Dust hung in the air, a fine drift settling slowly to the floor, over a prone figure. A prone figure all in black, dark hair chaotically spread across milk-white skin, a strange ear-ring caught beneath a cheek pressed hard against the floor. Cracks scattered along the floor, and up the wall, looking for all the world like the prone body had been flung there, or that it was dense beyond appearances and ruptured the concrete of the floor and walls with its weight. Chunks of crumbled concrete lay around the figure, and scattered along the hallway in both directions, yet strangely none lay on the figure itself. When one looked closer it could be seen that the figure was unblemished by the dust, to an almost surreal degree. Behind the prone figure a trail of footsteps lead from a shadowed alcove, across a sundered line carved in the solid floor. The dust continued to settle.
A low grunt emanated from the figure, and with a slow twitch, the face lifted from the rubble-strewn floor. Simeon slowly climbed to his feet and surveyed the destruction around him. It was obvious that the hallway was not entirely safe, now, after the brief battle with the Guardian. Now that he was upright, the dust suspended in the air about him had a more difficult time avoiding him, strange little eddies swirled about him and his clothing remained clean. The defence behind him, which he had so subtly passed lay in ruins, and the defence before him, the single remaining, no longer seemed relevant in light of the wreckage in which he stood.
Simeon shrugged. The defences had been wrought to protect the Assembly from any ... misadventure, either from without, or perpetrated by one of its members. Simeon had intended to leave those defences in tact, perhaps even use them to his own advantage while they held, but now that seemed pointless. With no remaining reason to remain covert, he strode forward until he stood at the next line carved in the floor. This line formed the gate, the gate which the Guardian Spirit should have opened had Simeon acceded to its wishes. That was no longer a possibility. Raising his hands and spreading his fingers to form a triangle at his chest, he exerted his will. The defences crumbled and he strode forward.
The room lay in shadow, illuminated only by the soft and fitful glow of the candles placed in alcoves recessed into the walls. Upon the table, the only piece of furniture located centrally in the small room, lay a pair of wings, gently writhing under their bonds. Several small and powdery lumps of ash scattered the floor, the remnants of individual feathers that had semi-sentiently strived for escape. Shadows flowed, living, about the room, flowing apart and together in an almost random pattern, always avoiding the areas directly illuminated by the candle flames, and always circling the wings. Cruel wires held the wings in place, anchored by crude nails to the wood of the table. Simeon stood at the door for seconds before the shadows noticed him, and collected before him of the floor.
Surveying the room in satisfaction, noting the piles of ash on the floor, Simeon spoke.
"I see that the bindings were, as I suspected not enough. It is well then, my shadow of servitude, that I placed you here to safeguard our ... treasure."
The shadow quivered, something like pleasure shuddering through its fabric at such rare accolades from its master.
"This room is no longer suitable for holding this prize, and the time has come for me to find the One I seek. Perhaps this plumage shall serve to aid me. Will you aid me Shade?" Simeon addressed the darkness by his feet as it fawned towards his voice.
"Then aid me now. Follow, and guard my steps."
Simeon stepped forward, the shadow hurriedly flowing away from his descending feet, and touched each of the nails holding the wire in place with an outstretched finger. Each nail flashed into nothingness at his touch, yet the wire remained taught against the wings where they lay. As the last of the nails vanished Simeon made a grasping gesture with his hand and the wires neatly slipped beneath the wings, to encompass them in what became a tight netting. Simeon lifted the wings and turned.
"Follow", he commanded the Shade, and stepped forward into ... nothingness, leaving the room vacant, the scarred table alone in the candle illuminated void left by his passing.
Pain swept through his dream, ripping him abruptly from a hazy recollection of running, running, misty figures pursuing, all sense of direction lost. Gasping he, lurched upright in bed, the stained sheets falling to expose his fair skin to the cool night air. Maria always slept with the window open, as she slept now next to him, fully clothed, the clock beside her showing the time, early morning, it would dawn soon. Mitch looked down at her sleeping form, overflowing the confines of the bed and providing him little space for rest, and grinned. Remembering her attempts at intimacy last night after he had shown up, unannounced and unexpected on her doorstep, haggard and flushed from the stress of his escape and subsequent flight through the University grounds; he brushed her hair from her face as she softly snored into her pillow. Of course, she had been rebuffed, more than once and only the absolute lack of alternate bedding had prompted him to accept the invitation into her bed. His resolve to avoid her lustful intentions had returned after he had laid down and she removed his shirt to lay a gently moist kiss on his chest. She's agreed to remain clothed while he slept from exhaustion.
