Tenet ran as fast as he could toward the Usher of Death

Tenet ran as fast as he could toward the Usher of Death.

Thanatos beat his wings like peals of thunder, and he drew in the fruit to his center. His other hands gestured in various signs, while their eyes glowered with danger and warning. The "Betrayer" ignored these, though he stumbled as if buffeted by gales and whiplashes. Sicol gleamed with a pale light as Tenet strode forcefully forward.

Wisps of dirt spun up and became half-formed people. Gaps in the spinning grit became shadowy eyes and mouths. Voices slashed out and their words cut like blades across Tenet's tunic and skin.

"Found your courage in the Pit, Oath-breaker?" accused a fiery female.

"Do you repay my hospitality by defiling both my home and my resting place?" an islander railed in stilted Arabic.

"How dishonorable you have become since you failed me, Mage-slayer," Wei Zhi growled.

A grit-figure grew horns, drew a katana, and raised the weapon to slice Tenet in half. Before Tenet could react, a long blade ripped through the creature's chest. The shadowy samurai shattered and flew into the dust storm. Rhad' nodded to Tenet through the dissipated attacker and swung out against another two phantoms that grew in Wei Zhi's place.

Tenet saw holes open in some other figures as black darts passed through them. A channel opened for him to press his attack and he dove into the eye of the raging winds.

Thanatos drifted over the still waters of the Styx and menaced at his assailant. "You have secured their names in the Ledger, Betrayer, and a visit to the Throne for yourself this day."

Tenet stopped at the shoreline and panted. Molten blood streaked from various gashes and scrapes, singing his tattered tunic. He dared to gaze into Thanatos' eyes, and immediately felt as though he tumbled down an endless abyss. He simultaneously felt he walked a corridor in a smoky labyrinth, from which their was no hope of escape or dawn. He heard familiar voices, crying out for help but just out of reach.

"Walk or run, you are Lost, and Lost you will for ever be, Exile," Thanatos pronounced.

Tenet listened past the Scribe's harrowing thunder to the roar of the wind. In desperation, he drew deep on the Power that kindled in all of his kind. Then, with the last of his might he channeled the Force of Creation into Sicol and threw it at his enemy.

Tenet cried out as he did so, "He has made us competent ministers of a new covenant--not of the Writ but of the Wind. For the Writ kills, but the One-Who-Is-Wind gives life...and the Wind of Heaven rushed over the waters."

The blade spun and flashed over the waters, as the cycling winds shifted to rush behind it. Sicol split both the Book's spine and the fruit to the core. The raging winds lifted the unbound pages. At that moment, an amphora smashed against the Book's skin-cover. A blue flame ate greedily and splintered into many tongues as the pages scattered. Those that fell to the churning Styx spread the inferno. The grey waters hissed at the sacred flames' transforming touch.

Thanatos shrieked, which sounded like a mountain splitting in two. His many hands clutched at stray pages and pieces of the fruit. Yet, the inflamed Wind tore him and bore him rapidly away. The pages that survived billowed in opposite directions as the gale fragmented toward all the cardinal points and lessened.

Tenet slumped onto the strand of slate. Giovanni rushed forward and gripped his shoulder. The Exile's silver-and-black eyes peered up at the priest's worried face. Tenet muttered, "I will be fine. I just need to rest."

Giovanni answered, "The grave may be no place to rest, especially when we have burnt Death's dark Book and kindled his River."

"If only it were his," Rhad' replied solemnly. "We have upset more than Thanatos, and we have far to go."

Art Source: "Azrael, Angel of Death" by PeteMohrbacher

Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Tenet, Giovanni, Roksana (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

What purpose do these living have in the Realm of the Dead?

The prow cut across the last waves and ran aground on hard stone. Giovanni and Rhad' leapt out of opposite sides of the craft and pulled it further ashore before helping the others disembark. Tenet whispered as he reached within the inner lining of his belt and withdrew something. He placed the small bag within the bottom of the boat and pushed it back into the current. The wooden vessel slipped quietly and quickly into the fog.

"Why did you cast off our means of escape?" Giovanni wondered.

Tenet turned his strange eyes on the priest. "It was part of the agreement with its owner."

A tense silence followed as the two studied one another before they joined the others. The beach stretched out as a barren landscape of broken stone that rose into craggy terraces. Then the shroud parted and what had looked like a massive stalagmite took shape. Roksana and Giovanni crossed themselves reflexively while every member drew weapons, save Tenet.

