Memory 116
He cannot see through the column of black fog that surrounds him, but he knows he is falling.
He does not know if he is spinning, or if his mind is bursting with exultant joy. Those symbols, those desperate scratchings on the floor of his cell, they worked. He was a prisoner, but now he is free.
The spinning intensifies. Bile tickles the back of his throat. He clenches his jaw but at last, his mouth is forced open, and from his lips spews… black fog. It dances around him, flowing through the tangles of his unwashed hair and twisting around his bleeding fingers. This darkness, this foul miracle, is within him as well.
It is a fascinating sensation, and he does not resist. He wants nothing more than to give himself over to it. The world as he knew it is gone, easily forgotten.
But no. I will not lose myself. I am Vittorio Toscano, Lord of Portoscuro. Scholar, collector of forgotten knowledge. I seek the Great Observers who live beyond existence. I want to know all they know.
The freefall stops, and his feet find solid ground. The last wisps of fog escape his mouth. The column of fog lifts, and in its place stands a derelict village. Much smaller than his seaside domain. This is not the paradise he had read about.
But of course. The pursuit of knowledge is never so easy.
Wherever I am, this is just the beginning of my journey. I have not lost myself yet. The word lingers in his mind. Yet.
Memory 117
Vittorio’s eyes water from the stench as he explores the main street. What manner of village was this? The street is made not of stone, but sand, and even the most portentous buildings here – the tavern, the jail, the banking house – are small, humble things made even smaller and humbler in their abandoned state.
The first sign of life Vittorio encounters is in the lodging house. A huddled mass, shivering in the entryway, at the base of a collapsed staircase. Excuse me. Tell me, what place is this?
The huddled mass raises its face to him, but all he sees is a void.
You wonder about the smell. I smell it too. What does it smell like to you? He knows the answer to her question but dares not say it. He backs away and she falls to his feet, grabbing his ankles. Don’t go. He knew you were coming. He told me to keep you as long as I could.
Arms emerge from behind and grab him around the chest, throwing him against the wall. Vittorio feels the whole of the lodging house shudder. He falls to the floor. The building crackles all around as the attacker straddles Vittorio and pulls something from beneath his draping robe.
I am unarmed. I have nothing. The robed man doesn’t listen. In his hand is a mechanical nightmare, a torture device from another world. Vittorio bats at the man, to no avail. I am weak. I am hungry.
Beams of wood fall from the ceiling. The robed man rips open Vittorio’s threadbare doublet and buries the device into Vittorio’s chest.
He screams. An unnatural drone fills his ears. Dust falls from above and stings his eyes. This building is collapsing. I must act quickly.
Vittorio digs his fingernails into the soft wooden floor and carves some well-remembered symbols.
Memory 118
The world changes as he finishes scratching the symbols. The robed man looked up at a falling beam and was gone just as quickly. Vittorio had lost sight of the woman long before then.
The attacker. Such aimless violence. From a young age, Vittorio saw violence as a form of madness. A symptom of some illness that most could not overcome. Even his most trusted knight, the Hungarian, could not resist the allure of violence.
Only when his mind stops wandering does he hear the rustle of leaves blowing in the wind. Dark sunlight breaks through the canopy above. A forest.
Vittorio rises and pain shoots through his chest. His chest! His injury! The robed man with his instrument of pain. He must have injected me with poison.
He opens his ripped doublet and looks at the marks above his breast. He was neither stabbed nor injected. The robed man had drawn on him. Vittorio remembers reading of the Celts, of their methods of creating permanent art on their bodies. He remembers a word that he’s never heard before. A word from a time beyond his own. Tattoo.
But why would his assailant do this? He looks at the marks. They are incomplete – the lodging house collapsed, and Vittorio escaped, interrupting his work.
Perhaps these marks have powers akin to my symbols. He copies them into the dirt of the forest floor and waits. The gentle breeze against dense leaves. No other response.
His focus drifts. Vittorio has not eaten in many days, and his body aches with hunger. I could barely fight off the robed man. Any greater threat will be the end of me.
He forages and forces himself to eat a handful of leaves and berries. They burn his throat, but he feels some strength restored. This won’t last. I need more. Perhaps a hearty meal awaits him in another realm.
He stops before he can dig the symbols in the dirt. Through the trees, voices scream. Vittorio runs to the sound. He knows he shouldn’t. But these screams sound different. They sound like home.
Memory 119
The screams dig through Vittorio’s ears, into his very mind, as he runs through the forest. I know these voices. He nearly falls into a pit of thorny brambles, so deep is his desperation. He studies the pit and marvels at its depth for just a moment before the screams call him again.
