Long ago, my grandfather told me that chrysanthemums symbolize death. The internet had since informed me that this was only true in some cultures and not others, but I still made a point of bringing three of them to his grave every year. He would have liked that.

  The old man’s grave was an ornate affair. He wouldn’t have wanted it that way, but grandma was left unsupervised with a checkbook and a catalogue from the local funeral home, and grandpa was in no condition to stop her after the eulogy. It was a large marble trapezoid with ornate Celtic knot engravings in gold along the edges and small scenes carved in each of the corners. All of the linework was sealed with glass and polished flush with the stone. I had no idea how they manufactured the thing.

  Grandma and I had an argument over the gold. I thought it would only be a matter of time before someone stumbled into the cemetery and busted up grandpa’s tombstone for it. She claimed that the underpaid security guard that worked the night shift there would keep any thieves away. I had my doubts.

  As I stood there pondering the meaning of life and death, a raven landed on grandpa’s headstone, a few paces away from me. It looked at me, tilted its head, and cawed at me. I looked at it, tilted my head, and cawed back at it. I wasn’t an expert at reading bird expressions, but I chose to believe that it gave me a look of utter bewilderment. It must have been astonished to encounter a human that could speak its language so fluently.

  It ruffled its feathers and hopped backwards, off the back of the headstone and out of my sight. I heard a quick rustle of wings, and then another loud caw. Curious, I made my way between the plots towards it. It was waiting for me. It shimmied and fluffed its wings before looking at me expectantly.

  “I think I know what you’re after,” I said. I fished a small can of peanuts out of my coat pocket and peeled the lid off. I had already eaten half of them, but the raven wouldn’t mind. I crouched down and tossed it a small handful. It greedily pecked away at them and started to crunch them up.

  “I’ll make you a deal, bud. You keep your friends from pooping on grandpa’s grave, and I’ll hook you up with tasty things when I’m here. Deal?” I asked the raven. It paused in its munching, looked up at me, and cawed.

  “I will take that as a yes,” I said. The raven finished its peanuts over the next few minutes as I watched. It took a moment to savor the meal, then flapped back onto grandpa’s tombstone and stood there. I frowned at it.

  “Hey man, we had a deal. Don’t go breaking it so soon,” I said, crossing my arms. It looked at me for a moment, and then slowly lowered its beak to the stone. It stayed in that pose for several long seconds. Just as I started to shake my head at the bird’s antics, a faint blue-green glow began to shine in an intricate design on the back of the tombstone. There hadn’t been anything in that place before.

  The glowing design grew brighter until it looked like a LED display for some overpriced computer accessory. The raven then raised its head and swayed drunkenly before shaking itself. It let out a drowsy caw and then flew off to a nearby oak tree and settled down.

  In the years since grandpa died, I had never seen this before. Grandma never mentioned that the burial package came with RGB accents either. It seemed tacky to me. I retrieved my cellphone and snapped a picture.

  “Hey grandma, what is this?” I sent over text, along with the picture. I didn’t get a response right away, so I looked suspiciously at the raven that was now snoozing in the tree.

  “How did you do this?” I muttered to myself. I stepped up to the tombstone and felt along the top where the raven had left its beak, searching for a hidden button. It seemed like perfectly smooth, flat marble. There wasn’t any sign of an activation mechanism, or a power source. Maybe there was a battery inside with some sort of heat engine?

  My phone buzzed. It was grandma.

  “I don’t know sweetie. Is that from one of those shows you like? What’s it called?” she sent. I sighed.

  “No, it’s on the back of grandpa’s grave. Looks like it’s built into it. Never seen it before now,” I sent back.

  “What? The back should be plain! I’ll call the funeral home and get some answers from them,” she sent.

  It was hard to believe that the designers secretly snuck some electronics into the gravestone without advertising it as a feature. Grandma wouldn’t get any answers about it for a while, so I took another look at the design while I waited. I stepped closer and examined it. It was highly detailed, with a series of eleven concentric circles, each with a different number of glyphs positioned on them. The circles were connected to each other with short lines positioned in different places between the layers.

