Otherworlds 6: Fire and Steel
You never know where a gateway to another world might pop up, but you'll know when you go through one. It had started to happen a few years ago. People just vanished suddenly; they leapt into a lake and never came out, a doorway no one could remembered suddenly appeared in the basement and vanished once someone walked through it, things like that.
Many people never came back when they vanished, but some of them did. Some of them came back changed. One of the earliest examples was two office workers who vanished in a boiler room. Four months later they re-emerged from the same boiler room looking completely different.
They had gone in a paunchy balding middle manager and an overweight mother of four. What had returned where two muscular strong people, both noticeable taller than when they had entered. The man was a mountain of muscle with a chiseled jawline. The woman had returned a tall athletic woman with high cheekbones and wild black hair that flowed down to her lower back. The irises of them both had remained an unnatural red ever since they returned.
Those two were one of the first recorded disappearances associated with an Otherworld. Unlike a mysterious disappearance, they had actually come back and explained, more or less, what happened. They had even brought two artifacts back with them.
The first recorded object brought back from an Otherworld were two metal discs, about 12 cm in diameter, inscribed with pentagrams inside a circle and some decorative markings. The returned travelers said the discs had allowed them to return home. They were vague on the details, but the plates also had something to do with their changed appearance.
The two cross-world travelers were eager to leave the publicity behind them, and also had no interest in retaining ownership of the metal pentagram plates. So, as their tale became a footnote to the larger Otherworlds phenomenon, the plates were passed around to various researchers. At first, very carefully, but then more casually as they were determined to be simply steel and brass. There was no longer anything measurably supernatural about these worked bits of metal, if there ever had been.
That is how the two pentagram plates ended up in the possession of a nascent Department of Otherworlds research at a small university. They hadn't yet developed a formal program of study, but some interested students did have the opportunity to assist the researchers.
Andrew was one such student. He was a graduate student currently pursuing his master's degree in anthropology, and he was working on a project about the impact of Otherworlds on society and culture. Andrew had been working very closely with the professors and other researchers who called Otherworld Studies their own.
Andrew had been delighted to be trusted with the responsibility of the storage room for Otherworlds artefacts and materials. He later realized this honor mostly consisted of labelling and dusting. It was a fairly limited collection. Most of the "artifacts" were not even from an Otherworld, and the rest were mostly things like articles of clothing or samples of dirt brought back in the tread of a shoe.
Andrew was still occasionally fascinated to be able to see these unusual objects up close and read about the context in which they had been collected, even if most of them seemed mundane. The most interesting object was a plain wooden door sealed in a wooden crate with warnings all over it. Apparently the door had appeared in some wall and a person had vanished to it to some different reality. As typical, the portal closed once someone had passed through. Unusually, the door had just remained there. It only opened up to the inside of the wall, as if someone had installed a door for inspecting the internal installation and joists within the walls. The door had been removed, carefully packaged, and after study had determined that, indeed, it was a door, it had been left to sit in this dingy storage room. Too potentially valuable to destroy, but too creepy to be left in its original location.
Andrew had managed this collection carefully, maintaining the files related to each item, making sure nothing was showing signs of decay, but recently something exciting had come in. A sealed crate containing the two pentagram discs from one of the first documented returns from an Otheworld! Andrew had seen these objects on television as a child, and now they were stored at the university.
Of course, it wasn't actually that impressive an item as far as the public was concerned. The publicity around them had happened well over 20 years ago. They had passed from the police, to government scientists, to non-government scientists, made a lengthy tour in various museums, and eventually packed off to storage. They were forgotten enough that the latest museum to display them no longer wanted to have to dig them out of storage for the occasional inquiry or photograph. So, now the pentagram plates had passed to the Department of Otherworld Studies.
Andrew hadn't been able to resist having a look when they'd first arrived. He'd looked on while Dr. Lyell had examined that plates for damage and assigned them a catalogue number. The 50 year old Indian-American woman was behaving like it was any sample or artefact, but Andrew could see the glint in her eye. Just like him, she was excited to be in the presence of such a famous and well-known piece of Otherworlds history.
Andrew, of course wanted a closer look. After a week of the pentagram plates sitting in storage, he decided it was time to have a peek. Of course, he needed someone to share this experience with, that's why his undergraduate friend Daveed was joining him.
Daveed was a finance major, but had a serious interest in Otherworlds research. He had been hoping the school would open up a minor program for it, but he'd had to settle for a minor in history. Andrew and Daveed had been friends for a good while and had a lot in common. Andrew knew he could trust Daveed to be discrete, but also to understand the significance to the experience.
This is why Andrew had used his keys to enter the Otherworlds Artifacts storage room after-hours. This in itself was not unusual; Andrew was a graduate student with a busy schedule, and sometimes the only time he had available for his curator work were odd hours at the end of the day. The atypical part of this evening, was that he had brought Daveed with him.
