The Remarkable Rift

The Rift Dwellers

"You shouldn't have come," Whitaker said. His eyes showed the wear of years, of decades of burdens and heavy strain. "You should have gone back to the Ithaca."

"I had to warn you," Marina retorted. "The explosives won't work. You'll die for nothing!"

"And if they do work, then you will die for nothing. Ms. Zukunft, Marina, I don't wish for you to die, but we cannot let those things crawl into our world. You said so yourself: they're death."

"I never said that."

"You said as much." Whitaker looked away from her and turned his gaze to the trigger in his hand. "All I have to do is wait until I'm right at the border of the rift, wait for those things to reach out for me, and then trigger the detonator. The rift will close, the outpost will fall...our world will be saved, Marina!"

"But it won't work! I told you, it's been disarmed!"

"I hope...I hope you're wrong, Ms. Zukunft." He grew silent after that, but her eyes pored over him.

"Why are you so desperate to die, Hieronymous?"

There was a momentary silence after her query, and Whitaker felt the tears wetting his cheeks, the red heat building up in his face, the gasp in his breath. Then, finally, he said "you know why. I know how you get into people's heads, how you see and know and feel as they do. Don't play coy with me, I know you've seen inside me. How can you know...and still ask why I would volunteer for this? Don't you understand what you perceive?"

"There is still hope, Hieronymous, even if you can't see it. There is a light beyond the present moment's darkness."

"Oh, I wish that were true," he replied, and as he spoke, a great shadow fell across the boat, bathing the pale, gunpowder-covered woman in a gloom far stranger than any the two of them had ever beheld. They had reached the edge of the vortex, and before them floated what looked to be a curved hole, like the inner curve of a blackened bubble, and beyond it...

"I also wish that you could forgive me, Marina." Whitaker closed his eyes and depressed the button atop the detonator, and as he did, his companion's whole body clenched up as if she'd been gripped by an icy claw. But nothing happened. There was the click of the trigger, followed by distant groans as from bodies nigh-infinite in scope, and closer than would fill either of them with comfort.

"I can...feel them...inside of me..." Marina began to gasp, twisting and contorting her body as if something was moving within her. Words began to fail her as she heard voices like the one from the radio, only these voices were accompanied by feelings, emotions, hungers that she had no means of interpreting. These were the minds beyond the words. They were cold minds, dark minds, alien minds, as far dissociated from good and evil as a stray dog was from the understanding of Illyrian dirigibles. "You...we...are welcome..." she sputtered, and Whitaker did not understand her. "Humans are...toys...tools...kindling..."

"Marina, please be strong for me," Whitaker said quietly, and as he spoke, he moved forward in the boat and took her hands in his own. "Marina, please be strong," he repeated.

She flinched at his touch and then tightened up, her whole body going rigid. "I'm...holding them back..." Her eyes closed tight and Whitaker tried to focus on what she'd told him, about hope, but even he could feel the darkness beginning to claw at his mind, as if his humanity itself were about to be shorn away. But still he held her, and still he tried to hold her in his mind as he was with his hands.

After a moment, her eyes opened, and she held the gaze of her own self, although the struggle still played itself across her twitching face. Then, together, the two Illyrians began to look around at the great and gargantuan shapes that surrounded them. At first, it was difficult to make any out, vanishing as they were into the gloom which now fully surrounded them, but as their eyes adjusted, they could see odd distortions, asymmetric bodies that curled around, many-headed and multi-limbed, dozens, scores, hundreds of black eyes staring like the eyes of giant spiders. And giant they were, for even the smallest shape they saw looked capable of swallowing them – the two passengers and the boat itself – whole in a single bite. Others swelled to megalithic proportions, dwarfing the Ithaca, making the outpost itself seem comparatively miniscule. Dark fists and open palms reached from the ends of limbs that could fully enrapture the Benjamin Clock. In one region, they saw a mass of spheres, like inky bubbles, that congealed together like a living swarm, but beyond all of these things, they could see something motionless, and yet alive, something which formed the very ground upon which the smaller forms walked and crawled and perched, and above which hideous wings flapped against the ebbing of the tide. Waves of life, of dark, twisted, lightless life, moved upon this greater form, and hard as he tried, Whitaker could see no end to the gargantuan living land which seemed to stretch onward for infinity and eternity.

As if by Marina's command, all of these strange beings held back, eying these newcomers suspiciously and yet voraciously. A dark song moaned from all around, and from somewhere far in the gloom, there was the banging of mad drums. But in one direction, there was something different from the rest which caught the Illyrians' eyes. There was a pale being, small, smaller even than Whitaker himself, sitting alone and yet not alone, for the malice and the malevolence of all of the madness seemed to be penetrating into that pale being. Then, as their lifeboat drew closer, it turned toward them and revealed eyes as black as the living ground on which it sat, and a crooked yet horrifying grin upon its lips.

Whitaker abruptly shifted the heat distribution in his boat's engine, and they began to drift quietly back toward the opening, the only point of light within the cold gloom. Marina's struggle intensified as the creatures dwelling in the rift took note of the rapid departure, and there was a sudden shift from all around, like a wave rippling out in their wake. "Marina, there's a piece of Gravirontide floating just outside the vortex," Whitaker whispered to her. "When we get close, I want you to jump onto it and escape."

"What?" the woman asked. "How...?"

"I don't know where it came from, but it must be caught in the field between the vortex and the outpost. We need to leave the ship, but you can still get to safety."

Her eyes caught the large piece, looking more like an armor-plated boulder than the support of an airship. Whitaker brought their boat to within four feet and she rose to her feet and leapt off the edge, landing flat atop the granite and metal block with a thud. She scrambled to her knees and called back for him, but he turned his face to the gunpowder in the boat, realizing his failure, and began to sob almost uncontrollably, trying with all of his might to stifle his cries. Marina continued to call out for him, but her words never reached his ears. This was to be his grave, or so his nearly-shattered mental state was telling him.

But then something else caught his attention, drawing him out from himself. Something great and round, something which by no means would even notice a speck as small as him, floated above him, trailing long tendrils like the branches of limp and dying trees, and something in that struck a nerve, evoked a sense of terror. Heaving himself up, he brought his heavy frame to the edge of the boat and leapt off, managing almost miraculously to land on the floating rock beside Marina. And to his great luck, the force of his landing shoved the floating mini-island away from the opening, allowing their momentum to leave the innards of that hellish realm.

Marina closed her eyes and pressed one hand to her forehead, almost screaming in her mind. Finally, she took a break and looked over at the man who had fed her for the past few months. "I'm trying to send a message to Captain Rixon," she explained. "To let him know what happened. I'm hoping I can reach him."

"Youmay want to hurry up on that," Whitaker said, his eyes focused on the riftbehind them. She followed his gaze and saw the great, black tentacles, thick astrees and as black as coal, venturing out from inside the rift and snakingtheir way toward the two survivors.