Tower of Zhaal

by Phipps, C. T.

  It made me angry.

  There was no sign of Bobbie, and I didn’t know if she was going to make it or not, but we continued to fight our way towards the Hummers. I could see both of them were intact and there was no sign the Deep Ones were making a move to destroy them. The gunfire, spellcasting, and shouts drowned out all other noise around us as I killed my tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Deep One. It was sickening, a horrid waste of life over a pointless distinction. Azathoth … Azathoth … Azathoth. I felt strange. Woozy. The blood called to me and I started seeing things that weren’t there. My daughter, when she was fifteen-years-old, walking through the carnage as if she didn’t have a care in the world; Gabriel, studying his geometry homework; Little Jackie, playing catch with me; and Mercury, naked while covered in blood, beckoning me to join her.

  I screamed, firing into the crowds of attacking monsters. My shoulder burned and every single one of the runes on it seemed to fade away at once, letting the corruption inside fester through the entirety of my body. The carnage, combined with the sorcery being thrown about, had undone my meager protections against the transformation.

  Fuck.

  Foul-tasting blackish ichor started to pour out of my mouth as we reached the Hummers. I fell to my knees, my vision becoming blurry. I felt the corruption pass through my veins, devouring my insides and replacing them with something else. I saw the veins in my hand turn black, the skin becoming a dusky gray. My nails fell off before the bone tips under my fingers began to press through. I could hear everything going on in the battle at once, the sounds of battle becoming a dissonant cacophony.

  “Booth!” Mercury shouted. Before she could run toward me, Thom grabbed her.

  “He’s dead! Leave him!” Thom said, forfeiting most of the respect I’d afforded him.

  I didn’t get a chance to respond because a massive twenty-foot-tall Cthulhuoid horror smashed itself onto one of the Hummers, knocking it to the side with its left hand.

  I could barely see it from my position on the ground, but what I could see was terrifying. In addition to its enormous size, it was a collection of mutated Deep One flesh and strange matter which, while still humanoid, embodied an alien power as far beyond the Deep Ones’ comprehension as their knowledge of the Great Old Ones was beyond ours.

  The creature’s face was reminiscent of the many horrors in clay worshiped by cultists I’d seen over the years. Long cephalopod tentacles hung from around the monster’s circular sharp-teeth-filled mouth. Its head was unnaturally large, particularly the brain-case. The creature had eight long fingers on each hand, each looking like they could tear through a man like wet tissue paper.

  The Cthulhuoid horror’s body was a bloated muscular mass of fat rubbery skin hanging over a far more muscular frame with a disgusting spider-web pattern of purple veins spread throughout. It was naked but sexless, with expansive dragon-ish wings on its back that could not carry a being of such weight, yet somehow clearly had.

  Perhaps the most terrible part of the thing, however, was its two rows of three black eyes arranged in triangles. They held an inhuman but recognizable intelligence behind them, radiating hateful menace towards my group. I felt the powerful psychic emanations of its emotions radiating like lethal doses of radiation, scarring my soul with their malevolence.

  The creature was, at heart, nothing more than a mutated Deep One. A being who, like me, had drifted too close to the Great Old Ones in their dreams and somehow absorbed a portion of their accursed essence. It fought for the Deep Ones, but it was no more akin to them than humans were to the ooze that had crawled from the ocean in primordial times. I didn’t have time to ponder this fact, for the creature and my party’s fate was sealed by the next few moments’ events.

  “Shoot the fucker!” Thom shouted, lifting up his revolvers and firing into its chest.

  The shots of mystical fire from another dimension were not effective this time, splattering against the strange matter of the creature’s flesh like raindrops. Everyone else’s attacks were equally ineffective. August maintained his bloody shield against the spells and hurled weapons of the Deep Ones.

  The creature reached down and grabbed Thom in its left fist, and taking the defiant gunslinger’s top half in its right, then proceeded to pull him in half with a sickening crunch. I and my group were showered in blood and gore before it threw the pieces away. Smacking its left palm to the side, it sent Jessica flying through the air like a baseball, smacking her body against the side of Vastarara’s statue and shattering her spine.

