He took a deep breath and headed unsteadily into the patient gloom, finding himself clasping the gems not so long ago he’d sold to people as a scam but which had somehow seemed to work. Suspicion made trinkets into objects of power, he knew it intimately, it was what had enabled him to convince people to believe his bullshit, and now he was getting caught up in the web of lies he’d spun. He honestly believed it, hoped for it to be true.
Feeling stupid and ignorant he clung to the fact they’d kept him alive this long and asked for a little bit longer.
When the floor levelled off, he found himself faced with rows and rows of strange tablets, all of which were engraved with strange symbols and shapes. The atmosphere was stifling, and though he had always been somewhat sceptical of the idea of energies and the other psychic nonsense he preached for a quick buck, there was something heavy and wrong in the air down here. There was no desire to touch the alien looking things, convinced if he did he would find himself part of some horrible recreation of raiders of the lost ark.
But he had to seek out this weapon the blonde man and his associate had spoken of, or there would be little sense in returning at all. A weapon, the guy’s had been a pen and a gun, were they all like that? Would he have to find some everyday item down here in the dark and just know it was a weapon? It wasn’t very well set out, he stood to have instructions. He’d said the one that called him, that was stupid there wasn’t actually things tha-
Someone was down here with him. He knew it, could feel it like pressure on the air, a sudden oppressive shift that settled like a weight on his chest. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end and he shivered as if someone had run a cold finger along his spine. There was an almost overwhelming urge to run back up the steps, say he couldn’t do it, he was a pet psychic who talked to the dead but who found some strange unnamed sensation too much to tolerate. That would go down well he was sure.
And then the whispering started and it felt like his body turned to lead, all ability to flee, to obey the way his heart hammered in his chest fluttered away like mist on a breeze. There was no running, only moving forward, and against all better judgement, all survival instinct and logic to the contrary he was drawn further along the hall, past other tablets which still felt wrong but towards something that thrilled and terrified but felt right.
He wondered if this was what it was like to really be psychic.
The whispers ceased on the edge of hearing and were replaced by something else, a low thrumming hum like a generator a room over from where he was, and he kept walking, his pace slow and steady like a monk through some ancient monastery.
The sound got louder and louder and was matched only by the sound of adrenaline in his ears.
But he didn’t stop.
Only when the thrill of the snarl was almost deafening did he stop, eyes locked upon a single tablet amongst many, a hangman’s noose.
Upside down. The hanged man in reverse. Time to choose.
Or wait. No. Not a noose. A choke chain.
That was odd. But it was definitely the place where the sound was coming from.
He took a deep breath and reached out and when his fingers grazed the coarse warm stone, the world altered. In a single instant, a flash of power like an electric shock, the tablet was gone and he found himself thrown to hands and knees on the dusty floor. The growling was no longer heard. It was inside his head, a slow irritable snarl which finally slowed and clarified.
He froze again, hardly able to process what he was hearing, hardly able to understand the guttural snarled voice that rolled in his thoughts.
He got to his feet, still dazed and baffled and found that in the dim light his eye was drawn to a light near his wrist, blue and vaguely ethereal, like someone had only heard of the concept of light up in the dark watches.
And it was a watch, beautiful and expensive looking but strange.
Incredulous he held out his hands to let whatever summoning entailed happen, expecting nothing at all. Instead he found himself – to his absolute horror – sporting a set of very long, very lethal looking claws emblazoned with white runes.
<’at’s me man. ********’ amazing right? Please say you like me man. Please. Look I’d be giving you a paw if I had any man.>
He held the very sharp objects at absolute arm’s length looking horrified.
“Lovely.” He said, and didn’t mean a word of it. “Can they go away?” And thinking very hard how he wished they would, they did.
He needed time to think about this. And he had to be out of the dark to do it. He headed for the stairs, trying not to look at the damn watch he wasn’t even sure if he could take off.
