The Blue Creature Between
Several years ago I met a thing the likes of which I had never dreamt of. And I have dreamt of a great many things.
It happened in the midst of one of my great spells. My apprentice, young Nick, used the wrong concentration of the noble water, and during the incantation the spell went awry. I was attempting to open a gate between the planes, but because of the miscalculation, the other end of the portal was shifted ever so slightly in the ether, and a thin crack on the very left of my gate led to nowhere. To the true nothing between worlds, where there is no vacuum because there is no space, and no eternity because there is no time.
Cracks began to radiate outward from the crack, eating away at the time and space of our world. I attempted a great spell of sealing, but no spell of our world can hold sway on a hole such as this. I feared for my life, and indeed for the entire world.
When the opening had reached the size of a man, something emerged from the nowhere, although clearly that is impossible. It was a creature, somewhat smaller than I, in fact about the same size as my Nick. It was covered in fur and had a face like an animal (though unlike any animal I have ever seen) and in colour it was a vivid blue like the oceans. It also had a great mane of flowing hair, coloured like the sky, that reached all the way to the ground. It was garbed in strange robes of green, brown and gold that wrapped around its body in hanging folds, leaving only its head uncovered. With the creature came a strange device, apparently an instrument. It had the proper frame of a harp, but the strings twisted and connected at odd angles in the manner of a spider’s web.
The creature swiftly turned to face the hole from which it had emerged, paying no mind to me or my Nick. From the folds of its garment emerged several oddly shaped limbs, and with these it began to pluck the strings of its instrument. I observed carefully and was able to count that the creature has, at the least, two arms like a man but covered in blue fur, five shorter limbs with long, delicate fingers, and eight long furred legs like those of a spider. It had many limbs besides these as well, some which moved far to fast for my eyes to follow. All its limbs are covered in the same deep blue fur on its face.
The music produced by this instrument was eerie and somewhat unpleasant. There was no true melody, or at least none audible to human ears, and the notes came so fast they blurred together into long shrieks of pure noise (I should note here that Nick claims to have found the effect in some way beautiful, though I do not understand how). The noise was loud enough that I could not hear the sound of my own voice, and, approaching the creature, I felt myself being physically pushed back by the sound. At this volume my ears should have been shattered, yet I felt no pain and afterward my hearing was unharmed.
Soon I began to hear another sound beneath the thing’s music, a crackling sound like breaking ice. The hole I had made began to gradually shrink. The performance continued, gradually growing in intensity until a ‘climax’ that was so fast I heard it only as solid wave of sound encompassing every tone the human ear can perceive. The hole in space and time closed completely, and the music slowed to a halt. The strange creature retracted all of its limbs, turned to me and bowed. Its eyes were pure black without the least hint of reflection, as if they too were holes leading to that timeless nothing. The creature vanished soundlessly and without a trace, leaving its instrument behind.
In the past few years I have tried to play this device many times, but it is impossible. Plucking any individual string causes them all the vibrate, creating the same toneless hum every time. If I remember correctly, the creature would pinch the web with its fingers in many places at once, limiting the size of the web that could vibrate. With the help of several of my students I have managed to produce several notes from the instrument using this technique, however actually playing the thing remains far out of reach for any being without at least ten limbs and superhuman speed.
Yesterday I received a call from a mutual acquaintance saying that another hole in reality was inadvertently created somewhere in London, but was repaired by an unknown agent. The instrument has vanished from my storage room.
- Diary of an Unknown Sorcerer
Book of Eleven Hours, Volume VII