Dark Amber

Dark Amber
	There’s a gun on my desk, and my hands are shaking. The gun was my father’s, and my hands won’t be mine for much longer. I can feel the dread amber spreading through my veins, fighting my mind for control. The shapes on my chest are twisting again…
	I had been working the end of my shift at a plant store. I had worked there for five years. A man came in, in a heavy black coat with a hood that concealed his face in shadow. He wore black gloves that went past his wrists. Not a scrap of skin was to be seen on him. I remember wondering about his clothing, because the coat and gloves must have been near unbearable in the summer hear. I shrugged it off, thinking him to be an albino and sensitive to light. I was tending to a sapling when he came in. He wandered absently around the shop, looking at the various flowers and trees. After a few minutes, he picked up a random potted plant and brought it to me. He stood before me silently, making me feel awkward. I couldn’t see anything in his hood, not even the whites of his eyes.
	“Can I help you?” I asked.
	The hood slowly nodded.
	“Do you want me to check that out for you?”
	The hood nodded again.
	He followed me to the counter and I rang him up. He paid with a twenty, leaving his change. He took up his plant and turned to leave, but I stopped him.
	“Sir? Don’t you want your change?”
	The blackness in his hood turned back to gaze at ne again. He stood like that for over half a minute, making me wish I hadn’t said anything. Before he finally nodded and took the change I held out to him. He turned to leave again, and I watched him as he walked to the door. His black shoes thudded loudly on the concrete floor of my shop, and as he left I saw him, very deliberately, drop a folded piece of paper on the floor. He exited the shop and went down the sidewalk to the left. I hurried out from behind the counter and grabbed the paper. I went to the floor and leaned out of the shop.
	“Sir, you dropped this-“, I started, but stopped. There was no hooded figure to the left or the right of the door. He was gone. I shrugged and went back to the shop. Out of curiosity, I unfolded and looked at the mysterious paper.
	It was covered with daemonic characters that jerked into my mind as I looked at them, flashing to English and back wildly. Some represented words, while others represented letters. Some I couldn’t fathom at all. They made my head ache. I was able to understand them well enough, however, to create a translation key. If any more of these letters are found, use the key to decipher them. You need to stop them…
	The letters on the paper read “Yggdrasil lays enthralled and corrupt at the center of the universe”. The flashing, twisting letters gave me a headache and I crumpled the paper and threw it away from me, revolted. I was sick to my stomach and leaning against the counter. I glared at the crumpled page, lying on the concrete floor, until my sickness receded; I gingerly picked it up again and unfolded it.
	This time, the characters didn’t flash or shift. Rather, they gently slid from one language to the next, back and forth. At the bottom of the page there was an address. It was a library.
	From that moment, I was trapped. Nothing could have saved me at that point.
	I closed shop early and headed home to my apartment. I didn’t work the next day, so I stayed up late doing research on the internet. I learned about Yggdrasil, the World Tree in Norse mythology. I found no references connecting it to the center of the universe, however. Then I looked up the library. There was nothing odd or special to be found out about the Varrus library, but I was insatiably curious, and I needed to know. I decided to drive to the library tomorrow to find out more about the writing. I shut off the computer and went to sleep.
	I awoke earlier than usual, my dreams disturbed by views of vast, starlit oceans with amorphous, tentacled cephalopods writing just beneath the chill currents.
	I rode to the Varrus library, grumpy and tired from my lack of sleep. From outside it looked like any other library. Walking in, I was greeted by the welcoming smell of old books and, more noticeably, an attractive brunette behind the checkout desk.
	“Good morning, and welcome to the Varrus Library! How may I help you?” she asked, bubbly and cheerful.
	I didn’t have any clue where to start, so I showed her the strange writing to see if she could direct me to what I wanted to know. The bubbly smile slowly left her face as she took in the characters. I was surprised. I thought she would have the same extreme reaction I had upon seeing the hellish characters. However, she just invited me back into the staff lounge. She offered coffee, which I gladly accepted. I perked right up after the first sip. We sat down, facing each other across an old coffee table.
