“And how do we kill it?” - Philip asked a very good question.

“We? More likely it will rip out our spines to fan itself. Even to seal it, powerful gods are needed, I reckon.” - grumbled Albert, pulling his tophat further downwards.

“Albert is correct.” - agreed Arthur as he explained: “That’s not something simple magic can deal with. We need something ancient enough for it to be stable, to overcome the disintegration. You saw how those two millennia old columns came apart just from its breath?”

“Yes, yes, just ‘ffffyi’, and gone. Anyway, that’s not out work, Wiseman. Hurry up and move before it gets out. Khe.” - reminded Philip.

Everyone had given up on trying to face that something that was currently slowly emerging from the portal. Akademians estimated that we still had more than five or so minutes until it got out, and I was not planning to play a hero either.

I remembered way too well how similar things had no trouble shattering whole words. Well, I still kept getting the power even when people were annihilated by the black winds that seemed to be capable of erasing both matter and energy. So I hoped that I was at least capable of using my armor and weapons to resist it to some extent. The theory made sense, at least.

Owing to the precise calculations or the simple, dumb luck, the destruction caused by the opened hole did not reach into the warded area. Wizards followed everyone in, and Albert and Philip immediately started working on their “spatial transference”, as they called it.

In practice, it looked like they simply paced around mumbling something incomprehensible. They even kept bumping into each other, which soon resulted in a somewhat heated confrontation. The squabble almost immediately turned into an exchange of insults. And I could have guessed the main insults used in advance.

“You fopdoodle, keh-keh, stop sornering all over the place!”

“You dare call me fopdoodle? I docked your mom!”

“Khhhe, so what, scobberlotcher, I did yours! Keh, keh, I did yer grandma too, ye yaldson!”

“Yaldson?! You dare! I took a turn at Busy Park with your greatgrandma when she first came to London from Charlton!”

And so their quarrel went on, with their respective sexual contests going back in time across the generations.

Nearby, Arthur covered his face and I heard him muttering: “The only two wizards in millenia who manage to link spatial magic to time theorem, reaching the secrets of time transfer. Instead, use it to end up each other’s ancestors…”

Mattea did not miss the chance to come over to me and grinning mischievously, proudly said: “See, sir? I said it won’t take long. Mentor says, they used to look different long ago. But when they decided to duke it out using time travel… heehe, they ended up as ‘brothers’. The latter part of the nickname is self-evident.”

Speechless, I only shook my head at that. I could still not understand, how Mattea still had peace of mind. Just a hundred or so meters away from us was a bloody portal with an extradimensional entity crawling out from it! Instead of panicking, like what several freed prisoners were properly doing now, she was sharing the detailed gossip from local occult community.

With glib tongues and abundant use of old euphemisms, the two ‘brothers’ continued working. In any case, they had to be quite impressive. Now that I thought about it, despite their teenager-level rivalry they still had somehow managed to appear here in the first place.

---

With two wizards working, the rest of the people were… pillaging. It was somewhat understandable, as we had entered restricted area, where Bull’s Blood had kept numerous goods and assets during the market. But except for Akademians and some of the people that had collapsed or frozen in shock, the rest blatantly ignored the portal and the creature! When I scrutinized those fearless people, I easily spotted what they had in common. They all had distinct animal features visible.

Listening to the students of the Akadem, I learned that the animal-traited people who had broken the wards, were weres. It was explained to others by one of the students, with a special reminder to not mix up therianthropes, weres and shifters. Those were the three general types of human-animal hybrids found in Europe. He apparently had special interest in transformations, so his explanations were really clear.

Thanks to my perception, I could hear everything while keeping my distance.

Apparently, it was not that difficult to differentiate between them. Therianthropes often had two pairs of ears (however, usually limited to mammal types) and some other animal-related body parts like fins, tails or wings. They also had the physical fitness of well-trained humans and could use magic, mostly preferring shamanistic styles.

Weres were iconic, half-humans with an ability to manipulate the level of transformation. When transforming, even partially, possessed immense physical strength. However, they were magically inert, a property that pushed them towards the fringes of the supernatural society.

And shifters were just a type of mages, who used their own power to turn themselves into animal shapes. Wizards apparently did not generally approve of such magic, as it was way too “uncontrollable” and prone to accidents. And different from weres or therianthropes, shifters usually went full way, either fully animal or fully human.

The transformation-curious student had also mentioned cynoscephalae, curses, spirit animals, animal spirits and divine blessings and lineages. Unfortunately, due to the current situation, he kept his explanations really short. But as it sounded quite interesting, I committed to memory all the details for future reference.