  “Jessica!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, unable to breathe.

  Mercury shouted a scream of anger and grief, invoking the god who had tormented me for years in Azathoth. Black-red lightning flew from her fingertips, wrapping and arcing around the Cthulhuoid horror. This caused the creature pain as it reared backwards, letting out an unearthly cry. Yet it then struck down the group with a telekinetic blow, which August sought to deflect with his shield, but everyone was sent flying. Vomiting blood, ichor, and worse on the ground, I could feel my flesh tearing as something new started to come up from underneath it.

  “You…” I said, my mouth dribbling gore. “You hurt Jessica.”

  I stared at the creature as my entire world went red. My hands ripped at my flesh and pulled it off, tearing away the mask I’d worn all my life. New appendages grew out as my old body sloshed to the ground like a discarded chrysalis. I stretched forth, a terrible butterfly unveiled for all the world to see.

  My true self was revealed.

  And I attacked.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was as Richard said, if I wanted to live I would have to be a monster.

  But I would be humanity’s monster.

  The thing I’d become, this mutant offspring of human and Kastro’vaal, this Eye of Yog-Sothoth, was a creature whose biology bore no resemblance to that of a human being. Not all of the diversity of life on Earth combined held as much strangeness as now existed within my cells.

  I was a four-legged, centaur-like being with a whip-like head as in my vision, but the body around me was far more fluid, like clay that shifted according to my every thought. Shouting out with alien lungs, my right top arm became a lengthy black tentacle ending in a scythe of extra-dimensional bone that I swung to stab the Cthulhuoid horror. The creature, for the first time, felt distress and let loose a piping wail before my scythe buried itself in the side of its squamous frame. Passing through time and space, I was instantly at its side and impaled it with dozens of bony spikes from my body. The creature recited a hundred spells with its psychic powers in an instant, and if I’d still been John, I would have been annihilated.

  I was more than John, though.

  The alien mind inside me was closer to the surface now, and it was a warrior with millennia of experience fighting. I instinctively cast counter-spells as I continually slashed into the monster, driving away any chance of its being able to retaliate. Then it died. A being that had the potential to live forever perished on that accursed battlefield along the coast, never imagining its immortality was chimerical. The second of the Cthulhoid horrors in this army gave forth a cry of existential grief that almost moved me, but I remembered Jessica’s dying form and launched myself at it as well. The battle was short, the creature not even attempting to preserve itself.

  Then I slaughtered the invading army.

  Every one of them.

  There were some who might have called what I did justice. I am not one of them. I was the terror from beyond for Insmaw’s attackers. A being beyond their comprehension killing them for reasons they could not fathom. They did not know my motivation, had no way to appeal to my mercy, and were as oblivious to the doom they’d brought upon themselves as humanity had been when they’d probed too deep into the dark tombs of the Pre-Rising era.

  That day I was Cthulhu.

  A scattering few of the Insmaw townsfolk still lived and took the opportunity to flee from their home. They would never return to th
is place, calling it cursed and creating legends about the double-sided massacre they’d been witness to. When I woke from my killing frenzy, and some semblance of human reason returning to my monstrous body, I could only stare at the thousands of dead around me. I fell to all four knees, torn between my new species’ instinctual love of carnage and my horror at the slaughter.

  That’s when I began to change.

  The transformation was subtle at first, then more intense as the black chitinous armor of my body’s new exoskeleton retreated underneath a new coating of bronzed flesh. The process was painful, but I barely noticed in my despair. The experience was overwhelming, drowning out everything else. My extra legs withdrew into my back and new eyes grew where I’d lost the need for them. Several minutes later, I saw the ground as I remembered it.

  I coughed, looking down at my all-too-fleshy hands. They had a fresh set of fingernails on them. There were differences. All of my scars from the past were absent and there was a “newness” to my body. Checking myself over from feet to genitals, everything appeared to be in order. Concentrating, I could see into the terrible other dimensions as before, but I realized I could shut off these extra senses like a man closing his eyes or covering his head.

