Welcome to the higher dimension. Welcome to the greater world. Welcome to the home of the Hungry Gods. It was all I could do not to puke.
I felt as much as saw Molly fall to her knees beside me, shaking and shuddering from the shock of the transition. I grabbed blindly for her, and she grabbed me, and we clung tightly together for comfort. Overpowered by a reality and a world we were never equipped to deal with. In this higher dimension, everything was just too big, too real, too insanely complicated. We’d have been lost if it hadn’t been for Giles Deathstalker. Just as he’d said, his experience of surviving alien worlds gave him enough of an edge to help him cope. He crouched beside us, speaking calmly and soothingly, his voice coming clearly to us as the only sane and normal thing in this new existence.
“It’s just another place,” he said. “The details change, but that’s all. You can cope. You can adapt. Because you’re human, and that’s what humans do. We roll with the punch, and we come back fighting. If you can’t cope with what you’re seeing, let your mind translate it into something you can cope with. You’re stronger than you think, Eddie, Molly. No matter how weird things get here, remember; it’s just another place.”
His voice, his calm sanity, were a lifeline I could cling to, something I could use to ground myself. Slowly I built a shell of defiance around me, refusing to be beaten down by the sheer loudness of the place, and bit by bit I got control of my senses. Until finally I was able to get to my feet again, and Molly with me. We were both breathing hard, and still clinging to each other for mutual support, but we were back in the game. It might be a very small thing to be human, in this largest of worlds, but even the smallest insect can pack a deadly sting. A deplorable sting.
“As long as the gateway remains open, and we stick close to it, we bring some of our world here with us,” said Molly. “Just like on the Damnation Way. It… insulates us, from the full force of the experience.”
“Well thank the good God for that,” I said. “I really don’t think I could cope with the full-on experience. It’s like everything here has been cranked up to eleven.”
“It is a bit of a strain,” said Giles. “And I’ve been around.”
“We need to do what we came here to do, while we still can,” I said. “Molly, I think…Molly?”
“Oh shit,” said Molly.
I forced myself to raise my eyes from the ground and looked where she was looking. I heard Giles gasp as he saw them too. They were all around us. The Invaders, the Many-Angled Ones, the Hungry Gods. Huge and vast, living things big as mountains. They existed in more than just three physical dimensions at once, so my mind interpreted their appearance as a series of overlapping images, always subtly shifting, never quite the same twice. Their aspect strobed in my head, as much an impression as an image. There were circles of them, rank upon rank, impossible numbers, stretching as far away into the distance as I could bear to look. Waiting.
They rose up into the sky, all of them moving slowly but inexorably forward. Towards the gateway, still pulsating and unfolding behind us. Looking up at them gave me vertigo, as though I might suddenly be plucked off my feet and sent hurtling up into the unbearable sky. I couldn’t tell what the living mountains were made of; only that it was vile and awful, like sentient cancers, with implications my mind didn’t dare consider. They had no obvious limbs, or sense organs, but I knew they knew we were there. Small as we were in comparison, they saw us, and knew us, and hated us.
There was so much more to them than my limited human mind could cope with, more than I was capable of comprehending. I knew that. I made myself concentrate on what my eyes were showing me. They were vast and they were ancient and they were monsters. Their nature blazed forth from them, unhidden by any trace of self-deception. They knew what they were, what they had made of themselves, and they gloried in it. They were evil, evil as an almost pure concept, hating everything that wasn’t them. Because the only thing they wouldn’t or couldn’t feed on was each other. They ate life, and not just for sustenance, but for the sheer joy of destroying it. Antigods, concerned only with consuming creation.
“How do we fight…that?” I said.
“You don’t,” said Molly.
I looked quickly around at her, disturbed at something in her voice, and saw something else looking back at me through Molly’s eyes. She looked…different, her whole face suffused with a new personality. She even held herself differently, as though new things were forming inside her, changing her shape and her balance. Giles swore softly beside me and reached for his sword. I gestured urgently for him to stop, and then gave the new Molly my full attention. I knew what had happened. The Loathly Ones were only ever extensions of the Hungry Gods, and this close to the real thing, the drone inside Molly had awakened and taken control.
“That’s right,” said Molly. It didn’t sound like her at all. She smiled in a way Molly never would have, her gaze full of hate and spite. “I’m in the driving seat now. Molly’s having a little nap while I talk to you. I’ve done this before, you know, when I killed Subway Sue. Oh yes; that was me. So simple and easy, and no one even noticed. Didn’t it strike you as just a bit suspicious, her dying so suddenly? For no good reason? No? Well, you mustn’t blame yourself, Eddie. You’ve had a lot on your mind.”
She stretched slowly, luxuriously, in a not entirely human way. “It’s good to be out in the open, instead of trapped inside such a small and limited thing, watching the world from behind her eyes and making my plans. I’m not strong enough to take over yet, to subsume her mind and soul in mine. I’m more…potential, than actual. But you should never have brought me here, Eddie. You never should have brought me home.”
“How long have you been…switching her off, and taking over?” I said. My mouth was dry, but I fought to keep my voice steady.
“Not long. It hasn’t been easy, corrupting Molly from within, protected as she is by her magics and the terms of the various unpleasant bargains she made in return for power. You wouldn’t believe some of the things she’s done, and some of the things she had to promise, so she could become the wild witch of the woods. I think you suspected me, didn’t you, Eddie, but you never asked because you didn’t want to know. Still, no need to worry about that now; I will become her, and she will be just another drone serving the Masters, for as long as she lasts.”
“Why kill Subway Sue?” I said. “She was your friend.”
“Not my friend, Eddie. Dear Sue had to go, because she might eventually have realised you could use the Damnation Way to access the higher realms. And we don’t like visitors here. We really don’t.”
“Why kill Sebastian?” I said.
“That wasn’t me, sweetie,” said the thing inside Molly. “Why would I kill one of us? Now, hand over the weapon. The box. The Deplorable End. Your quest is over, your mission a failure, your war at an end.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “Molly wouldn’t want me to.”
A silver blade appeared in Molly’s hand, and she put the edge to her own throat. It was the arthame, its supernaturally sharp edge already cutting the skin so that blood coursed down her neck. Molly smiled, her eyes full of a vicious glee. “Do as you’re told, little human, or I’ll cut my throat. And after she’s dead, I’ll take the box from you anyway.”