The Relentless Slaughter [Round 3: Tormentorland]

Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.

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Soggoth k’doam ilu natamn dgasatok k’vvaalikisstri eualiyy maita? K’Soggoth dgasatelka kv’mn’ koiis sk’koi

He couldn’t understand it.

The song wound through his head like a needle pulling wire. Each verse was a loop, a tiny circle around his thoughts in a winding pattern, a ragged tapestry, binding what had opened and shaping what was formless. Where the Oracle’s whispers were fire and stone this was water and ice: the promise of the glacier that crosses mountains, the fathomless power of the sea that lies sleeping. There was a deepness in his mind he never could have imagined, plunging down and down through the abyss to the ancient heart of a dreaming world where the fires of origin still burned. Gods swam like fish in its core. His song was one of calling, a resurrection of the primordial dead and deathless whose names existed in a language that had never been spoken, whose words were power. It called to him too: he, a man, a creature of filth and war and sickness. He was a speck in their shadows, a ghost in the drowning myriad, but still it summoned him with its sonorous hymn. It bound him to itself, a stitch in its endless weaving. The frailest worm and those deepest gods were bound by the dead one’s calling, were brought to life with its promises. He could not refuse.

Zimmer smiled.

____________

Caridea babbled happily to herself as her cult panicked.

Her countless tendrils were spread throughout the Sisterhood’s lair in contented lumps, tangled around stalagmites and poorly-carved idols of Shoggoth’s incomprehensible form. The bulk of her body lay back away from the entrance near a sacrificial table that rarely saw use. The rest of the Sisterhood was near the cavern’s entrance, busily plotting to obtain the sacrifice; for the most part they ignored her, as usual, and so the Greatmother had found a way to amuse herself. In one tentacle she held the crumbling remains of a shark, its condition worsened by being repeatedly ground across the cavern floor in mimicry of a menacing walk. Curled in another was the broken corpse of a Brother, his gills limply flapping as Caridea thrashed him from side to side. Both were gripped so tightly that her grip nearly bisected them; deep cracks oozed pitifully along the Brother’s shell and the shark’s spine was obviously broken. They jumped fitfully in her grasp, voiced alternately in a screeching whine and a heroic baritone.

“Grr!” The Greatmother said, jiggling the fish man’s corpse. “Grr, I’m a gross old jerk and I’m going to stop you from summoning Soggoth so I can have him all to myself! I am going to be best friends with him and we will look into the abyss together every day and eat ice cream and pennies and babies! And you get none! You get nothing because you suck. You suck a whole bunch and you are never ever going to get do anything again!”

“Not if I have anything to say about it!” The shark replied triumphantly. Its nibbled sockets stared blankly at the ceiling. “Caridea is the best in the whole world and she’s going to get to Soggoth first because she is the best at everything. She’s so pretty and brave and smart! Caridea is much better than Car…caro… sharkman. He eats rocks because he thinks they are PEOPLE!”

The tentacle lifted abruptly and began to slam the Brother against the rocky floor headfirst, smashing his face into a wad of meaty pulp. The Greatmother giggled happily and shook the battered body. “You’re dead, Brother! You can’t play anymore. Too bad!” A tentacle as thick around as the dead man’s waist snaked out and snared another corpse from a nearby pile, dragging it to the shark by a wilted fin. With a dismissive flick the sad remains of the predecessor were tossed onto a heap of similarly destroyed corpses, most long since ground into what largely resembled hamburger meat. Caridea was just about to resume her pantomime when her newly chosen toy groaned and opened an eye.

“Don’t….” he said, hanging loosely in the Greatmother’s grip. His gills shuddered. “Don’t…”

Caridea frowned slightly.

The Brother winced in pain as the kraken lifted the rotted shark and jabbed it into his side. Blood and other viscera oozed from a sweeping wound that encompassed most of his torso, purplish intestines beginning to push through where his muscles had been severed. The jagged edges of the cut were fresh and still red with bruising. He whimpered as the shark approached again. “No… no, stop, please…”

The kraken stared at him for a few long moments. Her tentacles twisted aimlessly and her eyes drifted across the cavern, crossing in thought. Her beak clapped once and then she gasped and brought a cluster of tentacles to her beak. “You’re alive!” The Greatmother squealed. She paused and examined the room. Distantly the silhouettes of her Sisters could be seen, hurriedly scheming and ignoring their leader’s morbid games. None of them had turned at this exclamation. “You’re ALIVE,” Caridea said louder, shaking the wounded Brother and prompting a muffled scream. “ALIVE.”

The Sisters did not respond. Irritated, the kraken’s eyes swiveled back to the Brother, now futilely attempting to staunch the fresh clouds of blood leaking from his stomach. His murky skin had gone pale. “I don’t get it,” Caridea said peevishly. She gave him another shake for good measure. “This is a stupid joke. You’re a terrible doll!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” the Brother said desperately. His mismatched teeth and snakelike jaws marked him as some kind of dragonfish, not that the Greatmother could differentiate between most species further than “squid” and “not a squid”. “You… the Sisters, I-I… We were just trying to get close enough…”

“You are just so boring,” Caridea said. She smacked him with the shark. “Start being dead.”

“Stop! I’ll tell you everything,” the dragonfish man begged. He twisted in her grip and flinched as another cloud of blood bloomed into the water. “We- we have a weapon, a- a secret weapon and Carcha- carbo- charch- our leader said it was going to st-stop the Sisterhood forever and win us Soggoth-“

“Soggoth!” Caridea burbled. “I like Soggoth.”

The Brother blinked. “Y- yes?”

The Greatmother laughed. Her tentacles rippled away from her great golden eyes, piling up on each other and away from the colossal glistening beak suddenly visible under her webs of flesh. It yawned once, clacking loudly in the close confines of the Sisterhood’s cavern. Several Sisters turned at the sound and shouted in alarm at the now-struggling dragonfish pulling desperately away from the razor edges of Caridea’s maw.

