Prologue - Charles I - The Fruit of Knowledge
There was a time, not so very long ago, that Professor Charles Harbruck held a preeminent position among his archaeological colleagues from which he had lead the neverending chase to understand the world before written history. These days, his name was little more than an aging eponym emblazoned upon an era of study whose contents had been absorbed into high school textbooks to be skipped over in favor of the rumblings of some modern political upheaval that included such frivolous aims as the common equity of the human race. Charles knew, though, how meaningless all those worries and woes were, though he kept that knowledge squarely with the company of the other thoughts within his mind, to be left unmolested by the community that would deny him.
It was eight years ago this day, as he recalled, and the man could still recount every minuscule detail so long as he spoke aloud, a feat he performed nightly if he was allowed. It began the same, he would lock the door of his lonesome shack, a beaten down fixture of sheet metal and plywood laced with the wiring of a makeshift patch into the electrical grid he had bribed a local official to perform, and block away what few ways sound or some image might find the ears or eyes of an unwelcome audience before he began. Eight years ago, he'd breathe, as he did this very night, and he would rattle away a set of coordinates under his breath, lost to anyone save himself, the location at which he had made the discovery that would drive him into hermitage. This night though, was different, the professor frantically pattered his thumbs against a touchscreen as he spoke, and his eyes ever drifted to the side of the shack that perched upon a rocky precipice that dropped sheerly into the crashing waves below.
"A relic of a precursor civilization", he began, "one with a system of writing, but entirely foreign to myself." Charles flung his words in a haphazard stream, the endings and beginnings of well-reasoned thought butting in between ravings and opinion. "A stone, perhaps the size or myself, hazarding a foot in length either direction. It bore this writing and I had to study it, I knew that I must know, as I always have. If nothing further, believe that it was a benign notion that brought me upon this course." The scholar drew ragged breathes as his pattering grew less focused on grammar and sensibility and more on hastily scrawling out his notes. It was an unsure notion, but Charles had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He swore that he could hear a hellish, slurping squelch in the distance, like the sound of a bog giving way underfoot, but growing ever closer, and rumbling as if with hunger. "It thrummed to my vision; pulsed with an energy all it's own. Though I could not directly reach it where it stood perhaps a hundred feet away, I could make out pictograms here or there in the shape of familiar sea creatures with an uncanny wrongness about them. I can not imagine what it was about the way that they were inscribed that vexed me so, but I knew I looked now upon something man had never known. I know not still whether or not it was meant for me, but I can never forget the feeling of terror I experienced as I walked towards it, forgetting myself and my footing on the outcropping of stone from the smooth tumble of the cave." Charles felt his fingers lock up, and only then did he realize the savage grip he had exerted on the piece of technology in his hands.
It was then that Professor Harbruck brought himself back to the present and listened, the gutwrenching sound from before now gone, or else replaced by the shuddering din of a rainstorm battering the scholar's beleaguered dwelling for all it was worth. He felt ill despite the rain's replacement of the sound he so despised, and without any further writing he tossed himself to one side of the domicile to lose the contents of his stomach upon the floor. Charles felt better for only a moment to have rid himself of the nausea as he spied the dark color and viscosity of his sickness, and rattled back to his phone with shaking hands. "I fell hard on the stones, and rolled unprepared into the dark and unforgiving depths for a time down smooth stone before I reached what I guessed to be a pool, though I could confirm nothing by sight. It struck me with fear that I had less than the first clue of how to pry myself from the grips of the situation around me. In fact, to this day, I know not how it was I came to live outside that chamber. I walked through the water for what seemed to me an eternity until I heard it. If you take nothing else to heart, take this, please, I heard things in that cave, and I can not bear the thought of the alien tongue in which they spoke." Charles looked then to the wall once more, the place he knew he could tear away the sheet metal, and tried to count to the rhythm of waves of rain spatter, only to find the usually calming exercise to be utterly useless, even the rain fell in chaotic and haphazard sheets. "I have done much to try and research all of this since then, but no one believes me, they think my claims the work of pulp fantasy but I assure you, you must consort with the scholars I was too fearful to search for. I don't know how I can be sure, but I am, I haven't the slightest doubt that I know things man wasn't meant to know, and I can't -" he was interrupted by the rattling of the shack, a rogue wind rocking the whole of the structure from side to side before Charles agin heard that rippling pull of viscosity breaking apart.
"I can't let the knowledge die with me, Riley" he finished as he attached a zipped file containing his findings and an address book, and hit send all as he pulled away the wall and threw himself from the cliff face, hopeful to be dashed against the rocks below. It seemed to him as if he fell forever before everything left him in a crashing wet thud. It was odd, though, he had imagined death to be final. The afterlife had never occurred to him, now, though, he could still see the dark blue of the sky, albeit in a watery blur, and even heard an indistinguishable sound in the distance, but could not feel his body. It also never occurred to him that something may have broken his fall and his body despite that the mind was still there. Not one of these thoughts crossed his mind until the professor saw the visage looking down into his eyes with bulging silvery orbs of it's own before the squelching from earlier filled his ears and his sight warped away into an infinite and unforgiving blackness, and the sound of the creature was intermixed with his own bloodcurdling screams.
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Personally, I blame Lily for this, and when the eldritch abominations come get us all, I take no credit. But, yeah, outside of that, have a pleasant "Hey, I'm back", and a prologue, which lacks any decisiony bits primarily because our only character thus far is rather less than capable of performing any decision making by my reckoning. Outside of that, I feel like I'm rather bullocks about cutting my paragraphs properly, so if anyone has critique focusing on that, I think it might do the most for this bit, outside of that, hope to have you all up a proper chapter in the near future.