  Each circle had a prime number of glyphs ranging from 2 on the innermost circle to 7 on the outermost. Some of the glyphs repeated, and some were unique. There wasn’t any pattern to them that I could recognize, but it also didn’t appear random. Every line was precise and the circles were perfect. Each of the duplicate glyphs were exactly the same as the others of its type. There was hidden meaning here, but I had no means to decipher it.

  I placed my hand on top of the tombstone where the raven had stood and waited. After several seconds, I felt a faint tingle in the palm of my hand and the design started to glow much brighter. I pulled my hand away and looked at it. There was no mark. I rubbed my palm. It felt fine now that I wasn’t touching the stone. There was definitely something in there, but I had never heard of a mechanism that gained power this way. Some electronic wearables were powered by the body’s heat or natural electric field, but they didn’t make your skin tingle.

  The raven cawed at me twice from across the cemetery. I waved at it distractedly. The glowing design was now bright enough that I needed to squint to look at it directly. The pattern hadn’t changed at all. I placed my hand over the design to block out some of the light and leaned in to get a better look at one of the glyphs.

  My hand jerked and was pulled firmly to the center of the circle, as if there were powerful magnets in the stone and I was made from steel. I swore profusely in startled alarm and tried to yank my hand away. It might as well have been superglued to the stone. The buzzing sensation started in my hand again, and the light erupted into a glaring brilliance like a fog light. I looked around franticly and yelled for help, but I couldn’t see anyone around.

  The now blinding light blasted out around me. The circles and glyphs swirled in the air and started to pulse with my heartbeat. The pounding rhythm deepened and sped up as my anxiety rose. I pushed off the tombstone with my legs until my knuckles popped and my wrist ached. It was as if my hand had been melted to the stone.

  I started to hyperventilate as the dazzling lightshow shifted from blue-green to purple and back. The circles twisted and the glyphs continued to throb ominously. The whole display started to spin and a black dot appeared in the center. The light warped around the dot and shifted down all of the colors of the rainbow into red. I felt an intense pull, demanding that I draw closer.

  It made me nauseous. It felt as though down was beneath me, but also in front of me. My hand was being pulled through the stone and my bones screamed about being stretched unnaturally. I was lightheaded and my vision was fuzzy at the edges. This wasn’t how today was supposed to go. I had dinner plans, and an entire life to live.

  Before long, my elbow disappeared into the stone. Terror took me and I bashed and kicked at the stone with the limbs I still had control over. It didn’t help. My shoulder was pulled through and I arched my neck away from the crushing singularity before me. As my head made contact with the tombstone, I could still hear the raven cawing at me, over and over, as if it knew all along.

  I drifted through darkness for eons, or perhaps a few seconds. I was neither awake nor asleep. My mind had been reduced to a lukewarm ember. I had no use for memory, or desire, or fear. I existed, if barely. Parts of me were nearby, but out of reach. I could feel the echo of warmth from each of them, searching for me. They didn’t simply belong to me; they were me. I was them.

  We needed to become one being again. I focused my being inward and pressed the ember of my mind into a tiny brilliant spark. For a single glorious moment, I illuminated eternity. My light touched all that was mine, and we rushed to be together again. My pieces jumbled together like a drawer of old computer cables that secretly desired to be a ball of yarn.

  All at once, I awoke with my face uncomfortably acquainted with a cold stone floor. I blinked rapidly as I regained my senses. The world around me was black and jagged. I could clearly make out the floor, walls, and ceiling, all made from glossy black stone. A moment later, I corrected myself: it was obsidian, volcanic glass. The cave was well lit, but I couldn’t see a source of light. There was a single passageway on the far side of the chamber that led to a tunnel. The glinting obsidian edges around the tunnel made it look like a demonic maw.

  The sounds of nearby conflict demanded my attention. I could hear a man shouting and the piercing growls of something large. A loud boom rang out and bounced off of every shard of obsidian in the cave. It sounded like an old black powder gun being fired and a hundred shot glasses being smashed at the same time. The noise was coming from the passage ahead of me. I drew my handgun from its shoulder holster and ran towards the fighting.