“Sisters!” she shouted, and crammed the hapless Brother into her beak. His screams echoed in the cavern for a moment before ending in a swift crack. Caridea heaved herself forward, flattening the few Sisters unwise enough to approach her. “Those horrible Brotherhood people have a thing! A secret thing! And we need that thing because it’s bad!”

A few of the Sisters looked at each other skeptically but the majority roared in agreement, hefting bone spears and tridents in the air. A brawny lionfish woman screamed and stabbed the Greatmother’s corpse pile ferociously, heaving pieces of desiccated fishmen into the crowd.

“We should go kill them!” Caridea cheered, waving her tentacles gleefully. “We should go kill all of the Brotherhood, right now! That sounds great! I like this plan!”

The consensus from the Sisterhood was, by and large, concurrent.

____________

Ten thousand gods are not a burden born lightly.

Dorin’s mind was in a thousand pieces, a halo of lonely light glimmering around her aching head in the dark of the deep. Each voice a spark and every spark an inferno; every god was a microcosm as she felt their thoughts and their hearts surround her. Their hopes, their chosen children, a million years away in their separate worlds waiting for their return. She turned her head, skin lined by their light in the gloom of the sickened ocean. They were radiant. She saw their bodies glowing in the ghostlights: an iron god of fire and hate, a seething cathedral, a bird, a woman, a cat-eyed man and child, a weeping red worm and a green liar, a man who killed death, a mask on stars, a glass king, a sword of sand. There were others, infinite others, too many to see, too many to hold in her mind for more than an instant before they overtook her and she ceased to be Dorin and became the eternal. Their forms were a language, a coal on her lips that she dare not speak. It was agony, holding them; it was ecstasy.

She was prepared to die for them. The Eye of the Faceless Deep demanded it, demanded a feast of gods to herald its return to the surface of the world from down in the dark where it slept. It was a worthy thing to die for, she knew. It was a death she did not deserve.
One came to her then, one child among titans. It was light enough to rest without crushing her mind, though its touch was foul poison and it turned the water dark with disease. She was untouchable in her radiance, she was immaculate. She gave the broken creature her hand and felt its tears running down her palm. The patterns they spelled burned her skin.

my hands are broken my eyes are blind, the sick god said. all my suffering was for you, all my pain. i loved you. Its fragile hands slid to her neck, wrapping around her throat, but Dorin pushed it away. It recoiled as though she had thrust a blade in its heart. my hands, it wept, my beautiful beautiful eyes… we only loved you, we only wanted to hear you sing. we only wanted to have you. all the years in the dark, can you dream? can you dream of us? we were so close to being warm. we were so close to being whole…

“Enough,” she said. In that single word she felt the power of a thousand gods surging in her like a tide of fire, searing away whatever threads of the Oracle still existed in her. In the brilliant light of the godshead she saw its body, cringing away from view: tangled limbs and broken hands, too many of them, hiding the gashes in its throat and the hole in its chest and the ragged red tracks running down its cheeks. Its skin was translucent and torn, a terrible drowned apparition whose bones pressed through it as if trying to be escape. It face was beautiful, long and pale, and in the pits of its eyes its pupils glowed like stars. It looked at her in confusion and pain, endless pain, but she had nothing to offer it. She was not a part of it anymore.

you cannot!, it wept. Its broken hands pressed to its mouth, thin red tears streaming over claws and down its skeletal chest. we loved you, we loved you, we love you. how it hurts, this breaking. what agony! have mercy, have mercy, our love…

“LEAVE US,” The gods commanded, and the Oracle screamed, holding its empty heart as the sea came up to take it

and he felt himself begin to die.

______________

Carcharodon was displeased.

The newcomers before him were not of the Sisterhood’s get- that much was obvious- but they were strangers nonetheless, and queer ones at that. Too much like landdwellers, not enough like the spawn of the Deep Dark. Ordinarily he’d have them sacrificed without further ceremony, but even he would not dare to disrupt the Great Culling that was to come. Soggoth’s endless hunger might refuse a gift that was not the Dorin, and he could not risk bringing the Dreaming One’s ire down upon his clan. Nor could he spare warriors to deal with them; the Sisterhood’s constant spars had left his cult irritably depleted, and every living Brother was needed to fight them back and continue the search for the Dorin. To complicate things further, the damned Hermit had chosen this moment to align himself with the strangers, bringing him out of the agreed neutrality. Carcharodon would need Caridea’s agreement to kill the wretch, something the leathery old bitch would never agree to so long as he was the one to propose it. His teeth ground. What a marvelous waste of time.

The colossal shark thrashed his tail, buffeting the smaller of the visitors into the rocky walls of the abyssal trench. Next to his bulk they were little more than minnows, slaves to every minor current. Children. Hardly worth his effort. “I will not insult your intelligence by commanding you to leave. I believe my desires are clear already.”

The Hermit cleared his throat. Amongst all the strangers he was the one had paid the least mind to the Brothers’ jabbing spears and snarled threats. Carcharodon would have admired his bravery were it not for the common knowledge of the Hermit’s so-to-speak diplomatic immunity. Had he lips, the shark would have sneered. He detested nothing more than a coward in a hero’s skin. “Great Brother,” the Hermit was saying, “As the wiser of the two Deep Prophets surely you must acknowledge that your ritual will bring nothing but sorrow to the Deeps. Caridea denies this, but we know-”

“Do not feign camaraderie with me, Hermit,” Carcharodon rumbled. He circled the strangers, casting his massive shadow over their upturned faces. Guards waited patiently around the valley’s lip, watching the guests for any invitation for a fatal mauling. “I owe you your life. Nothing more. You are lucky I do not summon your beloved Caridea and end your lies once and for all. Even a fool knows a heretic when she sees one.”

“This is not heresy!” The Hermit insisted. He swam closer to the Great Brother, prompting a growl and a half-hearted spear thrust from a nearby anglerfish. Carcharodon silenced the Brother with a glare. “What heresy is there in preventing your madness from destroying us all? What cause do you have to summon Soggoth? His coming will achieve nothing but to bring an end to this world!”