  I could also open them again.

  As I climbed up and walked through the corpse-ridden wreckage of Insmaw, my feet crushed metal and glass without pain. Fires burned everywhere, but the heat did not burn my flesh and the smoke did not choke my lungs. I was naked, but as I wandered, it might as well have been inside a tank. Stepping through the flames of a building that did little more than tickle my skin, I walked to the ruins of a bathroom and picked up a piece of shattered mirror. The image that greeted me was more confusing than relieving. It was my face, or an idealized version of it at least, looking two decades younger and absent much of the wear the Wasteland extracted from a man.

  The fact the Eyes of Yog-Sothoth were shape-changers came to mind and reminded me they had mixed their blood with countless species across space-time. How else could they do so without the ability to assume the form of the species they mated with? Staring at the mirror, I smashed it with my fist. None of it mattered without those I cared about. The loss of Jessica was too great a burden for me to feel anything but sorrow. I didn’t know where Mercury was either.

  “Jessica is still alive, for the time being,” a voice spoke behind me, both cruel and kind at once. “As for Mercury, she’s quite fine, I assure you. At least, as much as human beings can be in this world.”

  I clenched my fists, staring at the flames. I knew the voice and despised the figure behind it.

  Nyarlathotep.

  Turning my head, I saw that the Crawling Chaos had once more assumed a human form. He wore an old, ratty, Pre-Rising hoodie and had long stringy hair down to his shoulders. His ethnicity was, this time, Hindi like my maternal grandfather. He wore a pair of faded blue jeans with a thick, hand-woven belt. On the belt buckle was a little bronze plate with the Confederate flag engraved on it. The combination was strange, but nothing Nyarlathotep did was normal.

  “Which means there’s a half-and-half chance she’s alive and you’re just dicking with me, Black Pharaoh.”

  Nyarlathotep smirked. “Roland Fleece is my name today. I just came back from burning a church in Georgia, nineteen seventy-nine. Tomorrow, I’ll be Mary Anders in Nineteen Ninety-Nine Arizona and I’ll run a faith-healing ministry that works. Or maybe I’ll be Gostagg the Ever-Hungry on the long-dead world of Quash, demanding the fire-eaters there sacrifice their eldest to me. There’s so much to do in this reality if you know where to look.”

  I walked past him, paying no attention. “Leave me alone, whoever you are. There’s nothing you can do to me anymore.”

  Nyarlathotep laughed, almost choking on his own giddiness. “The hilarious part is that you believe that.”

  I turned around and gave him the finger.

  Nyarlathotep raised an eyebrow.

  I then gave him two, one with each hand.

  He raised his left hand, moved his fingers into position as if to snap his fingers, then gave a dismissive wave. “Not worth it.”

  I started walking towards Jessica’s crumbled-up frame, unwilling to allow myself to hope. “Where do you even come up with these bodies, anyway?”

  “Humans, aliens, dreamers,” Nyarlathotep said, following me. “I have a form for every god, demon, villain, and hero created by sentient life. Some non-sentient too. It’s why I am at the heart of every religion and belief system.”

  “There are powers greater than you, Nyarlathotep. I’ve seen that now.”

  “And yet you’re still subject to my whims. How frustrating it must be for you. Have you ever considered the possibility you are just another one of my avatars?”

  I stopped in mid-step toward Jessica and turned to him. “No.”

  “Why else would I be so interested in you?” Nyarlathotep pointed at me with two fingers, then held his hands behind his back. Walking backwards in an unnatural manner, he assumed a vulture-like pose away from me.

  I turned and continued, reaching Jessica a moment later. She was lying at the foot of the blood-splattered statue of Vastarara, the idol now resembling something closer to the heinous figure I remembered from the Dunwych tribal rituals.

  Jessica looked horrible. Her back was broken, shattered against the stone pillar beside me, and there was blood everywhere, including her mouth. It was a miracle she’d lived this long. She looked up at me, smiling, still conscious. Even more of a miracle.

