The artifact called to me.
The Cursed One gently set the box down amongst the bones. The pyramid began to shake. The stone beneath started to radiate heat. Water formed as the edges of the snow started to recede, revealing the structure's construction. Within seconds, rivulets of water were running off, snow swept away. The pyramid was not made of stone at all, but blocks of organic ivory. Each stone was larger than a man, carved from the tusks or horns of some impossibly ancient thing. Truly this was the Place of Power.
The bones started to shake by themselves. One by one, they rotated and moved, pulling into position, organizing the bits from chaos, taking form. The skull rolled a few times, righting itself as individual vertebrae formed a chain beneath. The jaw opened and closed. The finger bones curled together, clenched spasmodically, and scratched tears in the fabric of the ancient cloth.
"And the knee bones connected to the leg bone, and the leg bones connected to the hip bone," I sang stupidly. Jaeger cracked me alongside my face for interrupting their sacred moment.
The skeleton was whole. Lying on its back, twitching and rattling. Everything in place, but without ligament or tissue to hold it together. The Cursed One glided until he stood over the skeleton.
MY BELOVED, I GIVE TO YOU OF MYSELF. SURELY MY LOVE WILL SATISFY THE PROPHECY OF YOUR MASTERS.
His back was toward me. Almost gingerly, the withering base of tentacles covered the bones. The red cloak was flared wide, covering them as the Cursed One slowly lowered his form to the floor. The cloak settled, concealing the huge lump of oily tissue. There was a horrible squelching noise, like a plunger dislodging a clog. There was a heavy smell of sulfur. The vampire looked on in rapture. The winter air hummed with the power of the artifact. Finally the shape was still.
Man, what I would have given right about then for the use of my arms and a hundred pounds of C4.
Two separate shapes moved under the robe. Jaeger fell to his knees and prostrated himself on the floor, crying out to his master in joy. The Cursed One rose. He did not seem as massive as before. The red cloak was loose, and he was now not much larger than a man. One tentacle reached downward, almost gently, to be offered to another thing. It sat up from the puddle of gore, one arm extended. The tentacle encircled it and pulled upwards. The priestess had returned.
She stood shakily, wobbling slightly, not used to having a physical form. The bones had been coated in the black ichor of the Cursed One, flesh, tendon, and organs replaced by the unnatural mass. She was a human female in shape and structure, but not in texture or material. I could even almost recognize her from the visions, the memory of her flesh had been so perfectly replaced. The cloth that had held her bones stuck to her back, splattered and stained. She tore it away with one hand, then realizing what she had done, brought the hand up in front of her face, slowly opening and closing the fingers, turning it at the wrist to examine herself. Her eyes were crimson pits. She ran her hands over her body, the gelatinous mass twitching and moving.
The Cursed One encircled her in a horrible embrace, their faces melding together in what had to be their version of an impassioned reunion. Tentacles withered and slapped wetly against the ground, splattering me with oily droplets. He pulled away, her arms leaving black stains on his robe, his armor no longer gleaming, but now coated in slime. She stroked her fingers through the front of his face, his tissues parting as she touched the teeth of his yellow skull.
The dead flirt ugly.
MY PRIESTESS. I HAVE DONE AS YOU ASKED. I HAVE CROSSED THE IMPOSSIBLE GAP TO RETURN YOU TO THIS WORLD.
Surprisingly the priestess spoke aloud. Her voice was horrific, bubbling up from fluid-filled sacks, sounding like pouring tar. "My lord, you have done the impossible. Truly the prophecy has been fulfilled."
The conquistador helmet dipped toward Jaeger. The vampire moved in a blur and appeared before its Lord, presenting the ancient battle-ax. The monster took it, wrapping it tightly in its tentacles, and glided closer to me. The artifact was placed on the altar near my head. This was the closest I had been to the device, and I could hear it whispering. Deep inside I could sense the trapped souls, the Old Man, and hundreds-no, thousands-of other trapped sacrifices.
A sound came from the priestess, a horrible noise. It turned into a gurgling chant. The words were familiar and I recognized them from the memory. The concave hills began to quake and the curved sky began to shimmer. The moon was fat and bright overhead. The device rose until it was floating above the altar. It began to slowly rotate. Ancient runes could now be seen on the simple stone as they took on a black light of their own, detaching and floating in air. They formed a sphere of energy that began to grow, approaching my head. I could feel the electricity licking my scalp as the priestess continued her chant. The words made my remaining ear burn, and it felt like somebody was pushing an ice pick into my skull and twisting it.
"Machado. They're using you. You're just a pawn. The Old Ones are just waiting for you to open the path," I shouted. His crimson eyes looked down upon me, but he ignored my feeble attempts to prevent my death.
Koriniha stuttered briefly in her chant, but continued.
"They're going to come through and take over."
The Cursed One readied himself, the blade was lifted, held awkwardly in the tentacles. I screamed in pain as the black energy of the artifact crackled over my skull.
Now remember things you have seen. Remember things I have show you. Is up to you, many things which I not could tell, I have show you. Remember them, and all will be fine.
The words of the Old Man. I focused on them, trying to blot out the pain, the visions, the flashing cruel energy, the upraised blade.
Yet every five hundred years, a man will be born, a mortal with the power to use this device and bend it to his will. You are this man, you are the one who has been prophesied by the Old Ones. The words of Koriniha. In the vision she had looked into Lord Machado's eyes as she had spoken, but had she been speaking to him, or was it a message for me five hundred years later? The thought disappeared as a black whip of energy wracked across my body.
Control of time, space, energy, matter, that kind of thing. Anybody who tries to use it dies, unless you are one of the special people. Albert Lee had spoken about some of the things in the Old Man's journal. But I had used the artifact. I had unleashed a tiny bit of its power in Natchy Bottom. I had destroyed the flow of time, taken five minutes of history and made it as if it had never existed. And though I had been dead at the time, I had lived.
Thou knowest not of thy fate? Of thy place in this world? The question from the Tattooed Man, Thrall. What was my place? Why was I special? Why had he vowed to kill me?
The memory of Lord Machado, enraged, dying, body wracked by wound and fever, attacking the black obelisk, destroying the lines of the prophecy with his fearsome ax. Each glowing line appearing, only to be swept away in a crash of ax blade against obsidian.
He will come
Son of a great warrior
Auhangamea Pitt. The Green Beret legend. To his children he was just a normal man. A stern and distant father. Yet a display case over the family hearth held his Congressional Medal of Honor.
Taught in the skills of the world