Part 1

As the shy woman walked away, I took another look at the paper I had been given. I would begin to hear screams, it said. Well, he had told me that would be par for the course if I were to collect any of these things when he hired me. He had paid up-front too, telling me he would understand if I ran with the money.

As I moved down the dark staircase I began to hear agonized voices and, thankful for the note's warning, steeled myself. I can scarcely imagine how deep I went before the screaming paused and I had to bite back fear to shout the words that would save me into the black abyss surrounding me.

To my great fortune, they resumed their dark business, and I once more headed toward a great evil.

My fear did not come from baser instincts, such as the primitive yet natural terrors a child feels when faced with the night. As a grown man, I could tell that there were true threats to my health all around, perhaps no more than an arm's length away. The dark that hid the monsters (or worse, the otherwise normal people) only enhanced the agony in my mind.

The screams still piercing the obsidian hall, I finally noticed slivers of light. Reaching forward, I forced it open and found myself in a room out of a horrible dungeon. The paper I clutched described it perfectly, right down to the head of a small girl on the table. As the parchment demanded, I strode forward, stared into those broken eyes, and said with all I could muster, "Who will stop Them from coming together?"

I will tell you what I can, that you may be warned against following in my footsteps. Be assured, though, that there is far more to the tale, things which I would rather suffer lobotomy to forget than speak of.

The Man Who Will Stop Them from Coming Together

The man who will stop Them was torn from his mother's bosom, screaming, from an unnatural opening (this may have been a Caesarean section procedure). Though his mother lived through the agony of the knife and the needles, she never looked upon her child with the eyes of a loving mother, and so even in youth he grew mad. With his bare hands he drew blood from insects, using his fingernails to break their heads and jaws, ripping legs and antennae from their sockets. He tore their segments apart, or placed them in spider webs to suffer at the hands of creatures as cruel as himself.

 

As he grew older, he advanced. On one occasion he sat patiently in a serene garden for a bird to land in his outstretched palm. When it did he promptly crushed it and forced its mouth open so as to take count of its organs and last meal. On another he caught a mouse in a glass cup so he could bite its head off (only after muzzling it with its own tail).

Such sadism would surely have been noticed if not for his genius and his kindness to those he considered "worthy". He read often, books of horror and of heroism. He wrote, he sang, he lectured, and he taught. Perhaps it was this perverse curiosity, or his own origin, that led him to the path of the scalpel. He wished to know of anatomy, and he was insistent on being self-taught everything. In this way he disemboweled ten dogs, eight cats, and three little girls in the course of as many months. He had a particular order for each:

(I am ill enough as it is, and shall not describe his atrocities further. Suffice it to say, he prolonged the agony of his victims as much as he deemed necessary, as though to see what sensitivity each organ had. Many more horrors occurred in the years between this and his first touch on these Things, and it is these that shall exist as nightmares for the rest of my years. I shall tell you only what you need to know, to spare you my suffering.)

It was when he neared the end of his education that he first heard whispers of the Objects. He was told there were two thousand of them hidden across the world, most lost to the ages, but many still being searched for. In an instant his mind was decided, and he immediately set out for the first one he heard tales of. The first Holder he encountered was the Holder of the Cipher.

(You must excuse my narration from this point on; I felt violently ill at this point, and was barely holding back the bile in my throat. I could scarcely pay attention, and will provide you the best information I can.)

He later stole from or manipulated others to gain more. There were few he retrieved for himself, but I heard that one of them allowed him to "bend the rules" somehow. What this means I cannot say, for I have no concept of these "rules", and my host did not elaborate. He has an informant somewhere, one with a book that speaks of certain Objects and Holders; this is evidently how he was able to get the cipher.

He has unleashed the dogs of hell upon the unsuspecting world, hoping to crush the Holders and take their Objects. He also aims to destroy those who would bring them together and return Him to this world. His Irony makes him the ultimate monster; he slaughters everything with a slight smile in the name of protecting the world from monsters. In fact, you could say that he resembles Him, Kronos trying to usurp and castrate Ouranos.

At this very moment, he expects one of his foolish beasts, drunk on pride and arrogance, to return from staring into the face of Rage.