Tales of Cthulhu Invictus

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Tales of Cthulhu Invictus Page 2

by Brian M Sammons


  The General will arrive tomorrow, I will show him the work, and then I will go down into Pompeii and lose myself in wine and song for a week—it may be the only thing that will save my sanity.

  —Day 30—

  Has it been a week already?

  I woke with a bad head and worse stomach only to be summoned to the mountaintop; it was a journey I did not in any way relish in my delicate condition. I was not in the best of moods when I arrived, and even less so when the General showed me what now occupied the lowermost chambers of the complex.

  It has grown and thrived, filling the space allocated to it and spilling over into the surrounding vents. It is down below us in the deep places, seething and roiling, a black pit of fomenting fluid. He has been feeding his men to it, and it is a great horror.

  I did not fully comprehend the depths of that horror until the General gave me my new orders.

  I am to control it—then I am to devise a means of transporting it to Herculaneum where he intends to make a spectacle of it in front of the council.

  I have five days.

  —Day 32—

  What have we done?

  The calamity came upon us in the early morning. I was in a lower chamber, not doing much of anything, just thinking and trying to find a new way to broach my problem, when Galvinius came up at a run from below.

  Screams rose from the depths behind him, terrible wails of piteous agony.

  Just as Galvinius reached me, one of the General’s guards came up out of the vent. Blood poured from his head where a piece of scalp flapped, showing bone below. He almost fell at the entrance to the chamber, his legs giving way beneath him, but he gave one look back down the vent and squealed in fear before getting to his feet.

  We saw the reason a second later. A black sphere of the tar rolled lazily up from below, slumping like a partially deflated wineskin. The soldier squealed again and started out of the vent toward us.

  He did not make it.

  Behind him the thing opened and stretched, bat-like wings touching the wall on either side. The underside of the wings fluttered… and scores of green milky eyes opened in unison. The thing surged forward. The man had time for one more scream before it fell on him like a wet robe, engulfing him totally in its folds. I moved forward to try to save the man, but was held back by a hand on my shoulder.

  “We need to go,” Galvinius said. “You cannot help him.”

  One glance showed me he was right. The black mass seethed over the prone body, but the man made no sound, even as a lump of bloody meat was dragged forcibly from this thighbone. He was already gone.

  The tar had developed a taste for fresh meat.

  Glavinius and I wasted no time in consideration. We fled upward, trying to ignore the searing heat in our lungs, gasping for air as we pushed harder, faster, all too aware that something might come up from the depths and grab us at any moment. By the time we arrived at the uppermost chambers we were in a state of quite some disarray, and it was some time before we could catch a breath and were able to tell the General and his remaining guard the nature of our predicament.

  Even then the General refused to believe us, although his refusal was to be his own undoing. He strode toward the main shaft leading downward.

  “You have let yourselves be terrified by the strangeness of the thing,” he said, loudly so that his guard might take note. “There is nothing for true Romans to fear here.”

  Those were his last words.

  A black shape surged up from below, filling the passageway and falling on him before he could do any more than turn around. He earned his place in history seconds later, although by then there was no one there to see it, for we had all fled from an onrushing tide of black tar.

  I chanced a look back as we approached the exit to the chamber. The tar was filling the room fast. Tentacles—black suckers glistening—waved excitedly in the air, wet mouths gaped hungrily and a myriad of lidless eyes stared implacably as it came on, relentless in its pursuit.

  We had nowhere to go but up, retreating into the top chamber as the black tar swelled and filled the vast voids below us. A high whistling, a chorus of demented flutes, followed us as we ran.

  We almost made it, but were caught within sight of the sky—Galvinius and I were separated in the melee as we fought for position with the fleeing guards. Two of them fell at the mouth of the last vent, to be dragged away, screaming. Some of us screamed in unison. I caught a glimpse of Galvinius. He stood at the mouth of the chamber that led to the room with the glass plate that viewed history—and the alcove beyond. We both knew that he could not escape from that place—there was no way to the surface from there.

