The Darkness of Matter

The Darkness of Matter: Chapter 4

                The deadly tide of golden motes slowed, stopped. They hung suspended in mid-air, lighting the eerie half-darkness with scattered points of eldritch light, moving gently in random motion. Astonished, Sophie looked up as the icy cold of the room thawed ever so slightly. A breath of air touched her cheek like a promise of hope.

                 The daemon snarled angrily, turned.

Three shadowy figures stood on the threshold. Light shone from their hands, as if they carried torches or high powered flashlights. They were chanting. Vaguely Sophie could make out words; to her surprise they were in English.

“Go back. Erinyes, Echthroi, Temenos, Keres of old: we undo the summoning. We call you by your rightful name. Erinyes, Echtroi, Temenos and Keres."

The daemon howled, asound that shook the rafters. Darkness billowed from its hands but was met by a solid barrier of resistance that pinned it down and stopped its advance. The rosy little girl’s face dissolvedinto a rictus of rage, but the newcomers had the advantage. They advanced steadily, leaning forward as if facing a high wind, chanting through the rising snarl of its wrath. Behind it, the rift in the aether began to fade as the laws of the natural world reasserted themselves and stretched to fill the void, cutting off the unnatural magic that fueled the daemon's existence.

The blue corpse-eyes fell out of its face and rolled out on the floor like marbles, one landing near Sophie’s foot in a smear of blood; it was fresh.

The daemon’s substance thinned like a piece of worn clothing and its challengers redoubled their efforts, distracting it and keeping it from reaching the rift which was itself disappearing, as if painted over by layer after layer of translucent color until it was almost completely obscure. The daemon, now reduced to a featureless gray phantom, spread its wings out but the dread it inspired was thin and worn, like a memory of fear rather than the thing itself.

In the glass hemisphere, the last of the unbihexium chip smoked dark gray and white, a small, melting crescent of silvery metal, and dissolved into nothingness.

With a final sigh, the demon wavered and broke apart in a gust of smoke.

Sophie collapsed on the floor. She felt cold and exhausted and utterly spent, like a shell of herself, all substance forever sucked dry. No hope or light or energy left. 

A short dumpy woman in a plaid shirt and jeans rushed over. At her touch a measure of warmth returned to Sophie’s body. The woman pulled out a pencil flashlight from her pocket, and shone it professionally into Sophie’s eyes before releasing her with a nod. “No damage. Your pupils are reacting normally, thank God. How do you feel?”

Wordlessly, Sophie shook her head. She was beyond words. It felt as though she would never laugh again. She hugged herself, a visceral reaction to the terrible darkness.

“Terrible, I imagine,” said the dark-skinned man in the lead. “I only saw that thing for seconds and I’m still quaking to the core.”

There was a faint groan from the floor.

Sophie whispered, “Dad?” She suddenly realized how dim it was. The main lighting had gone out, and the ghostly fluorescent glow of the emergency lights lit the room. The air conditioning appeared to have stopped too. It was deathly silent inside the laboratory.

“He’s alright.” A slim young man with the build of an athlete turned Carl over, expertly checking his pulse and heartbeat. He added, “There’s another man behind the desk. He’s out cold.”

“I’ll get him.” The woman placed two fingers against Jonathan’s head. After a brief moment she diagnosed him: “A minor concussion.”

Sophie crawled over to her father. An ugly bruise stood out on his forehead but he looked otherwise alright. She reached her hand over; a spark leapt from her finger to Carl’s forehead, and he groaned.