Vittorio knows these voices. Knows their screams. The screams of his people as Kovacs brought terror and despair to his domain. For days, Vittorio heard nothing else from his cold, dark cell. Only screams as the people he swore to protect were slaughtered, one by one.
A clearing. He passes and the screams linger at his back. He returns to the clearing and looks down. What is this illusion at my feet? A baby bird, perhaps fallen from a nest. The bird opens its beak, and the screams of Portoscuro come forth.
Vittorio kneels over the wretched thing. He blinks, and the bird is in his hands. He studies it. So small, so withered. His stomach calls to him. There is meat on this creature. It screams again. Stop. Stop screaming.
Its neck must be so delicate. A pinch of your fingers and the screams will stop. And you will eat.
His hands tremble. They close in on the bird. It opens its eyes for the first time. Big, wet eyes, full of soul and sadness. He stops himself. How easy it is to give into the madness. A little hunger, and I was ready to kill a harmless little bird.
No. I will not lose myself.
Vittorio relaxes his grip, and the bird sinks its beak into his palm. He tries to drop the creature. It hangs from his hand, tearing his skin and drinking his blood, a vile leech that grows with every gulp. At last, he grabs the thing and throws it into the forest.
The grown beast returns in a billow of red and black fog, a charging behemoth with wings that cut through the trees and a beak dripping with blood.
There is nowhere to hide. The brush is too thick to navigate but the beast moves is great strides without effort. Vittorio runs along the path. A tremor in his legs and he stumbles. A plan forms in his mind. Keep going. I can feel that thing’s breath on me.
The beast snaps at his back. The sound of cloth tearing. The dull pain of blood welling.
He turns a corner moments before the beast and sees his plan before him. Life and death condenses to a single moment. An action made quicker than the speed of thought.
He avoids the pit of thorny brambles, but the beast, too immense in size and weight, cannot stop itself from falling in. The sound of a bone cracking, an otherworldly shriek, and Vittorio remembers his darling horse, Domenico.
Vittorio watches the beast writhe in the pit, clawing at the edges but unable to gain purchase. He sits, eats more leaves, and stares the beast in its great, wrathful eyes without blinking.
The search for the Observers continues.
In his own time, Vittorio grabs a stick, carves his symbols in the dirt at his feet, and leaves the beast behind.
Memory 120
Vittorio examines his surroundings in this new realm, and he weeps.
It is unlike any larder he has ever seen, but he recognises it as such all the same. Fruits and vegetables, withered and wilting. Dried meat curing as it hangs from the ceiling. Mounds of pungent butter resting atop an empty ice box, wheels of cheese stacked on shelves. Water dripping from a rusty spigot.
He ignores the rotting produce and focuses on the well-aged meat and cheese. The capricious symbols have granted me a modicum of kindness this time.
Vittorio remembers the sight of wild dogs tearing at a doe's carcass when he was a young boy. The only thought that forms in his mind as he eats and drinks in a blind mania. When he returns to his senses, he finally feels the pain of injuries sustained. The bird beast tore a nasty wound in his hand and ran its beak across his back.
He washes his black-red hands from the spigot, thankful the water runs clear. His doublet hangs from him in tatters, only fit to use as a rag to scrub his back.
Vittorio pulls the doublet off his shoulders and starts at the sight of markings on his chest. More than just the small tattoo given to him by his assailant – how long ago was that now? –the tattoo has grown, with even more symbols and markings spreading outward, that first tattoo the origin point.
He forgets about cleaning his back and studies the new tattoos. They look familiar, and it takes little time for Vittorio to recall a page of runes in his studies. He recognizes some of those runes here, growing across his chest, to his shoulder.
Is the tattoo growing still?
Memory 121
The single door out of the larder is locked. No matter. As Vittorio draws his well-worn symbols on the tile floor using a jar of jelly, Vittorio prays that his next destination will be as fortuitous as this one.
Still no closer to finding the Observers, Vittorio finds himself in a dimly-lit room. The floor and walls are dirt. I am underground. Dirt falls from above and the ground quakes. A loud explosion from up above.
I cannot stay here. He shivers. I am all but naked. His eyes land on a pile of discarded clothes. Some leather, some coarse linen. All of it sweet relief.
The outfit he chooses is oversized, but immediately brings warmth. Another explosion, and Vittorio brushes the dirt off him as it rains down.
Best to leave now. Vittorio digs his fingers into the dirt wall, but stops when he realizes he is not alone.