  “We cannot let it out, Septimus,” he shouted. “It cannot get to Pompeii or Herculaneum—think of the carnage. You know what has to be done.”

  I realized he was looking for my approval. With that black horror at my heels I was only too keen to give it. I nodded, turned on my heels and fled out into the light.

  Even then I did not stop, but careened down the slopes with no heed for care. I looked back once, to see black tar seep out of the hillside vents and start to flow.

  Then Galvinius pulled the lever and the roof came off the world in a red blast that wiped everything else from thought.

  ***

  And still I fled, through Pompeii as the ash started to fall, all the way to the harbor at Stabiae where I fought among the throng attempting to make our escape from the choking cloud of death that draped itself around us.

  Finally I made it onto a boat—even then it was a perilous sail through seas choked with bodies and rubble and ash, but eventually, after what seemed an age, we reached clearer water and I turned to get my first real look at what was left of the mountain.

  The ash rose like a cyclopean tree trunk from the collapsed ruin of the summit before spreading out its branches to let deadly foliage fall on the whole stretch of coastline below, leaving only gray death in its wake.

  I searched the cloud as it fell, looking for traces of the black, but all was gray—gray and white and as dry as the cold pit in my heart when I think of the destruction Galvinius and I have wrought in this place.

  Then I think of the alternative, and what might have happened had the black replaced the gray.

  I believe we have made the right decision.

  Fecunditati Augustae

  by Christine Morgan

  She shivers. She is hot, but she shivers. Cold, but she sweats.

  Thirsty, so thirsty, tongue parched, mouth so dry, lips chapped and split, throat a harsh rasp like snakeskin sliding on sand when she breathes.

  When she breathes…when she gasps, gasps in those sliding-snakeskin-on-sand wheezes of air. Never enough, a thin whistle as if through a thin reed. And coughing, dusty wracking coughs, chaff in her lungs.

  Thirsty, but the freshest water tastes both bitter and sour, and it hurts, how it hurts when she tries to swallow. They spoon in fruit juices sweetened and thickened with honey; she wants it, she craves it, but she gags and spits and cries.

  She wants it but not like this, wants it to keep. Not to spew up or spew out, upper end or lower, an upheaving reversal or a helpless squirting and squittering flood.

  Her belly gurgles, hollow but cramping, knotted with twists and clenches. Her bottom stings and burns, as if scalded, as if scoured red and raw. Her eyes ache. They feel gritty, swollen, gummed half-shut. Her ears hurt when she rubs at them, hurt more when she does not.

  Shivering hot. Sweating cold.

  It goes on and on.

  Tired, so tired. Sleep brings no rest. Or rest brings no sleep. Waking. Dreaming. Day and night run like wax, making shapes, waxy and strange.

  They bathe her with cool, damp cloths. Washing, wiping, wringing rivulets onto her feverish skin. They pat away the moisture. Careful hands touch her with oils and herbal balms.

  The shivers become shudders. Her teeth rattle, clicking together. They drape her naked form with a soft blanket. It itches. I
t is heavy, a sweltering weight. She kicks it aside and then shudders again, so very cold, feeling on fire but so very cold.

  Someone sings. It is meant to be soothing. It grinds into her head like pottery shards, like gravel and chipped tiles, like coarse broken glass.

  Another cramp grips her bowels, which release in a scalding rush. She whimpers in painful, weary misery. When she seeks to draw in another breath, the reed-thin passage of her throat squeezes down to a pinhole.

  She thrashes, limbs jerking, heels drumming. Her head snaps wildly side to side on her neck. Watery acid seems to splash upward from her stomach and into her nose. Her body bucks with strangling convulsions.

  Many voices clamor. Many hands close on her. She is lifted. There is shouting. There is panic and terror and confusion. More bile clogs her nose and throat, more lumpy liquid like hot runny mud dribbles down her legs. A fuming darkness clouds her eyes, rising to engulf her.

  “Give her to me!”

  The command is a shrill bark, almost a bleat, but it is quickly obeyed.

