Chapter Eleven: Unexpected

A man sat alone in his jail cell, contemplating life, the universe, and everything. Mostly he was doing this in an attempt to figure out a way to get out of this cell, but the guys in suits in charge of him had made sure that he could not perform even the smallest of spells, keeping his hands bound and his mouth firmly closed. So he was left with trying to figure out how to free himself under such constraints.

He had resorted to silent prayer to the various gods in the hope that someone would decide to help him out for a laugh. So far it wasn't working. Extending out with his mind as far as he could out into the ether, he suddenly heard a small 'Pop!' in his mind and thought to himself, Well you've done it now Ethan, you've given yourself a stroke.

For a moment there was a slight ringing before he heard a voice in his head say, "Thank you for calling the gods of Chaos. Due to the increased traffic load from various missions we have implemented an automated system to better serve your needs."

Bloody hell! Even the gods were modernizing these days! An automated call system didn't seem very chaotic to Ethan, but then again he supposed that if they wanted to inflict pain and insanity on the unworthy then this was definitely the way to go.

"If you wish to file a report, please think 'one' now… you have thought 'one'. Taking you to mission report thought mail," the voice on the other end said, causing Ethan to curse. Asking someone to not think of something was a sure fire way to get them to think about it, although he had a sneaking suspicion that this system wasn't exactly made for humans. He would just have to try and keep his mind calm and empty.

Of course at that point one of his captors decided to check in on him and demand to know what he was doing.

"Automated keyword check has detected 'captor' in your report and signs of stress. Have you been captured?" The voice inquired.

Yes! Ethan thought.

"Checking… checking… please remain patient… checking… systems indicate that there is minimal Warp interference in your location and you can be safely recovered. Would you like an extraction?" The voice asked.

Bloody hell yes! Ethan thought on first impulse before he could realize that he had no idea who exactly was on the other end of the line and maybe sitting in his nice cell would be preferable to being taken somewhere else.

Unfortunately by then it was too late and Ethan Rayne, chaos mage found himself yanked through a hole in reality toward an unknown destination. The transit lasted only a few seconds, during which time he was exposed to the blackest darkness and a sense of coming apart at the seams, as if he were unravelling to fill the void before he was vomited back out into reality.

Of a sort.

Ethan found himself lying naked in a heap on some sort of stone tile floor in a small domed chamber, his magical senses all screaming at him that something was very, very wrong with this place. His fears were confirmed a moment later when a group of heavily armoured demons wielding enormous axes entered the room. It was impossible to describe to the uninitiated, but he could taste the fact these creatures were completely unlike the bog standard demons back home.

These were pure blooded demons. These were Old Ones, or at the very least the elite soldiers of Old Ones, and as such were about as far out of his league as it could possibly be. On his best day with full planning and the back up of a small army he might be able to take one of these monsters, but naked and alone against six he was completely screwed.

The demons looked down at him with some confusion before one of them in particularly ornate armour said, "You're not one of ours."

Ethan was quite amazed that the voice sounded feminine rather than evil, but he did not really have time to remark upon his surprise before he was hauled to his feet, the demon saying, "The gods will want to talk with this one."

Ethan found himself frog-marched out of the bare chamber into a lurid, macabre realm of bizarrely twisting corridors adorned with strange sigils made of writhing, viridescent flames and solid blocks of coruscating light. Every colour imaginable, and a few that weren't, were present in abundance. The whole place was a riot for the senses.

As the soldier demons carried him along, the population density began to increase. There were all sorts of creatures, but the terrifying thing was that aside from a profusion of the demonic there were also a huge number of humans of every possible description going about various forms of business, bearing the sort of marks that showed that they had dedicated themselves completely and utterly to whatever deities these demons served. He even saw several people walking around who were clearly possessed.

Eventually they brought him before a set of great metal doors that had to be at least ten metres across and forty high, constructed of iron, brass, gold, and what appeared to be flesh and set with rubies, diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires to create a grotesque series of scenes that Ethan could not comprehend but seemed to involve excessive amounts of dismemberment.

With barely even a creak the great doors opened, revealing a swirling maelstrom on the other side, at the centre of which was an enormous stepped pyramidal structure upon the top of which was an enormous throne structure. Four figures were upon the throne, three of them sitting upon the legs or lap of the fourth.

When the figures had such things as laps and legs.

It was impossible to describe them properly, for each moment they were something different, and many of their forms defied human definition, but one common motif was of a man in his prime with three beautiful women, a pleased sneer upon his face.

