The Remarkable Rift

Marina's Power

"Are you still living?"

The words floated in the air around everyone, the voices low and steady, spoken impeccably and yet exuding such an alien sense that everyone but Marina took a step back from the console. She, however, squeezed her eyes shut as the voice disappeared into static, and as her focused intensified, the static went away and the enigmatic voice spoke more clearly. "We are addressing you, small ones. Do any of you remain?"

Jeremiah took a step closer to the console and sat down in the chair beside Marina. With an unusually steady hand, he depressed the transmit button and responded. "This is Captain Jeremiah Rixon of the Illyrian airship, Ithaca. With whom are we speaking?"

There was a moment of silence followed by a strange scratching sound. Then, "we are those who wait for you. We are waiting beyond the bounds of oblivion, and we wish only to help you."

"What do you mean?" Rixon asked. "Help us with what?"

"Do you speak for the new race called man?" the voice asked, its words twisting through the air in a way that only the truly strange can.

"I speak only on behalf of my crew and homeland, the great floating nation of Illyrium."

"Illyrium," the voice sounded out the word playfully. "Is this the name of your world? We heard from some whose tongues were not like yours. They spoke to us of magic and tribes. What are these words?"

"Those words are not of our people, and those speakers are no longer living, though I suspect you know that. Did you attack the people who were here before us?" Whitaker and van Killen winced at the bluntness of Jeremiah's approach, but their captain had no intent of dancing around the questions at hand.

"Those people were not prepared for the wonders we wish to share. We have such things to show you, and together, we can transform your world into a paradise."

"What is it you need from us?" Jeremiah asked, though a glance at the bodies against the walls gave him a dreadful suspicion.

"We need only a body," the voice responded. "We demand a sacrifice. Give us an offering. We will send the soul beyond reality, and we will use the body to walk your world and share with you such wonders that cannot be fathomed by a race as young as you. We need only the sacrifice to be our link, and our alliance will be forged."

Marina suddenly screamed and the console sparked, emitting a cloud of smoke that lingered across the deck. The voice went to static and then winked out altogether. "It's..." she tried to speak, but the words were difficult in coming to her. "It's...dark. I could feel it...on the other side..."

"It doesn't take a mastermind to understand what she's getting at," van Killen responded. "That thing on the other side of the rift, it wants one of us to be sacrificed to it."

"So it can walk the earth, a living corpse carrying the souls of...Lord knows what..." Rigstock said quietly. "It's monstrous. An offense to the Clockmaker, I tells you now."

"They can't be trusted, whatever they are," Whitaker added.

"I don't need any more proof of those things than what we see here," van Killen said, pointing to the bodies against the walls. "Throats exploded out, like something tried climbing inside them. Whatever those things are, I think they tried taking their own sacrifice before, three times they tried it, and three times they failed."

"Three times at least," Whitaker said. "Has anyone stopped to wonder where the rest of the crew has gone off to? I think they were taken. Taken but never brought back." He stared through the shattered window at the dark shape floating a mile away. "And now they want someone to bring them across, to anchor them to our world."