  Seized and held. Roughly turned. Upended over a bony, knobby knee. The world tips as if it will spill out, sloshing like a rocked jar or amphora. The tough, callused heel of a hard hand strikes her a firm blow to the back. She utters a bleat of her own, a hideous glottal expulsion. Her throat opens and now she is the sloshing jar, the rocked amphora, contents emptying in a liquid splatter.

  Before she can so much as begin to cry again, she is turned again, flipped like a turtle wallowing on its rounded shell. Two gnarled fingers invade her mouth in a scooping gesture. Then a face—what little she sees of it through her gummy, tear-blurred eyes is wizened and unfamiliar, a whiskery old woman, a stranger—descends on hers. A mouth, nearly toothless, closes around her mouth and nose in a slobber of fish sauce and cheap wine.

  A great dank humid wind gusts into her, filling her lungs nearly to bursting. The mouth lifts away and she coughs once, then lets out a loud, braying howl. So loud, in fact, that it further hurts her own ears. She sucks in a vast lungful of air on her own and commences wailing in earnest.

  All around her now are babbles and sobs of relief. The stranger hefts her by the armpits, holding her up. She squirms and struggles, waving her bunched fists. The stranger smiles a wizened, whiskery, nearly toothless smile.

  Then other hands take her, familiar hands, known. She is bathed again, washed and wiped, wrapped in a clean blanket. She cries the whole while, but lacks the strength to continue her earlier loud braying and wails. She aches head to toe. She feels stretched, hollowed and empty, wrung out like the wet cloths.

  When they attempt this time to feed her the honey-sweetened fruit juice, she drinks it eagerly from the spoon. She slurps at it, sucks at it, protests when they tell her she’s had enough for now, she must not make herself sick again.

  For now, they tell her, she must rest. She must sleep.

  Arms cradle her. She huddles, trembling, snuffling, against her mother’s bosom. The rich purple fabric of her mother’s stola is comforting in countless ways. Even now, when she can barely see, as if bleary veils hang in her eyes, she recognizes that deep, lovely shade.

  And when her mother speaks, she is further comforted by the gentle voice.

  “Leave us now. Send word to my husband that the worst of the crisis has passed.”

  There is a general bustling and rustling, followed by quiet.

  “You see?” says the stranger, in a bleat less shrill but still unpleasant. “The crisis has passed, yes, perhaps. But for how long? She nearly died, Faustina. She would have, if I hadn’t come.”

  “We have the best physicians in Rome--”

  “The best physicians in Rome are all Greeks and you know it. Their arts and medicine can only do so much.”

  “The priests--”

  “The priests. Pfah! The priests follow gold, not the gods, and you know that as well. They were generously rewarded to make sure the omens were auspicious when your father put forth his scheme to amend your betrothal.”

  Her mother’s purple stola rises and falls in a deep sigh. “Scheme or not, my father made what he felt was the best decision, for myself and for the Empire. I am pleased to be the wife of Marcus Aurelius. He is a good man. He will be a good emperor.”

  The stranger snorts. “But look upon your child. How frail she is, how sickly. If you want to keep the love of your husband, you’ll need to do better than that.”

  A many-ringed hand tenderly strokes her head, the fine and downy curls still damp from the bath. “He is devoted to her! He cherishes her, as he does me! It matters not that she is just a girl!”

  “And if she dies? As she almost died today?”

  A silence falls, a silence somehow terrible and cold. The only sounds come from beyond the room, trickling fountains and the breeze-whisper of shrubs in the courtyard, distant kitchen-noises, the brush of broom-straws on tile as a slave sweeps the walkway.

  Sleepy though she is, contentedly drowsy for the first time since the fever began, she stirs in her mother’s embrace. Her small fingers grasp the rich cloth. A fear, nameless and unformed, wells within her like another bitter tide of bile.

  “Do not say such things.” Her mother’s voice quavers, turning the words into a plea. Her mother’s heartbeat—remembered as strong and steady, remembered constant in the warm and fluid dark—thumps at an anxious pace.