Though they dared not speak, the Great Brother sensed his guards grow still with tension. Any mention, any hint that a cultist was even considering disobeying the holy gospel of the Deep Dark was punishable by immediate sacrifice- yet there was nothing he could do nothing to the Hermit in the space of his own temple. Not even a rebuke would be worth it. The old fool was too set in his ways, too important to be tossed aside like an unruly Brother or Sister…

“You should know the magnitude of your words, Hermit,” Carcharodon said lightly. With one fin he gestured to a burly octopus man, who nodded and swam down into the darkness waiting in the trench’s pits. “I know I will not be able to convince you of the importance of raising our great lord from his slumber. Instead… let me show you something a little more tangible…”

“Nothing is worth the end of the world, Brother,” the Hermit said sternly. “Not even-”

A piercing scream erupted from the darkness waiting below, an old sound to Carcharodon but no less unsettling for its familiarity. His guests recoiled in shock, wincing and searching the darkness for the source. The Great Brother’s perpetual smile grew even wider as they tried to shield their ears from the agonized shriek. “What are you keeping here, Carcharodon?” The Hermit demanded. The sound had not fazed him; his wrinkled face was set with determination. “One of your Brothers? Are you torturing a Sister?”

“Torture?” The shark mused, gliding placidly in the gloom. His shadow disappeared in the murk of the trench floor. “No, I think not. We’ve acquired a minor advantage over the Sisterhood, you see, Hermit. We no longer need to resort to such petty tactics. Entero,” he called down to the struggling shapes in the depths, “Bring up Scyliorhin.”

The thing that the octopus man dragged up, screaming and clawing at its face with bent and broken hands, was obviously unfamiliar to the Hermit even as one of his companions recoiled in disbelieving horror, glancing nervously at the others. The old crab only stared at the creature with open revulsion before turning back to the Brother, every inch of his face wrought with uncomprehending disgust. How interesting, Carcharodon thought. What else were the old idiot’s newfound allies keeping from him? Perhaps he ought to have a closer examination of these guests.

“What is this?” The Hermit said angrily. His beady eyes were fixed firmly on the struggling prisoner, biting and clawing at anything that came into reach. More guards arrived to restrain the writhing thing even as it turned its empty gaze on the strangers, mouthing at them incomprehensibly with a mouthful of shattered teeth. Thick black blood flowed in misty clouds from its blackened fins, now more closely resembling talons; its body stretched impossibly thin in every direction in a twisted echo of the fish men holding its broken limbs. “What have you done to this man?”

“We have done nothing,” Carcharodon said calmly. His obsidian eyes scrutinized the furious sage, gauging the Hermit’s reaction. “We have only been given a gift. Speak, Scyliorhin,” the shark bellowed, “Tell the Hermit your name!”


“SON OF BLASPHEMY! DO YOU THEN DENY US, PAGUROIDEA?” The tortured thing cried, sobbing in between its screams. It thrust its head upward, searching the water blindly with blue-on-black eyes. Sickle-fingered claws strained for the sunlight. “WE ARE THE FORSAKEN BONES OF THE SEA AND THE BURNING BLOOD OF THE DROWNING DEEP! WE SEE YOU, PAGUROIDEA! WE SEE YOUR UNREPENTANT SINS! WEEP FOR YOUR END, SINNER! YOU WILL NOT SAVE THIS EARTH!”

“You see, Hermit,” Carcharodon said, “We have more than one god on our side.”

_________________________________

He knew long before Gannet what had become of the Oracle. Still, he led him to her, and watched the dead man drown.

She was beautiful, as she’d always been, but magnified under the infinite lens of ocean she was radiant. Even the sleeping gods in his soul rose at her image, their hollow whispers a subtle hymn to her majesty. She wore pantheons like pearls, draped around her bare form and shining in the face of the darkness. Only by the power of the Sleeping One could the-man-called-Zimmer bear to look upon her without burning into ashes; he didn’t know how Gannet managed. Perhaps it came from being an Eye.

“Go,” he told him, unmoved by the fear in the man’s face. “She is yours.”

He didn’t see what happened next, only heard the song of the Oracle falter and then suddenly, furiously, end.

_______________________________

No, she told him,I don’t recognize you.

There were no other gods, no waiting ocean, no spider-child hanging on their every word. Everything was black. There was nothing beyond the heat of their bodies, nothing beyond him and her alone together in the gentle silence. They floated like moths in the twilight, pale flecks in the settling dark.

Her face was blank. He could no longer read the faces of men as he once had, but he could read hers like a holy text: there was nothing of him left in her. Not even anathema. No warnings. Nothing but her, and she was something he didn’t understand.

I don’t recognize you, she said to him. Her palms faced his, perfect and pale and smooth. I turn you away. Go back to the thing you were. I cast you off.

He didn’t have the words to respond. Instead he reached for her hands, but they fell away and the water went cold where her arms had passed, cold enough to turn his blood to stone. What was the thing he was? What am I?, he wanted to ask, but an Eye must never ask questions. An Eye may only obey. This is the hymn you died for.

She had nothing more to say to him, he saw. She was finished. Her eyes were on something greater, on a field of infinite stars somewhere in a sky he couldn’t see. Only the smallest part of her mind knew that he was even there, waiting for her. Dorin, he managed. He couldn’t remember her real name. Dorin. Please. I’m here.

Her eyes slid past him but her saw her perfect brow crease and it broke his heart. His god, his love; everything in her that should have been his was gone. In its place was a void, echoing on forever with the whispers of strangers and the cold touch of foreign lovers, pushing him away. He felt fear, he felt pain, he felt the slow rot building up in his chest like the sickness he was, burning out his heart in a pillar of smoke. He felt weightless. He felt nothing. He could not leave her side.

She- or not she but the thing she was, the thing he no longer knew- was tired of him. He could see that at last. She moved as if to strike him but instead it became a gesture, shaping a circle in the void with her hands. You cannot imagine, she said. You cannot imagine the things beyond your tiny world, your pitiful life. You are nothing to me, she told him, you were never anything at all.

