Shadow of Worlds

1 DOWN TO A CAMBRIAN SEA

1 DOWN TO A CAMBRIAN SEA

I sit akimbo in the midst of the fog, seeking the line that I remember in the Shadow of Worlds. I can hear voices in the distance, in the background, whispers and laughs and screams and songs, the low voice of men and the sweet high tones of women and children.

In the distance through the fog, I can see glimpsed shapes, human, animal, and sometimes other. Infinite emotions charge the atmosphere, and sensations, pain, pleasure, and all the scents of life and death are here. Time and distance have no meaning here, that which was may well be not yet born, and that which is to come may have already spanned its life. This place is a place of infinity and eternity, where the waters of time may flow forever, without marking in the slightest the face of this place.

I reach out with my mind, winnowing the shadows for that which I seek. The area about me slowly rearranges into a view of a craggy, rocky path, which leads past two great Oak Trees and to the smoky mouth of a dimly lit cave. A chattering sound comes to me from the tree to the right, a chiding for my trespass, no doubt.

I walk the last few feet to the mouth of the cave and standing at the threshold, I call, “Seer, have you seen my coming, and what I would ask?”

From a darkened corner of the cave, a barely seen Form moves, and says, “Even Herakles could foretell your coming, and you would ask after the shadow that passes the Shadow of the Worlds. You would know what is out there that could threaten an infinite number of worlds, and what kind of thing is it that we feel across the breadth and depth of the Shadow.

“Seer, may I cross your threshold?”

“Rafe, you are welcome here.”

I step into the cave. Turning to look the way I came, I see that the trees are whipping in a great wind, and almost continuous lightning lights the sky, and a constant roar of distant thunder fills my ears. The storm has obviously been raging for some hours, yet I had but seconds past stepped off a sunny path. This display of alternate worldlines was a special aspect of the Cave of the Seer. While I can walk to that which I desire in shadow, the Seer can walk out of his home to any place in shadow that he wishes to visit.

The Seer says, “There is a place which I foretell will yield a vital clue to the nature of the multiversal scourge which we all feel. It is a place that is Cambrian in its essence, and I have been there once in following the path of the destroyer.”

“Have you seen any of the old Walkers recently?” I am asking if the Seer had seen any of the other persons capable of walking from world-line to world-line like ourselves. I have met many ephemeral people in many shadow worlds but rarely met another shadow walker like myself. In places close to the origins of the Originals, sometimes there are doppelgangers, shadow copies from close by world lines, even copies that can walk the shadows.

The Seer says, “I saw the one-eyed son of Bor, and his one-handed son but a century past. Just recently, I saw a red-headed Walker named Nancy, and from a nearby mountain, some decades past I did see a duel between Enlil and the destroyer, Shiva. I did not see the end of the duel. The discharges and the mists that are common to such Walker battles obscured the battle.”

It was typical in such battles for the combatants to try to manipulate the fabric of local reality to promote their victory and the defeat of their opponents. When the manipulations are at odds with one another, the distortions of reality sometimes displayed as energetic discharges, and the eye would see fog where the form of an object was in dispute.

“And have you seen more sign of the Scourge’s presence?” I had seen several places where an unexpected ‘bleed-through’ of one reality into another had caused unusual changes and events in the local areas where they occurred. The universal lethality of the events in these ‘fairy circles’ left little doubt in our minds that the source was malicious. Sleeping people had awakened to find themselves melded to the rocky places that had been their beds. Some had found themselves merged with trees, roots become arteries, legs, and arms frozen into limbs, trapped evermore. These were disturbing sights but were not close to as ominous as some other sights.

In the last twenty years or so, I had run into signs of a destructive force that spanned entire world lines. I had seen whole shadow Earths that were lifeless, some from war, some from the plague, and some appeared to be a hunting ground for some voracious predator that had literally eaten every human on the planet. I found one shadow where a universal madness had struck humanity, ending at last in a mindless apathy. The survivors quietly lay down and starved to death.

The Seer quietly smokes a pipe, looking out the mouth of the cave at the thunderstorm. I extract a cigarette, and we sit smoking for a time. When we have finished our smokes, Seer gets to his feet, dons his coat, and takes up his staff. I regain my feet as well, ready to be off to wherever the Seer would lead.

The Seer waves his staff in the direction of the cave’s mouth, and the scene shimmers and fog rolls up, obscuring the storm from view. For the space of thirty heartbeats, nothing outside the cave is visible. As quickly as it arrives, the fog rolls away, and now the cave opens to a sunlit sea, and sandy beach lies before us, braced to each side with reddish sandstone boulders.

The Seer says, “Shall we go down to the sea? Something by the sea draws me, a Truth that will answer a future question. I know that this is the place of an ancient conflict, where a good species went down to ruin before the Scourge. There are answers here.”

The Seer and I walk between the stones, and down to a shallow sea. A few feet from the gentle waves, the sand, is mixed with a slimy green film that makes a living mat of doubtful pedigree and exuding an earthy stink. The smell of the mat is barely discernible over the almost overbearing stench of sulfur in the air.

I see tiny movements on the beach of crustaceans which are apparently consuming bits of the bacterial goo, and at the edge of the water, I see what appears to be a trilobite cast ashore by the waves. In one area of the bay is a darker colored patch of water, which seems to be hard put to mix with the rest of the waters, and in which I can see several dead hard and soft creatures.

I say, “I recognize this place. Trilobites place it as Cambrian, and the anoxic waters are a distinctive feature of the End Botomian Era, some 517 million years in the past in my world line.”

The Seer walks slowly along the beach. “I feel that our destination lies just around this mound. There was a great catastrophe here less than a thousand years ago.”