Put your hands above your head. Now.
The voice is coarse and clicks as if its speaker has something caught in its throat. Vittorio obeys the directive. Turn. Face me.
Vittorio does, and finds himself before a feathered soldier, red and black, with a pronounced beak and eyes of screaming gold. In this thing’s hand is a weapon beyond Vittorio’s understanding.
What are you? Vittorio already knows the answer. The bird beast he left in that forest pit, screaming in pain. This soldier looks like the spawn of some profane alliance between that beast and something on the verge of being human.
The soldier is soon flanked by others of its kind and they lead Vittorio down a narrow hallway. They prod at his back as they force him up a stairway to an open door in the ceiling. A door to the surface. Vittorio flinches at the explosions that dot the landscape up above. A battle rages in the distance, and around him uniformed beasts corral other humans into cages and carts. Prisoners of war.
In my escape from captivity, I find myself a prisoner once again.
A familiar screech rings through the air, and the beastly soldiers stop their plunder. They drop to their knees and look up at the large, winged behemoth, resplendent in its red and black feathers, its leg healed but twisted, as it soars overhead.
Memory 122
His hands are bound behind him, the tips of his fingers just barely able to touch each other. The thick post scratches his back as he struggles and Vittorio feels the old wound, from how long ago he cannot remember, opening again. The great behemoth had dug its sharp beak into his back once upon a time. Now it wants to complete the hunt.
Other prisoners scream nearby. Vittorio tries to ignore them. He stretches his arms behind him as far as they can go. It is only rope that binds him here. Rope can stretch. Rope can break.
I will carve the symbols into the palm of my hand if I have to.
The soldiers bark a command, and one of the prisoners screams louder than the others. Don’t look. Focus. Even with his eyes turned downward, Vittorio can feel the tremble of the ground and see the flurry of feathers as the behemoth lands. Don’t look. A whip of its neck and the screaming prisoner is gone from his post.
The behemoth gulps, its open beak turned to the sky. Don’t look.
I should have killed that thing when I had the chance. I should have made a fist around that wicked little hatchling and squeezed until it stopped moving. This hellscape is my doing.
How many have died because of my mistakes?
He hears the people of Portoscuro as he heard them in his cell. I hardly remember that cell now. But I remember those screams. I was the cause of those screams. I brought Kovacs to my land. I thought I could control him. I thought I could hold sway over the realms. I thought I could find the Observers.
All he knows has been wrong. And all around him are the consequences of his failings.
Something snaps. His hands fall to his sides. How did I manage to sever that rope?
The behemoth is above him now, looking down at his final offering. The other prisoners are gone. Only one remains.
Vittorio looks up at his old nemesis. His bones tell him to run. To carve his symbols into the dirt and escape. But why? Let there be one last death, so that no one else needs to suffer from my mistakes.
The behemoth plunges its head downward, and all is dark and silent.
Memory 123
It’s you. I remember you from long ago.
Vittorio wakes to a kind face looking down at him. A familiar face. She who was once a void to him but now is something else.
Yes, I remember. I was here once. Vittorio sits up and brushes debris from his legs. The collapsed staircase. The fallen ceiling. What was this?
The lodging house. She brushes his face with twisted fingers. I was devoured. Consumed.
Yes. As was I. He can feel her pity. The winged demon is a creature of the abyss. It feasts on worlds, although I hear on the wind there are creatures even stronger than it. With greater appetites.
The room shudders. Something churns outside the lodging house.
I must get out of here. I must get outside. Vittorio is on his feet, hands reaching for the door. Even great force does not move it. Here, let me. The woman puts a gentle hand on the door and it obeys.
But there is no outside on the other side of the door. More memories stir within him. A place not as distant as the lodging house but still far away. The smell of the place is what is most familiar. Rotting fruit and vegetables. Curing meat. Wheels of cheese torn to pieces. A rusty spigot where the water still runs clear.
I was hungry, and I gorged myself in this larder. Why is it here?
Another realm devoured. She holds the rotting food. Vittorio rests against the wall. What is done is done. There is no escape.
What is this? The woman runs her hands over his tunic. It is open and off his shoulders in a swift motion. Her hands touch his chest. His arms. These markings.
Vittorio looks at his own body and sees how far the tattoos have grown. They extend across his torso, down the length of his arm. The woman walks around him, running her hands across his back. Are they there as well?
The man in the robe. He planted the seed in your chest. How long it has taken to grow.
Vittorio dresses himself again. My attacker. Is he here? No. He left me shortly after you did. He left a note. Perhaps he knew you’d return for it when the time was right.