Pain sparked again, causing him to flinch forwards in an attempt to escape the pain behind his shoulder blades. At the same time, a fierce itch at the centre of his chest drew his attention, drawing his arms instinctively up for protection. He staggered from bed into the bathroom to see what was biting him. Some vague recollection from the hurried events of last night, perched on a garden ledge in the Campus Grounds, and an unfamiliar itch then, the same area that burned so intensely now. Before the mirror unimpeded by clothing, his chest looked somehow deeper, broader, and yet narrower, his sternum seemed extended, almost protrudent, and longer. Turning sideways he could see that his chest was thicker, ribbons of muscle stretching backwards from his breastbone to wrap tightly around his thorax and stretch up towards his shoulder blades. The burning there slowed now, as if cowed into submission by his attention. Something thin and wispy grew on his shoulders, strange lumps forming there as well, and a soft, one might go so far as to say downy, fuzz growing in two small discreet patches, one on each shoulder blade.
A slow dawning of recognition twinkled in the back of his mind, some association being made to some distant childhood memory. For some reason he had images of new-hatched chicks, weak and wobbly on unused legs, staggering from the remnants of the egg, with a similar fuzz on their bodies. What was this, he thought, why was this happening now? It was not like he did not have enough to cope with already without some strange fuzzy rash forming on his body! Reaching back with one hand, he felt the fur and lump beneath the skin, each individual strand of fuzz discreetly defined, almost as if it might grown into something. This too gave him vague reflections of memory, an image of ibis chicks he'd disturbed with his father whilst hunting for ducks in the marsh as a child. Quizzically, he turned further, to observe both his chest and the strange lumps on his back at the same time. Yes, the new-formed muscle stretched back from his heightened sternum to these, these, pinions on either side of his spine.
This was not good, he was sure of it.
The first dawning light of the sun broke through the low clouds, and a single beam of light cascaded through the frosted bathroom window, a warm ruddy glow encompassed him as he stood there, transfixed by the strangeness of his own body. Something musical happened inside his head. The light triggered some soul-deep harmony, the dawning of a new day, and his strange new physical manifestations combining to provoke some reality-shaking shift in his consciousness. A feeling of power swelled in his being, and the pain from the buds on his shoulders and the stretching of his chest subsided, as if his mind and body now worked in concert rather than in opposition. The light enveloped him, caressed him and warmed him in a way nothing had armed him before, like a gentle lover's caress, the Universe embraced him. The vaguest sense of a divine plan, a cosmic scheme in which he was embroiled, drifted in the periphery of his consciousness, a sense of rightness flowed through his emotions. Then it was gone. The sunlight was just a stray beam of illumination, the mirror was just a plate of silver-backed glass, and he was just a man, with a sore chest and aching shoulders. Yet, he felt lightened, the burden of his fear somehow lessened, as if he had been told Fear not, for there is a reason! Turning, he beheld Maria standing in the doorway, gazing at him.
"What just happened?" she asked, "I heard music."
Cereal, milk and a white bowl flecked with gold, at least that was all it was flecked with after he washed the sticky marijuana and hashish crumbs out of it.
"So, like, you've got some growth thing on your back and some lump on your chest? And you hear music in the Dawn light? Are you sure you don't want to tell me what this is about?"
Maria sat across from Mitch at the table, heartily inhaling waffles with syrup in a decidedly un-Goth joy over food. Certainly all other self-proclaimed Goths that Mitch had met had been pale, anaemic, imitations of people not jolly great slaves to consumerism and hedonism. OK, maybe he had met a few hedonistic Goths, but nothing compared to the joyful eating machine that was Maria.
"I can't tell you Mistress", why he allowed her to demand that pronoun from him he never could quite figure out, "all I can do is ask your help, a place to rest. I place myself in your capable hands, and beg only you allow me my privacy."
"I want to watch you shower", she said in what he suspected was only half a jest, "I'll have you under my roof, and in my domain only if I can watch."
He looked up at her across the table, and only now noticed the quivering of her lip that signified her nervousness at her own boldness. Perhaps it signified her concern for him as well.
"And I want to see those lumps before a doctor too! How long have you had them!?"
Something fiercely defensive woke in his hind-brain, demanding he rebuff her orders in the bluntest of terms. With difficulty he swallowed a fierce retort back.
"Maria, I would not ask if I wasn't in real need. I'm your friend. Should I expect every time I come to your doorstep to have to defend my virtue like a blushing virgin? And I'll have the lumps looked at when and if I choose. I'm not going to be bossed around, Maria, I'm serious about this."
Maria grinned, her plump face exhibiting a shyness she rarely showed, despite her words.
"Can't blame a girl for trying, sexy! You come around, knocking on the door in the late hours of the night, looking like you've run from a mental institute, with the wrist-band to match! And you terrify the shit out of me with your strange growths and moanings in your sleep! Who is Simeon, why are you so frightened of him?"