  “Hey, John,” Jessica said, looking at me. “Good job with the Fishheads.”

  “Don’t speak,” I said, kneeling beside her. “Maybe August can—”

  It was a lie and we both knew it. There was no sign of August. In all likelihood, he was as dead as everyone else.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” Jessica said, chuckling. “I know when my ticket’s punched. I don’t want to sully the moment.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the moment,” I muttered, staring at her. “I want you to live.”

  “Not in the cards,” Jessica whispered, reaching over to grab my hand. I held it tight. “Captain, I want you to know something—”

  “Yes?”

  “What I asked the Yithians—”

  I wanted to know what her wish was. I’d see the Yithians fulfilled it, even if she wasn’t here to benefit from it.

  “It was to team up with you again,” Jessica said. “We’re family.”

  I blinked, staring at her. “We are. Always. In this life, the next, and the next thereafter.”

  I held her hand for an hour thereafter, until she died. I am not ashamed to say I wept like a child, letting out my grief for the immense loss I felt. Even if I held fast to the belief that there was something beyond this world, a possible madness given all I’d seen, it did not disabuse me of the fact I was now separated from her. Perhaps forever.

  Much to my surprise, I heard a shuffling from a group of nearby corpses. I walked over to them and noticed the dead body of Farmer Joe and his youngest daughter. They’d been killed, their insides liquefied, by the telekinetic attack of the Cthulhoid horror. I’d seen such happen before, and it was not a pretty way to die.

  Scanning the rest of the nearby corpses for both some sign of my associates and the source of the noise, I saw the movement of a small girl’s hand underneath Farmer Joe’s body. Reaching down, I picked up the massive corpse and pulled it off the small form of his eldest daughter.

  The girl was lying there, wearing a white nightgown, a blonde wig on the ground. Her head had no hair and I wondered if Farmer Joe was their biological father. It mattered little since it was obvious what had happened. He’d attempted to shield his children from the Cthulhuoid horror’s blast, succeeding with one. He’d given his life attempting to protect them, and no one could ask for better proof of fatherhood.

  I looked down at her, her eyes stained with tears and trauma. It was a look of someone who’d be haunted b
y nightmares for the rest of her life. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you Nyarlathotep?” the girl asked, looking up to me.

  The actual figure sniggered from a distance.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, kneeling down so we were face to face. It seemed the Deep Ones worshiped him as well as the Great Old Ones I’d seen carved in their statuary.

  “I saw what you did. I saw you change,” the girl said, wringing her hands. “I’m sorry we weren’t good.”

  “You were,” I said, reaching over and placing my hand on her shoulder.

  The girl cried into her hands. “Then why?”

  “Always that question,” Nyarlathotep said, muttering. “Always.”

  The girl gave no indication of seeing the real Crawling Chaos and simply cried onward, mourning her lost village. I held her at a safe distance, conscious of my nakedness but trying to give what little comfort I could in this place.

  “What’s your name, child?”

  “Prentice.”

  Nyarlathotep’s features shifted and he transformed into a thin, tall, Caucasian man with an oval head and a business suit. He resembled the writer from my dreams of Azathoth’s court and had an early twentieth-century New England style, something I knew from pictures. Nyarlathotep lifted his left hand and looked as if he was going to snap his fingers, before shifting to his right, making a finger-gun, and pointing it at us both.

  “Bang.”

  Farmer Joe moaned. So, did Prentice’s sister beside him.

  “Ah!” Prentice shouted, jumping away from them. I half expected their zombefied remains to rise shambling from the dead, but instead, they looked alive and well. Both looked confused but otherwise fine. It was as if they hadn’t just been lifeless meat a few moments ago.

  “Sweet baby girl,” Farmer Joe said, wrapping his arms around Prentice. Her sister joined in the group hug.

  I rose and took a step back, staring at the miracle.

  For what else would you call it?

  It was the source I questioned.

  I turned and stared at Nyarlathotep. “Why did you do that?”