---

I was dividing my attention between the spontaneous lecture on hybrids and the activities of SAS team. SAS team, under somewhat unwell-looking rabbi’s leadership, was fervently combing through the area, gathering all documents they could find. Soon they had stuffed their tactical backpacks full, and resorted to using duct tape to somehow wrap up the heaps of loose papers. The spider-woman hovered near Aitan, following him closely. And he kept looking back at her, which in turn resulted in awkward smiles each time their eyes met. Who could have guessed that Rabbi Es had so unconventional desires? I personally found the excess pupils somewhat eerie.

The other people who seemed to be truly bothered by the portal and the unknown entity within were me, the elf and Arthur. The elf seemed to experience serious nausea as he tried to stand still. Arthur kept looking at the portal and the victorian duo, anxiously tapping his foot.

“Faster, faster.” - I heard him whispering.

Then he turned around, quickly locating the group of students from the Akadem. As they did not dare to wander off and had actually remained in the same place, he could only look at them sternly before warning them to remain cautious.

I stood silently, kneading the helmet in my hands. Having too much spare mental faculties was often great, but it also resulted in having persistent thoughts about what could go wrong and all the disastrous things that may happen any moment.

I played around with the shape of the helmet. Initially I had wanted to make it into German sallet, but while it would look good, its style did not combine well with my armor. Out of curiosity, I even tried out several variations of Japanese kabuto, and while some of them looked harmonious with the scale pattern of the armor, they were a bit too wide, cumbersome and impractical for my purposes. Then I gave it the shape of lobster-tail helmet, zischagge, but I personally did not find the result to be attractive enough.

Finally I ended up combining several shapes, borrowing the ideas from various times and places. As the result, I had to admit, the helmet was a real Frankenstein monster among the helmets.

The inside padding resembled the insider of the modern army helmets, while the base was a half-sphere protecting the head. Attached to it was the fan-like scaled guard that surrounded the neck while allowing the cocmplete freedom of movement and all the necessary flexibility. As I had no trouble with oxygen or field of view, I added a wedge-shaped visor that covered my throat and face. The sufficiently wide eye slits were mostly for show, but kept the helmet completely utilitarian.

By the way, when I fit it on, I found out that the theory about how some warriors like vikings had used their long hair as padding under their helmets was a complete bullshit. The hair kept sliding, it did not provide any cushioning and the random strands kept getting into face. Tired of constant need to keep it in check, I morphed a tiny piece of the armor on my back into a sort of a clamp, securely fixing my hair into place. This long and pretty much indestructible hair, while impressive, made me think if I really need to find Durandal, Excalibur, Kladenets or some other mythical superweapon just to get rid of this annoyance?

---

I finished messing around with my helmet and decided to ask Arthur some questions about the Akadem. Using my foreign origin, I was planning to enquire about the occult community in Britain. That, in turn, would help me to better understand the structure on a global scale.

Albert and Philip, who were now walking in straight lines, were making sharp turns at the ends and kept actively gesturing with their hands, forming odd-looking figures and shapes. From the beads of sweat covering their faces, it was obvious that they were hard at work. I side-stepped to avoid them as they seemed to be oblivious to their surroundings and approached Arthur Wiseman.

“Arthur.” - I nodded.

Arthur turned towards me and opened his mouth to reply. But then we both spun around to look at the portal.

The being in the hole stopped trying to simply squeeze through. It had uncoiled its limbs, forming long, whiplike tentacles that kept constantly branching out like some sort of eerie mass of wriggling roots. The ends of the tentacles flailed around, trying to take hold of something invisible, feeling around the borders of the portal. These feelers grabbed the edges of the dimensional hole, twisted together for better leverage and then, pulled.

No sound came from that, but I could feel how the fabric of space was strained like tout strings ready to burst. The borders of the hole that were formed from blood pole, shuddered under the impact and then slowly began to unravel.

With another tug, as easy as ripping threads of cloth, the strands of natural laws that formed the space were completely torn apart. Such action resulted in inaudible, but soul-shaking tremors that rushed outwards from the portal. The pulse spread out, carrying the black wind with it, spreading it out like a cloud of dust follows a shockwave of an explosion. A section of floor beneath the hole simply disappeared, leaving a deep fissure in the ground with its bottom outside of the range I could perceive.

From somewhere above, a piece of rock of the size of a bathtub dropped down. The rock landed on being’s back, but did not leave a mark, instead bouncing off it. Just as it fell towards the floor, a small churning whirlpool of black wind covered the rock, erasing it from existence.