She was right, he realized. She had always been right. He was nothing.

There wasn’t anything left for him to be.

_____________________________________________

“Mother! Greatmother!”

Caridea frowned. This was the third distraction in as many minutes and she was getting very annoyed by all this bother. It wasn’t very often she left the Sisterhood grotto; why did her Sisters have to make such a fuss about everything on her big day? It wasn’t fair. They were always front flank this and rear flank that and fifty percent losses these and it was just horribly dull. She could find the Sacrifice on her own, she bet, if she really really wanted. Only it was easier to make the Sisters do it. Then she didn’t have to worry about running into those terrible Brothers and getting a stomachache.

“Mother, something’s wrong,” an angelfish was saying anxiously, tugging on the kraken’s tentacles to get her attention. Caridea tried to wave the Sister off but the little creature clung to her like algae, frantically waving a spindly trident. Grudgingly the Greatmother waved permission to speak, hoping she would forget what she was here for and leave. “The Brothers are doing something to our soldiers. We don’t know what it is, it almost seems like a kind of poison, or- or sickness or something, our healers have never seen anything like it- Mother, our Sisters are in danger! We can’t continue the attack without imperiling the search for the Sacrifice!”

“What silly nonsense!” Caridea exclaimed, pushing at the Sister with her tendrils. She hoped the awful girl would leave soon. “I didn’t give anyone permission to get sick! Have them arrested for disobeying orders. We need people listening to me! Always!”

Her attendant decided to ignore this statement and pushed a small scrap of something dark at Caridea’s eyes, which the Greatmother batted at irritably. “Look,” the angelfish urged her.

“Fine!” the kraken snapped. She snatched the scrap away and lowered it in front of her left eye, scrutinizing the material. It seemed to be seaweed of some description, scratched with complicated scribbles in a vague map of the surrounding sea. Dark blobs indicated the Brotherhood’s abyss, surrounded by clusters of fish skulls of various conformation and size. The rest of the map was marked with X’s. Disinterested, Caridea waved the map at the impatient Sister. “I don’t get it. What do you want?”

“Mother,” the angelfish cried, “We can’t find the Sacrifice. We’ve looked everywhere! We… we fear the Brotherhood may already have her, and with the sickness-”

Caridea scoffed. “That’s stupid. You’re stupid. They don’t have her. She’s over there,” she said, and lifted a tentacle in a southerly direction. Her golden eyes rolled in irritation. “Can’t you hear her? She’s in the Black Temple. She’s so loud, I wish she’d stop. Talking to all those weird people. What a crazy person!”

The angelfish stared up at the babbling kraken, horror dawning on her face. “You… Greatmother…” Her fins flared in distress, brilliant red; she searched desperately for witnesses but her Sisters were too far away to hear.

Caridea ignored her. “You’re all too slow! Too slow! You should have killed the Brothers by now, every last stupid one of them! Why’d I trust you? What about them, huh? I am fed up with everything!” With one sweep of her tentacle she buffeted the Sister back, tossing the map off into the deep as the angelfish flailed for balance. “I am leaving! I am going to deal with the Sacrifice myself. Yeah! Yeah, that’s what I’ll do,” she said proudly. “I can do anything I want. I’m the best!”

The angelfish didn’t bother to stay to watch the Kraken lurch off towards the Temple, humming happily to herself. Map and trident tossed aside, the Sister simply prayed that she would be able to reach the others before the Greatmother had time to doom them all.

___________________________

YOU ARE THE DEAD THAT WALKS.

The words rolled into his mind like thunder.

Martin flinched, his head colliding painfully with the wall of the cavern the Brotherhood had placed them in. Stars and error messages darkened his vision for a moment before he regained himself, shaking off the sudden throbbing in his head. The voice was loud, as though someone had shouted into his ear with a megaphone, but the cavern was empty except for the crab boy and the old guy. “What the hell was that?” Martin said.

Samael and the Hermit merely looked at each other. Neither seemed particularly fazed. “What do you mean?” the Hermit asked cautiously.

Martin frowned. The last thing he needed was further proof that he was going insane. “That… the voice. Just now? It said…”

DEAD THAT WALKS. THEY ARE NOT THE CHOSEN. THEY ARE DEAF.

The android sighed, holding his head in his hands. “Nevermind.”

THEY ARE BLIND TO US. THEY ARE BLIND TO THE SEA AND THE VOICE OF THE DEEP. WORTHLESS. THEIR DEATHS WILL COME.

The Hermit and Samael stared at him uneasily for a moment longer before lapsing into disinterested silence. Martin slid down against a wall, keeping his hands pressed to his temples in what might have appeared to be frustration. In reality he was trying to recall everything in his programming that had to do with long-range telepathy and psionic communications, particularly the kind that left no individual tracking code and didn’t seem to be transmitted from any recognizable source.

Alright, joke’s over, Martin thought as loudly as he could. I know you’re a telepath. I don’t know how strong you are but you must have a reason to talk instead of trying to brainwipe me instantly. Who are you and what do you want?

The voice responded with a thin wail of a laugh. LITTLE DEATH. YOUR CHANGING FORM DOES NOT DECEIVE YOU, DOES NOT CLOUD YOUR MIND AS THE OTHERS? SUCH MARVELS OUR EYES HAVE SEEN. WHICH OF THE GOVERNED WORLDS DOES THE WALKING DEAD HERALD? ANTHOUSAI? CORILADAE? BLESSED HYLEROROI? SPEAK, DEATH. TELL US YOUR SINS.

Martin glanced irritably at his two companions. Even someone without an ounce of psychic sensitivity should have been able to at least pick up on the wave disturbances caused by a transmission of this strength, even if the words were evidently in some kind of code. The two crustaceans had not even budged. Only the Hermit had made any move that might indicate disturbance, and that was merely a concerned glance in Martin’s direction. I repeat, state your identity.

PAGUROIDEA DOES NOT HEAR US. NOR THE DEMON. DO NOT CONCERN DEATH’S IMAGE WITH THEM.