Many black wings the size and manner of a Rukk's wings dominated the space behind the figure. Some fluttered lazily like a bird of prey. The rest simply adorned the man-shaped being. Three sets of arms stretched out also from his body, and each palm bore a piercing eye. A garish ruby fruit hovered over one hand, while a massive book lay open under another. Blood-rimmed eyes peered from under a black hood. Scores of tentacles writhed independently from between his pale lips.

A thundering cascade bellowed, snapping loose papers into a gyre around the hovering form. "Declare your name and your manner of departure, mortals."

It paused and its bone-rattling voice came again, "State your purpose for straying into our lands, Betrayer."

The voice crashed against their souls as much as their flesh, grinding both like a mortar in a pestle. Kadir fell to one knee from the pain. The rest looked as though the weight of living became a mountain heaped upon their shoulders.

Tenet however stood with shoulders drooped by a different burden. His strained face expressed it as he viewed the agony of the others. Whispers of names and familiar voices flickered from the giant book in front of the Fallen before him. Tenet clenched his fists.

Finally, he answered, "No, Wei Zhi. I did not intend this end for you...I warned...I...defended..."

Giovanni stepped to his side and spoke. His usually robust speech sounded frail in the aftershock of the Scribe. "I am Giovanni Battista, and I have yet to journey into death, but I will not come to these lands. My home is elsewhere, as is my friends'."

The creature merely arched its brow in thought, which seemed to add to the crushing weight on Giovanni's back. The priest's knees buckled. Then the thought passed and the thunder answered, "The end of man is known only in the Books, and you are no Scholar in their Script. One among you is already writ here, and another is promised to join them."

Tenet's whispers became insistent and then he spoke with a new voice, filled with clarity and Power. "The Scales are in the hands of Another, Thanatos. Only One can open and read the Books that Seal all ends. Neither you nor I are Him."

The dark brooding figure glowered. Tenet reeled as if lashed by one of its large tentacles. "So you speak to more than the departed, Betrayer. What purpose do these living have in the Realm of the Dead?"

Tenet answered, "Their business is to merely pass through and return alive."

The Exile seemed to grow a bit as he stood upright. His hand slipped behind his back and a faint shimmer fit a slender blade into his grip.

"Mine is to seal this Passage once and for all."

Art Source: "Azrael" by PeteMohrbacher
Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Tenet, Giovanni, Roksana, Kadir, (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

"Our troubles have only begun."

Giovanni threw his forearm against the broken stump of a petrified tree. He stared back through the vaulted cavern. Roksana braced her lithe body in the hollow of the column, while the shadows seemed to slip over her rather than her into the darkness. Rhad' planted his svärdstav into a divot in the floor and leaned against its long haft. A fine mist revealed their tortured breaths.

"Having glimpsed it, I know their monster's name," Giovanni grunted.

An oily whisper from the dark hollow replied, "It is no trifle that stalks us. I can smell its brimstone musk all about this catacomb."

"You have come to the Gates," Rhad' informed them. "Such portals are their domain."

"By their and it," mused a wearied, refined voice, "You refer to Kerberos, the hounds of hell."

Giovanni cast a gloomy look at the Arab who sat slumped against a boulder. Kadir had been sulking since the plunge and the loss of his talisman. "As it would seem the invaders have allied with Cerberus, we must escape his den quickly."

He studied the man who had feigned to be a mere watchman. Dark shafts remained buried in various places of Rhad's body, though the man showed only the fatigue from the run. The priest continued, "If you truly be Rhadamanthus, by what avenues can we flee?"

Rhad's grey eyes met his as he answered, "Only deeper across the River."

"No mortal should tread those banks before their time," countered Giovanni.

"Have I not announced it is your fate?" The watcher's words fell as a decree, not a question.

Baleful howls rose and dipped, each slightly different and clashing. Everyone strained to peer through the fog, but the call bounded from everywhere. Flashes of sickly yellow lit and vanished between rocky formations, but one could not tell if the source stood ten or a thousand meters away. The ossified grove that sheltered them also masked the predator. Instinctively, Kadir, Giovanni, and Rhad' placed their backs to each other. The Arab nervously tossed a dagger between his hands.

"Do not fret," Giovanni assured him. "The Shepherd will guard us even in the valley of Death."

"I'd prefer not to test that hypothesis in such a literal scenario," the scholar quipped.

Gentle, rhythmic drips struck water somewhere nearby. The splashes came long and regular. The priest recognized the cadence. He reached into the trunk of the tree and pulled Roksana out of the darkness. "Let us go! Heaven has provided a way of escape!"

The act startled the vampir. The sultry flame in her eyes dissipated to a mute tiredness. Exhaustion tinged her words as she asked mid stride, "What do you mean?"