“We seem to be in the beginning stages of the extinction event. Most of the trilobites and similar animals will be rare by the end of the Botomian. The fact that there are no land plants suggests that we have not made it into the Ordovician. How could our problem have anything to do with events this far back?”

We round the mound and find a massive black basaltic structure standing in the shallow water near the shore. The structure is several times the size of the great pyramid, and the great stone roof of the building is partially missing. This huge structure is an awe-inspiring sight, and its presence here in the middle Cambrian is an unexpected mystery.

I point. “What the hell is that?”

Seer says, “Let’s find out. I think that I can pull a record of past events here from shadow overlaps nearby. We need to stand exactly where we are, and give me a moment to concentrate.”

The Seer plunges the end of his staff into the sand, and there is a simultaneous flash of light. The view of the artifact shimmers, and suddenly a hundred or more creatures can be seen around and entering the building. The creatures are some variety of Cephalopods, with a long upper body, with a rather ugly head on top of a long torso that is a basic greenish-brown column, ending in a muscular looking mass of tentacles, which they used in a very leg-like way. These creatures seem to be at home in the building, suggesting that they are the builders and not interlopers.

While we are watching, an object approaches the building from the far side, moving without noise through the air. I can see two of the creatures in what must be the cockpit of the flying machine. The building is in good condition, with no missing roof as we had observed just moments ago. The air smells sweet and wholesome.

“Seer, who are these creatures that we see? There is no hint of any such intelligent beings living during this time period on the Earth.”

The Seer says, “I do not know who they are, but consider; Life had existed on the Earth for a good three billion years before this time. I don’t know if they are native or not, but there was certainly time for life to reach this level and then fall back.”

While we watch, the puffy white clouds in the sky turn dark and ominous, and there comes a shaking of the earth in a substantial lateral earthquake. Suddenly, we see a distant volcanic eruption and a plume of out-gassing scars the horizon. Lightning runs amok between black clouds.

Over the building, there is a flickering circulating ring of lightning, and the clouds parts to surround the light display. There comes a shimmering pulsing light at the center of the lightning, and from the center stretches a great mass of both gigantic tentacles and what looks like slivers of darkness, a Stygian blackness that defies examination.

The great mass of darkness and grasping tentacles reaches down and touches the roof of the building, exploding it into ruins at the first touch. Many more tentacles reach all about the periphery, scooping up the local population and dragging them in great distress into the maw of the maelstrom. When finally the monstrous presence has withdrawn, the scene seems identical to the present-day scene, save for a minor bit of wear on the building, and the active volcano in the background.

“I don’t understand! That creature reached out from somewhere else, but it did not come through to this world. It almost seemed like it could not come through, but it could reach in and grab things and drag them back to where it is. It looked like the volcano and the storm were manifestations of the creature’s presence.”

The Seer states, “I believe that you are exactly right. The creature could not fully come into this plane because it is from a place far distant from the world lines that we know. Even the small amount of its essence that was here was enough to start to change this whole world line. I believe that over time, with repeated intrusions, it would have changed the laws that rule this land enough to allow it to exist here. This world would become hell in every sense of that word from the moment of its coming. This dark creature I think is the Scourge that we were seeking.”

I say, “I do believe that this is well above my pay grade. Who would ever have thought that the old ‘Lurker at the Gate’ mythos is real? If that was the Scourge, what can we, or anybody, do about it?”

Seer says, “I do not know how we are to fix this problem, but like any problem, steady consideration will ultimately provide a solution.”

“Who would have thought that my friend the Seer is a steadfast Daoist?”

We start back toward the cave, with my friend chuckling merrily at the thought of being seen as following any religious creed. Most of us who had learned how to walk the shadows have little or no patience for religion, but we have a strong spiritual component to our lives. It is the difference between centering your life around rules or meaning. The worlds are full of meaning for us, but we do not like following rules.

We walk up the incline between the twin boulders and enter the cave. Looking back, I see the storm-tossed Oaks, and the reflection of the lightning on the leaves casts a skeletal reflection of the trees. The cave seems to be a comfortable place to pass some time, but I suppose that I should be out and about. The Wicked do not get to rest.

I cast my gaze on my old friend. “Well, I guess that I had better do some hard thinking on the problem. I think that I will stroll back to my cabin to think it out. See you later, my strange friend!”

Waving farewell, I walk back out into the sunlit path between the Oaks, whistling happily in response to the chattering from the low branches. As I walk, I enter the light meditative state that is conducive to both dowsing and shadow walking, and the fog gathers about me.

A little while later, I feel eyes on my back and glimpse the lupine back of a gray wolf. Looking around, I see that I have an escort in the form of a large male wolf. Each time I walk the shadows, he appears to keep me company. I cannot account for this phenomena save that I must add him into my picture of what the world I seek must contain, and so I open the way for him to come with me. I am glad of the company, regardless of the truth of this, and have awarded this wolf with the name of Lobo.

Soon I see familiar landscapes, a meandering creek with plump muscadines hanging low above the water. On the far bank, a thick canebrake stands, while birds sing from the shelter of the thickets, and my wolf laps at the water’s edge. A wooden bridge spans the stream. I step onto the bridge, knowing that my cabin is just a short distance ahead.

I walk through the Black Walnut Grove and spy at the edge of the grove my home. A wide and welcoming porch waits, with a hardwood porch swing, slowly swaying in the morning breeze. Reaching deep into the shadows, I seek and soon find a brace of chickens, which I pull into my domain, and throw them promptly to the wolf.

“Eat, you hound and then hide safely. My neighbors are a distance, but there are hunters about that could be a problem. I will leave the door open so you can warn me if someone comes.”

Soon, I have a plate full of a fine stew that came from some distant shadow, and an even finer whiskey from another. With a full belly and a warm shot for my stomach, I settle down for contemplation of the events of the day, and later, a night in the bliss of sleep.