I will not continue this communication if you refuse to cooperate.

The voice made a noise that only the most liberal of xenolinguists would have interpreted as indicating amusement and drew itself closer to Martin’s mind. He recoiled instinctively; whatever was sending the transmission was big, far bigger than he had expected. He would have identified it as a team of psychics working together rather than any one source but for its unmistakable note of commonality. The transmission pulsed and he found himself receiving an image: a broken figure, nauseatingly thin, with black sclera pierced by bright blue irises.

The fish thing? Scyliorhin? Martin thought in disbelief.

HA HA HA, GOOD. NO. YES. HE IS ONE OF US, BUT ONLY A VESSEL. ONE OF THE FEW SUITABLE TO WEAR OUR BLESSED FORM. ONLY AN ANCHOR. TEMPORARY. WE ARE INFINITE.

Sorry, but that doesn’t answer my question. This must be someone’s idea of a joke, Martin decided. Even in whatever bizarre place he’d found himself in there must be unauthorized psychannels. His mental filters were most likely malfunctioning; an uncommon occurrence, but not unheard of. Are you a collective? A hivemind? What organization are you registered under?

THESE ARE MORTAL WORDS. THEY DO NOT APPLY TO US. WHY DO YOU ASK US OUR NAME, DEATH? DO YOU NOT RECALL OUR FIRST VESSEL IN THIS WORLD? HE FEARED YOU. WE ALL FEAR YOU. YOUR IRREVERANCE WOUNDS US.

Something triggered in the android’s memory- an image of a spidery horror crawling towards him- but he pushed it away for now. It was becoming increasingly clear that this wasn’t an ordinary transmission. He could feel the voice’s words as though they was his own: there was nothing human about it, but something deeper, calmer, infinitely more terrifying and seething with life. It regarded him with a thousand years of predatory cunning, watching without eyes. He was a threat to it, he realized. It was sending him a warning. As clean and as clinical as a medic’s report, the voice wanted him gone.

Martin shook off the fear creeping into his stomach and gave a mental push to the voice, relieved when it retreated willingly. It was just a scare tactic. A simple manipulation of instinctive stimuli by an amateur psion with a stolen amplifier. Why are you afraid of me? Why are you telling me this?

BECAUSE WE CANNOT TOUCH YOU.

In Martin’s mind there was suddenly an image, brilliantly rendered in colors no human eye could trace: a man standing before a ragged pit, stiffened against the wind that raced towards him from over the stony shore. Something black and oily was pouring up from the ground, neither liquid nor gas but reminiscent of both, curling towards the man with wisps of curling fingers. It settled around his shoulders like a shroud and he staggered forward, stumbling into the earth as it swallowed him whole.

WE CANNOT CONTROL YOU LIKE WE CAN THE OTHERS. WE CANNOT MAKE YOU SEE US, WORSHIP US, DIE FOR US. YOU ARE NOTHING. YOU ARE BARREN EARTH WHERE THERE SHOULD BE SOWN LIFE. OUR VESSELS FEAR YOU BECAUSE THEY KNOW YOU ARE OUR DESTRUCTION, SOMETHING WE CANNOT REACH. WE ARE A GOD. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO DENY US. THAT YOU BEAR OUR VOICE WITHOUT MADNESS IS PROOF OF YOUR IMMORTALITY.

You… Something was rising to the forefront of Martin’s mind, a combination of a fragmented memory- who’d want to take the risk of malpractice?- and the impression of the voice itself. It presented itself to him, absurd in its simplicity. He didn’t want to believe it; he nearly laughed. A… disease? You’re a disease, and you can’t infect me.

He felt its cold agreement, unfazed by the discovery. It had no need to lie to him. WE ARE MANY THINGS. WE TOOK A FORM NO LIVING THING COULD REFUTE, BUT YOU ARE NOT LIVING, DEAD THAT WALKS THE EARTH. WE WOULD NOT WASTE A HOST WHEN THERE ARE LESS WORTHY MEN TO OFFER.

Something about the way the voice intoned the last few words made Martin frown. The sacrifice. The sacrifice they’re all talking about.

SHE DENIES US AS WELL. SHE DENIES HER SALVATION FROM THE HANDS OF THE MULTITUDE. BUT THERE IS HOPE FOR HER, DEATH. WE DO NOT SAY THE SAME OF YOU.

And then the voice was gone, and Martin was alone with the feeling that something was about to go terribly wrong.

__________________________________

Soggoth slumbered as Caridea drew ever closer, trailing the bodies of Brothers and Sisters in her tentacles.

She moved through the water like a ghost, passing over the ruins of the city that had always been there, ever since she had crawled from her mother’s corpse six hundred years ago. She eyed its melted towers curiously, not having seen it from above since she was a nymph. She’d never noticed the extent of the destruction before. What kind of thing had the power to do that, she wondered, to topple all the buildings like so many stacks of shells? It wasn’t Soggoth. Soggoth would never hurt anything. It must have been something almost strong as him, she decided, and stopped swimming long enough to register this information. After a minute of silence she came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter anyway. No one was strong enough to stop her, she thought happily, crushing the corpses with ease. The Sisterhood had been wrong to hold her back, to think that she wouldn’t just get whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it, because that’s what always happened. No one could keep her from anything. She was simply the best there was and that was a fact.

The Black Temple loomed in the distance like a beacon, radiating the slumbering thoughts of Soggoth at her. She had to hurry, Caridea thought. The Sacrifice was waiting.

_______________________________

Soggoth k’doam ilu kv’mn’ koiis sk’koi.

She understood it perfectly.

Her time was coming, the minor flaw of the sick god’s son dealt with and the sweeping face of the godshead now turning back to her. Was she prepared? Would she flee? Did she fear the darkness that would come? No, she told them, smiling. They were so gentle, all of them, even the gods of death that sat in the shadows with their swords. They would not hurt her now. She was too precious. She was the catalyst that would burn this world to ashes. They loved her.

