The Living Shard
Compendium 2020 – Story 50
By Andrew Hawnt
Between life and death, matter and void, this realm and that, hung a nameless Cathedral, its spires stretching up into the endless seas of being that formed and maintained the Multiverse.
“I have found the shard,” echoed the voice of Malaris as the heavily-robed Mage strode into the chamber of Kiasi the Watcher of All. He came to a stop at the base of the steps up to the Watcher's viewing platform. The chamber would have been in pitch darkness had the column of light that rose perpetually from the stone dais atop the Watcher's platform not been spewing images of lives and worlds into the air above it.
“I know,” the Watcher said calmly. “I see all, remember.” He looked down at the Mage and sneered. His long hair was pulled back into an elaborate braid, making his features taut and even more severe than usual.
Below him, Malaris bowed his head. “With all due respect, Lord Watcher Kiasi, at present you do not see all. That is why you had me search for the shard.”
Malaris regretted this instantly as he saw the Watcher's expression darken. Kiasi didn't need to move a muscle beneath his deep purple robes in order to scare those beneath him. He had consumed entire realities, tasted the screams of trillions of lives, slaughtered gods.
“Apologies, Lord Watcher,” said Malaris in calmer tones. “I spoke out of turn. I have found the shard, however there is a complication. When it was retrieved from the thief that took it, the shard itself escaped. It had become a being in its own right, and shifted through a temporal rift.”
“Are you telling me that a chunk of the universe's living consciousness, its very soul, has taken on a mind of its own?”
“I am, Lord Watcher. What course of action do you wish?”
The Watcher glanced back at the column and its eternal dance of realms being born, evolving and finally dying in blazing light. He looked back to the Mage. “Take an army. Follow the shard through time and space and bring it to me. If I am to complete The Great Work, I need that shard to allow me to access the Underverse, the primal energies of all that exists. Only then can I end everything. All must be darkness, Malaris. All must be silence, lest the peoples of these infantile worlds continue with their foolish actions.”
“An army, Lord Watcher. Yes. Very well. The shard, it is... no longer in its original form.”
“Why would that stop you?”
“It is on earth in their early 21st Century, Lord Watcher. The shard has become a man. A single human being who can access every reality there is. A living shard.”
“Its human name?”
“Daniel Clay,” replied the Mage.
The Watcher conjured an image of the man within the column of light and took in the face of a creature that was now both his greatest prize and his greatest enemy. “Take the Shadowkin,” he said without looking away from the image. “Go.”
Malaris hurried away and called for the army of the Shadowkin to retrieve the human. Dead or alive.
*
The air was thin. Cold. Crisp. Daniel drank in the view from atop Liathach, said to be Scotland's finest mountain. Snow kissed its peak and others surrounding it across the glorious landscape. It was incredible to be there, so far away from the stresses of life back home in Sheffield. He pulled out his phone and snapped photos in every direction. Soon he would have to head back down and drive back to the hotel. There were deadlines to meet for the new book. It was still missing three new stories he'd promised to the publishers. He knew that when he got back to somewhere with a decent signal his phone would go crazy with messages from Sally, his perpetually stressed agent.
At least up here nobody can see what happens when the stories come. I should just live in a hut on a mountain. Screw modern life. It's too dangerous for people like me.
He sighed.
Who am I kidding? I'd go even more mad if I moved to the country.
He began the arduous task of returning to the base of the mountain. At an elevation around 1,055 feet, it was far from being the highest peak in the country, but it was still bloody hard work.
After a careful journey back to ground level, he changed out of his mountaineering gear and back into street clothes in a frenzy of hurry-up-I'm-frigging-freezing fumbling. Daniel followed this by sitting listening to some random eighties music station on the rental car's radio and eating a stack of thick-cut ham sandwiches while he warmed up again. He had sat his phone on the passenger seat, and the number of buzzing noises coming from it told him he could indeed expect tense messages from Sally. He flicked through them with a thumb while chewing, and sent one back that just said I'll have a new story for you tonight.
In reality, he had no idea if he could deliver one that night, but he needed to calm Sally down before she had a stroke.
Then he knew.
The mouthful of sandwich fell in his lap as a terrible pain hammered at his temples, spreading through his brain, down his neck and along the muscles of his arms. He touched his fingers to those aching temples and gritted his teeth.
“Not here, for Christ's sake!”
