Story of a Man who reached too far

Somewhere in vast emptiness of land once long time ago known as Mongolia, a lone figure was slowly walking. There was nothing and nobody for hundreds of miles around, land was dead and dry, sky cloudless and full of stars. Ancient, long forgotten wars burned every trace of life from most part of this once with life teaming continent. Everything was dead but for that lone figure. He was obviously a man, not too big or distinctive in any manner. His clothes were worn, his back covered in large, black cloak made out of hide of some large, furry animal. His head was bare and covered in black, greasy hair. For imaginary observer he would maybe look like a bandit or hermit but there were no observers here.

It seemed that he was walking aimlessly in some vague direction, not even looking where he was stepping. Night was cloudless but Moon was also absent. It was almost pitch black.

There was nothing strange or unusual to be seen here except that there was a living being walking these dead lands. One could think that he is simply lost or is maybe a pilgrim, seeking redemption of some deity. But, if our imaginary observer was there he or she would know in the same moment that nothing is ordinary about that lone, slowly walking man.

For all around him there was greatness. He was very deep in his thoughts and knowing that there is no one else here to feel it, he loosened his restraints and opened his mind to both world and space. Air was crackling with arcane energies. Reality was loosing definition for Man's mind was penetrating deep in another reality, endless void that one day in very distant future will be known as Warp.

Suddenly, Man stopped and looked up in the sky. Air arround him froze in instant and dead land felt even more dead, even more still. Everything was locked in momentary state of ultimate stillnes, air stoped moving, chemical interactions between molecules ceased to work, atoms almost stoped vibrating as electrones started to slow down in their endless spherical race arround nucleus. Down to the subatomic particles, everthingy down to the quantum level of existence, everthing stoped as the temperaturs arround the Man rapidly fell to ultimate zero. Everything lasted for just one fraction of just one inmeasurable unit of time. Everything happened becouse the Man heard the the Scream.

He used all energy available to him at the moment, syphoning vast ammounts of energy from both realities. Our physical reality was freezing and Warp  was coiling in emotional, almost sentient pain. Man was aware of risks but he had to know more about Scream. He reached far with his mind, far more than ever before and ever again. Scream was unlike anything he ever known before. It was vast psychic scream of pain and fear, so vast that it filled all of known space. He raced with his mind, searching for the couse of it, wondering what could be powerfull enough to shake foundations of both realities and be heard in whole galaxy. He raced but source of scream seemed more and more distant. He pursued it as far as he could, far to the boundaries of galaxy, bouncing from energy fields of stars and planets and when even that was gone, using gravity filed of our galaxy as a support but the scream came from even more far away. Knowing that he was about to loose the trace to the source, he reached in Warp and used it as the last mean to go even deeper in void. He knew now where scream came from for there was only one thing ahead. Another galaxy, vast and mysterious, Andromeda. He was far now, almost half the way to the Andromeda when he felt that his pursuit is coming to an end. Warp existed not too far in void for there was nothing there for it to leach its emotional energy. Intergalactic void was ultimate emptiness, devoid even of secondary reality. The Man knew that he streched strings of Warp far more than he should. He was aware that he made mistake and that there will be consequences for there were powerfull entities rulling over Warp, entities that were more than his equals. His arrogance took him too far away. In last moments before going back, he looked down in the void before him, in galaxy he will never know. In that moment he remembered that anciend phrase.

If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.

Just once fraction of moment too late, he realized that abyss stared back and noticed him and for the first time in his long life he felt true horror. Before finding the source of scream, he realized now, it found him first.

There was no other way to describe it other than „it“. He was aware that it was sentient but unlike anything he ever knew before, not event in the deepest and darkest pits of Warp. It screamed again from trilions of bilions of mouths at the same time, reaching for him. It screamed in fear so horrible, so endless that even Warp coiled back like some giant tentacle that got burned, pulling him away and back home but it was too late. He felt gigantic sentience watching him with endless fear, malice and hunger. Behind it there was something even larger, even more sinister but shrouded in impenetrable veil of unknown energy.

He knew he was runing away now, faster than anything will ever again run trough Warp, blazing like a dying star trough its depths, leaving scars in delicate emotional constructs that will never heal, destroying unique warp leviathans, sending tsunamis of carnage up to the foundations of thrones of warp deities. Soon he was back home, slamming with his mind like a meteor in dead soil. Frozen atmosphere imploded with impact and explosion equal to most monstrous weapons of ancient man shaked the tectonic plates of his planet. Even as ringlike hypersonic shockwaves of arcane fires were thundering just miles away, scouring dead lands once again after many milenia, he was back on his feet, watching in the black void of now for a moment starless sky and giant shadow that manifested there in boiling air above him. Clothes and flesh that were part of Man were gone now, anihilated. His true form was visible now although there was nobody on Terra to see it. Golden human-like form, similar to beings long dead nomadic people of Middle Asia called Jinns, desert demon of fire, was only what was left of Man. It was not made of fire but from pure golden light and energy that never before and never again will come to existence. There was nobody on Terra to witness his true form now but he was fully aware that there is something watching from depthless void. He felt it reaching over unimaginalbe distance, plural in its gaze yet singular in its nature, countless eyes watching over countless alien worlds in one single point, immensely far, watching him, snifing his traces, drooling for his energies, howling in unison one singular scream.

It was too late now.

He was aware of his mistake. It will come for him one day now that it was aware of his existance and existance of abudance of life in this galaxy. It will come trough cold and lifless void of intergalactic void guided by a single beacon, shining like a lighthouse in stormy night, his own lifeforce. He was arrogant and careless in his pursuit. It will come following his trace, like a wild beast follows blood drops of wounded pray.

It was hungry and its hunger was infinite.