The endless caverns of the Temple echoed to the planet’s core, swimming with the primordial Firsts- Love and Death, Pestilence and War- legacies that outlasted even the Sleeping God, yet were little more than his servants to be tossed aside when they no longer served him well. They were not bound to her pantheons as the other gods were, yet they swirled around her wailing their eulogies to the world they had built from the dust of long-dead stars. She scorned them. Who clung to stones when they could have pearls? With a flick of her hand she banished them, sending them back to the world’s core. She did not need them as witnesses. She had eternities for that.

The Sleeping One stirred, barraging her with waves of torrid dreams. She lifted a finger; a thousand gods rose at her command in a shining shield. She felt some perish, but it was like losing grains of sand from a desert. They were hers. They would die if she commanded it, but more importantly they would live to see her fulfill her sacrifice. She felt their eyes on her, brimming with pride. They adored her beyond anything else in their universes.

G’ka malidam myn’nk K’Caridea.

Dorin turned, smiling, to the cracked and ancient path of bones that led to the Temple’s gate. It was time.

__________________________

“What is the thing I was?”

It was the first thing he’d said without the tinge of the Oracle’s madness coloring his words. The alchemist attended the dying man; he could spare the shell of his body and he was fond of the poor creature. His true self was elsewhere, amidst the churn of ancient gods bearing up the body of the Dreaming One. He could spare these few moments before his mortal form disintegrated.

The dead man’s eyes were clouded, blind. He lay in the hollow of the broken city, limbs twitching upon a heap of nibbled bones, crabs and eels, their tiny legs weakened by the sickness fleeing his body. The alchemist was immune, shielded by the grace of the old gods, but he felt the madness creep at the edge of his mind, searching for a sanctuary. He could offer it nothing but the cold comfort of his presence.

“What was I?” the man asked again, not to the alchemist but to something else, something Zimmer could not see. Perhaps it had come to be with him, he mused, or perhaps the man was simply delusional. Another spasm wracked the Eye’s body and he curled away from the alchemist’s hand. His back was hollow, shrunken against his bones. Dark spots had appeared across his heaving sides, bleeding onto the mass of tendrils that grew from the sockets of his hips. Zimmer wondered if his body would fail before it fell apart or if the wretched thing would stay dreaming even as his life slipped away, his bones sinking into the city’s ruins. What a terrible place to die, the alchemist thought. A million years from home.

There was little he could do comfort him. “What is your name?” he asked quietly, touching his hand to the side of the Eye’s face. He shuddered in response, pulling away. He didn’t seem to be able to move his tentacles.

“Why… are you asking?”

The alchemist turned the man’s head to face him, searching the blind eyes for some hint of the Oracle’s power even as feeble claws raked weakly at his wrists. Ordinarily he would have feared further infection, but this time he was too well shielded. The Eye seemed to sense this and subsided, breathing raggedly. “Do you remember her?”

“Who?”

“Dorin.”

For the briefest instant the dying man’s face contorted with rage and he bared his black teeth, pupils shrinking to pinpricks under their patina of blindness, but between one breath and another the fury was gone. “I don’t know who that is,” he said dully. He coughed, choking on black fluid that burst from his mouth in clouds. His eyes searched fruitlessly for the alchemist’s face. “Who is she?”

Zimmer could have laughed. “She is everything. She was yours, once. She is the sacrifice that will bring a dying world to life.”

Again there came that strange flare of anger, dissipating before the alchemist had a chance to register it. Perhaps he was only imagining its existence. “I don’t know her,” the Eye said. “I don’t know you. You should… leave…”

“Gannet,” Zimmer said, but the dying man didn’t notice. He was trying to rise despite the frailty of his collapsing limbs. His skeletal back arched with the effort, forcing his ribs into sharp contrast against the near-translucence of his skin. “This world is going to end. Does it frighten you?”

“I fear nothing,” the Eye said. A sharper note entered his voice, deeper and crueler than Zimmer had heard from him before. “You see my dying. I died… once…” He frowned. “No. Did I?” His eyes snapped to Zimmer, staring at the alchemist through their fog with sudden clarity. Suddenly the city seemed to have grown cold. “Who are you?” the Eye said quietly.

Zimmer frowned. This was growing distracting, pulling his focus from the Sleeping One’s song. “You know me,” he said impatiently. “Don’t play the child. I am the blood of the Oracle.”

“The Oracle?” Whatever fugue had possessed the man seemed to be fading with alarming speed. The thing- he no longer wanted to call it an Eye, no longer wanted to call it anything- strained forward, clawing towards Zimmer on broken fingers. “What happened at the Oracle when you left me? What did you do to me?”

Unnerved and preoccupied by the affairs of the divine, Zimmer could only stare. “I did nothing. I wasn’t there-”

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?” the broken man screamed. He slashed at the alchemist with feverish speed, falling short but only by an inch. Zimmer felt the current ripple past him and crawled backwards, far too slowly.

The thing that had been Gannet snarled at him, shaking with tension. A spasm passed through his tentacles and he laughed, spitting out blood. “You left me,” he mumbled, smiling at Zimmer with dripping teeth. “You left me down there. All alone. Are you afraid to die alone, stranger? Alone in the dark with a hundred screaming madmen pulling you deeper and deeper down?

“Gannet,” Zimmer said, horrified.

“Who’s that?” he said disinterestedly. He examined his claws as if he had never seen them before, then looked back at the alchemist with an expression that sent the gods quailing from his soul. “I don’t know who you are,” the thing said slowly, “but I know why you left me. I know what I did to you.” It laughed, gasping for air even as it dragged itself closer to the helpless alchemist. Bone splintered and cracked with every step it took. “And every second, every hour of the time that I was in that damned cave, I was waiting for this. I was waiting for you. I let those damned things take me because I was waiting for a chance to pay you back, and I knew that if I just waited I would find you here. With me.” His laugh was a seabird calling, screaming and screaming and screaming. “I did all of this for you, dear. And here you are at last.”
_________________________

“I’m here!” Caridea burbled happily, waving the battered corpses of the cultists before the towering expanse of the Black Temple. Her eyes rolled in happiness. “Are you excited, Soggoth? Are you? I brought presents!”

