Of The Dark and The Deep Read online

  Of The Dark and The Deep

  The Cryptid Council Series

  Book #1

  Rînk Wéstër

  Copyright © 2018 by Rînk Wéstër

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Åbøut thê Bøök

  A göd who lives on his fathers,

  who feeds on his mothers...

  Gröötslâng is the tusk of heaven

  Who rages in his heart,

  Who lives on the being of every göd,

  Who eats their entrails

  When they come, their bodies full of mågÿck

  From the Isle of Flame...

  Every cryptid göd learned the prophecy. Knew enough to fear the gröötslâng completely.

  CEO of the most powerful mågÿckal corporation on the planet, Gærüt S. Lång, had lived with being the boogie man to the boogie men his entire existence.

  He was the Gröötslâng. The elephant serpent of heaven. The slayer of The Dark and The Deep, Aeyitria and Łöståghår. Dark Mother and Father of them all.

  He was also the göd Ôlörûn and he governed the immortal council of cryptid elders from their hidden Buckhead, Atlanta Peachtree sanctum. Along with his seven Øgdöåd brothers. The most ancient and powerful göds of the cosmos.

  Sphelix Thorne. The göd Ågänjû. Bæbäl Richmand. The göd Bæbälúayé. Hlünin Såtûri. The göd Osänyìn. Dr. Örên Marcuse. The göd Òrúnmìlà. Aren White. The göd Obàtálá. Xiao Yu Shizi. The trickster göd Yuhuang Dadi. Åpsät Õsòòsi. The göd Õsòòsi.

  It was a good thing then that he was the last of his kind.

  He had killed the only other over 4000 years ago.

  That time for good.

  Nothing could bring her back save his Amulet of Sihiosia.

  And he would die before he’d let that happen.

  He prayed however that it wouldn’t have to come to that.

  Not again.

  This book is dedicated

  To All the misunderstood mågÿck wielding gëëks of the world.

  Do not test the depth of the river with both feet.

  Those who have not crossed the river yet should not laugh at those who are drowning.

  —African Proverb

  CØNTÊNTS

  Cøvër

  Tìtlê Page

  Åbøut thê Bøök

  Dëdicætîön

  Êpîgräph

  Pröløgüê 0

  Chäptêr 1

  Chäptêr 2

  Chäptêr 3

  No Chäptêr 4

  (Spit spit evil be gone!)

  Chäptêr 5

  Chäptêr 6

  Chäptêr 7

  Chäptêr 8

  Chäptêr 9

  Chäptêr 10

  Chäptêr 11

  Chäptêr 12

  No Chäptêr 13

  (UnLuck Be rebuked!)

  Chäptêr 14

  Chäptêr 15

  Chäptêr 16

  Chäptêr 17

  Chäptêr 18

  Chäptêr 19

  Chäptêr 20

  Chäptêr 21

  Chäptêr 22

  Chäptêr 23

  Chäptêr 24

  Chäptêr 25

  Chäptêr 26

  Chäptêr 27

  Chäptêr 28

  Chäptêr 29

  Chäptêr 30

  Chäptêr 31

  Chäptêr 32

  Chäptêr 33

  Chäptêr 34

  Chäptêr 35

  Chäptêr 36

  Chäptêr 37

  Chäptêr 38

  Chäptêr 39

  Chäptêr 40

  Chäptêr 41

  Chäptêr 42

  Chäptêr 43

  Chäptêr 44

  Chäptêr 45

  Chäptêr 46

  Chäptêr 47

  Chäptêr 48

  Chäptêr 50

  Chäptêr 51

  Chäptêr 52

  Chäptêr 53

  Chäptêr 54

  Chäptêr 55

  Chäptêr 56

  Chäptêr 57

  Chäptêr 58

  Chäptêr 59

  Chäptêr 60

  Chäptêr 61

  Chäptêr 62

  Chäptêr 63

  Chäptêr 64

  Chäptêr 65

  Chäptêr 66

  Chäptêr 67

  Chäptêr 68

  Chäptêr 69

  Chäptêr 70

  Chäptêr 71

  Chäptêr 72

  Chäptêr 73

  Chäptêr 74

  Chäptêr 75

  Chäptêr 76

  Chäptêr 77

  Chäptêr 78

  Chäptêr 79

  Chäptêr 80

  Chäptêr 81

  Chäptêr 82

  Chäptêr 83

  Epilogue

  0

  They said In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with Göd. And the Word was Göd.