As they approached, the forms stabilized, presumably for Ethan's benefit. The four figures disentangled themselves from each other, allowing them to rise, the man coming to the forefront to take a closer look at Ethan.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" The man asked. From his gaze Ethan felt that he probably already knew everything there was to know from Ethan, but wanted to hear it for the benefit of the others in the court.

"We found him in one of the emergency recovery chambers," the lead guard stated.

Feeling the eyes turn upon him seeking an explanation, Ethan stuttered out, "I… ah… appear to have… well… err… called the wrong number, magically speaking. Terrible misunderstanding you see, and… well… I… uh… yes. Yes. Total misunderstanding."

"Your coming here was foreseen, Ethan Rayne," the man stated.

"Bullshit," one of the women behind him, a redhead, stated.

Turning upon her in annoyance, the man said, "Dear, I'm trying to cow the mortal here, and you're not helping me maintain the proper air of all knowing superiority."

"All knowing… sure… if you were really all knowing then why was it that…" The red head began before he cut her off.

"Not the time my dear, not the fucking time," the man said.

The purple haired one, who appeared as a sexy, sexy MILF raised a finger and said, "Actually, today's orgy is scheduled in five minutes."

The man paused before conjuring up a pocket watch and saying, "Well what do you know?"

"See? Not all knowing," the red head pointed out.

"It is his brand of prop humour," the blue haired albino woman said.

"Shut it," the red head spat.

"If this is a bad time I can come back later," Ethan suggested.

Glancing back at him, the man said, "You wish. Anyway, since someone had to go and ruin my aura of omniscience, I'll get right to the point. You weren't supposed to be able to get into that line and that error was fixed but we are very impressed nonetheless… unless of course you were and I'm just fucking with your mind."

"Pro-tip, he probably is fucking with your mind either way," the red head pointed out.

Glancing back at her to give her a baleful stare, he returned his attention to Ethan and said, "Getting back to the topic at hand, we would like to offer you a job Mr. Rayne. As a so-called worshipper of chaos, we would like to introduce you to the benefits of big 'C' Chaos and hope that you will take them back to your home dimension."

"Uh…" Ethan said nervously.

"You don't have to answer now, the orgy is getting ready to start, so maybe you should tell us then," the man said, waving his hand to beckon forth a large group of scantily clad women. Smiling, he told them, "Please take very good care of our guest here."

Ethan felt like the man who had jumped out of a plane without a parachute only to discover that his fall was broken by landing in a pool at the Playboy mansion.


Somewhere across the multiverse a dark command room only vaguely illuminated by the monitors of various screens suddenly lit up with various warning lights and the low chatter of technicians going about their work was drowned out by warning klaxons suddenly activating. There was an immediate, brief panic as everyone tried to figure out what was going on before professionalism kicked in and they began sorting out what had tripped all of their alarms.

"Incoming transdimensional shock wave!" One of the technicians announced.

"Inform the fleet," the officer on duty ordered. "Do we have a source yet?"

"It's coming from the direction of Wild Space!" One of the technicians announced.

Everyone felt a shiver at that announcement. Wild Space was the border land of universes about the horrific realm known as Chaotic Space. Chaotic Space had been sealed off an unknown number of eons ago by some ancient people, but despite their skills the almost non-stop dimensional rifts within Chaotic Space had a tendency to bleed out into the surrounding realities, making navigation in the dimensional sea a trying task. For the most part Wild Space never saw patrols, making it something of a haven for pirates and outlaws insane enough to take the risks.

That said a dimensional rift had not been recorded in Wild Space for hundreds of years. It required an enormous amount of energy to disturb the dimensional sea in any significant way, and Wild Space was not sufficiently disturbed to normally generate those sorts of forces.

The entire command room rumbled as the shockwave passed over their observation post, but they already braced for impact and were on a fixed point, so the fact that they felt anything at all was worrying.

"Shock wave has passed, communications are returning. Beginning triangulation with other outposts…" someone said.

There was a gasp of horror as the results were displayed upon the main holographic projector. Entire universes were presented as points of light like stars in the sky trailing tangled webs of unrealized timelines behind them, creating the impression of a constellation of jellyfish floating in the void, forming great arms and clusters of being.

And shunted off to one side, out on a branch of existence far from everything else, was the stain that was Chaotic Space, sealed off from everything else by the great works of an elder civilization. And the triangulations showed that the shock wave had come from within that damned place. Already their sensors were picking up tangled skeins of madness reaching out, ensnaring other cosmoses within Wild Space.

The officer did the only thing he could. He said to his communications officer, "Get me the TSAB Headquarters."