Unceremoniously the kraken flung the bodies to the Temple floor where they burst into bloody clouds, muddying the water with viscera. Caridea ignored them. “Where is she?” she asked breathlessly, searching the shadows and flapping her tentacles excitedly. “Where’s the Sacrifice? I’m ready!”

Here.

If there was any divine distaste in Dorin’s voices the Greatmother didn’t notice. She dwarfed the tiny human by a hundredfold; when she appeared the kraken might have missed her but for the blinding radiance that surrounded her fragile soul. Even then it was more a matter of the ethereal song binding itself to the girl’s body that caught Caridea’s attention. Breathlessly she rose up, looming before her like a thunderhead. Each of her eyes was as tall as three of Dorin, but the Greatmother gazed upon her with such reverence that the pantheons stilled in respect.

“You’re so beautiful,” Caridea whispered, echoing in the hollow halls of the Temple. Her tentacles coiled gently around the girl’s halo, a shielding embrace. “I didn’t even imagine. He’ll be so pleased with you.”

Dorin smiled back coolly. She was done with words. “Do it.”

The kraken nodded, silently, and opened her beak to begin.

_________________

The Brother’s trench rumbled with the force of Carcharodon’s roar. “SHE FOUND IT!”

Martin stayed silent, partially out of respect for the shark’s distress but mostly out of tact. Even trapped in their tiny cell he could feel the fear amongst the Brothers, the absolute terror of their leader. It didn’t seem like a very efficient way to run a cult, but then he’d never much been into religion anyways.

SEE HOW THEY PANIC.

He sighed. I thought you’d left.

The voice- the entity, rather, though he still didn’t know what to call it- chuckled. WE DID NOT TELL YOU HOW REFRESHING IT IS TO HEAR YOUR DERISION. YOU ARE A STRANGE ONE.

Why is Carcharoguy upset? Martin thought, vaguely uncomfortable at its sudden change in tone. Where before it had been caustic the voice was smooth, confident. Things were going well for it. He wasn’t sure if that was necessarily a good thing. What did they find?

THESE CHILDREN WISH TO SUMMON A GOD OF THE OLDEST BLOOD. THEIR SACRIFICE WILL WAKEN IT. THIS ONE WAS WEAK AND DEAF AND COULD NOT HEAR THE HYMN. THE OTHERS HAVE CLAIMED THE GIRL FOR THEIR OWN.

The cavern floor rumbled again. Martin looked at the guards curiously; they had retreated in with the prisoners, quaking and paralyzed with fear. The Sisterhood has her? What does that mean?

HAVE YOU NOT WITNESSED A SUMMONING, DEATH? ONLY THE CALLER BENEFITS. ALL OTHERS BECOME THE OFFERING. THESE CHILDREN WILL DIE.

He didn’t have to ask what that meant for him.

WE SEE THE FEAR IN YOUR MIND, DEATH. DO YOU FEAR WHAT YOU ARE?

If we could at all avoid getting me killed that would be great, the android replied. Reflexively he felt the socket where his weaponized arm used to be, not that it would have been of use to him now. I guess maybe save the rest of these people while we’re at it.

YOU ARE ADMIRABLE FOR A DEAD THING.

The voice was growing louder and more steady, thick with self-assurance. It blocked out the bellows of Carcharodon’s rage and the frantic prayers of the Hermit, trying to reason with the terrified guards. Martin found himself perversely amused by their efforts. It wasn’t as if the apocalypse was going anywhere. Everyone on this planet is going to die, then.

THAT IS MUCH THE POINT. BUT WE ARE INFINITE IN OUR MERCY; SHALL WE SHOW YOU HOW IT ENDS? A CHILD SUCH AS YOU MIGHT LEARN SOMETHING.

The android shrugged, realized the voice probably wouldn’t pick up on the gesture and send it a mental nod instead. Sure. Why not?

Abruptly his view of the cavern shifted and Martin was thrown bodily to the floor by a tremendous blow, except that instead of the cold stone he expected he felt himself collide with only more water. He plunged into a freezing void and sank down and down into a writhing blackness that caressed his body like a lover’s hands. Stunned, he struggled aimlessly against the forces but met only air, and smoke, and then his eyes opened and he saw the endless reaches of the Black Temple unfurling before him.

Twisted and distorted carvings covered every inch of the colossal space, every tiny fragment ¬¬of a broken scale or wayward talon painstakingly detailed with slavish devotion. Gods and monsters coiled in seething knots in every direction, winding in and out of each other until it was impossible to tell when one ended and the rest began; furious, agonized faces peered out from every surface, curses on their gnarled lips and slavering tongues bared. Unspeakable horrors bulged from the walls and seemed ready to peel themselves free of the stone to devour the Temple’s occupants, every inch of their surfaces engraved with impossibly fine precision. Martin reeled; his gyroscopic stabilizers must have failed for him to be experiencing such vertigo. It wasn’t until he saw the faint, shining spark that floated in the center of the atrium that Martin realized the sculptures’ true scale: each carving was stories high, the largest taller than a skyscraper. Warships could have been lost in the space of this single room, little more than toys in the endless shadowy depths. Alone in the depths floated the Sacrifice, miniscule and infinite all at once.

The voice murmured something he couldn’t hear and the android’s vision blurred for an instant. When it cleared he was within arm’s reach of the girl he had seen from a distance. At this range the sculptures were unrecognizable but for vast sweeps of smooth stone, but he barely noticed: the Sacrifice caught his gaze and held it like a diamond glittering on a field of stars. She herself was pretty in a youthful sort of way- a little too last year’s Prom Queen for Martin’s taste- but the glow of the silvery halo surrounding her transformed her into a goddess. Her face was bright with rapture, her eyes shining like lamps in the dark. She didn’t belong here. Martin wanted to pull her away, to take her out of this hateful place, but when he tried to take her hand he found he couldn’t move. His body was simply gone.

