Dreams and Possibilities

The catacombs beneath the temple of Vusyn were dark and damp, the sort of place that Kirk’s mother would have told him was haunted by spirits of the damned and cursed by demons. But Kirk MacDuggar had never put much stock in anything his mother told him. He hadn’t seen her in years and he didn’t want to. She was way too much of a buzzkill, always telling him that his way of life was criminal and lamenting that her only son had failed to make her proud as a productive member of society. Stuff like that made Kirk glad she wasn’t around to take a cut of any of the profits he made from heists and looting operations. Most of the time it was boring, run-of-the-mill thievery that occupied his time–stealing artifacts from store-rooms in museums, shoplifting, stripping parked cars for parts, that sort of thing. But every so often he got a tip about ancient treasure in some long-abandoned ruin. Those were the jobs that excited him–and that made him the most money.

Just such a job had brought Kirk to the temple of Vusyn earlier that day. Supposedly there was treasure beyond any man’s wildest dreams hidden somewhere in these derelict ruins, according to the rumors floating around the Daily Butcher, a tavern where Kirk went for beers between jobs. Kirk had scoffed at the description, nicked a map off a better-prepared raider in the tavern, and taken off on his trusty motorcycle to find the temple.

But so far, the temple had been disappointing. There were no stained glass windows or tapestries or even curious religious artifacts in the main worship space, only crumbling stone walls and floors and pews. Even the ivy creeping through the half-collapsed ceiling looked like it had seen better days. The marble altar at the front might have been worth something, but it was too heavy for Kirk to move and too big to load up on his motorcycle, so he spat on it and left it for someone else to take away. He had almost written the place off as a false lead, but then he stepped by chance on a tile that sank under his weight, causing part of the wall to rumble and groan and shift a few inches to one side. Behind it were steps leading down, covered in a thick layer of undisturbed sand and dust. Kirk wasted no time in forcing the wall further open and making heavy boot-prints on the stairs as he rushed below, guided by the powerful beam of his heavy-duty flashlight.

The stairs continued for longer than Kirk wanted them to, twisting and turning and doubling back on themselves as they descended into the depths beneath the temple. He was disappointed to find no murals or writing on the walls, although he wasn’t looking very carefully. Kirk was most interested in gold and jewels, cash hoards and portable artifacts. Anything he couldn’t carry with him wasn’t worth his time. 

Finally the stairs leveled out to a plain dirt floor. Remarkably, there was no water pooling on the floor, despite the dank, musty air. Kirk’s flashlight beam swept erratically around the space, revealing a hallway leading straight ahead with several openings in its walls. The raider moved methodically from opening to opening, taking no care to silence his footsteps. The first opening was just an alcove with a plain stone statue in it but nothing to interest Kirk. The second contained a reliquary that Kirk opened and then discarded, spilling the bones within on the dirt floor. The third contained another statue, the fourth another reliquary, but then the fifth opened into a small room lined with stone shelves, each crowded with clay pots and amphorae. Kirk opened each of these, handling them roughly as none of them seemed to be remarkable in color or craftsmanship. The pots mostly contained scrolls, but Kirk couldn’t read the text in any of them.

“Some dead language or some shit,” he muttered, debating whether he should take any of them back to the surface with him. Scrolls were always a gamble; they were only worth something if the academics in hoity-toity universities didn’t already have any record of whatever was written in them. Kirk preferred to traffic in goods of more certain value. But the amphorae were empty, and pot after pot contained nothing but scrolls. Frustration boiled in Kirk’s chest and he started smashing amphorae on the ground, littering the floor with ceramic shards.

Then, behind an amphora and wedged between two pots, Kirk found something different. His flashlight revealed a rough rectangle of dark brown, dusty leather. Kirk touched it and then recoiled with an unusual bubble of nausea in his stomach, feeling like he’d disturbed a dead body. But he’d never been the squeamish type, and so after belatedly pulling on gloves, he grabbed the rectangle and pulled it off the shelf to get a better look.

An old leather-bound journal with parchment pages sticking out of the top and bottom landed in his gloved hands. A round, whorled lump protruded from the center of the front cover, but no writing of any kind marred the desiccated leather surface. A withered, wrinkled hand extended from the front cover, its long, bony fingers entwined with those of a matching hand from the back cover. The hands, with their dark, jagged nails, held the book closed with a death grip.

“This is weird as fuck,” Kirk said, turning the book over in his hands. He tried to pull a piece of parchment out without opening the book, but the covers were held too tightly together for anything to budge. Kirk took a deep breath, grabbed one book-hand in each of his own, and pulled them in opposite directions. At first nothing happened, but with a creak and a groan and a puff of dust, the decayed fingers of the book-hands gave way. The book should have fallen to the floor, but instead it hovered in midair in front of Kirk. The whorled round thing on the front cover shifted and then leather peeled back from the lump, revealing a glowing, bloodshot eye.

“HOLY SHIT!” Kirk yelped. He tried to scramble away from the book, but his feet were stuck fast to the floor. The room of dirt floor and stone shelves and floating leather-bound book spun around him, faster and faster until blackness engulfed him.

