I squinted into the dust, feeling it sting my eyes. A face came into focus here and there, frozen in an expression of torment. They were like the souls and spirits I’d encountered before, but these were torn and shredded, twisted. They were just as affected by the proximity of the rifts as my Weird was.
“What happened to you?” I asked the cloud of souls. “Why are you here?”
We came.
We crossed the barrier.
We saw.
And now we wait.
“Wait for what?” I said, trying to be patient. If souls decayed even in the Deadlands, it must be exponentially faster.
For the end.
The end of Fae and man.
The end of days.
The end of the stars and planets.
The end of all things.
“I want to see Nylarthotep,” I said again. “And I want to see him now.”
I sensed a shift, and the spirits drew back. I wondered if they were like me, humans with a Weird trapped by the Gates, or if they’d been tricked by Fae into walking through hexenrings only to end up here, or simply stumbled off the edge of the page, the way people did in the old stories, the ones people furtively passed around when the Proctors couldn’t hear.
It was easy to forget there’d been a world without magic before the first Storm exploded into the human world. A world where these things were just stories for children, distilled from stories for adults, to keep the darkness beyond the campfires out there, where it belonged.
But there had been, and these people were relics of it.
“You’re a rare case,” a voice said. It was textured and cultured, a rich velvet curtain of a voice, far from the rasp or growl I’d expected. “Most men would give up their lives to avoid meeting me face to face.”
“I’m not most,” I told the voice. “And I’m not a man.”
A laugh. Low, like a warm finger dragged across skin. “Then approach, girl who is not like most. Tell me why you seek the favor of the one who waits.”
I took one step, then another. It wasn’t like I could turn around. Reality was so distorted, I wouldn’t be able to find my way back without opening a Gate, and I couldn’t imagine that, in the Deadlands, a new Gate would lead anywhere good.
The distortion grew stronger as I approached, and the rifts fell away. My stomach lurched. I’d never gotten close to another being who could manipulate reality the way Tesla or I could. There was probably a good reason for that, because this was the worst I’d ever felt and still managed to stay conscious.
“Does it bother you?” Nylarthotep asked. He sat in a simple black chair with a high back, a robe similar to the ones the Faceless wore swirling to hide his figure. He wore a cowl emblazoned with the Yellow Sign. It wasn’t embroidered or painted, though—Nylarthotep’s robe was made of the universe, and the Yellow Sign was a slice of a sun, churning and flaming upon his brow.
I felt dizzy looking at him, and it wasn’t just because the vortex of unreality had grabbed me with its iron grip and refused to let go. I’d never seen anything like Nylarthotep up close. He felt like the Old Ones.
Worse, though. The Old Ones were incredibly ancient, but they were neither good nor evil. They simply existed, in the way of planets and the universe, an existence that could no more be denied than sunlight could.
Nylarthotep pulsed with malignance. If you could describe evil and malice as a figure, as a feeling, it would be this. This nausea, this panic, my hindbrain screaming that I was close to something no human was ever meant to see.
“Of course you bother me,” I said. “I’ve been dreading meeting you ever since I decided to come here, back in San Francisco.”
“I do not know this place, San Francisco,” Nylarthotep intoned. He shifted, and the stars in his robe canted and re-sorted themselves into new constellations. “I have no knowledge of the human world. When I was sent here, the Iron Land did not yet exist.”
“I want you to release a soul from your grasp,” I said. “Just one. Surely you can spare that.” I figured getting down to business might stop him from staring at me from beneath his cowl. I could feel his eyes. They felt like a sunburn—inexorable and with the sting of permanent damage.
“That’s interesting,” Nylarthotep said. “But the answer is no. The Deadlands are my domain and the souls within are my property.”
He stood, drawing to nearly seven feet tall. I got the sense that there was something inside Nylarthotep’s physical form, something incredibly large, indescribably ancient and aching to be let free. What I was seeing was the watered-down version, and my Weird kicked and screamed at the proximity of the larger thing.
“Please,” I said. “I’m here asking. Not demanding. All I want is Dean.”
“Hmm?” Nylarthotep cocked his head. “Oh, that’s right. I forget you give each other names. Odd. Like cockroaches naming each other.”
I tried to keep calm. If my heart had a beat, it would have been thudding. “I know you rule the Deadlands. That’s why I’m here. I just want you to give me Dean.”
“Rule the Deadlands?” The laughter came again, louder this time. “Girl, I do not rule this place. When the ancients cast me out, they cast me into a void, a place where all the dead came to their own final rest, be it good or ill. There was no unity, no collecting point for souls. What you see around you? This is a manifestation of my will. Of my boredom, of my wrath. I saw the souls, some happy, and I saw that they were weak and could be controlled.”
My mouth dropped open. It was worse than I had suspected. “You don’t rule,” I repeated, letting it sink in. “You … you made the Deadlands?”
“They sprang from my hand. And when the first soul became entangled, I was curious, so I allowed it to exist rather than snuffing it out. Then another, and another. No more happy deaths or simple endings. All souls continue to exist and act as fuel for my world, my land. And I do with them as I see fit.”
I felt like I would faint. Before that, I’d vomit, and fall to the ground, because this revelation was the worst thing I’d ever heard.
“So there really was just a void before,” I said, “where souls could do as they liked.”
Nylarthotep nodded. “There was nothing of greatness. Until me.”
“Then what harm would it do?” I said. My voice was shaking, but I managed to stay upright, and decided to count that as a victory. “You have all this, by the power of your own mind. What difference would one soul make?”
“Because it would not be my will,” Nylarthotep said. “I do not grant requests. Everything that happens—the city, the Faceless, the monsters that live in the wilds beyond, even the Walkers—happens at my will. And when this place ceases to amuse me, I will crush it and make it anew, a sculptor at his clay. The void and the dead are mine to use, forever.”
I had to think fast. I could tell he was almost ready to boot me down one of the rifts and dump me into some airless vacuum.
“A bargain, then,” I said. I’d been expecting it.
Nylarthotep grinned. I saw a flash of white teeth shaped like a shark’s under his cowl. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. “Sit, little human, and tell me of your so-called bargain with the Yellow King.”
I watched as another black throne materialized. The Yellow King beckoned me. “Don’t look so shocked, little human. There was a time I could create entire worlds with a flick of my wrist. I was worshipped by the primitives as a god.”
“But you’re not,” I said. “You’re just drifting through the universe like the rest of us.” I didn’t know what possessed me to back-talk something like Nylarthotep. Maybe I was tired of being treated as if I were small, to be wiped off the map as he saw fit.