  But No. It wasn’t so. First came Hiklorim. And the hibernating dominion that saw the first of us born.

  I know because I was there. I was The First.

  The first to eat the dark and break oblivion.

  *****************************************************

  How on everything binding me to this life, on the dying Amulet of Sihiosia, I wish I wasn’t.

  Long before the word and the kith of humankynd there was The Dark and The Deep.

  They spread out together like a vine across cosmic dots, comingling the filth of mågÿck and thought. They were Aeyitria and Łöståghår, the cardinal mother and father of us all. For billions of years, in an unclaimed time before time had a master, there was only the two of them. Lonely in the challenge of unanswered, soundless omnipotence they grew. Their gnawing pitch black power creating the syllable and design of the universe. Together they bound the nothingness and bent blackness into something tangible and sticky, as if night were smoke, and that smoke a breathing, writhing, unending vastness.

  In humankind’s pyramid texts of 2780 B.C.E., in what is waiting to call itself the “old tongue”, this starless realm of The Dark and The Deep, of Aeyitria and Łöståghår, our dark mother and father, would come to be known as Hiklorim; the imagined realm of churning unfolded night, mågÿckally torn and shaped into being from sheer will and malice.

  After eons there in Hiklorim, with his nothing nursing her empty, Łöståghår had grown weary of Aeyitria and wanted something more. He wanted a child. New to the crafting of things, Aeyitria and Łöståghår, spent a thousand years trying to give their mågÿck form. Aeyitria sensing Łöståghår’s motives found ways to manipulate the mågÿck of her Dark impulse, changing the Dark and remaining barren. In the final moments of that final year Łöståghår, The ever wise Göd of The Deep, being infinitely as wise and duplicitous as Aeyitria, visited her in a dream as she slept and poured his mågÿck into her. He raped the dark mother and impregnated Aeyitria, forcing his mågÿck into hers, into the shape of a son. In incandescent rage at this permissionless quiet thing inside her,, Aeyitria soon grew fat and large, celestial stretch marks ripping across the heavens, the screams of her dark divinity bursting open, muffled only by Łöståghår’s joy. But Łöståghår had miscalculated. This new thing scraping and mewling inside the mother had a foreboding foreign mågÿck of its own which frightened them both. When the immortal walls of Aeyitria’s uterine envelope broke, The Dark and The Deep both shuddered. Beings to whom consent was new found themselves afraid and heavy with a gnawing power that would not heed. Beyond that place of horror and fear, screaming inside my own mågÿck, that primordial amnion swam and convulsed and in its place I took my first
breath.

  My eyes were as large as galaxies. Seeing for the first time all of Hiklorim laid before me I cried out, the cholic of this new visual well of life finding its first voice. In my yawning embryonic state the first stars danced and played on my skin, darting in and out of my pores. Creations now inate to and because of me. My skin was covered in golden scales with empyral diamonds knocking together vibrating so fiercely where I unfurled, screaming in infant newness, the Dark and The Deep shrank from me. Insult to injury they begged each other for succor and tried to run away. In hunger I lashed out with my mågÿck so different from Mother and Father and drank down the milky tar of their murky empyrean abyss. My fangs and 6 tusks latched onto that dark tit. I fed on them, digesting their mågÿcks with my own, and it was good.

  I was alive.

  The very first Cryptid.

  The very first of the 9 Göds of the Øgdöåd. We Children of the infinite dark.

  There in Hiklorim, in the time your texts would call Zép-Tëj-Wê, my seven brothers and I lingered for millennia.

