Shadows Out of Time

A third time he leaped into the spinning earth-sphere, possessing the body of a soldier in some far-future war. The world seemed to explode with fire and thunder as he crouched in a muddy trench with his fellow warriors, clutching a rifle in his fists. Malygris determined to fight his way out of this war, something that should be easy with his knowledge of sorcery. When the time came to charge the enemy, he went “up and over” with the rest of the boys, only to take a bullet in the forehead after five steps.

Once more his bodiless consciousness slipped outside of time and space.

Again he dove into the timestream. And again, and again.

There was no way to control when and where his consciousness emerged each time. Perhaps the Yithian could have done this, but the remnants of its mind were still as damaged as that of Malygris. Malygris’ hunger for a living body and a return to glory in the physical world consumed all other visions now. Nylissa and the pleasures of her love were forgotten things.

Malygris dreamed only of conquest.

Each time he landed in a body unsuited to his purposes, he committed suicide and began again. Over the course of history, pre-history, and future history he appeared in ten thousand different bodies, and some of these bodies succeeded in building bloody empires. He became a Lord of Ancient Babylon, plotting to murder rivals and gaining a reputation as the greatest sorcerer of that age. Yet mortality caught up with him, and his Babylonian body died of some nameless disease without a cure.

Another empire he formed in a later millennium, after inhabiting the body of an up-and-coming dictator who set about conquering most of Europe. Massive organized slaughters unfolded at his whim, with entire races routed and scrubbed from the earth. All of the decadent pleasures and sadistic rituals of that dark empire stemmed from the twisted mind of Malygris, yet none who followed his orders, none who worshipped his cruelty as that of a living god, ever heard his true name. Sometimes even he forgot his true identity, lost in the depravities of conquest and its carnal spoils until his nightmares reminded him. In the end, he grew tired of this charade and the dictator committed suicide.

Haunted by dreams of golden Atlantis, Malygris longed to return to his origins. Yet he might as well seek to find a needle inside a haystack. Again he inserted himself into history, using his stolen bodies to study ancient texts and improve his mastery of sorcery. His goal now was to master the flow of time so he might return to his home in Atlantis. This dream became his chief obsession, though another thousand lifetimes failed to bring him there.

He was a tribesman, leading his people to slaughter their peaceful enemies. He was a murderer whose crimes fostered their own gory legend in the cities of Europe. Once he inhabited a beetle-like body common to the race that would inherit the earth long after mankind had exterminated itself. Inside the insect bodies of this distant future he sensed the familiar minds of the Yithians, who had transferred the consciousness of their entire populace into this future race to avoid their own prehistoric extinction. Recognizing Malygris as some kind of temporal contagion, they ejected him from the timestream by tearing his host body to bits.

In another era he became a devious clergyman, trapped in the stolid halls of a great religion that he corrupted with sadism and demonology. He inhabited pirates and scientists, inquisitors and slaves. He lived the lives of peasants and royalty, primitives and futurists, sailors, bankers, artists, and politicians. Once he inhabited the body of a writer whose tales of bleak cosmic truths were regarded as fiction, yet whose ideas permeated global consciousness. Time and again he founded death-cults and fostered murderous rebellions steeped in carnage. He turned hopeful futures into miserable dark ages, venting his spite on mankind both personally and globally.

There is only one constant that marks the appearances of Malygris throughout past and future histories: Corruption, violence, and destruction follow wherever he goes. Every life lived, every death endured, has only worsened his malevolence. He is a blind specter now, reaching into the world at random times and places. A curse upon humanity. His obsession has shriveled into a hatred for all that lives. Cruelty and death herald his unpredictable visitations. The course of history has been warped to wear the bloody scars that Malygris makes upon it.