Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Winter
"Horrace, no! You can't eat the remote control!" I lunged across the couch, grabbing the TV remote just as one of Horrace's tentacles was about to pull it into his mouth. After three days of living with an inter-dimensional manticore, I still wasn't entirely sure which part of him consumed things.
"It's not food," I explained for what felt like the hundredth time. "It's technology. Remember our talk about not eating technology?"
Horrace made a dejected musical sound, something like a sad trombone, and several of his eyes blinked in sequence. He'd been with me for three days now, and while his bond with me had only strengthened, his curiosity about literally everything in my apartment remained insatiable.
"I know you're bored," I sighed, reaching out to stroke his iridescent fur. "Being cooped up in here isn't fun for either of us."
Horrace had taken to perching on the back of the couch when he wasn't wrapped around my neck, his multiple eyes constantly swiveling to take in every corner of the apartment.
The surveillance orbs that had initially terrified him now seemed to fascinate him, he'd spend hours watching them float, occasionally mimicking their movements with perfect precision.
"You know what? I think we both need some breakfast," I stood up, stretching. Horrace immediately perked up, several tentacles forming excited jazz hands. "Yes, you can have pancakes again."
As I moved toward the kitchen, Horrace leapt from the couch and scampered ahead of me, his six limbs moving in a hypnotic pattern that shouldn't have been physically possible.
He'd grown slightly in the past few days, now closer to the size of a small dog than a pug, and his colors had stabilized into a predominantly iridescent blue-purple that pulsed in rhythm with my prophetic markings.
"Morning," Milo's voice startled me. I'd almost forgotten he was on overnight watch duty. He sat cross-legged on my kitchen counter, surrounded by tiny skeletons and Franks fish bowl that appeared to be having a tea party.
"Have you been up all night?" I grabbed the pancake mix from the cabinet.
"Nope! Just woke up about an hour ago. Jeffrey wanted to make tiny pancakes for his friends," he gestured to the smallest skeleton, who was indeed flipping miniature pancakes on a doll-sized griddle.
"That's actually adorable," I watched the tiny skeleton work with surprising dexterity.
Horrace approached the skeleton tea party cautiously, several eyes focused intently on the tiny pancakes. Jeffrey noticed and held one up, offering it to the manticore. Horrace delicately plucked it from the skeleton's bony fingers with a tentacle and made a happy trilling sound.
"They're becoming friends," Milo beamed. "This is the cutest thing ever!"
I smiled, mixing batter for human-sized pancakes.
The past few days had settled into a strange routine.
Fenric had eventually stopped hyperventilating about protocols long enough to file the necessary paperwork designating Horrace as a "Prophetically Significant Entity," which apparently gave him special status that prevented the Bureau from whisking him away to some inter-dimensional containment facility.
Rook remained wary but had gradually stopped growling every time Horrace moved too quickly. Zane, surprisingly, had been the most accepting, even bringing Horrace a collection of small, shiny objects that the manticore arranged in patterns only he understood.
"Any word on finding Emma?" I asked Milo as I poured batter onto the griddle.
"Fenric's been searching Bureau records," Milo reported, helping one of his skeletons pour tiny drops of syrup. "But it's complicated. If the dimensional rift happened decades ago like Horrace's memories suggest, Emma could be anywhere now. Or..." he trailed off.
"Or she might not be alive anymore," I finished quietly, flipping a pancake with more force than necessary.
The thought had been weighing on me. Through our connection, I could feel Horrace's longing for Emma, but also his growing attachment to me. What would happen when we found her? What if we couldn't find her? The prophecy had said to bring the monster home, but what if home no longer existed?
As if sensing my troubled thoughts, Horrace abandoned the skeleton tea party and moved to my side, wrapping a tentacle gently around my wrist where the blue markings glowed. The contact sent a wave of warmth through me, a reassurance that transcended language.
"We'll figure it out, buddy," I promised, stroking his head with my free hand.
Milo watched our interaction with a thoughtful expression. "You know, your bond with Horrace is getting stronger. The energy signature is more integrated now."
"Is that good or bad?"
"Neither, just different. It's like..." he searched for the words, "like your prophetic energy and his inter-dimensional nature are harmonizing. Becoming complementary."
