Ending - Vincent Lee - Arkham Horror

Chapter 1

 

Vincent Lee was running again, like he has been since the deaths of many of his patients a long time ago. He was a doctor before the monsters appeared from those strange gates, killing people all over Arkham. He was running towards his problems this time, however, and not from them. A part of Vincent never forgave himself for choosing to save the world instead of saving Ruby. Ruby Standish was a female thief he caught stealing from the Silver Twilight Lodge. Instead of turning her in, he decided to give her a second chance if she would help him close the gates to save Arkham. On their travels they found how to close the gates. To do so, you needed to jump into such a gate which teleported you to another world. An Other World is nothing like good old earth, strange creatures and plants can inhabit such a world and the laws of physics don’t apply in these godforsaken worlds. When you arrived in an Other World you had to find a gate leading back to earth and by doing so you would come to know the alien world and its secrets. When you would find a gate back you should have come across an answer to how to close the gate, which could be as simple as making a specific marker to something as complicated as blood magic. Together they closed many gates and killed a lot of the monsters, they came to know and love each other. All was in vain, however, when they came across the king in yellow. In their adventures they learned that the king in yellow an Ancient One was and that the creature wanted to take over the real world by invading it from the Other Worlds. When traveling through the Dream World they came across the Ancient One, the giant was 30 feet high and a huge yellow cloak. They couldn’t see the face but they knew what the creature was because of the size and the strange scepter it held in its claw. They hid behind some stones so that they wouldn’t be noticed. When they saw that the creature was looking for something they found a gate back to the real world hidden behind a door with a strange runic mark. Vincent stepped through the gate, but when he looked back he saw that Ancient One had picked up Ruby and was looking towards the gate. “Enlarge the gate for me, mortal. And I shall let you mate go” Vincent heard the creature repeating inside his head. He knew how to increase the gate in size, but he couldn’t unleash the Ancient One on the world in trade for a promise made by one the most dangerous entities ever existed. He chose to seal the gate so that the monster was imprisoned in the Dream World. It was the last gate that needed to be closed to stop the invasion and it would have been the end of their long struggle. He couldn’t find any joy from it, however, not without Ruby.

 

Vincent became restless, he couldn’t sleep nor eat, he couldn’t live without her. He had to find her to ask for forgiveness and to live together again, for he knew that she was still alive. After days of research he discovered a sleeping gate hidden beneath the Historical Society. He awakened the gate and through it he came to the Dream World again. The gate closed shortly after arriving. After days of searching he finally found the place where they came across the Ancient One. Luckily the king in yellow was nowhere to be seen, he could see some strange piles of rock however on the location where the gate had been. A note was beneath the top stone, on it was written

 

The beast dropped me, in it's rage, when you closed the gate. I landed in a lake which broke my fall.

I hid from the monster until it walked on, I made these piles of rock to indicate the direction I went.

Find me, Ruby

Chapter 2

 

Ruby was making another pile of stones to indicate the direction she went. There was no sun in the Dream World, so it was hard to judge what time it is, only strange colorful moons dotted the sky. She judged the time that passed, since the escape of the king in yellow, by the amount of food left in her backpack. Vincent and Ruby never went into a gate without a months’ worth of supplies, only a quarter of it was left. She hadn’t had big problems taking care of herself in this alien world, she had been alone since she was nine years old. Vincent taught her how nice it was to be able to rely on someone else for a change and his company was highly appreciated. When she put the last stone on the pile she felt something sticky crawling on her cheek, it was still a shock for her when she found herself crying. She grew up thinking that crying was useless, but every time she thought about Vincent she couldn’t stop herself. She was angry at Vincent for closing the gate, leaving her behind to die, while she knew it was the right thing to do. Whenever Vincent came up in her mind she couldn’t help but wonder where he was. Why he hadn’t caught up with her already. Whenever she asked those questions to herself, she couldn’t help but wonder if he thought her dead or if he would even come to find her, if he even could. Sometimes she kept asking herself these questions for hours, over and over again. They drove her mad, which is lethal in a world build of dreams and nightmares. She had to cling on to the small hope that he would come to save her, or else she would lose her sanity and could end up lost in time and space; a fate worse than death.

