The Dissolving Testament

The chamber was lit by flickering candles, tall and thin, giving off an exotic fragrance reminiscent of jasmine and sandalwood, tinged with a musky hint of ambergris. The shadows danced to the strains of distant, discordant music. He sat before a sphere of crystal, eyes unfocussed. In the center of the skrying glass floated a luminous Glide glyph, a placid island of stability amid broken, upside down images that seemed to change constantly, coalescing, flowing together and breaking apart in an endless cascading stream of invention.

He cast his thoughts outward, devoid of intent, fishing in the endless ocean of souls. He felt a mental tug, followed the psychic lure of the thoughts of another touching upon him. Someone has spoken my Name. Either they hold themselves the stronger of us, or they are ignorant meddlers. He chuckled softly to himself, a profoundly unhumorous sound. He did not have a preference. Choirs of wingless angels caroled hymns that no one could hear and the spirit moved him.

Around him the images began to slow their pulsing changes. A landscape began to appear out of the chaos, there were stars twinkling in a sky of jet, what was that pattern they seemed to be making...

...In his place of power, the Other sat with his familiar in the altar room. He had felt the intrusion of the skryer. Closing his eyes, he saw a glowing glyph in a sphere of crystal, and a robed man regarding it from a darkened chamber lit with flickering black candles. "Fool", he thought, "Thus do I invoke thee. If thou hast powers, use them." Opening his eyes, he regarded with satisfaction the now visible glyph floating above the altar. Placing his will upon the glyph, he morphed it into a glyph of his choosing, charged with a portion of his energies, strengthened with spells he had invested in this place over many years and in the performance of many rituals.

Opening his third eye, he sat in the full lotus position and began a pattern of eight cycle breathing. His body felt weightless, his senses expanded and the feeling of having a distinct location, of being bound by time and space twinkled and disappeared. He felt, as it were, plugged into the starry dynamo of night, and he focused his attention upon the intruder. "You trespass.", he thought, savoring the apprehension the spy was beginning to feel. "How may I serve thee?"

In the center of his being, at the focus of energies where inbreath slows and imperceptibly changes to outbreath, he created a wheeling, circular vacuum. The process had a distinct resemblance to pulling the plug in a basin of fluid. He allowed the glyph to resume its original configuration as the hole in the fabric of creation began to pulse in its cycles in an insistent rhythm. "Welcome! Well met, well met, indeed.

The chamber grew dim around him. The candles flared up, once, twice. The third time they winked out, and he felt himself become the glyph as it circled around and around a vortex and began to come apart. He felt a menacing regard and a monstrous hunger at the center of the maelstrom. He frantically tried to pull back, to no avail. "Why?", he thought he spoke aloud. "Why?"

The Other regarded him with considerable pleasure as the glyph above the altar began to shred and fall into the whirling void, which diminished as the shape was sucked into it, flickered and vanished. "Some people would bitch if you hung them with a new rope.", the catlike being beside him spoke. "But briefly, mon frere." The Other replied, chortling. "Only briefly. A rather humble vintage, but one has to admire his presumption. Will you feed now?" The cat grew huge, beginning to swirl in mid air above the altar. There was a loud purring sound that altered its timbre as the cat expanded, seeming to become a mighty laughter that vanished in a burst of noise like a tape recording played backwards and upside down as the catlike shape disappeared.

Bespoken