  The passage was wide enough for a single person if I hunched my shoulders. It made a sharp turn to the right and led upwards at a steep angle. Another boom came, followed by an angry screech. The sound of fighting was much closer now. I approached the crest of the hill and peeked over. The tunnel opened into an enormous chamber, easily five times as large as the last one. There were many small platforms and ridges covering the floor. I could see a man in glowing armor fighting a monstrous floating black squid. He was holding a sword that was wreathed in blue flame with one hand.

  I froze and stared at the scene in front of me. I’d had no time to think since waking up and then this. First the mysterious diagram, now a glowing... knight? Fighting some eldritch abomination? My mind raced furiously, trying to come up with explanations for what I was experiencing.

  Was this a movie set? No; nobody used practical effects for monsters anymore, and that wouldn’t have explained my encounter at the cemetery or how I had gotten here.

  Maybe this was cutting edge VR that was plugged directly into my brain and the glowing diagram was a trap that knocked me out. That didn’t work, either. Anyone with that kind of tech wouldn’t need to kidnap random people. There were volunteers for a one-way trip to Mars; there would be thousands or more who would be willing to test something this advanced.

  Could I have been drugged with psychedelics? That was more believable, and I couldn’t rule it out, but who would do that? Was it some government experiment? Didn’t they get that out of their system during the Cold War?

  As I considered and rejected option after option, the fight ahead of me continued with clashes of steel and claw. The knight was moving like a true expert, but the monster easily dodged every strike he threw its way. It would dangle the tips of its tentacles just outside of his reach. It was playing with him. The knight must have realized it too because his arm blurred faster than my eye could track and he severed one of the beast’s claws off before it could pull it away. It screeched with rage, and the knight stumbled back while holding his head.

  The monster surged forward and thrust five of its limbs towards the knight. Each was tipped with a matte black blade about as long as my forearm. The knight tried to dodge and sweep the attacks away with his blade, but he only caught one. The other four struck from different angles, smashing into his armor. The armor flashed and dimmed with each hit until the fourth one landed with the sound of shattering glass. The armor puffed away into smoke and the knight was knocked to the ground.

  I shook myself out of my hesitation. If it got through him, I was next, and I’ve never done well with seafood. I stepped up to the top of the ramp for better footing and took aim through my red dot. The squid was menacing the man from above and stabbing down towards him with a ragged volley of tentacles. He rolled like a log to avoid the strikes, turning killing blows into impressive scars.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  My gun bucked as I fired four quick shots at the monster’s center of mass. I knew nothing about floating squid anatomy, but putting holes in a creature was usually not good for it. The bullets punched through it and black ichor sprayed out the other side, pooling with rainbow discoloration like an oil spill. The monster crashed and bounced off the ground, rolling in midair to glare hate at me with its seven eyes. Its eleven tentacles splayed out around it, pointed towards me as it screeched again.

  I kept pulling the trigger. The squid dodged. It was fast, but bullets were faster. Half of my shots still hit as it tried to roll, weave, and juke. One of my shots hit something important and it dropped out of the air. All of its limbs spasmed randomly and jabbed violently at everything around it. Most of them stabbed harmlessly into the air or ground, but one launched directly at the downed knight, blasting through his parry and tearing through his pelvis.

  The man screamed as the squid’s death spasms ripped the bladed claw out of him. I shot the creature again in the middle of its eyes and it fell completely limp. I rushed over to the fallen man to see how bad his injuries were.

  The stab to his pelvis had punch all the way through and was spraying bright pink blood in pulses. There was a severed artery somewhere in there, and I didn’t have a hospital and surgical team in my pocket. He was dead and I knew it.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and spammed the power button as fast as I could to call 911. I dropped the phone on the ground next to me and struggled to get my undershirt off from underneath my holster. With some tearing, I managed it to pull it off and twisted it tight. I glanced at the phone screen, at it was still trying to make the call. I swore to myself. There was no signal here.

  The knight had his hands pressed to the wound in his hip. He looked at me as I leaned over him. His bright green eyes were filled with pain and horror, and his hair stuck to his head from sweat and blood. I pulled his hand away and shoved my shirt into the wound, packing it in as tight as I could. He screamed again, and groaned as I put pressure on it.

