Wolf of the Tesseract

Chapter 21

The air smelled musty in Claire's cell; it felt almost like it had a gritty texture. Claire assumed that her jailers secreted her somewhere below ground.

She sighed. Several days had passed since they had captured her and locked her away. Luckily we are not alone? Her mind occupied itself. The only visitors had been high ranking members of the Heptobscurantum. Daily, they left her food and literature about the cult as if they might somehow convince her to willingly surrender herself to the Great Awakening.

Today, however, none of them came. The day crawled along; Claire ignored the grumble in her belly.

Eventually, a familiar figure walked into the room: Caivev, Vivian. She strode in with her cocky attitude. "I wonder if I should thank you, Claire."

Claire barely acknowledged her presence. She only shrugged indifferently.

"You've done quite a bit to help me, you know," Vivian toyed with her. "See, I was really quite torn about the importance of the Heptobscurantum, previously; I only saw them as another of Nitthogr's puppets. I barely even credited them as true followers of Sh'logath. All I really wanted to do was complete my Dunnischkte: complete the vyrm merging, something similar to what you've done with the Princess... become both, and more, than the sum of the originals. It was my service to the agod.

"Deep down I never really thought that the Awakening would come to pass in my lifetime; I would need the Dunnischkte in order to live long enough to see it. After all, every one of Nitthogr's schemes was eventually foiled by the Guardian Corps, and so, my merging was all that mattered. But now you are here and the Guardian Corps are no more; there are none left to stop us from invoking The Devourer."

She flashed a grin. "The Awakening is only a few days away. I just thought I would give you my thanks before I leave you with The Seven. The Heptobscurantum are the true believers—the faithful ones."

Vivian turned to leave. On her way out she nodded to the seven men who entered the dank chamber.

They approached wordlessly. "I'm guessing you're either a really old Boy Band, or this Seven that traitor told me about?"

Several of them grinned. They wore either cultic garb or sharp business attire, depending on the company each had left just prior to their arrival.

"What? You couldn't come up with something more clever than The Seven? I've got a bunch of choice selections for you." She calmly rattled off a string of highly obscene expletives.

The big guy in the middle smirked ear to ear. He stood an entire head above his peers. He might have been handsome except for his dopey face and a wild mullet. "I like her," he laughed. "I can see exactly why Nitthogr wanted to keep her." He leveled his scary eyes at her. Deadpan, he stated, "But that's not a consideration for us, Princess Claire."

Claire gave him her attention.

"We need your blood for the sacrifice: the blood of the Architect King, it runs through your veins."

Is this true, Bithia?

Of course it's true. You are the Prime now. Claire's heart sank. Every girl dreams of being a princess someday. Claire became Princess of all reality, but at the cost her life.

"In mere days we will take you to this world's central Tesseract gate, a powerful nexus point of reality. There, during the solar eclipse we will perform the rites and ritual. Your blood must be shed to release the almighty Sh'logath, waking him from his slumber in the nethersphere!"

He sounded so excited for it. He'd raised his eyebrows in expectation; the goofy grin on his face beckoned for a response, as if he expected her to yell, "hot dog! Count me in!"