The Infernal Aether (First Draft)

Chapter 26 - Running from Shadows

We ran through a landscape which was utterly devoid of features, save for the mist which licked and curled around us. The sounds of pursuit were ever-present, such that I feared that we would never be able to escape; indeed, I wondered where exactly we thought we were trying to escape to.

It had all began when Andras had let those creatures into the laboratory and in so doing had recreated every nightmare I had had for months. "No!" I shouted, but Andras simply grinned even broader -- something I would not have thought possible without splitting its face -- and stepped aside.

At first the only incursion was by the mist, sly grey tendrils which reached in, probing and searching. An advance party for the Damned. Sounds followed it, a shuffling, moaning and scratching which made my skin itch with terror. Then there was the smell, a cloying stench of decay and corruption which outstripped even the worst that the Thames in the height of summer could offer.

Hands appeared in the doorway, reaching in and around the doorframe, skeletal, insect-like, fleshy and decayed; there was a sight for every fear and nightmare.

"Run," I said.

The others were rooted to the spot, infected by the same paralysing fear I felt. I however had an advantage; I had lived this terror every night for months. While I dreaded this more than anything else, my nightmares had given me the answer. In every single one of those nightly terrors I had run away, desperately kicked myself from those hideous parodies of appendages and then managed to wake up just before they had caught me. Of course, that last part was the one flaw in my plan.

I grabbed Kate and thrust her toward the room's other door. "Run!" I shouted. "Max, N'yotsu -- now!"

The others blinked at me and then obeyed. Kate pulled the door open and gasped. "Where's the rest of the house gone?" she asked.

Where there should have been a passageway leading to the kitchen, not to mention yet more laboratories, there was instead...nothing. A black void inhabited by curling mist. It appeared that the device had only transported the room in which we were standing to the Aether.

Thankfully there were no creatures waiting for us outside that door. "No time," I said. "Go."

We ran, not looking back for fear of what we would see. The landscape -- for want of a better word -- was completely featureless, with the passing of the all-pervasive mist and our rapidly tiring limbs the only signals that we were actually moving at all. That, and the fact that we remained just outside of the grasp of our pursuers. Just.

"Run, little mice." Andras' voice rang out around us, coming from nowhere and everywhere. "Flee your fate."

My lungs were burning and my legs ached. I could feel myself slipping behind the others.

Andras laughed, a cackling sound which made me want to rip out my ears. "I wonder where you are trying to run to? Such petty, stupid humanity; always charging, always darting away, never realising that what you are trying to run away from--"

As one we shouted out as Andras suddenly appeared in front of us, surrounded by those hideous, skeletal forms.

"--Is directly in your path!"

We turned and ran, pulling, encouraging and helping each other. We had to escape; we had to.

"I know that you are getting tired now," Andras' voice seemed to follow us, echoing round us with the same clarity no matter how fast we tried to run. "Those puny legs will be failing you. And all the time you know that we are here, just waiting for you."

I caught a glimpse of something to the side and as one we turned again and sprinted in another direction. Or was it the same direction? Such things seemed to have little meaning in that place.

"You humans," mocked Andras. "You pride yourselves on your advancement, on your intellectual and technological marvels. And yet you cannot help but succumb to your base, animal instincts. Running from the inevitable. When will you learn? You cannot outrun ME!"

The Demon sprang into view in the distance, directly in our path, leering at us with a deep amused rage. We fell over each other in our attempts to stop and turn.

"Wait," said N'yotsu. "The Demon is correct. We clearly cannot outrun it. And it is also clearly playing with us."

"But those creatures," I said.

"Could have caught us ages ago," said N'yotsu. "I suspect that Andras is controlling them, using them to make us run around for its amusement." He turned and called out at the Demon. "Is that not right?"

A curtain of mist rose and fell and then Andras was standing right in front of us. "You really are a spoilsport," it said. "I take it you have finished with your exercise and now wish to discuss my terms?"

"Your terms?" said Maxwell. "You are as stranded here as the rest of us. I do not think you are in any position to dictate terms to us."

Andras grinned and waved a hand. The mist parted to show the shadowy forms of a multitude surrounding us, waiting.

"You know," said Andras, pointing at Maxwell. "It is only really you that I need. The others are completely expendable. N'yotsu here," it sneered his name. "Cannot create or manipulate these machines on his own. As for the other two, they are merely here for my amusement. My friends here could rip them to pieces in front of you. Maybe we start with the girl. No, better still, your brother." The shadows crept a little closer. "Does that incentivise you at all?"

"I am sorry," Maxwell said to us. "But I have to balance our lives against that of the whole world. If we have to pay that price, so be it."

We nodded in agreement. My heart pounded and every fibre of my being cringed at the thought, but I knew that it was the only way.

N'yotsu grinned mirthlessly. "And besides," he said to Andras. "I do not believe you are telling the whole story. Again. The laws of physics do not seem to apply here; concepts such as distance and time seem redundant. I would wager that death also does not hold here in the same way it does in our world."

"Very good," said Andras. "He's good is he not? Very clever. Wonder where he gets that from. No, concepts such as time and death do not hold here in the same way that you have always known them. Many of these creatures have been stranded here for millennia, never ageing, never dying. Never knowing the blessed release that you will eventually crave. They would rip you apart and you would know nothing but an eternity of pain. It will consume you and you will become one of them." Andras shrugged. "But if that is what you want..."

"You are controlling them," said N'yotsu. "Holding them back. I can see the effort on your face. Even with your powers it must be an incredible amount of work. I would wager that eventually you will fail and they will turn on you too. Yes, we will suffer, but so will you."

Andras took a step forward, its rage so terrible as to make us take a step back. "I should never have--" It stopped itself and then grinned. "You are of course correct. But there is one more card I have to play." It raised a clawed hand at me. "I can still take your souls, one by one, send you to an eternity of torment in my army of tortured..." The Demon paused, clearly trying to think of a sufficiently poetic word, and then shrugged. "Souls."

I gasped. It felt as though a white hot poker had been rammed through my very being. Everything about me was torn away, ripped to pieces. My life, my past, my identity was wrenched away and waved before me like a rag in front of a bull in its final death throes.

I became aware of a hole, a void within the core of everything I had known. I could not comprehend what it was or what it replaced or what had gone before. All I knew was loss, a loss which was so complete that it was not just something I experienced: it was me. All I was, all I knew, all I had been and would ever be was...nothing.

Then everything faded away into blessed, comforting blackness.