Spectral Evidence

(Or because...maybe, this is all there is. Maybe, this is as good as it gets. )

That’s all.

“I have an idea,” Camberwell said, at last, from somewhere nearby. And Goss opened his mouth to answer only to hear the angel’s still, small voice issue from between his teeth, replying, mildly—

“Do you, huntress? Then please, say on.”

—

This, then, was how they all finally came to be arrayed ‘round the well’s rim, the seven of them who were left, standing—or propped up/lying, in Hynde and Katz’s cases—in front of those awful wall-orifices, staring into the multifaceted mosaic-eyes of God’s former Flip My Universe cast and crew. ‘Lij stood at the empty southeastern point, looking nervous, for which neither Goss nor the creature inhabiting his brain-pan could possibly blame him. While Camberwell busied herself moving from person to person, sketching quick and dirty versions of the sigils on them with the point of a flick-knife she’d produced from one of her boots. Lao opened her mouth like she was gonna start crying even harder when she first saw it, but Camberwell just shot her the fearsomest glare yet—Medusa-grade, for sure—and watched her shut the fuck up, with a hitchy little gasp.

“This will bring us together sooner rather than later, you must realize,” Eshphoriel told Camberwell, who nodded. Replying: “That’s the idea.”

“Ah. That seems somewhat...antithetical, knowing our works, as you claim to.”

“Maybe so. But you tell me—what’s better? Stay down here in the dark waiting for the air to run out only to have you celestial tapeworms soul-rape us all at the last minute anyways, when we’re too weak to put up a fight? or force an end now, while we’re all semi-fresh, and see what happens?”

“Fine tactics, yes—very born-again barbarian. Your own pocket Ragnarok, with all that the term implies.”

“Yeah, yeah: clam up, Legion, if you don’t have anything useful to contribute.” To ‘Lij: “You ready, sound-boy?”

“Uhhhh...”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

Done with Katz, she swapped places with ‘Lij, handing him the knife as she went, and tapping the relevant sigil. “Like that,” she said. “Try to do it all in one motion, if you can—it’ll hurt less.”

‘Lij looked dubious. “One can’t fail to notice you aren’t volunteering for impromptu body-modification,” Eshphoriel noted, through Goss’s lips, while Camberwell met the comment with a tiny, bitter smile. Replying, as she hiked her shirt up to demonstrate—

“That’d be ‘cause I’ve already got one.”

Cocking a hip to display the thing in question where it nestled in the hollow at the base of her spine, more a scab than a scar, edges blurred like some infinitely fucked-up tramp stamp. And as she did, Goss saw something come fluttering up behind her skin, a parallel-dimension full-body ripple, the barest glowing shadow of a disproportionately huge tentacle-tip still up-thrust through Camberwell’s whole being, as though everything she was, had been and would ever come to be was nothing more than some indistinct no-creature’s fleshy finger-puppet.

One cream-brown eye flushed with livid colour, green on yellow, while the other stayed exactly the same—human, weary, bitter to its soul’s bones. And Camberwell opened her mouth to let her tongue protrude, pink and healthy except for an odd whitish strip that ran ragged down its centre from tip to—not exactly tail, Goss assumed, since the tongue was fairly huge, or so he seemed to recall. But definitely almost to the uvula, and: oh God, oh shit, was it actually splitting as he watched, bisecting itself not-so-neatly into two separate semi-points, like a child’s snakey scribble?

Camberwell gave it a flourish, swallowed the resultant spit-mouthful, then said, without much affect: “Yeah, that’s right—‘the Terrible Immoel, who speaks with a dead tongue...’” Camberwell fluttered the organ in question at what had taken control of Goss, showing its central scars long-healed, extending the smile into a wide, entirely unamused grin. “So say hey, assfuck. Remember me now?”

“You were its vessel, then, once before,” Goss heard his lips reply. “And...yes, yes, I do recall it. Apologies, huntress; I cannot say, with the best will in all this world, that any of you look so very different to me.”

Camberwell snapped her fingers. “Aw, gee.” To ‘Lij, sharper: “I tell you to stop cutting?”

Goss felt “his” eyes slide to poor ‘Lij, caught and wavering (his face a sickly grey-green, chest heaving slightly, like he didn’t know whether to run or puke), then watched him shake his head, and bow back down to it. The knife went in shallow, blunter than the job called for—he had to drag it, hooking up underneath his own hide, to make the meat part as cleanly as the job required. While Camberwell kept a sure and steady watch on the other well-riders, all of whom were beginning to look equally disturbed, even those who were supposedly unconscious. Goss felt his own lips curve, far more genuinely amused, even as an alien emotion-tangle wound itself invasively throughout his chest: half proprietorially expectant, half vaguely annoyed. And—

“We are coming,” he heard himself say. “All of us. Meaning you may have miscalculated, somewhat...what a sad state of affairs indeed, when the prospective welfare of your entire species depends on you not doing so.”

That same interior ripple ran ‘round the well’s perimeter as ‘Lij pulled the knife past “his” sigil’s final slashing loop and yanked it free, splattering the frieze in front of him; in response, the very stones seemed to arch hungrily, that composite mouth gaping, eager for blood. Above, even through the heavy-pressing rubble-mound which must be all that was left of the temple proper, Goss could hear Journee-Zemyel swooping and cawing in the updraft, swirled on endless waves of storm; from his eye’s corner he saw Hynde-whoever (Ashreel, Eshphoriel supplied, helpfully) open one similarly parti-coloured eye and lever himself up, clumsy-clambering to his feet. Katz’s head fell back, spine suddenly hooping so heels struck shoulder-blades with a wetly awful crack, and began to lift off, levitating gently, turning in the air like some horrible ornament. Meanwhile, Lao continued to grind her fisted knuckles into both eyes at once, bruising lids but hopefully held back from pulping the balls themselves, at least so long as her sockets held fast...

(The Terrible Coiab, who seeds without regard. The Terrible Ushephekad, who opens the ground beneath us. )

From the well, dusty mortar popped forth between every suture, and the thing as a whole gave one great shrug, shivering itself apart—began caving in and expanding at the same time, becoming a nothing-column for its parts to revolve around, an incipient reality fabric-tear. And in turn, the urge to rotate likewise—just let go of gravity’s pull, throw physical law to the winds, and see where that might lead—cored through Goss ass to cranium, Vlad Tsepesh style, a phantom impalement pole spearing every neural pathway. Simultaneously gone limp and stiff , he didn’t have to look down to know his crotch must be darkening, or over to ‘Lij to confirm how the same invisible angel-driven marionette-hooks were now pulling at his muscles, making his knife-hand grip and flex, sharp enough the handle almost broke free of his sweaty palm entirely—

(The Terrible Yphemaal, who stitches what was rent asunder)

“And now we are Seven, without a doubt,” Goss heard that voice in his throat note, its disappointment audible. “For all your bravado, perhaps you are not as well-educated as you believe.”

Camberwell shrugged yet one more time, slow but distinct; her possessed eye widened slightly, as though in surprise. And in that instant, it occurred to Goss how much of herself she still retained, even in the Immoel-thing’s grip, which seemed far—slipperier, in her case, than with everybody else. Because maybe coming pre-Inscribed built up a certain pad of scar-tissue in the soul, in situations like these; maybe that’s what she’d been gambling on, amongst other things. Having just enough slack on her lead to allow her to do stuff like (for example) reach down into her other boot, the way she was even as they “spoke,” and—

Holy crap, just how many knives does this chick walk around with, exactly?