The Gates of Madness by James Wyatt

Author:James Wyatt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: D&D, Adult Fantasy, Abyssal Plague, Fiction
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Published: 2011-02-28T22:08:31.443142+00:00

Albric closed his eyes, quieting his thoughts so he could hear the voice of the Elder Elemental Eye. The voice of Tharizdun, he reminded himself, and a renewed thrill of excitement coursed through him. Each time he remembered how his god had spoken through Jaeran, the one-eyed leader of Sigil’s little cult of thieves, he shuddered with a joyful terror.

Jaeran stood at his side now, holding Albric’s arm so he didn’t fall when the vision came. “Even in the City of Doors,” Jaeran said, “finding a way to Pandemonium is no easy task.”

“The Eye will lead us true,” Albric said without opening his eyes. He still didn’t dare to speak the name of his god aloud. He spoke it in his mind, though, imploring the Chained God to lead him.

Tharizdun! he called in his thoughts, and fire surged through his body. Tharizdun, lead me!

Though his eyes remained closed, a landscape suddenly appeared to his senses. It was a realm of madness, where pulsating globules of liquid flesh floated in air, wreathed in blue and purple flames. Lightning flashed among them, forming fleeting connections from one to another as eyes and mouths bobbed to the surface and submerged. Shadows of geometric shapes drifted among the blobs, as if a weak and distant sun careened behind impossible structures erected somewhere beyond vision. A translucent tube stretched out before him, undulating slowly as lightning coursed past it, and Albric realized that its mouth opened right beside him. It was a path, the way he was meant to tread. Though it wasn’t revealed to his senses, he knew that the tube—which reminded him suddenly of a gullet, constricting in pulses that added to its waving motion—opened onto a doorway to Pandemonium.

He shook off Jaeran’s hand and walked into the mouth of the tube, which sprouted teeth like slabs of granite as he passed, ready to close down on any acolyte who proved unworthy.

He felt Jaeran close at his heels, but the others were beyond his awareness—they might have been among the floating orbs of flesh, for all he knew or cared. They were on their own. They would follow or they wouldn’t. Tharizdun would ensure that he had acolytes enough for the rite.

The tube carried him along without any conscious effort on his part. He had no idea what was happening to his body in the streets of Sigil, nor did he care. Perhaps he was walking along the path laid out for him by Tharizdun, or maybe he was traveling outside of space and time. Once or twice, globules of flesh drifted near the path, and lightning danced around him, but the tube seemed to insulate him, and the flesh-blobs couldn’t hinder his progress along the path. Then the tube came to an end, squeezing him out in front of a blazing ring of green flame. Albric opened his eyes.

The wretched tenements of the Hive were nowhere to be seen. He was in a back alley somewhere, but the surrounding buildings were large, clean, and in good repair.

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