A Matter of Temperance (The Adventures of Ichabod Temperance Book 1) by Ichabod Temperance Page B

of the Forbidden Gate ?” I ask, but secretly fear I know the answer.
    He sighs. “The document stored in the American university is a pale copy, containing many errors which weaken its power: though, make no mistake, it is still quite dangerous. Indeed, the Enemy has created quite enough horror with another such copy. This document is the original.”
    “Is not the Eye of the Forbidden Gate designed to summon some terrible demon to feed on mankind?”
    “Not precisely. This document is designed to summon Something utterly Other, Something that does not belong to this universe.”
    I feel my gorge rise. Surely...?
    “And this particular document was written by no human hand.”
    “They saw the end coming, you see. These abominations were from some place incomprehensible to us. They could not interact with our world fully. Metals and certain gases were useless to them, but they needed access to these materials for their dark industries. They could “possess” life forms, but the brains and nervous systems of our existing animals were too simple to serve as vehicles for their aims. Thus, they attempted to...meld...with and adapt tissues native to Earth. They used their black magics and their twisted sciences to create living creatures from the matter of this universe, but these mongrel creatures failed to serve as adequate vehicles for the monsters’ ambitions. The result led only to life forms that were little more than clockwork factory workers, quite capable of seemingly complex tasks, but with no more power to decide than a slime worm...yet they could remain, when their masters were banished by another alien race, one from our own universe.”
    “A guardian race?”
    The elderly scholar shakes his head in negation. “They were guardians only in the sense that a man might avoid stepping upon an ant. Although they were beneficent enough to our world, it was only to serve their own goals and to defeat their own enemy.”
    His tone bids me interrupt no more.
    “Working in secret during the last months before their defeat, the abominable masters used their misshapen servants to write down a means by which they could be summoned from their entrapment. They knew a time would come when the incongruity between our universes would lessen to the degree that they could come through the portal in their original might.”
    “For millions of years, these twisted servants preserved this knowledge.  When our species emerged, the monstrous shepherds watched quietly, as their masters had created them to do. As humanity rose from the savannas to the ziggurats, the dark scribes prepared the alien knowledge in a form our minds could understand. By the time of our first civilizations, many men had become all too ready to worship at the altar of any evil if it would slake their thirst for power. It was a simple matter for the servants to pass this information to credulous and evil humans, though few human minds could fathom this utterly alien language; thus, the translations began. The Sumerian name became attached to it, but only because its true name cannot be spoken. Acolytes began work and dark rituals were enacted. And now, the time approaches out of the unfathomable past such that the congruency of our universes grows close enough for their return.”
    “The Eye of the Forbidden Gate cannot be destroyed by humans; thus, wise men have taken the last scroll written in the hands of their servants to keep evil men from summoning these abominations. You are the latest in the long line of scroll protectors, as I am the latest of its loremasters. It is a sacred trust, and one upon which everything that exists...depends.  That is why we cannot fail. We cannot let this document fall into the hands of the enemy. If we fail, the Portal Dweller will open our world to them so that they can return to conquer this universe utterly.”
    I am not a woman accustomed to vapors, but I feel the room moving far away, and the distressed voice of Mr.