‘You utter, utter FOOLS,’ screamed the hollow but terrifying dark voice. The venom hung in the air like freeze-framed globules of spit. Monty was trembling with fear. His insides were turning to jelly. This place was even worse than he imagined. He was a fool for trusting. Anything would have been better than this, even death.
Since entering the mind of the Elif he had acquired a new body. Same shape and size as before, just now he seemed to be made of a something lighter than normal flesh. He had a heartbeat and still needed to breathe. He feared he might actually be dead. But whatever it was that was happening to him, death was not the greatest of his worries.
‘I hold you responsible Alistair. You should have had this all under control. Immediately that the boy returned from the Akashi realm with the ruro material you should have gone in and cut it out!’ bellowed the Elif. ‘What use is my misleading the agency if you can’t get even get the simplest of jobs right? The Leader failed to bring me the Akashi gate and now YOU FAIL ME TOO!’
‘It took us some time to capture and prepare the mind-entity to transport the ruro my master. I feared that some within the agency were getting suspicious - I had delayed their transport arrangements and as we know, they are desperate for the ruro. I thought we were obeying. I was very wrong. We were about to go in. Hours, minutes even,’ replied Alistair calmly.
‘What! Don't talk to me about minutes! I am a master of time or did you forget?’
‘Yes, you are truly the great one and I am forever your servant. I am sorry. I didn't plan it, or understand you correctly. It is my fault, master.’
‘Not all is lost, Alistair. The boy's thought-form did manage to enter my mind. He tried to destroy me. Sadly, I have not been able to destroy him, not entirely, not without the ruro globe. I had to throw his thought-form somewhere he can do little harm. I've transported him to Earth's far future. A version of it anyway. He can stay there and rot for all I care. At least until I can destroy him properly. That's a better fate than a mere quick death. I will spare your life Alistair. I need you on the physical plane.’
‘Thank you master. I would gladly give my life if you so wished.’
‘I know. But your friend - he will pay instead. The sound, the disembodied voice, seemed to home in on Monty. ‘He has no further use. But wait! Why should I just let him die? That would be too good for the snivelling little wretch that he is. He can be one of my pets.’
‘You will be in-cor-porated,’ a new, mechanical voice - the Elif’s thoughtputer - said with a steely chill. With horror Monty looked down. His eyes were revealing what he could already feel to be the case. His body was being sucked away in great swathes of grey. He was becoming nothing but a cloud of darkness. His thoughts became vague. The cloud reformed and hardened. His thoughts, and self, congealed. He was becoming a small black creature. He had four legs and wide oval yellow eyes. He was still suspended in the blackness. A moving sea of dark plastic energy was now forming under his feet. In the distance he could see hundreds, if not thousands more pairs of eyes just like his own. They looked hungry and vicious.
A swarm of flies descended upon his face, his nostrils filling with them. They stung and bit. He could feel the blood forming in tiny droplets upon his animal-like snout. A ball of black energy hit him hard. The insects dispersed in an angry cloud. He felt every bone in his body snap with the impact but a second later they all reformed. The pain however remained.
‘Now go! Join your new friends,’ the Elif’s voice boomed. Monty needed no further telling. He ran toward the thousands of eyes, torches upon the horizon of darkness. As he ran he could hear the Elif, and Alistair laughing. The outlines of their faces could be seen as huge portraits in the sky. The Elif's face was not human. It had two large oval eyes, completely black with strange diamond shaped pupils. The pupils were red. It had a wide face, a mere slit for a mouth and no ears. Its forehead slanted backwards and was four times the length of a humans’. Alistair's face looked like it should - the real ugliness beneath the thin veneer of the everyday. The sharpness of his long face and chiselled nose was accented by his grey skin - it wasn’t a face that suited laughter.
Monty ran for his life, unsure whether the pack of creatures he ran toward would be worse than that which he left behind. But somehow he wanted to reach them. He felt more like a hurt creature than the confused, hard-thinking human he used to be. Maybe the pack would welcome him.
The Elif and Alistair watched him go.