***~O~***

“What brings you here, mortal?” asked a voice that Kirk felt rather than heard, reverberating around him and inside him. His eyes snapped open to reveal darkness shot through with swirling colors in sickly hues. Metallic tendrils of light spiraled through space without rhyme or reason, providing enough light to see that no surface supported his prone form, but yet Kirk was not falling. The swirling colors converged on a single point, where an elderly man sat, looking and not looking at the intruder. Kirk struggled to his feet, trying not to think about the lack of ground beneath his dirty boots, and approached the older man.

His eyes at first seemed mild and kind, but more than a moment’s glance into them made them bottomless and vast yet impenetrable and full of secrets. His hair and beard were long and silver-gray, blowing in a gentle breeze that Kirk could not feel. His robe was at one second plain navy fabric, the next instant nebulas and deep empty space. His body shifted every moment between a solid human form and a mist of swirling infinite colors, festooned with eyeballs.

“Where the fuck am I? What’s happening?” Kirk demanded. He felt certain he could take an old man in a fight, if it came down to it. His hand touched the comforting weight of his pistol hanging from his belt in a holster.

“There is no need for violence here,” the voice told him. The old man’s lips remained still and yet moved with the words that echoed around and through Kirk. The pistol disappeared from beneath Kirk’s fingertips, as though it had never existed.

“Give that back! I need it!” Kirk decided to keep his eyes on the swirling space beyond the old man’s head; focusing on the man himself made his head swim and his stomach uneasy.

“Not here.” The elder paused and sized up the raider in front of him. “You tried to open the high priest’s tome.”

“I didn’t know. There wasn’t writing on it or nothin’.”

“And the hands holding it shut did not give you pause?”

“Can’t tell what it’s worth without opening it.” Kirk’s tone was petulant and unrepentant. The elder arched a silver-gray brow.

“The secrets of that book were not meant for you to know. My high priest gave his soul to me and made himself the book when the end of his life was at hand. Your desecration of his remains pierced my heart and brought you to my domain.” The elder released a heavy sigh, and a wind nearly strong enough to knock Kirk over burst from his form. Kirk stumbled as the wind whipped around him. The elder regarded him with an unreadable expression. “But perhaps some wisdom may yet reach you. Listen well, Kirk MacDuggar.”

“How do you–”

“I am Thizasis, the Ruler of Dreams and Possibilities. I know your dreams of wealth and prestige, of living the easy life, Kirk MacDuggar, and I know what possibilities you have explored to try to make those dreams come true. I have been known by many names by many peoples, Vusyn being one of them. You have come without respect into my temple, desecrated my altar, raided my catacombs–”

“The place is an abandoned dump! Maybe take up your beef with whoever used to worship you there and let it fall apart–”

“You will be silent.”

Kirk tried to protest further but found his lips sealed together by a force outside of his control. His eyes widened in fear. His vocal cords wouldn’t move, either.

“Furthermore, you have broken the Record of the Priests of Thizasis, sealed by the life of my high priest, in pursuit of ill-gotten gain. All these actions I could have excused if there was any sense of wonder or respect for the divine in you. But you treat these impossibilities–” he waved a misty, eyeball-laden arm at the space around them, “–with a complete lack of curiosity and awe. Your senses are stunted, your mind trapped in a…most limiting perspective. You do not deserve the gifts I can give you.”

Kirk wanted to reply, to argue, to protest, but his lips and tongue and vocal cords remained supernaturally still.

Thizasis spoke again in that voice that came from everywhere and nowhere all at once, this time with a cadence that made Kirk’s skin crawl. “Long shall you live, but dull your days shall pass in undistinguished haze. All smiles be banished from your face; your heart henceforth a joyless place shall be until such time as you make others what you most value. And should you selfish still remain, to stone you’ll turn, slow but with pain.”

As the last words of Thizasis’ speech echoed through his domain, space and time began to shift around Kirk. His powers of speech came back to him in a rush and a torrent of profanity left his throat. Colors and light and an elder god’s gaze spun around Kirk, faster and faster, until nothingness hit his mind like a runaway train.

***~O~***

Sunlight warmed Kirk’s face, bringing him out of a nightmare-laced sleep. His eyes fluttered open to reveal blue sky and fluffy white clouds overhead. A crumbling stone edifice loomed near his head. Panic bubbled up inside him and he scooted away from it, then scrambled to his feet with difficulty. His limbs felt strangely heavy. He looked around and knew he should feel happy to be back in the real world, looking at the outside of the temple of Vusyn, but an empty sort of apathy settled in his chest instead. He patted his hip and found his pistol back in his holster, which would have made him smile only hours before, but now his lips remain set in a flat line.

Something buzzing in his pocket kept Kirk from wondering what could be wrong with him. He fished his phone out of his pocket. “Incoming Call from Momma” flashed across the screen. Kirk stared at it for a moment before declining the call. He didn’t feel like dealing with his mother’s scolding while he was on a job with nothing to show from his time in the temple.

As he slid his phone back into his pocket, a stinging ache began in his left earlobe. He touched it, fearing he’d been bitten by a mosquito. His fingers squeezed cold hard stone instead of soft flesh.

Horror bloomed in his chest as Thizasis’s final words to him echoed in his head:

Long shall you live, but dull your days 

shall pass in undistinguished haze. 

All smiles be banished from your face; 

your heart henceforth a joyless place 

shall be until such time as you 

make others what you most value. 

And should you selfish still remain,

to stone you’ll turn, slow but with pain.