Giovanni noted he had had the effect needed to help Roksana regain control. He did not answer. Each stride took them blindly through the mist. The others followed warily behind him, while the baying increased as the hounds drew nearer.

He let his boots sink into the dark waters and draw him deeper. The priest thought of one of David's songs, which he prayed would come true. He whispered instinctively, "Be a light unto my path..."

Two pale silver stars broke the fog bank. They hovered above a black silhouette that resembled a pillar set into a rocking platform. The river surged to the runner's waists as the shadow took form into a man on a flat boat. The pilot paused his strokes and knelt. Grey skin stood out in the twilight. The ferryman wore only a goat-beard and torn tunic.

Extending a strong hand, the coxswain announced, "Decided to join me and prove your boast true that you'd follow me into the Gates of Hell?"

Giovanni clasped the offered hand and laughed despite himself, "My word is my oath. You live even here border of the grave! Now, can you take all of us in before the hell hounds seize us?"

Roksana exclaimed, "Tenet! How did you escape--and come upon this boat?"

Tenet and Giovanni helped her aboard while the others scrambled over the other side. Tenet answered, "I slipped from its jaws with great effort and took refuge on this boat. That gatekeeper only bays when on the hunt, which I know well. I sensed it pursued a different quarry and decided to lend aid."

"As to the boat...," Tenet hesitated, honor bound to honesty. "I borrowed it from a former colleague."

Giovanni met his black-and-silver eyes for a long moment before a burning breeze that smelled of rot blew across the boat. The makeshift steersman pushed off with his pole. He had only paddled a little ways out when a dreadful keening pierced the mist. The huddled occupants stared astern. Six yellow torches glared back from the shore. Ghostly flames oozed and dripped down and smoked upon the waters. The smouldering lights halted, accompanied by a bitter howl, and then slowly receded into the gloom.

Giovanni crossed himself and finally allowed himself to relax since yesterday's repast. Fatigue claimed him as he heard Tenet darkly announce, "Our troubles have only begun."

Art Source: "Hellhound" by Kajito

Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Giovanni, Roksana, Kadir, Tenet (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

"From Beyond"

Allison sat crosslegged on the floor of the old barn, sobbing. "I can't help I miss you so much. You left so young. I just wish you could come back. Even if it was just for a day." Even tear stained eyes seeing between snot covered fingers couldn't miss the flickering light. A chill wind blew her brown hair back and dried some of the moisture from her face.

"Here, sis. Coming to you." The voice was crackly, like static from an old radio.

Allison fought to her feet, ankles and toes complaining from the loss of circulation from two hours of sitting criss-cross-apple-sauce. She giggled at the saying from when they were kids, even as she looked into the jagged black hole in space. Through it, she could just make at a girl dressed in blue, dark hair covering her face. "Mel. Melissa is that you?" The dress looked like the one she'd been buried in.

"Yes. Keep talking. Helps me." The voice was stronger, but there was still some kind of distortion.

"I've missed you so much, honey. How is this even possible?" She shook her head. Now wasn't the time to worry about that. "I've come here every day since the accident. I felt so bad about what happened. I know part of it was my fault. Playing with that game we found in the attic was my idea."

"Couldn't have known. The game was older than anything. Opened the gate." Her voice was stronger and the glow increased.

Allison could make something else out behind her sister. "Run, sweety. I think something's chasing you. Come faster." Her voice took on an edge of panic.

"Already got me. Now going to get you." The body that might have once been her sister shuddered and whipped its head back. The eyes were little mouths with pointed teeth. When she opened her mouth to scream, tentacles with eyes instead of suckers wormed their way out.

Behind the horror that had been her sister, a massive creature moved in shadow. It had its own tentacles tipped with hooks and lined with barbs.

"No. No. It's not my fault. I couldn't have known." Allison walked back from the tear in space. There was no way her sister or the thing using her as a puppet could make it through.

The air shimmered and ropy, slime covered masses forced their way through and pried open the doorway.

Allison didn't notice the blood trickling from her eyes and ears. "Not my fault. Not my fault."

"You cheated at the game." The Melissa puppet's voice rasped from its eye sockets. "This should be you and not me. You would be the key. You would feel my terror and pain."

Allison whirled around and began running for the barn door. Instead of getting closer, every step took her further away. "I didn't want you to win. You always won at everything."

The Melissa Puppet sat foot on the cracked floor boards. "It's okay, my sister. It used me for the key, but you will win the consolation prize. It also needs food for its young."

Screams echoed off of the trees, frightening birds into the air.

Art Source: Horror by Kredepops on Deviant Art
Story and Characters (c)/by Scott Roche

#Horror, #Lovecraft, #Gateway, #ScottRoche, #Cheater