She hands him a roll of papyrus. No greeting marks the page. No message he can understand. Only more symbols. This madman did not even finish his writing. Vittorio has seen enough of these symbols to know the symbols on the page are incomplete.
Incomplete. The word awakens a memory. The tattoo the attacker left on him. The seed in his chest. Vittorio had tried using those symbols, but they too were incomplete.
The blood on his fingers is dry. He licks the old wounds, picking at scabs and creating new red ink. Vittorio drags his finger along the papyrus, drawing the seed that was planted in his chest. The message is a puzzle to be solved, and that first tattoo is the missing piece.
The room around him shimmers. Somewhere in his mind’s eye, he sees a place far away. A menacing hook hanging from a stand. The man in the robe. Reaching out. Urging him onward.
Memory 124
Vittorio paces, his mind a flurry of revelation.
It was him. I’ve spent time beyond measure in search of the Observers, when an Observer had found me long ago. All I wanted was to share in their knowledge, and all this time it has been on my body. He didn’t attack me. He gave me a gift.
He chose me.
Vittorio feels the woman watching him as he marches into the larder. All he can hear is the low rumble and churn from outside. He finds a knife in a drawer.
My journey must go on. The Observer chose me. I will get out of here, and I will find his realm. I just need to copy his mark.
The papyrus was in his hands, but now is gone. I must be losing my mind. He tries to remember the symbols in their entirety, but they fade from view like waking from a dream. He lets out a bitter laugh and reminds himself of what he already knows: the pursuit of knowledge is never so easy.
The old symbols will not do. They never gave me the power to travel as I please. The realms they brought me to were random, often hellish. Somewhere on my body is the key to complete control over travel across realms. Somewhere on my body are the symbols that will bring me to this Observer, to his realm, and the perfect world that lies out there somewhere.
He stands in front of a shattered mirror, studying his chest, torso, arms, and back. The scrawls are illegible, unfamiliar. I must be very careful. These symbols could spell my ruin if I do not use them correctly.
That’s when he sees it. The familiar swirls and circles he has used so far. The symbols for traveling between random realms. But there’s more. Jagged lines and smaller shapes, like accents, around the symbols. Modifying them. Changing their meaning.
Clarity strikes. This is the key I’ve been looking for.
Vittorio drives the knife into the wall of the lodging house and begins to carve. A guttural scream vibrates through the room. Blood wells from the carvings and runs down the wall.
I have never been violent before. Never in my life have I ever harmed anyone. I’ve never had to. Such was the luxury of my life as I knew it. But that life is behind me now.
He runs the knife across the wall with precision, remembering every accent and nuance he never knew he needed. The walls shudder. The blood does not stop. The wailing intensifies.
Vittorio feels her lips by his ear. The power is yours now. For now.
And then she is gone.
Memory 125
The sun sets over the distant hills and the air smells of sulphur as Vittorio opens his eyes and looks upon a simple wooden shack.
The ground squishes beneath his feet. Vittorio looks around and finds he is standing on a mound of blood, offal, and red and black feathers. Between him and the shack lies the head of the damned behemoth, blood pooling at the base of its severed neck.
Vittorio raises his head to the sky and lets out a triumphant cry. The creature of the abyss lays dead at my feet and I remain.
The Observer wanted me to come here. The symbols in their completion brought me here, to this shack. A steppingstone to his own realm? I need to know more.
Vittorio opens the door and finds a staircase descending into the earth.
The room at the bottom of the stairs is dark, too deep for light from the setting sun to reach. Vittorio feels his way through the silent dark until he can see the shape of a candlestick. The touch of his hand brings it to life, a flame dancing alight on its wick.
A self-lighting candle. Ingenious.
Beneath layers of dust and cobwebs, Vittorio recognizes steel machines, wooden puzzle boxes, and jars of exotic fluids.
He searches the room for more candles to light until all is illuminated.
The workshop. Exactly as it was described in my research. Centuries of otherworldly knowledge contained on ornate shelves. The Observer chose me, and it is from here that I will follow him to his realm.
A book on the desk catches his eye. The symbols on the cover. The symbols on his chest. They’re not identical, but they are close.
Vittorio brushes the dust off the book and is startled by the texture of the pages. Old, tough leather, every single page, each of them covered with tattooed symbols.
He drops the book and backs away from it. No. Not pages. Skin. Human skin bound into a book. Tattooed skin just like his.
Vittorio stands alone in the workshop and feels the vastness of the realms closing in on him. "
