Burton and Abberline, along with everyone else in the room save the Awakened, clutched at their heads. The voice of Yog-Sothoth was deafening, and coming from inside their skulls. The entity was communicating with them through their minds, without words as Burton knew them.
He heard a high-pitched whine, and realized it was the stones the Awakened wore within their repugnant headpieces, humming in their mountings. Their ethereal vibrations made his back teeth ache.
“Beyond One,” said the Swinburne-thing. “Father of Nug and Yeb. Grandfather of terrible Cthulhu. You survey all facets of reality, but powerful as you are, you are locked outside the universe. We wish to give you entry, to impart your will on this facet. We implore you. We retrieved a Doorway to receive your magnificence, and have obtained the ancient and holy psychic stones to focus your power in this realm. All we ask in return is to traverse the First Gate.”
All who are deemed worthy may attempt passage through the First Gate. Let me through, and access to the All in One shall be yours.
“It’s a bloody deal with the Devil,” Abberline whispered beside Burton.
Burton considered the Inspector’s words. This Yog-Sothoth was no ordinary devil as he knew the term. He was much bigger, much more powerful.
What is that infernal hammering? Said Yog-Sothoth as the sound of the police battering ram grew louder, every impact threatening to send the formidable double doors exploding into thousands of splinters.
“The humans of this facet attempt to stop us,” said the Goforth-thing. “Even now they seek to sully this holy ritual with their presence.”
They annoy me.
The sound ceased. Burton and Abberline looked at each other, a cold realization stealing upon Burton as he realized what must have happened. Yog-Sothoth, using but a modicum of his power, had stopped the police in their efforts to break down the doors. How this was achieved Burton didn’t know, nor want to.
“Now see here!” Abberline shouted, an edge of fear in his voice. “Every bloody person in here is hereby under arrest. No more magic tr-”
Abberline seized and, panicking, dropped his pistol. Burton heard it clatter heavily to the floor as the police inspector fell against him, gripping Burton’s shoulder. “What is it man?”
Abberline didn’t say anything, but his panicking increased. He rubbed his face with his left hand, as if indicating the trouble sprang from that part of his anatomy. Burton squinted his eyes in the gloom, and in the pale light emanating from Yog-Sothoth’s globes he saw a terrible sight. Inspector Abberline’s mouth was gone. Not covered or obscured. Gone.
“These are the men who tried to stop us,” said the Swinburne-thing, pointing at Burton and the frustrated Abberline. “They are the ones who tried to prevent us from becoming conduits for your perfect will.”
Then they shall be the first to know what it means to bend to the will of Yog-Sothoth.
Burton felt his legs give beneath him, and he had the strange sensation that he was melting into the floor. Abberline looked at him askance, his expression frozen on a body that was now a mass of cubes. Burton reached for him with arms that were now giant lobster claws.
“Bismillah! Help me!”
As if in answer, the millions of cubes that now made up Abberline’s body fell clattering to the floor.
16. The Man of Truth
Burton wretched, but nothing came up. The assembled acolytes stared down at him with bulbous eyes on the ends of long, fleshy stalks. Burton wanted to scream. He squeezed his eyes shut instead.
The Man of Truth has learned that Illusion is the One Reality, and that Substance is the Great Impostor.
“El-Yezdi,” Burton murmured. He was still there with him.
“What did you say?” asked the Swinburne-thing.
“El-Yezdi,” Burton said again, flexing the fingers of his right hand, feeling the cold brass there once more, the solid and lethal scimitar hanging from his left hip.
The Man of Truth is beyond good and evil. The Man of Truth has ridden to All-Is-One.
They were all there with him. The Captain. Ruffian Dick. Abullah the Bushri. El-Yezdi. Especially El-Yezdi, whose eyes once more burned into Burton’s soul.
“Something’s wrong,” said the Goforth-thing. “I don’t like this.”
“Nor do I,” said the Whiteside-thing. “Something isn’t right.”
“Something else is here with Burton,” said the Nash-thing.
“Wait, you dolts,” said the Swinburne-thing. “Once Yog-Sothoth is through this will be over. We’ll head for the Gate and leave these repulsive bodies.”
So the ritual wasn’t finished. Burton smiled, rising to his feet, which were no longer melting into the floor.
“No. It can’t be,” said the Nash-thing. “He subverts the will of Yog-Sothoth.”
Burton stepped up to him, slashing out with Abdullah’s scimitar, knocking the queer headpiece from his head. It clanged onto the floor and Burton stepped on it, rending the soft metal and dislodging the Wold-Newton stones from their fittings and crushing them to black dust beneath his boots.
“No!” cried Whiteside, lunging at the explorer. Burton slapped him aside with a brass hand that could dent steel plate, and the man fell to the floor in an unconscious heap. The rest of the Awakened moved toward Burton now, but they were no fighters, even in their normal lives. Burton dispatched them easily, careful not to wound them too severely as he dashed the obscene crowns containing the Wold-Newton stones from their heads.
“Keep chanting!” the Swinburne-thing screeched at his thralls. “We must complete the ritual!”
Burton came after him next, but the being from Yith ducked out of the explorer’s reach. “Where did you get that sword? That arm?
Burton could see no scimitar in his hand, no brass and wood prosthetic where his right arm should be, though he could feel them. But he was glad Swinburne’s impostor could see them. He grinned at the Swinburne-thing. “The Man of Truth knows that Illusion is the One Reality, and that Substance is the Great Impostor.”
“Who told you that?”
He brought the scimitar up, its blade singing in time to the ethereal vibrations given off by the Wold-Newton stones. He brought it down in a sideways arc. The Swinburne-thing ducked, but the sword lodged between the combs of the elaborate, misshapen headpiece and pulled it from his head. Burton flicked his wrist, and the headpiece clattered to the marble floor.
“No!” said the Swinburne-thing, diving to the floor and grabbing it. “You don’t know how many centuries we have prepared for this! You will not take this away from us, you repugnant pink ape!”
Burton placed the tip of his blade on the back of the Swinburne-thing’s neck.
“Do it, Burton,” the Swinburne-thing spat. “Go ahead. You will not kill me. I am Timeless. But the owner of this body, your dear friend the poet, will not be so fortunate.”
In the distance the great bell of the Westminster clock tower struck the first chime of midnight.
“No!” the Goforth-thing cried. “The ritual!”
The tendrils of Yog-Sothoth that stretched out from the stone began to writhe and slink back within it, the tenuous foothold the eldritch entity had in this world slipping away.
“Come back, O Beyond One!” the Swinburne-thing cried, reaching for his master, heedless of the razor-sharp blade at his neck.
With the third chime, there was a sudden flash through the front windows from the direction of Westminster, and all of the Awakened went limp and senseless where they lay.
“Algy?” said Burton, leaning down to check his friend’s pulse. His scimitar and mechanical arm, so solid and present mere moments before, were now gone. There was a blast of cold air from the stone, and a slight sucking sensation, then the essence of Yog-Sothoth was gone. The assembled acolytes moaned and held their heads, muttering questions to one another.