Chapter 2: The Unseen Hole

  Ok, new rule to the cosmic horror gamebook: it turns out that being a flawless hole in the universe is as subtle as being a guy in a leather coat.

  The object in the canopy, which I had come to call in my mind Mr. Peepers, was not staring at me.

  That was clear in my new soul-compass, the Astrolabe. The Aetheric Shroud was not a cloak, it was an area of paradox. A glitch. And Mr. Peepers, with his twelve cold eyes, was looking at the glitch. It was as though you were looking at a spot of rotten pixels on the screen; you can not see what is in it, but you can most certainly notice the place where reality has dropped out.

  My head was counting like a drum. Four minutes and thirty seconds.

  The obsidian limb, which is as sharp as it is a razor, which broke off of the main body of the creature, and which cut me not, but the ground just in front of me. It was a probe. A question put in the language of sharp things. Are you really there?

  I didn't wait to answer. I moved.

  I was happy that my body was one of the few things that did not make no sense. My high Egress was not a figure in my new internal stat sheet, but the natural movement which had enabled me to play London rooftops like a playground. In this case it was that my feet took hold on greasy, shiny moss. It implied that I was able to jump off a vibrating car-sized mushroom, with my synth-leather coat puffing out behind me. I was not only running, but I was moving through the alien world, a ghost in both senses of the word.

  With a scream that cut the air, a sound as of grinding glass, I felt it shaking in my bones. Mr. Peepers fell out of the canopy, and its vine-like legs received it like a falling shadow. It was fast. Horrifyingly fast.

  Three minutes and twelve seconds.

  I dared to take a peep at the Astrolabe with the eye of my mind. The field of shimmering above my central Star was wavering, and the countdown was a physical strain. Something was going on, however. I was walking, I was seeing and smelling and touching this crazy, living forest, when the Astrolabe was at work. It was creating a profile, a template of a new type of lie.

  I slipped beneath a low root which was throbbing with green light, another piece of obsidian cutting a gouge in the wood where my head had been. I was a blender of a parkour artist. This was not a long term survival plan. I needed cover. I had to have a place to ride the transition.

  In front of us the forest floor fell down a chasm. One gigantic tree had fallen over it, and its trunk was broader than a highway. Its bark was a carpet of radiant fungi, and formed a pattern of light and shadow, which was in a state of flux. An ideal spot to lose sight of. An ideal spot in reality to conceal a glitch amidst a million other points of light.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  I drove on the accelerator, my legs were pumping, the weird, damp air scalding my lungs. Mr. Peepers followed me, and its multiple-eyed stare was fixed on the moving spot of nothing which was me.

  One minute remaining.

  A sighing chime sounded in my ear. The Astrolabe, my new soul-bound life coach, was simply telling me, 'Ok, I did my job. Your turn not to get filleted.'

  [Resonance Sampling Sufficient Tier 1 Veil]

  The safety net was there. Now I only needed to live through the fall.

  I threw myself down on the toppled tree-trunk, and my feet were slipping over the moss that was glowing. The abyss beneath was a vertigin fall into utter, silent darkness. Mr. Peepers came down on the log behind me, and the old wood groaned under its weight. Two limbs of obsidian were raised, and were about to impale the paradox in the wood.

  Ten seconds.

  I didn't run further. I fell, holding on to the end of the log and swinging myself beneath it. I was suspended, with my fingers screaming in protest, and the abyss gawking up at me.

  Three. The cold, dead sensation of the Aetheric Shroud started to dissipate, as in the sun the mist evaporates.

  Two. Mr. Peepers looked over the edge, its mask-like face showing alien bewilderment. It may sense the glitch wearing away.

  One.

  I channeled my Lumen into the structure inside my head that suggested not a weapon, but a catalyst. I paid attention to the template that the Astrolabe had constructed, a cluttered, partial, yet working resonance map of this world.

  The chilly stature of the Shroud disappeared. I was absolutely, totally naked a moment. My soul, unrefined, was a light in the darkness.

  All the twelve eyes of Mr. Peepers were opened. It had me.

  Then, the new power took hold. It was not coldness, but a warm, chameleon-like hum. The Veil of Native Resonance was a second skin that had fallen upon me. My dissonant hum was hushed, flattened, and substituted with a low-fidelity imitation of the song of the forest itself.

  I had become to the monster above an interesting paradox and then a patch of moss. My soul signature was no more a siren but another voice in a world of voices.

  Mr. Peepers tilted its head. It was examining the lower side of the log, and it looked straight over my head. The danger in its position was imminent, and had become mere, animal bewilderment. The glitch was gone. The prize was gone. It pulled its limbs back with a last, angry chitter, and scurried away into the wood, vanishing into the radiant canopy.

  I stood still a long time, with my breath stuck in my throat, my arms trembling with adrenaline. I was alive. I was concealed, not because I was invisible, but because I was perfectly uninteresting patch of moss.

  At last I was able to drag myself back to the log, my heart pounding with my ribs. I was alone, in the centre of a chasm, on a world which was making a vigorous effort to kill me. But I was alive.

  I took my first real breath of alien air and allowed myself a grim, shaky smile. "Okay," I whispered to the glowing forest. "Round one goes to the rookie."

  That’s when I heard it.

  I thought it was the chittering of a monster or the hum of the forest at first.

  But, No.

  It was music.

  Faint, clear, and coming from the other side of the chasm. The sound of a flute, playing a melody that was achingly sad and impossibly beautiful.

  And I realized my first contact wasn't with a monster. It was with whatever was sitting in the darkness, playing a song for the things that hunt in the twilight.