	“Well, what can you tell me about this?” I said, gesturing to the paper on the table.
	“I’ve seen the language before, but I don’t understand it and I haven’t met anyone who has. I can’t even find anything on the internet about it.”
	“Neither could I. But I can read it.” If I had the time, I would learn to keep a hold on my loose tongue. She got excited and asked me to read what the letters said. I cleared my throat and recited the words to her.
	Her excited smile widened into something more sinister. It was the grin of a wolf before it pounces. She said a word that I can’t recall, a word not meant for a human tongue, and it hung thick and heavy on the air as if offended at being spoken. The word coiled around me like a snake, tightening and constricting. My vision grew hazy and I lost consciousness.
	When I woke, it was on a stone floor bound by chains. There was no one else in the small room, but there word dark stains. The only other feature was a flat metal door with no knob or opening mechanism that I could see.
	I stood, feeling dizzy and nauseated. I staggered to the door, only to be halted by the chains bound to the wall. I sat down again in the center of the room. I must have dozed off, because I was awoken by two burly men hauling me to my feet. Chains undone, they half carried half dragged me out of the room.
	They took me through twisting corridors carved with endless whirling shapes. One whorl flowed seamlessly into the next, ever grasping each other. We turned left and right over and over until our path must have resembled the carvings on the walls. Eventually, we came to another door. It was carved with the same swirling designs as the walls. Unlike the walls, however, it was made of wood whose alien grain made my eyes burn and tear. They pushed the door open, drawing my attention to the dark marks on their arms. Their blood vessels were visible through the skin, black and pulsing.
	In the room beyond there was a tree, of the same wood as the door. Its large roots curled into a deep bowl near the stone floor. It grew up against the wall towards the back of the room, looking more like a parasitic growth rather than a tree. Still, I could see a glimmer of what it used to be. Proud, radiant. It was life corrupted. Its leaves hung dark and foul from its branches, using shadow instead of light for nutrients.
	We entered from the side of the room, with the tree to our left. On the wall to the right was an altar. It was a flat stone slab, with five carved stone tentacles rising from the center. In the center of the room stood a woman. Like the tree, I could see her former beauty, twisted and deformed. She wore a grey robe open in the front to reveal the same twisted shapes from the corridors writhing animatedly across her chest and stomach. Her arms bore the same markings as the others, dark lightning across her blood vessels.
	Behind her, chained to the wall, was another prisoner. He was beaten and worn, and had a large bruise on his face. Likely, they had resorted to cruder methods to capture him than they had me.
	“Put him next to the first one,” the witch said. Looking back at her, I realized she was the librarian from the Varrus Library. The two men holding my arms shoved me roughly down next to the other prisoner.
	The witch smiled at us both, and it was not a pleasant smile.
	“Both of you could read its writing…Both of you have what we need to set this anchor.” I had no idea what she was talking about.
	“I need your blood.” That, however, I understood pristinely. She reached inside her robe and drew out an ornate dagger.
	She went for me first. I tried to shuffle away, but one of her henchmen grabbed me and shoved me over to the tree. He held my arm over the roots, and the witch drew the knife along my wrist and let the blood drop into the bowl. A generous amount of my blood fell, and the roots sucked it up greedily. The tree seemed to tense, its branches curling closer to itself and then…nothing. The tree relaxed. The witch was disappointed.
	“Tsk tsk. You have bad blood. Next!” The man holding me threw me back against the wall and retrieved the other prisoner, who started stuttering something in a language I didn’t understand. They repeated the process with him, letting the tree drink his blood.
	This time, the tree reacted. Again, it seemed to tense and curl in on itself and relax, but drops of red amber started appearing on its branches, as if it itself was bleeding. A single drop started growing on the trunk. As the other drops stopped forming, this one grew larger and larger until it was the size of a baseball.
	The witch giggled, and then cut the prisoner’s throat. She bent him over the roots as his carotid blood sprayed over the tree, which sucked it up as fast as it came.
