The Man From Taured (40 page)

Just then Shaw and Dashiell appeared in the doorway. Both of them looked exhausted and had blood on their faces and heads. Shaw had a huge deep cut across the bridge of his nose. Dashiell looked as if someone had raked his fingernails down his cheek.

"Hello, guys," Noble said, pushing Olivia away. "I know what I am now and what I need to do. Please, take Olivia away from here. Tell her what's going on."

Dashiell put his hand on Olivia's shoulder. He said nothing, but he nodded at Noble. Noble returned the gesture and then he gave a look to Shaw.

"Are you going in?" Shaw asked.

"Yeah, I have to," Noble said. "The original Rift is right here. And I think the Void itself may be a Rift. If I can close it off, maybe I can save the multi-verse. I need you or Dash to stay here, though. I may need some help getting back through.”

"I'll stay," Shaw said.

Noble studied the man's face. Through the blood and the dirt and whatever else was on it, there was determination and terror mixed together. He grasped Shaw's hand and shook it.

Then he turned and faced the mirror.

"Hello, son," the Void said in his mind.

Noble felt the Void substance in of his bloodstream bubbling and gurgling. It was like his skin was alive and moving on its own around his bones. His blood felt as though it were on fire. The world was turning gray and he thought that it was likely some of the Void substance was covering his eyes, making him dark-eyed.

"Hello, father," Noble said. "It's time we met face-to-face. Or, in your case, face-to-black-goo."

"I'm ready," the Void replied. "I'll show you things that you've never seen before."

Noble decided it was enough of the small talk. Without turning back, without another word, he ran toward the mirror. When he got within a foot of the base of it, he leaped into the air. His feet vanished through the mirror and then he was all the way through.

There was that moment of feeling like being turned inside out. His blood burned hotter, as if every single nerve-ending fired at once and he opened his mouth to scream, but found himself unable to.

Then it was over.

Now Noble faced his true father.

The world was black and formless. All around him was the Void. He could not see a thing, but he could sense everything. The darkness was alive, but it was not human. It was not male, nor female. It was the substance of the universe itself, unfathomably old and capable of tremendous things. It was also in tremendous pain, horrible pain.

"Welcome home, son," the Void said directly into Noble's mind.

Noble could still feel his fingers and wiggle his toes. He was here physically, but he was floating, not standing anywhere near anything solid. There was nothing solid here, just nothingness. The Void was the very essence of nothing. At the same time it was a living paradox because it also gave nothing physical form.

There were other things within this darkness. Noble didn't sense them at first, but as the whirlwind of nothingness flowed around him he could hear thing. The sound was so distant, like hearing a radio station that was fading out the further you went from it.

Voices.

Thousands upon thousands of voices. The sheer volume and number was beyond comprehension and Noble put his hands to his head. They were babbling to him in languages that he knew and those that he could not possibly understand. They were of all ages, shapes, nationalities and from untold numbers of dimensions. Most of them were terrified, babbling, wanting to latch on to him so that he could help them. They were lost, wondering where they were, how they got there, why it was so dark and how could they get home? Children asked him for their parents and parents begged him to help them find their lost children.

"Can you hear them?"

"Yes, I can."

"Their screams are beautiful," the Void said. "Their souls stay within me. They stay within me forever and they feed me. Their fear feeds me. Their fear keeps me alive. It is what sustains me."

"What are you? Are you the devil? Are you evil?"

The Void laughed and all around Noble the air shimmered and shook with it. Behind that there were more screams, screams of sheer pain and terror.

"I am what has always been," the Void replied.

"No, I don't believe that," Noble said. "I can feel it. That's not true."

Noble reached out both hands and plunged them into the swirling mass of blackness around him. It was like pushing his hands into a living tornado. It rushed past his fingers, but then he pushed through it with his mind. His mind expanded with new knowledge, seeking more, pushing into the huge mind of the creature, the being, the entity that was all around him. He met resistance, and then pushed harder, and broke through.

Noble cried out and his head rocked back. For the third time that night, visions flooded his mind. There were so many in this case that it was overwhelming. Some of it he had seen before through Whitten's mind, the days when the Void was all there was, all that could be, until the Light came, but then he could see past it, but what was beyond that was utter madness.