 

A screech woke her from her thoughts. The sound came from one of the strange flying creatures which inhabited the Dream World. She had to move on to find a gate back home, before she would run out of food. A yellow object moved at the horizon, something of that size could only mean one thing; the king in yellow would be checking out this region for a gate as well, the Ancient One was also caught on this world. She had to find a hiding spot before it reached her, luckily she found a cave where she could hide. Inside the cave she saw a light at the end of a tunnel, she followed the tunnel and the rock wall turned into a brick wall when she neared the torch from which the light came from. She heard some people talking around a corner, the people who were talking appeared to be Cultists. Vincent and Ruby often came across some cultists, but never in big groups. She decided to find out what they were doing here.

Chapter 3

 

Vincent had been traveling from pile of stones to pile of stones in the hope that he would see her over the next hill or around the next mountain. At first he had been running, but he had stopped doing that after he passed out from exhaustion a few days back. At least he knew that she was still alive, he was worried for her health though. In the last letter he read stood that she was running out of food and was wondering if he was following her. It was an agony not being able to tell her help was coming. He was afraid to yell her name so she could hear him, he didn’t want to attract unwanted attention. When he arrived at the next pile of stones and he start looking for the next pile. He couldn’t see the pile however and he started to worry that something happened to Ruby. He started to run in the direction he thought she would have gone to (the line of piles was quite linear). He came across a crater where some rocks were crushed, when he looked better at the crater he noticed it had a strange form. The hole looked like a giant footprint, a piece of paper was hidden beneath a stone; it was another letter from Ruby

 

I saw the king in yellow again so I hid in a cave nearby. The cave let to a temple inhabited by Cultists worshipping the Ancient One. I write this so that, if you read this letter, you know that I am going to try to stop the Cultists from opening another portal back to earth. I heard them talking about an ancient closed gateway big enough that even the king in yellow can walk through it. He must not enter the real world. I have found another way to indicate the time, yesterday I had my monthly period.

Come fast, Ruby

 

Maybe he shouldn’t have known the time when she would have a period, because it is very personally, but this meant that she wrote this letter yesterday. He was checking the mountain in front of him for a cave, but found only a collapsed entrance. So close yet so far away. What stood in that letter again? There was something about a temple, the cultist might have another entrance. He ran around the mountain and eventually found an enormous cave, the ground was covered with the giant footraces however. He was afraid he wouldn’t have time to find another entrance, so he ran inside. He wouldn’t let her stop the cultists on her own. At the end of the cave he found an abandoned gate which led to the temple, he walked into a hallway with torched hanging on the walls. He couldn’t see or hear any of the cultists mentioned in the letter,  but he still decided to walk on slowly; it wouldn’t help Ruby if he was caught by the cultists.

 

He heard some chanting when he opened a door but when he decided to go into the room a hand caught him on the mouth and he was slammed with his back into a wall. Ruby was standing over him, in cultist robes, ranting about why he took so long and why he left her here. But he wasn’t listening to her, he was looking only at her lovely face and kissed her to shut her up. “I guess I will have to forgive you, for now” Ruby said, out of breath, when she pushed him off. “We don’t have a lot of time, Vincent. The cultists have almost completed the ceremony to open the gate. Do you have a gun with you to shoot the high priest? He is the one who knows how to reopen the gate and how to keep it open for the king to go through.” “What happens when the priest dies while the gate is open?” asked Vincent to Ruby. Vincent saw look on her face and knew she liked his plan.

 

Ruby gave him some cultist robes she found in the sleeping halls and led him to the Ceremonial Chamber via a secret passage. They had to crawl through the tunnel but eventually reached a great opening where all the cultists were chanting. On the wall they were looking at was a great glyph made of some unnatural stones. The king in yellow himself was standing next to it, Ruby pointed towards the cultist standing on the other side of the glyph. That cultist had white robes while the rest had black robes so that had to be the high priest Ruby talked about. The priest made some strange hand gestures and slit the throat of a beast lying on some of altar. He put a bloodied hand on the rocky wall and by doing so the glyphs started to glow. The glowing pattern expanded and opened into a great circle, the circle formed an image of a forest. The Ancient One laughed at the sight and commanded a cultist to walk through, the cultist reached earth safely so the king judged that the portal worked properly. The king had to duck to walk through and the moment his head was through the portal, Vincent shot the high priest causing the image of the forest to turn back into the glyphs. Panic was spreading as half of the God the cultists worshipped slipped from the wall and fell in a sickening splash killing some of the cultists standing to close. In the confusion the couple sneaked out of the temple in search for a way home, but not before raiding the temple kitchens.