"It's safer you don't know, Maria, believe me, you just don't want to be too involved in this crap. Just give me a night or two to catch up, study, and I'll be out of your hair."
"Study!?" Maria slammed her fork down, splashing syrup across the table in her anger, "I bloody well knew it! It's that book again isn't it? You've found out more! Tell me, tell me!"
Mitch stood, took a cloth from the sink, although he doubted it was any cleaner than the table itself, and began to mop up the syrup as he spoke.
"You know I came here only a few weeks ago, with that Book. I told you my tale of the Bookstore. I didn't tell you what happened there, not all of it. I said I witnessed a murder. I did. It was the proprietor..."
"I knew that silly!" interjected Maria, "I gathered as much from the news reports the next day!"
"... it was Simeon who did it," continued Mitch, "and now he pursues me."
Maria's fork dropped from her fingers landing with a soft phut! in her unfinished waffle.
"How dangerous is he?" she enquired as she leant across the the table, "Why don't you go to the police?"
Mitch threw the soiled cloth back into the sink and looked at the poor effort he had made of cleaning the table, not that Maria seemed to care.
"Very dangerous, Maria. He is a man of many ... unique talents. The book is part of it, of that much you are correct. He wants it, I want it, it may be the only hope of stopping him."
"What are you talking about? Stopping him from what? What do you care? You should keep as far away from this man as possible! If he's as dangerous as you are hinting at ..."
"He's as dangerous as that and more. I saw him ... kill. It chills me even now to think of the manner of that act. Without a touch, he killed. Maria, I have to find a way to stop him chasing me, but I feel something else as well, for some reason I'm involved in this, and it was meant to be so. I fear I have no choice."
"You're an idiot Mitch, but I love you, you know that." It was the first time she'd said that, although he had always known it. She reached across the table and grasped his thin hand in her pudgy one.
"If you need my help, you have it. Just don't be surprised if you catch me watching you in the shower. You're still a sexy man, Mitch, and I deserve a peek. Besides, all Goths are voyeuristic, didn't you know?"
The day passed. Mitch, deep in study, barely noticed the passage of time, some realisation of urgency had struck him in the dawn's light and now he applied himself to the Book with a diligence he had been unable to summon before. The book was hard to study. It wasn't just the fact that the alphabet used was foreign to him and the language unheard-of, gifted to him by some agency he neither knew nor understood. It was the fact that it was both history and manual at the same time, with no clear division between the two. History flowed seamlessly into direct instructions for ritual and at times ritual appeared to be interrupted by historical tale, seeming like the author had been unsure himself as to whether the events described really happened.
Regardless of its bizarre style, the book was rich in exotic fact and esoteric meaning. Rituals described as banishing and preparatory were listed as absolutely mandatory, reminding him of sections of other books he had encountered, The Lesser Key of Solomon, the Grimoire of Armadel. Yet in the following section reference was made to these preparatory rituals being discarded with entirely without any adverse effect on subsequent workings. Many pages described the creation of certain tools to aid a magician or priest, a ring, a staff, a hat, a robe, and other rituals made reference to items never described elsewhere. What was the Lapis Rod of Beguiling? And throughout, reference made to some Elder Creature, if he was pronouncing it correctly, an "Ahkrabu". It appeared to be a mythical creature somewhat like a centaur, but scorpion and man rather than horse and man. References to Shammash, the Summerian Sun Deity, featured, but only ever as a kind of patron god, sometimes described as fragile and needy of protection.
Truly, this book was unlike any other he had encountered, and yet, he found many resonances with things he HAD seen. Similar rituals, and known deities, albeit altered and bizarre.
Mitch experimented with minor incantations, always with Maria at a safe distance or missing entirely. He'd frequently wait until she trundled off to work or was engaged in some engrossing pastime before he would gently chant the words and draw the sigils. This lasted until she found out what he was doing and refused to go to work at all. His progress fascinated her. In this wise he gathered additional insights into why Simeon wanted this book so badly.
It seemed the Ahkrabu were a real species of chimeric creature, somehow blessed or cursed by the gods on some unknown antiquity to be the living barrier between the knowledge of the Gods and the humans who worshipped them. With the lower body of a scorpion and the torso of a human, the Ahkrabu would be an abomination to behold. They were armed with bows of stressed granite, unlikely though that seemed and likely an exaggeration, with which they never missed their target, and used to great effect in defending their charge. Their charge was simply this; To guard the knowledge of the Gods from the eyes of Humanity.
The book gave the rituals and tools to control, or deny, the Ahkrabu's power.
With such knowledge, and if it was all true, Simeon would be able to bridge the gap between the heavens and the earth, and gain the knowledge of the Divine, becoming near-divine himself. Who knows what such a twisted man as Simeon might do once that was attained!