  “Men need children. Think of your own parents and their grief. Your brothers, dead before they could marry. Your sister, who barely lived to her own wedding day. The only reason you alone survived to grown womanhood was because they brought you to me--”

  “Stop!” Now the quaver is gone, the voice sharp and strong, that of a princess of Rome.

  Yet, the wizened stranger, with gnarled fingers and breath reeking of fish sauce and wine, merely laughs.

  “I know what you would have me do,” her mother continues. “Must I? Is there no other way?”

  “Of course there are other ways. Take your chances; leave your fates in Fortuna’s hands. Bribe the priests and beg the gods; see how well that serves you. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps your little daughter would have recovered on her own. And perhaps the thin soil of your womb will be blessed with fruitful abundance. What is it to me? I am just an old woman who tried only to help.”

  “Capra--”

  “No, no, say no more. Give me a scrap of crust, a sip of water, a coin or two if it pleases you. I’ll gather my rags around me and remove myself from your sight. Or have one of your house-slaves whip me through the streets, if that is more to your liking.”

  Over her mother’s protestations, the stranger rises from the stool, a laborious effort of creaks and groans.

  Her mother outstretches the many-ringed hand. “Stay. Capra, do stay. I’ll send for food and drink. Let us talk. I will listen.”

  Mollified, the stranger sits again. Slaves are summoned to bring bread and wine, olive oil, and figs. More fruit juice with honey is brought as well, sweet and good. The drowsiness begins to return. She burrows her head into her mother’s purple-draped bosom, dozing as they discuss politics and poisonings, rivals, risks.

  “Can you promise me?” her mother asks, with a suddenness that startles her awake again.

  “Promise you?” The stranger sops up olive oil with bread until it is soggy enough for that nearly-toothless mouth. “I can promise you that the goddess does have great power, but the goddess also can be cruel. Demanding. Greedy and capricious. She will give you many babies, but she will take some back.”

  “And this one?” A gentle thumb caresses her cheek. Her mother’s loving gaze is all and encompassing, the sun’s own warmth and light.

  “Bring her tonight,” says the stranger, crushing a fig until the soft pulp squeezes out and then sucking it from the skin with a wet slurp. “Bring her tonight, to the templum cornua lunae, just after sunset. Bring her, let the goddess taste of her, and we shall find out.”

  ***

  “Does Mother seem differ
ent to you lately?” Galeria climbed the steps from the tepidarium pool, accepting the long drying-cloth handed to her by a slave and wrapping it around herself. She tucked the ends secure above her breasts, which had even at fourteen not yet ripened as much as she’d like.

  In the warm water, her sister kicked lazily, stirring ripples to lap against the tiled edges. Mosaics in shades of blue, green, grey and gold depicted fish, shells, sea-nymphs, dolphins, and waves. More fish and waves, these sculpted in marble, formed the legs of the lounging benches. Graceful columns supported a domed ceiling. Bronze figures of trident-wielding Neptune served as wall-sconces, each with three small lamps hanging from the points of the tridents.

  “Shouldn’t she?” Lucilla asked, sweeping her arms back and forth to increase the ripples. Her hair floated around her shoulders, veiling the fact that she, three years younger, still had more the shape of a slender boy than a budding woman. “She is different lately. All of us are.”

  “Not so different.”

  “Indeed so! With Grandfather dead, she has his entire inheritance…and with Father and Lucius Verus succeeding him, that makes her empress of the whole of Rome!” Giggling, she splashed with both feet. “Until, that is, Lucius Verus is married, and then she shall have to share that title with me!”

  “If everyone agrees to the betrothal.”

  “Why wouldn’t they? It was Father’s idea.” Lucilla splashed in Galeria’s direction. “Don’t be peevish, sister.”

  “I’m not peevish!”

  “You are. Peevish and jealous, because I’m to have a handsome, powerful man, while you’re stuck with some dull, dusty old scholar.”

  “A senator, and a friend of our father!”

  “A philosopher, who’s already been through one wife!”

 

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