There was just one universe and it was a universe of monsters. Giant monsters with faces filled with tentacles, or made from plant matter. Beasts with fangs and claws and giant wings that were used to soar on winds that no longer existed, in a universe comprised of ether, not stars and matter. Giants, taller than anything that ever lived on earth, taller than the tallest mountains, ruling a seemingly endless amount of planets. They ruled them and subdued anything that lived there, living and existing just on the praise and worship of those who they subsumed.

These monsters were at constant war with each other. They flew through millions of miles of space in seconds. They forced those that were their worshipers to fight for them. Then the giant beasts also fought each other, wreaking havoc and destroying the worlds that they fought over.

As the centuries wore on these creatures invented new weapons, new technology and newer methods to wage war. They invented vehicles for transporting armies across the universe.

The universe was chaos to start with, and it was descending even further. These creatures began to lose their physical bodies to become globes of energy with only some rudimentary consciousness holding them together. The slaves rose up to fight their masters, but they were smashed down. It was war, horror, bloodshed all over, all the time. Entire planets were wiped out in seconds, billions of lives ended.

Then the darkness came.

Just like a human who did not remember his or her own birth, one moment there was one universe and it was chaos, and then there was darkness. The darkness came from the edge of that original universe. Perhaps it was some new weapon that had gone out of control. Perhaps there really was some kind of god out there that had just decided enough was enough and that this singular universe needed to be contained.

There were those creatures near the center of that universe who saw the darkness as it spread, blotting out the stars and planets at the furthest end. They tried to create weapons and devices that would save them, but they were out of time. The blackness spread until there was nothing but darkness. The Void was born and it wiped out the universe of chaos.

Except that wasn't quite right. No, it didn't really wipe them out, it put them to sleep. It encased that universe, putting them into a kind of stasis.

From there the multi-verse was born. Although, for centuries there was just the universe of chaos and its envelope of the Void. How long was the Void there to act as a kind of prison? Even it was unsure, but long enough to forget what its purpose was. Long enough for the giant creatures and beings that lived in that universe of chaos to fall asleep, forget their wars and their petty kingdoms. Long enough for the Void itself to gain consciousness.

It was like a sponge. It always absorbed those around it, absorbing their consciousness, dreams and nightmares. Perhaps it was without consciousness at first, but over time it absorbed the chaos it now contained. As those elder gods fell asleep it absorbed their dreams which were those of vengeance, terror, conquest.

The Void forgot its purpose and with those insane whispers echoing in whatever it had that passed for a brain, it began to want power. It wanted more. It wanted to be the one and only thing that existed.

It was then that the Light saw the problem. For Noble, and for the Void, what the Light was remained a mystery. It was the opposite of the Void, but was it God? Was it something that created the universe? That was not clear, really, but the Void felt that was the case. The Light began making universes to encase the Void and it fought back.

This Noble had seen this before. Now, however, he understood it better. The Void had forgotten its purpose and those insane voices whispering in its head resulted in a kind of madness. At the heart of the Void itself was still that universe with its monsters, forever asleep, but always dreaming of awaking and conquering everything that was around it.

The Void had a rift inside of it. It was small. Noble could sense it now. It was a tiny pinhole into that original dimension. That was where the chaos that inhabited the Void's mind existed, its collective consciousness, and was driving it to want more, to destroy.

The Void had been created as a prison. Perhaps by one of those monstrous beings, or perhaps by the Light. It was
unclear, but it was meant to contain, and then had gained its intelligence. Meant to contain the chaos, it had taken it into itself and now it was mad. Utterly mad, but with those voices inside its head, who could blame it?

"I see it now," Noble said. "I see where your pain comes from, Father."

"What have you discovered, Noble?" The Void said. "Have you come to understand why I must conquer that dimension? Have you come to understand my purpose?"

"I do understand your purpose, father," Noble said. "It is you who have forgotten."

"What do you mean?"

Noble was no longer listening. He closed his eyes and sensed that pinhole, that tiny place within this mass of darkness where light emerged. It was light filled with rage and anger, with babbling voices speaking languages that had never been heard by human ears. Then Noble let that Rift, that hole, draw him to it.

"Where are you going, Noble?" The Void asked. "Stop."