As they entered the dimly lit store room, Andrew made a bit of a show about waving Daveed in before softly closing the door behind them. It was unlikely anyone would see them, and there was no chance anyone would think much of it even if they did, but a bit of showmanship was in order, considering the occasion.
In another act of showmanship, Andrew had placed the crate in the middle of the room instead of on its normal shelf. He wanted to emphasize its importance and digging the box off a shelf did not feel appropriate. Andrew slowly removed the lid, revealing the two round discs of worked metal to Daveed.
"Wow" Daveed said, "it's really them, just like in the videos. They look very shiny in person".
Andrew wished he could reply that they had some kind of supernatural shine to them, but it was just because he'd polished them with a fine cloth when they'd first arrived. The discs could get dusty and tarnished like any other metal.
Instead, Andrew simply said "That's them. Right out of the story opened up knowledge of the Otherworlds to humanity.".
The two men gazed at the objects. Even though they had arrived on Earth less than 30 years ago, these things were a part of history. Daveed was bent down examining them.
"It's interesting that they're different colors. I wonder if there are more like it back in the Otherworld they came from?" Daveed said, stroking his chin to show he was in thought.
Andrew replied "We don't know. The two who came back with them didn't explain exactly what they are. They apparently hate all the publicity, which is funny based on how some other people who have returned from Otherworlds who came after them act."
Daveed nodded and said "Do you think it would be ok if I picked one up to look at it? I've never seen what the back looks like."
Andrew thought for a moment. It wasn't against any rule to bring Daveed back here, but he definitely wasn't supposed to let people just handle these artifacts. He could already imagine the dressing-down Dr. Lyell would give him about wear and tear on artifacts if they would get in the hands of the public. Still, Daveed seemed very impressed and he was reluctant to admit anything that dispel that image, so Andrew gave into temptation.
"Oh, I think I can allow that, since you know the significance of these items. Let's have a look."
Andrew and Daveed simultaneous reached down and picked up one of the pentagram plates. Strangely, as Andrew picked it up he heard the sound of metal on metal, like he was picking up a chain. The discs had no moving parts, so he turned the disc to reveal the back, trying to determine what had made that sound. At the same time, Daveed was looking at the back of his own disc with curiosity.
Suddenly chains shot out from the discs. It should have been impossible for chains of this size to emerge from such a small disc. It was not clear where they were coming from, but each disc extended chains that wrapped around the torso of the person holding it.
The chains pulled taught, as if retracting into some impossible space inside the discs, pulling the disc against the chest of the person who was holding it.
Suddenly everything was spinning. It was so fast, but Andrew knew what must be happening. They were being pulled to an Otherworld. Strangely it felt less like a mystical experience and more like riding a tilt-a-whirl ride at an amusement park.
Suddenly the two of them were thrown back onto their feet. They stood atop a dusty rock cliff under a sunless sky. The light seemed to come from fires and what appeared to be lava dotting the landscape below. An acrid smell of smoke was in the air, but not so heavy as to be asphyxiating.
Andrew, still dizzy, looked over to Daveed and was shocked to see what looked like a demonic version of his friend. His fingernails had extended into black claws, and the same had happened to the toenails on his bare feet. His shirt was gone, but the pentagram plate was still held tight against his chest with chains. The sigils of the plate now glowed with a strange red light.
Daveed head sported a pair of large goatlike horns, and the eyes that looked back at Andrew contained glowing red irises. Daveed looked at Andrew with a start, and Andrew felt a sinking feeling and looked down at his own body.
Andrew's fingers also ended in black claws. He was shirtless and could see the pentagram disc pressed into his chest, like it was a part of him. His chest and stomach seemed much more trim and muscular than it had been before. Andrew almost spoke to comment on this when he noticed that as he ran his tongue over his teeth, he encountered the unfamiliar feeling of what felt like oddly sharp incisors and elongated canines.
As Andrew moved his head he felt the weight of his own horns, and as he began to examine himself he realized he and Daveed also had tails, not some costume piece, but a real part of his body that he could feel and move.
Andrew could tell that Daveed's stunned shock was about to abate. He couldn't tell if the demonic man was about to scream at him or to cry, but something was about to come.
In the moments before being on the receiving end of a well-deserved freakout, Andrew tried to think of what had happened. Why had these discs, inert for nearly 30 years, suddenly sprung to life? What were the odds that he would not only experience an Otherworld, but be in one of the rare scenarios where multiple people were pulled into an Otherworld together?
They had one advantage. Andrew was steeped in Otherworld lore. There were few people on the planet who knew as much about going to and returning from an Otherworld. He didn't know exactly how those two had returned all those years ago, but he knew the discs had something to do with it.
Andrew lightly touched the glowing disc on his chest with his claws and smiled a toothy demonic smile. We've already got our tickets home.