  “Hey buddy, you’re going to be okay. This will stop the bleeding and we’ll get you to a hospital,” I lied.

  “I think not,” he said, his voice strained. He was visibly paler than when I had started.

  “Who are you? What’s your name?” I asked. He coughed violently for a few moments and I repeated my question.

  “Daivon Khan, of Haylomsha,” he said. He spoke with a faint accent that I couldn’t place.

  “Do you have a family, Daivon? Maybe a sweetheart back home?” I asked. He chuckled to himself and rested his head against the black glass behind him.

  “What does it matter who knows now? Yes, I have a woman, and I would have married her, too,” he said.

  “Tell me about her. How did you meet? What is she like?” I asked. He looked into the distance and his eyes unfocused. I grimaced for a moment, but then he started to speak.

  “She is smart, and kind, and beautiful. More than any man could hope for. I first saw her selling trinkets outside the tower. I had never seen one such as her before. Her smile, the way she moved... she was only skin and bones, but she never swindled the aspirants,” he said. He was starting to slur his words.

  “She sounds like a great girl. What’s her name?” I asked. He smiled faintly.

  “Layla,” he whispered. He took a deep breath and let it out before closing his eyes. He didn’t speak again.

  I pulled my hands away from his body and sat back on the ground. I had never watched someone die before, at least not directly. It was... grotesque. Where once there had been a person, now there was just a thing. I looked away. The sight of him was more hideous than the monster that had killed him. I didn’t know Daivon, and now I never would.

  I took a moment to collect myself. The squid laid motionless a few paces away in a spreading pool of ichor. It had deflated like a leaky balloon. Up close, I could see that it had a layer of soft scales covering its body and limbs. Daivon had managed to cut the bladed tips off of three of the tentacles and there was a pair of round holes in the body that were larger than my gun could make.

  Scanning around, I saw a discarded pistol in a shallow nook nearby. It looked like an old dueling pistol, but it had no flintlock mechanism or any other visible way to ignite the powder. A port behind the barrel gave off a faint blue-green light.

  I considered going to investigate the strange weapon, but I looked at my hands. They were still covered in Daivon’s blood.

  I sat down roughly before the coppery metallic smell could make me sick. Enchanted knights, monsters, magic black hole vortex tombstones... none of this belonged in my world. I had a gun so that I could scare off thieves and rabid trash pandas. Now I had killed an eldritch abomination and a man was dead. I tried not to think about how much of his blood was my fault.

  A faint sizzling sound interrupted my thoughts. The squid’s body started to crisp and smoke. Small pieces of it flaked off and began burning away at the edges with a deep purple flame. I took several steps away as the noise and light intensified. It smelled like slightly charred caramel mixed with a touch of battery acid. Layer after layer of the creature dissolved away until there was nothing left. Even the smoke was gone.

  I quickly checked myself over. There weren’t any injuries or unwelcome changes, but my clothes were now smeared with another man’s blood. I grimaced and knelt down next to Daivon’s body. I wanted to say something to him, maybe an apology or a promise, but there was no one left to hear it. I sighed and started to clean off my hands on his pant leg. It was his blood to begin with, so I hoped he wouldn’t mind if I gave some of it back. In that moment, a familiar buzz began in my palms. I pulled away, swearing. The buzzing didn’t go away and, to my horror, Daivon’s body started to sizzle.

  “Oh, no! No, no, no! Do NOT!” I yelled at it as I scrambled away. It had no regard for my half-baked commands. It began to flake away and dissolve just as the monster’s corpse had, but with blue-green flames instead of purple. The buzzing grew stronger and started to hurt. I ineffectively tried to wipe and scratch the feeling away. I couldn’t see anything happening, but I could feel it. The sensation started to climb up my arms.

  I panicked. I tried to flee back down the passage I had arrived from. As I neared the tunnel entrance, the pain reached my shoulders and became an excruciating burning sensation. Years of indoctrination kicked in and I dropped to the ground, rolling around to extinguish the invisible fire.