	Each drop of crimson amber became slowly larger, but the large one on the trunk almost doubled its size. The witch plucked it from the tree, letting her victim collapse to the ground, twitching and bleeding. She carried the dread orb over to the altar on the other side of the room. The air seemed to throb as the witch and her orb grew closer and closer. I could feel fear in the very core of my being.
	The witch placed the orb in the center of the stone tentacles, and with one great, final pulse, the orb was locked into place, floating motionlessly at the center of the five tentacles. The air was heavier than it had been before, and the orb seemed to be deeper set in reality, like a thumbtack pushed into a wall. The witch giggled again.
	“We only have one more anchor to set…and then it will be finished.” She walked back over to the tree and retrieved a small drop of dark amber. She turned to me, smiling. “You’re going to help us.”
	I opened my mouth to protest, but the witch was quick. She forced the drop of blood amber into my mouth. I tried to spit it out, but it twisted like a maggot down my throat. I coughed, choking, trying to vomit. I couldn’t breathe…the world went black, but I retained consciousness. What was happening?
	The blackness cleared, and I saw Yggdrasil. It didn’t resemble a normal tree. Both ends of its squat trunk extended into an extensive root system. Looking along the roots, I realized I was floating in space. I could see all along the branches, all through the universe. Wherever Yggdrasil touched, I could see. I realized the roots were also branches, extending all the way to planets like Earth, connecting to all the trees in the universe and drawing the energy from soils of an infinite number of planets. I realized that the roots were also like branches. They changed somewhere along the way, becoming unperceivable. But they were still there, bearing their celestial fruits. Any planet with life…
	My viewpoint changed. I could see the other side of Yggdrasil, and the horrible thing that had latched itself onto it.
	It resembled an octopus. Hundreds of tentacles wrapped around the Tree of Life, sometimes plunging directly into the bark. I could see these penetrating tentacles pumping out Yggdrasil’s amber, taking it to the head of the beast. These tentacles had bioluminescent patches all along their lengths, glowing with a fel green energy. Other penetrating tentacles pumped the amber back in. I could tell that the amber being pumped back in was corrupted, and evil. This ancient god was corrupting the Tree of Life…It was corrupting the entire universe.
	It had eyes all around its head, hundreds of which turned to regard me. My soul felt naked. I was nothing compared to this monolithic entity. Its eyes blinked, and it showed me a new vision…
	I saw Earth, with the previously unperceivable branch of Yggdrasil circled around it, wrapping the planet with its embrace. The branch was totally corrupted and rotting – the ancient god had achieved its goal. The branch began to tense, as the witch must have set the last anchor down on the planet surface – all the god needed to draw the celestial fruit back to the center of the universe.
	The branch pulled Earth away from the sun, out of the solar system. Out of the Milky Way, even. Back to the center of the universe, the origin of all things. I saw Earth reach the trunk of Yggdrasil, only to be plucked off the branch by the ancient god. The tentacle holding Earth brought it to the god’s gaping maw at the center of its tentacles. Earth disappeared into the thing’s dreadful beak.
	Its eyes blinked again, and I awoke on my apartment floor. My head was screaming and my whole body was in agony. At first, I couldn’t remember what happened until I saw the badly healing cut on my left arm. As soon as I remembered, I wanted to vomit again, but then I noticed the markings. Just like on the witch and her henchman – black lightning highlighting the blood vessels of my arms. I ripped off my shirt and, thankfully, no writhing black shapes were appearing on my body. Yet.
	I knew with horrible certainty that the ancient thing I saw in my vision was about to start feasting…the witch and her cult only had one last anchor to set. Then it would pull…
	I quickly began this account that you read now. Somebody stop them…you won’t believe me, but test my blood! The dark amber is in me now…I can feel it reaching towards my brain. Soon I will be just another minion. I’m going to pick up the gun now.
	Damn. It’s too late. It won’t let me pick up the gun. All I can do is write…

	Fools. You have no idea where you are going. Your planet’s souls are mine.

	These papers were found by May Stevens on October 26th, 2016. Her son, Sean Stevens, has been missing since. Along with these documents was a pile of shredded paper, presumably the translating key Mr. Stevens wrote about. No gun was found in the apartment.