Mythos Read Online Free PDF

name.”
    Great, one of my god-cousins feeling self-important—something I adored. “And your name would be?”
    “I don’t think I’m willing to share it just yet. Not till I know considerably more about you. For example: Which side are you on? Where did you find the luscious redhead with the fiery wings? More to the point, what is she?”
    “Now pull the other leg,” said Melchior, who had put me firmly between himself and the huge dog.
    “Also, what is that?” asked the stranger, indicating Melchior with his eyes. “I’ve not seen its like before. Some kind of black elf or kobold, perhaps? I don’t suppose you want to sell it?”
    “Sell me?” growled Melchior. “How dare you! I’m not some thing to be bought and sold—I’ve got free will.”
    “What’s that got to do with anything?” asked the stranger, looking genuinely baffled.
    I was about to respond when the poodle made a really horrendous noise deep in its throat. At that, Melchior shot up the back of my leathers to my shoulder. The dog made the noise again. This time his whole body convulsed. It was only with the third repetition that I realized he was about to throw up. Which he did, directly at my feet. I jumped back about a yard and opened my mouth to complain about the dog’s behavior. Nothing came out. I was too shocked.
    Instead of a simple puddle of vomit, the poodle had coughed up a lot of something that looked very like the eternally changing stuff of Primal Chaos, except that someone seemed to have added sparks and ice crystals to the mix in an attempt to jazz it up a bit. In the middle of it lay . . .
    “Is that a human hand?” I asked.
    “No.” The man’s answer was flat and final.
    It was also quite obviously not the truth, or at least not the whole truth. It was definitely a hand. For several seconds it lay there between us, palm up, as the not-quite-chaos slowly ate a hole in the ground. The poodle very gently nudged the hand with its nose. In response, the hand clenched itself into a fist and rolled over. For the first time, I got a good look at the jagged tooth marks that showed where the hand had been bitten off its wrist.
    The dog nudged the hand again. In a stunningly fast move, the hand extended its fingers and thumb, rising onto them rather like some bizarre spider. For just one instant longer, it stood perfectly still, then it bolted, exhibiting that same wild speed. The poodle immediately let out a gleeful bark and launched itself after the hand.
    “Not again.” The stranger sighed as the slender cord tying him to the dog went taut.
    Then the force of the dog’s charge yanked his hand from his pocket—the cord was wound tightly around his wrist—and pulled his arm straight out in front of him. A moment later, he was dragging along in the wake of the chase, swearing vigorously in a language I didn’t recognize. In seconds the whole group had passed out of sight.
    “That’s got to be the strangest thing I’ve—” began Melchior, but I held up a hand.
    “Hang on a tick.” I had just noticed an odd and ongoing sliding sort of noise and wanted to find out what it was.
    A seemingly endless silvery cord was zipping along the ground, one end vanishing in the direction of the strange chase, the other disappearing off through the empty parking lot to the northeast. I knelt for a closer look.
    “Is that the leash?” asked Melchior, hopping down beside me.
    “I think so, but that’s not half so bizarre as this.” I indicated the puddle with one finger but didn’t touch it. “Primal Chaos? Or not?”
    “I don’t know,” said Melchior. “It looks like chaos, it’s dissolving the ground around it like chaos, and mostly it’s changing like chaos, but then there are the ice and sparks.”
    “Which are flickering in and out but are very definitely ice and sparks.” I nodded.
    Maybe Tisiphone had been right in her first call, and we were someplace beyond the edge of the map. If so, how had we gotten there?