  The columns of pain met at my spine and rapidly shot up towards my brain. It was as if my whole being had been transformed into fire and pain. I couldn’t hear or see anything anymore, but I could smell that same slightly burnt caramel, this time without the acid. Under the pain, I felt a familiar twisting pull, growing stronger.

  I couldn’t think or form any plan or strategy. I resisted the pull on pure feral instinct and force of personality. I unleashed a flood of spite and violent intent directed at the pull. There was snap and a connection, like brand new ethernet cable being plugged in for the first time. The pain disappeared all at once, replaced with extreme disorientation and vertigo. It felt as if gravity was constantly changing directions, and my sight and hearing were filled with random static. I couldn’t feel my limbs. My lungs refused to scream. I had been down this road minutes ago, so I knew what came next. I curled up and hoped all of me would still be there when it was done with me.

  My vision slowly started to resolve. Different clumps of color began to organize and persist. Needles of sensation sputtered to life as the different parts of my body reported their presence once more. Muffled sound came through as irregular but distinct patterns. Moments crept by and the world around me sharpened.

  The obsidian caves were gone. I was in another dimly lit place. I was laying on my back and looking up at a flat white ceiling that connected to straight walls at right angles, clearly a manmade structure. The flicker of firelight drew my attention to shelves of purple candles surrounding me on three sides. I craned my head back and saw a longer room with half a dozen hooded figures dressed in white robes, all staring at me.

  I tried to speak, but gagged. Instead of waving at them, my arm twitched like a boiled noodle. Its betrayal stung me deeply, but I forgave it when I saw the chains. I was laying on a table inside a large magic circle and both of my wrists were chained to the ground with thin metallic lines. Whatever spell these people had used had left my limbs filled with static and stubborn petulance. The sight of my hands ground my brain to a halt. I wasn’t this pale before, was I?

  One of the figures had turned their back to me and was speaking to the others. I had trouble deciphering the words, but I could tell he was a man by the sound of his voice. He seemed excited and gestured towards me several times. I could make out a few words: “... success … servant … restore … righteous!”

  I rolled onto my side and focused on trying to call out to them again.

  “Blegh!” I said.

  The lead figure stopped talking and turned to me. He was a middle-aged man with short grey hair and a trimmed beard with a small scar on his left cheek. He had a confused look and asked me a question. I could make out the end of it.

  “...to say something?” he asked.

  “Hehb. Uh nuhd hehb,” I said. One of the other figures spoke to the leader.

  “Are you sure... success? A servant of... wouldn’t try to speak... taking control,” they said.

  “No, it wouldn’t. Something else... gotten to his core before... could. We’ll need to try again,” the leader said.

  Their words were becoming clearer to me, and I didn’t like what I was hearing or the way they were looking at me. The chains holding me down were made of metal, but were thin like a necklace or bracelet. I gave one an experimental tug. It went taut, but showed no sign of stretching or breaking. I couldn’t sit up to get better leverage either.

  The hooded figures had stepped away from me and were having an intense discussion just outside my ability to hear. They reached some conclusion and two of them left the room through a metal door in the far corner. The leader turned to me. He was holding a silver bowl in one hand, a knife in the other, and an offensively casual disregard for my well-being sent chills down my spine.

  I fired a stream of fluent mental curses at the man, my situation, and the world generally. I had come to my senses less than ten minutes ago, and someone was already coming to kill me. I hadn’t had time to process watching a stranger die in my arms. I was going to be sacrificed on a stone altar inside a magic circle and everyone else here was far too calm about it. My world had gone from an ordinary-if-somber weekend to an unrelenting cavalcade of nonsense that all wanted me dead.

  I began screaming as loud as I could while thrashing against the chains. I yanked them with all my strength, but they would not budge. The leader was approaching me wearily and the other two had stepped up behind him. I looked down at my wrists as my heart raced and bile threatened me with a flamethrower. I knew what I needed to do. My survival instinct screamed at me and told me not to do it. I told it that it should marry the knife if it liked it so much. I had to break my thumb to get out of the manacles.

  As I was gathering my resolve and trying to decide how to carry out my grim plan, the door burst open and slammed into the wall as one of the figures crashed through. His hood was down and there was a spatter of blood on his robes.

