Chapter 9: 09 → Dis/Connections → Realeyes

Unfortunately, the moment Josh and the three eldritch girls escaped from Oculum through the crinkled-up hole in the fence, Josh — expert human — managed to trip over his own feet.

Doubly-unfortunately, since there were three eldritch girls escaping directly behind him, after all... managing to trip over his own feet didn’t just cause an isolated disaster. Instead, it caused all four of them to collapse in a heap, together becoming like some kind of eldritch meatball with too many limbs.

The four of them disentangled themselves immediately afterwards, of course, still breathing heavily from their ordeal.

“That was—” all four of them started simultaneously. 

“—a mess,” said Ulisa. 

“—stressful,” said Josh. 

“—curious,” mused Terisse. 

“—so Odd damn cool.”

They all looked at Ludi, who was staring wistfully back into the Oculum grounds. Ulisa sighed. “Come on, you weirdo.”

Ludi gave them all a cheeky grin and hopped back on her hoverboard. “All’s well that ends well!”

“I don’t trust that it has ended,” Ulisa shook her head. “We may be out of the grounds, but we’re still only halfway to where the planar boundary is thin, and our time is running out.” She gestured to Josh. “And unfortunately, we will likely attract more attention yet, with the still-intensifying glow.”

Josh looked back and forth between all of the girls. Hesitantly, he suggested, “I-if the glow is the source of the trouble… m-maybe I could wear some kind of disguise…? If that’s even doable, I guess.”

The three of them stared, and he looked down, embarrassed. “N-never mind, it was a stupid idea.”

“No, it wasn’t!” Ludi said, suddenly, flipping her board up to her hand and then patting him on the head. “Disguises are great!” Why was she patting him on the head? Was she still treating him like a pet? He frowned at her.

“It isn’t as if the disguise would obscure the unbelonging energy,” Ulisa said.

“No, the idea does have some merit,” Terisse hummed, looking to Ulisa and then back at Josh. “Just disguising the extraplanar as an ocuman may be enough to shake our pursuers. They might assume it’s another kind of glow, rather than unbelonging energy.”

Ulisa tilted her head. “...Perhaps. You may be right. Though I don’t believe I have the power to spare for glamour magicks; not when I still need to open an ultraplanar tear to a receding plane.” She turned to the third girl, who was staring at Josh with a twinkle in her eye, her terrifying toothy grin revealing innumerable sharp teeth once more. “Ludi?”

“This is gonna be fun...” she said, tentacles snaking out from behind her, her remaining eyes opening with a bright glow. 

Josh flinched back, suddenly much more afraid of both her and his idea. “Wh-what are you going to do?”

“Just do something normal, Ludi, we don’t have time for you to be a chaos oddling,” Ulisa groaned.

Ludi’s numerous teeth vanished once more behind her pouting lips. “Fiiine. Just a little glamour to make it look like an ocuman then, I guess,” she grumbled. She didn’t slow her action, though, and, still terrified, Josh felt everything close in around him, her dark tendrils wrapping around him, squeezing him in a pitch-black cocoon. He could not move one bit.

And then a moment later... pop! The cocoon of tentacles fell away, and Josh stumbled forwards, confused for a moment at the angle he was looking at everything from. It seemed as though the glamour went beyond just appearing differently to everyone else, because his own perspective was also changed. He was... taller? And before he’d even consciously thought about that, he had already decided he did not like it; it made him feel dizzy and bulky and... wrong. He already hadn’t been a fan of his normal height, and this... Well... at least it was just a temporary glamour, he decided.

That wasn’t the only thing that had changed, though... he realised after a moment with a shock that he was also seeing out of a third eye, and he could even open and close it independently of his other two. “I have a third eye...” he said, and immediately winced because even his voice had changed, taking on a deeper, more mature tone that grated on his ears like nothing else. He suddenly felt lucky for the voice he had, and he didn’t even like his normal voice, either!

“Well, yeah,” Ludi said, sounding offended. “You wouldn’t be a very convincing ocuman if you didn’t. It’s not the same though, obviously. A fake.”

“I don’t like this,” he mumbled. This felt so wrong. Like the sliders on a character creator had slid further away from what he wanted and were now in a comically terrible category. Except he actually didn’t find it very comical.

“It doesn’t matter, it’s good enough. We don’t have time for this,” Ulisa said, her voice gaining urgency. “I think... we need to go. Now.”

Josh Holliday turned around, nearly tripping over his feet again, and behind them... from the direction they’d come the night before... a dark, dark cloud, flickering with lime-green sparks of lightning. “Uhh...”

“Curious,” Terisse hummed. “I wonder what that could be.”

“We’ll figure it out later!” Ulisa said, and all of them took off again, but not before Josh actually tripped, only just catching himself before he could tumble into a heap again.

As it turns out, running was faster with longer legs, but... much, much harder to do. Maybe he’d get used to it? Looking back at the imposing cloud over his shoulder... he definitely hoped he would.

He might not have liked how it felt to be pretending to be this ocuman guy, but... at least he didn’t look like a human anymore. Hopefully that would allow him to blend in at least a little. It wasn’t as if he was anywhere near the tallest ocuman, after all.

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“The glow does seem to have diminished... Hmm...” Ulisa said, after peeking back at Josh for a moment as they rested for a moment at the end of an alleyway. “I’m impressed. I didn’t think a glamour could obscure unbelonging energy.”