YOU ARE ONLY A GUEST. WATCH. THEY ARE NEARLY TO THE END.

Beyond the girl loomed a shadowy monster, a sea monster off the borders of some ancient mariner’s map, little more than a speck on the Temple’s caliginous surface. Its arms were wrapped lovingly around her, carefully out of the halo’s glow. Colossal eyes shone in the light as its beak clicked softly, murmuring a string of words that set Martin’s teeth on edge and made the wires in his fingers tingle. He ignored them; it was easy with the Sacrifice to distract him, to guide him in this darkened place. He wanted so badly to hold her…

DO YOU DESIRE THIS ONE, DEATH THAT WALKS? The voice was thick with scorn. OUR VESSEL TO THIS PLACE DID, ONCE, UNTIL SHE TORE HIM FROM US. HE WAS A GOOD EYE. SHE HAD NO RIGHT TO TAKE HIM. WE GAVE HER A CHANCE TO SAVE HERSELF, TO SAVE THIS WORLD, AND SHE TURNED US AWAY. SHE WILL PAY HER PRICE, IN TIME. THESE GODS… THESE LESSER THINGS HAVE DAMNED THEMSELVES IN MAKING THE GIRL THEIR MARTYR.

Why? Martin thought vaguely. What could go wrong with her?

YOU ARE AS FOOLISH AS THE REST.

He felt it, then, the voice’s purpose.

WE DO NOT REGRET WHAT IS ABOUT TO BE DONE, DEATH. KNOW THAT THIS IS TRUE.

He knew in his heart how it was going to happen. Perhaps he had always known, since the moment the voice first spoke to him; perhaps he had accepted it hours ago. The voice was overtaking him, making him a part of itself, and he could see it: a twisted, dying creature, heart torn out by its own broken fingers. Its hands were on him, guiding him, moving him towards the darkness stirring in the Temple walls at the kraken’s summons. It was inevitable now, but he felt no fear. He felt nothing except for wonder, and the growing suspicion that this had always been meant to be. In his last few moments he only had one question.

Why?

YOU WERE A GOOD HOST, DEATH THAT NO LONGER LIVES. WE WILL ALLOW YOU THIS.

As the Temple walls began to crack and shake and the behemoth’s voice rose in exultation, the voice melted into Martin Holden’s mind and he laughed as he felt its anger, its terror, and its overwhelming spite as it gently nudged him forward.

WE DON’T LIKE TO SHARE.

______________________________

In the end all it took was a single word.

The gods that surrounded Dorin came from her body and were bound to it, bound to her by unbreakable chains forged from the rituals of summoning and sacrifice. There were patterns that they must follow, legacies they must not break. She was their anchor: she was all they saw, all they could feel in the drowning deep of the city of Sk’koi. They were her attendants, her masters, her slaves. Not a single one of them thought to answer to the god that waited beyond to devour her. Not a single one, for all their power, could disobey her. Not a single one even knew how, except for the one lonely being that the Sacrifice had cut free.

It was easy, for the Oracle. All names are much the same, and all it had to do was whisper one in place of another.

It wasn’t as if the Dreaming God knew the difference between one mortal and the next.
____________________________

Dorin felt the deception instantly.

It was as if someone had plunged a knife into her heart; she grabbed her chest but found that she was drowning, drowning in darkness and poison and fire. She was empty, so burningly empty: her halo was ripped away, shattered in the boiling hatred of the Temple and the wakening mind of Soggoth. They were gone. All of her gods were gone and their absence was the purest agony she had ever felt. Every inch of her skin burned as though soaked in acid, every vein in her body a wire of pain burrowing into her skin. Her portals were lakes of fire burning into her bones. She screamed but no sound came out, only black and twisted words that burned her mouth to speak, howling the names of long-dead cataclysms. She heard the kraken wailing in fear and tried to push the beast away, but no gods came to her call, only the freezing cold of the ocean and the empty hands of sickness.

GIVE THE DEAD MAN OUR LOVE, WITCH.

k’soggoth dgasatelka kv’mn’ koiis sk’koi soggoth k’doam ilu natamn dgasatok k’vvaalikisstri eualiyy maita, k’soggoth dgasatelka kv’mn’ koiis sk’koi koiis sk’koi k’soggoth dgasatelka sk’koi


WE HOPE THIS WORLD WAS WORTH IT.

__________________

The Sleeping God woke to a poisoned earth.

In His infinity He beheld Sk’koi with a thousand eyes burning eyes, watching the city crumble as His mind swept through it in the throes of His waking. It had become something alien in His absence. He did not recognize its ruins, though He mourned for the city that had thrived a thousand years ago, that had carved His name into the very bones of this world. His thoughts were languid, unfurling themselves over the darkened waters with the leisure of one who has slept through aeons and would have remained until the end of time had His Name not been spoken in the hall of the primordial ones. The sacrifices He had been promised were nothing more than a ruse, after all, a mortal when he had tasted gods in his dreaming waters. Those who had summoned Him had failed.

His all-encompassing mind felt them as it spread through the ocean, opening to everything that swam, that crawled, that walked upon the face of the abyss. Miniscule fears and petty desires. He did not hate them for their faults, did not wish doom upon them for their broken promise. He did not wish anything at all. As His mind touched theirs He felt their bodies failing, turning back to the dust from which their souls were borne with screams of silent sorrow. He did not wish them harm. He did not wish that their minds and hearts would turn to stone, but it was the price they had agreed to pay. He could not refuse.

The Temple parted like so much sand at his touch, a hundred years of stone dissolving at the slightest wave of His fingers. Hands as large as cities gripped the crumbling stone, coiled tight with alien muscles as the Dreaming One rose into the sea and turned His head to the darkening sky. The oceans boiled, the earth groaned with agony: all the endless tapestries of life unraveled in a single moment of wondering though. It was strange, the Dreaming One considered as the world came to an sudden and cataclysmic end, that He had never once considered He would not want this world to die.

Such was life, He mused.