Shadows Out of Time

She was back in the darkness of the cylinder when she felt the Mi-Go pass through the anomaly again, but she was powerless against it. Her mind was already splintered, and this time the anomaly only splintered it further, supernova upon supernova, fracture upon fracture, thrusting her backward through her past again, but also forward into a jumbled patchwork of horrific imagery that her mind couldn’t — dared not — collate. Each of these splinters fractured again and again, a mosaic of moments from the entirety of her life, until she was everywhere and everywhen, past and future, on Earth and on Yuggoth and then finally—

Somewhere else.

Emily stood upon an arid plain of sand. Before her, a stone structure sat half-buried, its timeworn walls decorated with strange, angular carvings. What remained of its massive spires rose toward an alien yellow sky where three moons hung like staring eyes. In the distance she saw enormous towers, the remains of an ancient, deserted city. Scattered among the crumbling buildings were huge, soaring monoliths of black stone, rising high above the towers and emanating a peculiar sense of dread. She found she couldn’t look at them long before her discomfort became overwhelming and she had to look away.

She was surprised to discover she was back in her body. Or a body. It couldn’t be hers. Hers was wherever Professor Vaughan and the Mi-Go had left it on Earth, after pillaging her skull. Or maybe her body was gone, burned or dissolved in acid so there would be no evidence. The body she wore now was solid, real, but it was clearly artificial, something the Mi-Go had constructed to house her brain. She patted her arms, her stomach. It didn’t feel like metal or plastic, it felt like flesh, or something close to it.

She didn’t know where she was in her timeline. Her future, it seemed. But what was this place?

There was no door in the half-buried structure before her, only an immense archway leading inside, built for someone much bigger than her. If she wanted answers, this looked like a good place to start. She stepped through the archway and found herself in a passage whose walls had been carved with the same strange designs as the exterior. The passage opened onto a titanic chamber, its soaring, vaulted ceiling rising so high that it disappeared into the shadows. At the center of the chamber was a circular dais surrounded by five stalagmites, each a dozen feet tall, bending inward like enormous ribs, and made of the same black stone as the monoliths outside. Atop the dais was an immense throne, hewn from ancient rock, and upon it sat a colossal skeleton. Its massive skull, brown and cracked with the passage of time, resembled a large, smooth boulder. It had no mouth, no eye sockets, no ear holes, just a flat expanse of bone.

A dark, oblong object rested on the throne beside the dead giant. Curious, she pulled herself up onto the throne and sat beside the giant’s huge, elongated femur and oddly spiked patella. The object seemed to be a long sliver of that same black stone, and while the giant could have easily held it in one hand, she had to lay it across her lap to examine it. But the moment she touched it, a web of energy burst to life between the five black stalagmites, surrounding her. It took the form of thousands upon thousands of strands, crossing each other to form a grid, and within the countless squares of the grid were moving images. She saw an Earth occupied by lumbering dinosaurs. She saw the raising of the pyramids, the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the continents drowning under massive floods as long-lost islands rose from the ocean’s depths. She saw other worlds, too, other forms of life that weren’t human or Mi-Go — barrel-shaped creatures with wings like fans, coneshaped entities with snaking limbs, polyp-like monstrosities that phased in and out of the material plane. She saw civilizations rise and fall on countless worlds. All of time played out before her.

She put it together then. All the clues were there. This was Arneth-Zin, the temple at the center of the universe where all the timelines converged. This was where Professor Vaughan had wanted to go so desperately that he’d sold her and Sean to the Mi-Go like lab rats. The dead giant beside her had to be the sentry he’d spoken of. The watcher of Arneth-Zin — blind, deaf, dumb, and long dead. She almost laughed at the irony. It had seen and heard nothing of the timelines that played out in the grid. It couldn’t tell anyone its secrets. It couldn’t send Professor Vaughan back in time to save his family. Vaughan had destroyed Emily’s life, put her through unimaginable horror, for nothing.