You are reading story Extra Credit for an Eldritch Horror at novel35.com

“It isn’t as if unbelonging energy on this scale is often experimented with,” Terisse replied. “And it has waxed and waned the entire time the extraplanar has been here... at least, I’ve noticed something like that, at least.”

Ulisa hummed. “No, you’re right. It has. I didn’t think about that. Maybe there’s something more going on... something we don’t understand yet. It makes one want to experiment. If only we had more time...”

Josh frowned. They kept acting like they were about to run out of time, but didn’t they specifically say they had like multiple thousands of years or something?  Why were eldritch horrors so weird with timekeeping? Why couldn’t they make up their minds?

And he’d long since realised that there was a part of him that kinda wanted to stay here, too — to use up some of that time he had. A part of him that was getting increasingly insistent the closer they came to that park where they’d first arrived.

But what could he even do? He belonged back home, didn’t he?

He — the sole human in the Oculum campus — ran along the streets, side by side with the ocuman girls he had begun to consider friends, even as mean as they sometimes were. He ran side by side with the friends he had begun to care about, even with all the strange things they did and said. Even as little as he understood them, and as little as he understood this place.

It was as if he’d fallen into the strangest, most spectacularly-bizarre adventure anyone could have come up with, and yet... his departure was scheduled less than a day after his arrival.

It was crushing, in a way. He may have belonged back on Earth, yeah, but... he didn’t want to belong on Earth, he was quickly realising. Not now, anyway. He wanted to know more, and see more, and do more. 

There was magic here! 

The possibilities were endless! 

He wanted to see what he could be in Oculum. He had to. Wouldn’t that be more interesting than being a lawyer? Or whatever dumb thing his mother wanted him to be?

And like...  what else was on the table, here? Like, who knows, maybe with glamours, Ludi could give him a disguise that moved the character creator sliders in the other direction? In some way that made him feel better, not worse.

Oh, Ludi... he thought, after a moment. She was... she was all over the place, yeah, constantly jumping back and forth between somewhat treating him like an actual person and treating him like the butt of a joke, but... he really didn’t mind it that much, did he? He could see himself getting along with her, and doing the same right back, and her finding it absolutely hilarious. There had to be something more going on with her, right? He didn’t really know anything about her yet, did he? Besides the obvious. Wasn’t that... sad?

Looking over at his other friends... down at Terisse, who was cutely biting her lip, glancing back every once in a while at their surroundings, a little jumpy as if the four of them were still being chased by something. She seemed frustrated. Did she even want to be out here? No, she wanted to be reading a book, probably. Why did she even come with? Josh couldn’t help but want to know that, and more. He wanted to get the chance to be closer with her. He wanted to get the chance to make her smile again. And yet... he probably wouldn’t, would he?

A frown on his face, Josh looked over at Ulisa, then... and his insides began to ache with anxiety. He wanted to help her, he realised. He wanted things to go well between her and her sister, he wanted her to be happy. Even more than that, though... he knew that there was something he was missing still, with her. There was something about the two of them that he... hadn’t quite figured out yet. His feelings whenever she in particular was mean to him. Whenever she looked at him funny. Whenever she treated him like the densest creature in the entire plane. Without knowing what any of that meant... leaving felt... wrong.

But was there even anything Josh could do?

Passing by the last ocuman stragglers... Across the street... Through the gate... Between the trees... Over the cliff...

...And then, once more, the four of them were in the clearing.

“We made it,” Ulisa said, her voice uncharacteristically soft as she looked up at Josh. “The place where the planar boundary is thin, with little time to spare.” 

He opened his mouth to reply, and... couldn’t find the words. 

She looked away, every one of her eyes opening, emitting a glow of her own. “It has been... interesting, extraplanar,” she said. “As much as I often hesitate to admit it, I... do appreciate that you were there. That I... well... extra credit.”

“Y-yeah,” Josh said, and realised then that his voice had returned to normal, and that he was looking at Ulisa from the usual height; only slightly above her. Ludi had released the glamour. Looking to her, then at Terisse, who gave him a small, encouraging smile, his heart ached, and his eyes began to sting.

It wasn’t fair. Why was he leaving? He didn’t want to just be extra credit. Or at the very least, he wanted his own extra credit. But like... extra credit being just... well... he just didn’t want to go! He wasn’t ready!

C R A C K

A hole opened in reality, dark tendrils reaching out from the kaleidoscope inside. Josh felt vertigo as he stared inside, terrified of falling in, terrified of losing this place. Terrified of losing the first things he’d ever started to truly value.

“I... wait... I...” Josh said, swallowing down his saliva.

“You need to go,” Ulisa urged, her own tentacles pushing him towards the ultraplanar tear. “Like...  n o w . You’re running out of time, you realise, right? If you don’t leave...”

“But...” he said, trailing off. He had to get over himself. He had to just... talk to them. He had to be honest, to speak for himself, to stand up for himself. As hard as it was with his mother, it was even harder with people he actually valued the opinions of.

The extraplanar took a deep breath, preparing to tell his friends what he’d realised, what he’d decided, what he wanted... hoping beyond hope that they wouldn’t reject him; that it would be okay. Then, he spoke. “I—”

“We don’t have time for this, extraplanar!” Ulisa snapped, and her tentacles threw him in. The very last thing he saw, the last image burned into his retinas... the image that slowly became more and more distorted within the ultraplanar kaleidoscope...

She had tears in her eyes, too.