Before I could respond, Horrace suddenly stiffened. All twelve of his eyes focused on a single point in the air, and he made a sound I'd never heard before, a high, crystalline note that seemed to vibrate through my bones.
"What's wrong?" I looked where he was staring but saw nothing.
Then I felt it, a strange pressure in my chest, like the air before a thunderstorm. The blue markings on my arm flared painfully bright, and Horrace began to glow with the same intensity.
"Milo," my voice sounded distant to my own ears, "something's happening."
Milo jumped off the counter, his playful demeanor instantly replaced by alert concern. "Winter, your eyes, they're glowing!"
I couldn't respond. The pressure was building, a buzzing energy that filled my head with static.
Horrace's tentacle tightened around my wrist, and suddenly I could see what he was seeing, a thin spot in reality, right in the middle of my kitchen, where the fabric of our dimension was stretching, bulging inward like something was pressing against it from the other side.
"Get back!" I managed to shout just as Horrace let out another crystalline note, higher and more urgent than before.
The air in the kitchen split open with a sound like tearing silk. A perfect circle of nothing appeared, a hole in reality that wasn't black or white or any color at all, just an absence where the world should be. And from this absence came a smell like ozone.
"Winter!" Milo's voice seemed to come from miles away.
Horrace was vibrating against me now, his form beginning to blur at the edges as he responded to whatever was happening. Through our connection, I felt his recognition, his excitement, his fear, a tumult of emotions that mirrored my own rising panic.
I tried to step back, to pull away from the rift, but my feet wouldn't move. The blue markings had spread up my arm, across my shoulder, creeping toward my neck like living vines of light. Horrace's glow intensified to match, his form now pulsing with the same rhythm as my markings.
"Milo, get help!" I managed to call out, but it was too late.
With a sound like a giant intake of breath, the rift expanded. I felt a violent tug, and then Horrace and I were being pulled forward, inexorably drawn toward the hole in reality. I caught a glimpse of Milo lunging toward us, his hand outstretched, before the world turned inside out.
We fell.
Or maybe we rose. Direction had no meaning in the space. Colors that shouldn't exist swirled around us, and sounds that had no source filled my ears, a chorus of whispers, shouts, songs, all overlapping in a cacophony that should have driven me mad but somehow made perfect sense.
Horrace was still with me, his tentacles wrapped protectively around my body as we tumbled through impossible geometry. Through our connection, I felt his recognition, this was familiar to him, the space between dimensions, the pathway home.
But we weren't alone in this in-between place. Shapes moved in the swirling chaos, things with too many angles and not enough edges, beings that existed in more dimensions than my mind could comprehend. They reached for us with appendages, curious, hungry, fascinated.
Horrace made a sound that rippled through the void, a warning or a greeting, I couldn't tell. The shapes retreated, but I could still feel their attention, their awareness of us as we drifted through their domain.
How long we traveled, I couldn't say. Time had no meaning here. It could have been seconds or centuries. But eventually, I felt another tug, a different kind of pull, and suddenly we were falling in a way that made sense again, down, definitely down.
We hit something solid with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.
For a moment, I just lay there, gasping, trying to reorient myself.
I was lying on a floor, no, a rug. A thick, plush rug in a shade of purple so deep it was almost black.
Horrace was beside me, his form slowly stabilizing from the blurred state it had taken in the void.
"What... where are we?" I managed to sit up, looking around.
Bookshelves lined every surface, even the ceiling, with books arranged not by size or color but in intricate spiral patterns that hurt my eyes if I looked at them too long. A chandelier hung in the center, but instead of bulbs, it held small, glowing orbs that changed color every few seconds.
"This isn't the apartment," I stated the obvious, trying to get my bearings. "Horrace, do you know where we are?"
Horrace had recovered faster than I had. He was already exploring the room, moving from shelf to shelf with excited trills. Through our connection, I felt his curiosity but no recognition, this place was as strange to him as it was to me.
I struggled to my feet, my head spinning slightly.
The blue markings on my arm had retreated back to their usual extent, no longer spreading across my body, but they still pulsed with unusual brightness.
I felt different. Like I'd left something behind in that void, or maybe brought something back with me.
"Hello?" I called out. "Is anyone here?"