  The Children of the infinite dark.

  Along with our sister.

  Harsh as sapphire in her eternal malice.

  Ÿêmøjá. Sky Mother and She Who Would Not Burn.

  I should know.

  I spent millennia trying to kill her.

  I succeeded. Once.

  But when you are of The Dark and The Deep, Death may come.

  But He can’t always collect.

  Motherfucker.

  1

  Gærüt S. Lång loved walking at night down Peachtree Street with all its hipster gastro pubs filled to overflow with any given evenings laughing horde of frustrated millennials, busy substituting security for mild sexual frivolity.

  Thanksgiving was just around the corner and Buckhead’s finest shops were frantically throwing up decorations of turkeys and horns of plenty in every window. 30% off at Nordstrom’s. Amazing Fendi discounts. We honor all competitor coupons. There were Black Friday sales announcements and Street Santa’s begging for donations at every intersection of downtown Atlanta. Streamers and event lighting hung from every lamp and signpost, all of human holiday melding into one great blur of anticipation. An elderly man grinned at him, nodding and shuffling by, on his way to claim his own piece of the festivities. Bless them all, he chuckled. He looked up, bathed in the ethereal glow of the lampposts overhead and laughed. He loved those blazing synthetic suns the humans called “street lights”. They cracked open the night, as he walked, and drank down his anxiety. Usually they provided unearned, unopened solace. But not tonight. Tonight he wasn’t alone.

  He knew what the two men following him were long before they knew to mask their scent. He swallowed hard and opened his mind to them. His fingers traced the edges of the Amulet around his neck as he let just a trickle of his Sihiosian mågÿck flow out and between them. A metaphysical chest thump. They both halted, eyes darting back and forth, foreheads beading with sweat in knowing unease.

  “Yes, motherfuckers, my dick is bigger than yours. Much bigger.” he sulked at them. Sending that message telepathically first to one and then the other. “Now run along before things get...unnecessary.”

  The 2 beings shimmered and quickly changed form like water in reverse, evaporating into something slow and solid. Skin like blue and orange cement and millions of jagged pebbles replaced the men standing there moments ago. Round swirling protrusions grew on their heads, becoming great knobs of lion mane the color of desert sand. Hidden from the humans passing by with sorcery and glåmöûr, they transformed into Foo Ming Guardian lions, the Tåôtié of legend, their stone-like skin covered in lava flames, the color of ruby embers, enveloping each knob and twist of torso. Crimson smoke rose off them like the smoldering outline of a slowly bleeding corpse. This was their true göd form. The lesser cryptid beast children of his brother, Xiao Yu. Never the brightest of creatures or beings of subtlety, they climbed up the face of the nearest building, claws shredding mortar and brick, breaking every pane of glass in their path as they disappeared into the night.

  Fucking Foo Dogs.

  They always hunted in pairs and never without first being summoned to the hunt.

  But who would welcome death enough to summon them to hunt me?, He thought. Unless...It couldn’t be? Could it?

  That thought made his tongue go dry in fear as he quickened his pace, stifling the urge to scream.

  He knew if he started he would never stop.

  *****************************************************

  As he rounded the corner, almost knocking over a little girl child wearing a Wonder Woman pink coat and galoshes who had managed to run ahead of her parents, there stood his destination. In stark contrast to the lights and frenetic shopping going on all around it, it was the last and only place in the multiverse that Gærüt wanted to be right now. Never had the doors and the rotunda of The Sallie Douglas Building seemed more foreboding. It’s top 9 floors were home to the Küqålä Corporation. A 15,000 year old company that existed long before “company” was a thing, specializing in arms, munitions and overall king-making. They had been integral to every human war over the last 15 millennia. Their offices moving from continent to continent, city to city, vast resources shuffling and reshuffling themselves over the millennia, it was an entity unto itself. Governments grew or wilted on the political and economic vine at Küqålä’s directive.