  “Amos, they are coming! The Inquisition is here!” he shouted.

  “What?! This place is warded. We should have hours still,” the leader said.

  “They are here, now! Jakar is dead. We must run,” Bloodstains said. The leader, Amos I guessed, turned and gave me a baleful look. He growled in frustration and shook his head.

  “Fine, we leave. Miskra, kill the vessel. We’ll get another,” Amos said, handing the knife to one of the others.

  Miskra, a woman with straight black hair and pale skin, hesitated as I continued to scream and shake my head rapidly at her. She glanced between me and the knife in her hands as the others made their way to the door. Before she could make up her mind, a loud bang split the air and a bright streak of blue-green flashed through the doorway, hitting Bloodstains in the chest and turning his back red. He fell to the ground with a thump.

  Eight soldiers surged into the room like a SWAT team. They wore matching dark clothing, metal breastplates, and pointed helmets with faceplates, all painted or dyed black. Their guns were similar in style to Daivon’s, but were two-handed muskets or rifles.

  There wasn’t much of a fight. The soldiers didn’t announce themselves, demand a surrender, or wait for the figures in white to move. Each black-clad figure entered the room, shot a standing target, and kept moving. The gunshots boomed without smoke and each person in white dropped with wet thumps. It was over in less than six seconds.

  Two of the men in black approached with their guns leveled at me. I laid perfectly still and stared at them, wide-eyed. I couldn’t see anything behind their helmets. Even their eyes were covered in tinted glass, like sunglasses. The now familiar blue-green glow came from ports behind the barrels of their guns. They stopped just outside the circle.

  “H.. helb?” I asked.

  “What did he say?” the one on the right asked.

  “No idea. Whatever they were doing must have scrambled his eggs,” the other answered. There was a long pause.

  “...think he’s an Urallite?” the first one asked. The second man scoffed.

  “Yeah, the guy tied down in the ritual circle is definitely the cultist. Is your brain purely decorative?” he asked derisively. Then he stared at me for a few moments before his helmet tilted to the side.

  “Huh, I can’t ID him. No signature at all. No response to queries,” he said.

  They lowered their guns halfway and looked me over head to toe.

  “I’m not getting any closer until a mage clears it,” Number One said. Number Two nodded his agreement and the two settled in to guarded silence.

  The confirmation of ‘mage’ was both exciting and terrifying. If magic had done all of this and brought me here, maybe one of their mages could send me back home. What would I tell everyone when I got back? Would they lock me up if I told them about this? Should they?

  As I wrestled with my own sanity, the rest of the soldier searched the room. They gathered up old books and scrolls and tossed them together towards the back of the room. One soldier took a knee and felt around at one of the stone floor tiles. He pried it up with his fingertips and then called out to the room.

  “Compartment here. I’ve got lances,” he said. He flipped the thin tile over a hinge and reached in. He started pulling rifles out of the hidden stash. They were longer and chunkier than the soldiers’ guns. Another soldier came to help him and together they piled the guns near the center of the room.

  A new man entered from the open doorway. He was an older man with dark eyes. He was dressed in black like the others but had no armor on and wore a golden badge over his heart. He took in the bodies and the growing pile of guns with a satisfied nod. His gaze turned to me and his eyebrows rose in a moment of surprise. He walked over and frowned at the two soldiers near me.

  “Why haven’t you removed those chains yet?” he barked. The first soldier flinched and spoke up.

  “High Inquisitor, we don’t know what the circle does, and we couldn’t ID him,” he said. He glanced at the other soldier and then quickly added, “He could be an Urallite.”

  The High Inquisitor gave the soldier a flat look for several judgement-filled seconds. Finally, he broke the silence.

  “The array is inactive. It cannot harm you. As for his ID, use your eyes. Do you not recognize him?” he asked.

  The soldier studied my face, and even leaned in for a closer look. He shook his head and hunched his shoulders.

  “...No. Who is he, High Inquisitor?” he asked. The older man gave him a disapproving look.

  “You have punishment duty for thirty days,” the High Inquisitor said. He turned and gestured to me.

  “This man,” he said, looking me directly in the eyes, “is Daivon Khan.”