The darkness in front of him began forming faces. He saw those who were part of the flight that had brought him into this craziness. Their eyes were filled with fear and they reached out to him. Noble raised his hands and made them vanish. They were illusions designed to distract him. The voices were real, but he tuned them out. They would have peace soon.

Noble felt the darkness within him, reacting to him. The Void was fighting back now, screaming inside his head. Something shoved his shoulders. Something else punched him in the gut. He raised his hands and the darkness erupted from his palms and he fought back, pushing the blackness away from him, allowing him a path, but the Void was everywhere, all powerful in this dimension.

"Do not make me destroy you, my son!" The Void said. "See what I can do. See what I can do for your universe. I bring you peace. I bring you the absolution of nothingness."

"Nothingness brings nothing," Noble replied. "You have a hole, father. You have a hole in your mind and it is driving you mad."

"Join me, don't fight it!" The Void replied, but there was a caution, something akin to worry in that voice.

"If you really wanted to destroy me, you would have," Noble said or, more accurately, thought. "You can't, can you? Something prevents you."

"It's because you are part Light and part Void," a voice entered Noble's head. It took him just a moment to realize it was Orval. "Yes, your grandfather may have had the Void inside of him, but the Void never touched your grandmother, Noble. And everyone is touched with the Light, as well as the darkness that always lurks there. You got both. In fact, you got a larger helping of the Light than the Void. Because, despite its best efforts, your grandfather was not completely corrupted
.
No matter how hard it tries, it cannot create total darkness that will react, behave, reproduce and exist like you do, like the rest of your dimension does. That is why your dimension was created, Noble. It was created by the Light to be the last barrier between it and the total destruction of the multi-verse. It's why the Void cannot simply swarm in there and absorb it all like he has all of the others. Your dimension is the fire-break. It's why we must fight for it!"

Noble could see Orval now. That rascal formed right out of the Void itself, almost coming back into full physical reality. It was like seeing a ghost. Now Noble could see his dimension, Orval's people, all of them looking to the sky and feeling it tremble as the Void tried to bring down all of the walls save for Noble's home. He could see between the dimensions and beyond. He could see young teens born with the ability to control the weather in one dimension and that young girl with the sapphire-blue dress in another. He could see dogs chasing after police men in another, while a mysterious phone rang and rang in yet another, providing a bridge to this side where demons could live and burst through.

All of it was merging. All of it was about to collide and the walls would break and they would all come rushing into the Void, save for one dimension. The fire-break.

His dimension.

Noble reached deep and saw the Light within him. He saw himself as a being made entirely of energy, a swirling vortex of darkness and light. The Void itself was also energy, but dark energy, dark matter. All of the worlds were one, related, with his own consciousness now pushing through each layer, finding more and more energy there. All of it was connected, and within that swirling mass he could see the mind of the creator. The mind that thought up the worlds, worlds where a deadly road race brought hope to the hopeless, where detectives sought missing girls and found nothing but demonic entities in the woods, murder, death, life, love. Each new person created by this one creator, and within that were the creator's thoughts and they were, surprisingly...human.

Noble's mind soared above it all and he reached out, finding Orval and pulling him out of the void substance.

"Help me," Noble said into Orval's mind. "Help me clear a path to the rift."

The darkness rose all around them, reaching at them. All of those dreams Noble had experienced when he was younger about running through a hallway comprised of darkness and the darkness reaching out and biting him came rushing back.
This darkness had teeth.

"I'll do my best!" Orval called back, his thoughts so loud inside Noble's brain.

Noble could see him now. Orval, running ahead, swinging what looked like a sword left and right, chopping away at the Void as it reached out for them. Noble cheered him on while reaching into himself (was he even in possession of a physical body anymore? He had no idea.) and pulled up the light and focused it into a beam that shot from his fingertips. It burned the Void and Noble heard it scream.

There it was! Up ahead was the pinhole, casting off bright white and red light.

Orval was screaming some kind of battle cry in a language that he did not recognize. Orval had been consumed and was now pure consciousness. What Noble could now see was some kind of manifestation of that thought.

The Void churned around them. Noble's mind filled with horrific images of men and women being flayed alive. Children's bodied impaled on pikes and screaming as they died. There were lakes of fire and people screaming and screaming for eternity.