My spiritual side throbbed as the aftermath of the quake passed through me. It felt like a distortion, something that deformed the world itself and directly affecting the people within.

The area was oddly silent, as if that being could suppress all the sounds around it. I glimpsed a look at the victorian duo, but they were still doing their stuff, apparently not ready yet. Arthur’s face looked pale, his lips moving but no voice came out.

The wave resulting from tearing the space had not affected the wizards much, but seemed to be quite a blow to the elf. While some of the other people showed signs of feeling unwell, the elf was now bleeding from his eyes and nose. He also had trouble standing steady, and without gremlin supporting him, he would have easily lost his balance.

---

“How much time do they need?” - I asked Arthur.

“No idea. That… wave might have ruined all their work and calculations.” - Arthur confessed.

“Khe-khe, Wiseman, don’t fret. You are underestimating us a tad.” - Philip, who had been nearby, heard us and managed to interject while grinding his teeth.

Rivulets of sweat ran from his bald head, straight into his eyes that were now red-rimmed from the irritation. But he kept working, forming complex patterns with his hands, not even stopping for a moment.

“Anyway, any useful ideas how to deal with that?” - I pointed at the creature that had already dragged out over thirty meters of its massive, wriggling trunk. Every second, with each consequent shove, it was closer to getting out into our world.

Arthur waved his hands in dejection: “Nothing… such things are only briefly mentioned in really, really old texts. The only sure thing is, that they should have trouble with our steady laws of reality, even time and basic space is way too limiting for them…”

---

I sighed. Seems that I was being forced to check out some of my theories in practice without much assurance and no prior testing or confirmation.

Silent, I raised my hand. It was not meant to be a dramatic gesture, but I simply required some space for the weapon. It was going take the shape of a wide partizan, a long, sturdy polearm with a long and wide blade, like an oversized spear suitable for slashing, hacking and stabbing.

It was the weapon that came into my mind as a suitable option to be used against a creature that was already big enough to fill an olympic swimming pool. Of course, there were other similar weapons whose shape I could choose, such as ranseur, spetum, glaive, guandao, woldo or naginata.

Offhandedly, I thought how greatly I had been affected by the several visits to The Wallace Collection in London during my early teenage years. I briefly reminiscenced how they had an eye catching exhibition of partizans there, in addition to a truly supreme choice of weapons and armors. I remembered envying the museum curators a lot back then.

I slowly shaped the partizan, focusing on the details to ensure that the structure was as solid as possible, leaving nothing to chance. Yes, I had previously practiced the quick weapon form change. But now, facing the unknown, matter-erasing entity I decided to do it slow to avoid any mistakes.

Paying extra attention to the durability, I even directed some of the matter away from my armor to add the necessary strength to the shaft. I did my best to recreate the general idea from the time I had reformed my body. Back then, inspired by nanostructures, especially graphene, I had tried to reach the maximum possible material strength and hardness by forming highly regular, strong bonds between the particles of the matter.

With a part of my perception, I observed how the wizards, SAS and freed captives stood up, looking at me. Or more exactly, at my hand, where slowly, like a sinister metal flower, the scarlet weapon took form. Now that I thought about that, I had previously created my weapons in seconds, so nobody paid much attention to it. But this time, everyone kept staring intently until the moment the very tip of the partizan took its shape.

The partizan reached the length of over three meters. Even without decorations, due to the eye-catching colour, it looked ominously impressive. Its clear, straight lines and smooth facets and faces formed a harmonious whole. As the light from the miraculously surviving globes of light shone upon the surface, its rays were scattered and reflected, creating glittering red beams that illuminated the surrounding shadows.

---

Huh-hoh, everyone looked expectant. Did it really look so impressive, when I created the weapon? I quickly reasoned, that I still had to maintain my authority, and some suspense was good for that. So I did it in a simple way - I used a considerable force to strike the butt end of the partizan against the stone floor. The stone tile shattered with a loud crack, shaking everyone up.

I was no hero, and to be honest, I had always found the stories about the heroes rather silly. Altruistic people, fighting for others? Bullshit. But now, I had no choice - I was going to fight some unknown extradimensional, tentacled relative of Cthulhu in order to actually have a chance of leaving the damn place. And while I knew well that I was going forward only because I had no other choice, the gazes of the surrounding people… were not unpleasant. At least, that did well to satisfy my ego.

Chasing away the unrelated thoughts, I stepped forward.