  Larger than life sculpture and artwork of the greatest most vicious human warriors of the past populated the walls of its current Buckhead headquarters. All designed to proclaim with no equivocation its malevolence to the world. Alaric, The Visigoth King who sacked Rome. Julius Caesar. Leonidas of Sparta. Genghis Khan. Miyamoto Musashi. Alexander the Great. It was art imitating irony.

  The Küqålä Corporation’s supremacy and wealth were matched only by the cruelty with which they had spent millennia wielding them. All under Gærüt S. Lång’s piercing eye. Küqålä’s President, CEO and master.

  It was in the penthouse chamber, beyond the door of mystically warded quartz and diamond, that the real business of Küqålä took place. It was there the Cryptid Council of the Øgdöåd held sway. Over this dimension and every other.

  It was there that Gærüt was headed with more haste and trepidation than he had felt in thousands of years. Once inside the atrium with its gothic Prussian arches and burnt Italian marble and out of sight of any prying eyes he opened his mågÿck and transmigrated into the 42nd floor penthouse Cryptid Council hall. Teleporting in, before he could say a word and compel the moment, he found himself right in the angry middle of psychic fisticuffs, lightning bolts, fangs and feathers flying between his two brothers, Xiao Yu Shizi, the Jade Emperor Göd Yuhuang Dadi and Åpsät Õsòòsi, the Angel Göd of the hunted and avenged.

  And standing behind them, mågÿck rolling off her in manic ripples, eyes burning like pyretic emeralds, covered in Transvaal dirt and funereal grime, stood the one being in the multiverse he had hoped to never see again.

  Hello Brother, she cackled before they both shifted form and the world went black with rage.

  2

  The star of Sihiosia was old. As old as the gröötslâng itself. It was the very first star of the very first universe. The original Light of Hiklorim. Formed from a co-mingling of mågÿcks made physical, It grew within the mother. Mother mågÿck. Father mågÿck. And something new. That mågÿckal triumvirate trundling and attaching itself layer upon stygian layer until it became the gröötslâng. It was its beating center. It’s abiding heart. But not in any mundane human sense of the word. It was the elysian umbilical that bridged the power of the Mother and the Father and created its own elsewhere mågÿck. The mågÿck of the gröötslâng itself. Born of The Dark and The Deep but different from them. A power far greater than the sum. Malicious and untamed, it wanted only to become destruction itself. To reach out and recolor the inky black of creation. To become it’s own bit of matte darkness in a glossy sky.

  It’s måg
ÿck became one with the gröötslâng, whispering in the coptic language of eons, the secrets of conquest and domination. It was the star of Sihiosia, that in the end before the second beginning, allowed the gröötslâng to conquer Aeyitria and Łöståghår. When the Great War of Hiklorim began between the Mother, the Father and the gröötslâng, he had summoned the power of the star, binding his life force to that of creation and together they drank back the sorcery of Aeyitria and Łöståghår.

  Weakened now by both the birth of the gröötslâng and the power of the star of Sihiosia, Aeyitria and Łöståghår lashed out in final and dying impotence. Their remaining mågÿcks hemmorhaged and smashed together in a storm of rage and power. That final act of terminal vengeance spasmed across the heavens, corrupting and poisoning his creation, giving birth to the 7 other göds of the Øgdöåd.

  The gröötslâng then, in what he would come to rue millions of years later, carved from his own heart a sliver of the star of Sihiosia. With it he fashioned an Amulet of utter enmity and ruin. Into it, in a phobic fit of unrehearsed wrath and unapology, he poured all of his aching malice, shaping that hate into cosmic clay and that clay into Nänå Båkløü.

  His daughter. His sister. His gröötslâng queen. The 9th and final göddess of the Øgdöåd.

  Around her neck he hung the Amulet of Sihiosia to bind her to him and bring his brothers to heel. The Amulet he ripped from her the day he killed her, breaking its covenant and unsealing its curse.

  The final revenge of the Mother and the Father.

  In that space, their retribution breathed out, and in that breath was fire.