An army of shadow beasts hurtling from a giant gothic building floating between universes. A Mage in flowing robes at the helm of a massive starship. A malevolent being within that building, watching lives unfold within a column of light. A quest for a lost shard of the universe's living soul had begun.
The pain found his fingertips and he stared at them in awful frustration as inky blackness leaked from them and hung in the air like snakes born of smoke. The story burned bright in his head, like all the best ones did. He willed it back. Willed it to hide again for a while.
The vision faded.
He caught his breath, wiped tears from his face and dug the half-chewed food off his jeans and the car seat. He flung the mess out of the window for the birds and started the engine.
He sent Sally another message. Can confirm new story tonight.
The pain hadn't left completely, but he needed to go. He started the car and floored the accelerator, the strains of 'Mad World' by Tears For Fears accompanying him as he drove.
*
Daniel made it back to the hotel room before he lost control of the vision, but only just. He locked the door and his defences fell, the story exploding across his vision again. The inky darkness returned, seeping from his fingers and spreading throughout the room like throbbing, engorged veins. He staggered and fell, the veins now dragging at his limbs as though they were starved and craved his physical form to survive.
“Get off me you bastards,” he wept as the pain grew so bad he almost passed out. He pulled himself along the room floor, the blackness now oozing out of his whole body and anchoring itself to the walls.
He managed to drag himself to the chair at the small desk. Opened his laptop and called up a fresh document. He was set. No matter the power of the onslaught from wherever he was tapped into, nothing could stop him once his fingers met the keyboard.
As he began to type, the darkness began to pull back.
“Let it flow, Danny boy. Let it all out so you can have some time away from feeling like a monster. Go on, lad, just write it down. Not fantasy this time.”
He told his own story.
A man plagued by visions from across the stars. Across time. A man whose only respite was to capture those visions in prose and call them stories. A man whose life had revolved around these glimpses of other possible realities. A man who had been ridiculed as a child but ultimately respected and worshipped as an adult for the same damn thing. The writer bashed the keys until the ending existed. Another agonising vision would fall by the might of his weaponised imagination. This latest tale was no mere yarn, though. This was a story that would shape reality and change the future.
The shadow beasts surrounded the Earth, the ominous form of their flagship coming to a stop as great weapons were readied and aimed at major cities. The writer called forth heroes from his countless other visions, dragging them through sheer force of will into this universe to do battle with the darkness itself.
The warping of space and time around the shadows and their masters saw them rage against strange anomalies that saw them dragged back into the void from which they had emerged. Those anomalies corrected themselves and the writer sent his creations on their way with more words that acted as conduits between the Here and the There.
All had fallen silent, but the writer knew that there would always be another vision to battle. He opened another document and waited for the next attack to come.
Thousands of words later, Daniel sent his agent the document and closed the laptop. His clothes were rank with sweat and a look out of the room's window told him he had written well into the night. He stared out at the Scottish countryside and thought of the drive home. He couldn't face it tonight. He had to sleep and freshen up. He needed the hotel's spectacular breakfast.
But after that there would be a journey home. Back to the study he'd built at the bottom of the garden. A little office where there were bars to grip onto when the visions came and hurt the most.
He knew another story would come soon, and again that darkness would try to emerge from him and swathe the world in its horror.
Daniel headed for a shower.
*
Shadows converged on their flagship as it hurtled through a pulsating void. Within minutes it had righted itself. Moments later, it had sent a message across dimensions for reinforcements to join it.
“So be it, storyteller,” snarled the Mage known as Malaris. “The coming days will be your crescendo.”
As the writer slept, another story prepared to do battle.
© Andrew Hawnt 2020
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About Compendium 2020:
Compendium 2020 is a project from author Andrew Hawnt that consists of 52 original short stories, flash fiction stories and vignettes given away for FREE in 2020. Featuring science fiction, fantasy, horror and more, this began as a personal quest and due to the weirdness of 2020 has become an ambition to provide free distractions for anyone who needs them.
About Andrew Hawnt:
Andrew is based in Nottingham, England. Known for his music journalism career, comics writing and film critique work, Andrew is a prolific writer and is the author of a growing stack of books, including the cult hit VHS Ate My Brain. He made the movies The Demon And I and The Demon And I: Birthrite completely in lockdown with cast members filming their scenes remotely, and new films are coming.
Andrew is also the creator and presenter of the YouTube shows Planet Hex, Turn One Shock and the VHS Ate My Brain series as well as the video versions of the Compendium stories.
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© Andrew Hawnt 2020
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