated everyone who came into this place as little better than rats in his walls. He led us to this kooky place and left right before things went south,” Thom said, counting off events on his fingers. “Need I remind you, if not for the fact that three of you are wizards and one a mutant, we’d be screwed every which way from Sunday.”
“I am distressed to find myself agreeing with Mister Braddock,” August said, frowning. “Professor Armitage has always been an isolationist. He also possesses the power to summon and control a creature from the Many-Angled Place. It’s possible he thought pre-emptively eliminating us was the right decision.”
“So, let’s shoot the bastard,” Jessica said.
Thom shook his table leg at us. “I suggest we play nice, get our weapons back, and then kill this bastard.”
“And lose what we were promised?” Bobbie said, almost healed. “Fuck that.”
Thom shook his head. “We keep our deal with the Yith. If they wanted to kill us, they wouldn’t need to invent a story about the last imprisoned Great Old One struggling to get out. I believe this Whateley is a threat to this planet, and last I checked, we live here. I also want my brother back. We just need to kill Armitage quiet-like and make sure he doesn’t come back.”
I hated that we lived in a world where making sure an enemy stayed dead was a concern. “Before we start plotting murder, we might want to determine whether or not he’s the party responsible.”
“And how would you suggest we do that?” Thom asked, glaring at me.
“You could ask me,” Professor Armitage said, standing behind him.
Despite defending him, I wanted to quick draw on him and put him down. Alas, I didn’t have the will or the weapons.
“Dammit,” Thom muttered, turning around. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
“No,” Professor Armitage intoned. “I don’t.”
I pointed at the gory remains of Mathew. “Tell him that.”
August shrugged. “I can bring him back.”
“Leave the dead in peace,” Jessica snapped. “I’ve seen what kind of things you wizards return to life.”
August was nonplussed. “Just making an offer.”
Thom, meanwhile, looked intrigued.
“I returned minutes ago,” Professor Armitage said. “I sensed the leak in the barriers and was reinforcing them. Marcus Whateley must have been undermining our library’s protections to observe us. When he saw you, he undoubtedly sent the Hound.”
“Why not send it when you were here?” Thom asked.
“Because I would have killed it,” Professor Armitage replied. “Obviously.”
What a smug asshole.
“Why should we believe you?” Bobbie asked, looking at her blood-soaked clothes in disgust. She wasn’t paying much attention to our conversation. I wondered what she had been bribed with to make her so unconcerned with treachery.
“Because if I wanted to kill you, I’d just do this,” Professor Armitage said, lifting his crystal staff.
“Wait,” I started to say, but a flash of light consumed us and the seven of us found ourselves in a darkened underground garage. Gray-robed figures were loading up supplies into vehicles all around us. He’d shifted us through space. Again. I was getting really sick of that.
“Except I’d have dumped you into a volcano, or space, or the space between dreams,” Professor Armitage said.
“How powerful is that thing?” Mercury asked, staring at the rod.
“Very,” August said, unimpressed. “Which is why I’m getting mine back.”
“You could have asked for forgiveness for your many crimes,” Professor Armitage said, staring at him.
“That would require my caring about what the University thinks of me,” August replied.
“Your supplies are being readied,” Professor Armitage said, not even bothering to gesture. “You must leave within the hour.”
Thom looked outraged. So was I. “After all you put us through—”
Mercury grabbed my left hand, calming me.
Professor Armitage’s next words silenced us all. “Professor Whateley has been spotted in a town called Insmaw to the North. You can catch him if you reach him before the next two days have passed. The Great One’s time sense is blocked past this point—which probably means that is when the world will end.”
This day just kept getting better and better.