Tower of Zhaal

by Phipps, C. T.

  “You have no idea how many trillions of sentients pray to me every second of every day. Because I exist outside of time, I hear them all at once forever. I hear them ask for love, money, goods, the end to sickness, or a longer lifespan. It is wearying listening to all of them demand the attention of one who has seen stars coalesce into existence before collapsing into black holes.”

  “That’s not an answer.” I clenched my teeth, knowing he could have restored Jessica and my other loved ones in an instant.

  But wouldn’t.

  Because it wasn’t amusing.

  Nyarlathotep’s gaze narrowed. “The answer is, despite this, I sometimes grant what they pray for. That even in the darkness beyond ages, there is a glimmer of hope—because you left it there.”

  The Messenger of the Other God snapped his fingers again and Farmer Joe as well as his daughters disappeared from sight.

  I blinked. “What did you do?”

  “I sent them to another part of the former United States. The West Coast where humans, Deep Ones, and other creatures intermingle more freely.”

  I stared out into the night, still stunned by Nyarlathotep’s unexpected largesse. “What will happen to them?”

  “Farmer Joe will remarry in time, a human this time, but an open-minded one. He will die in his seventies, collapsing because of heart failure in the middle of a walk. The eldest girl will marry as well, taking her children with her to a hybrid-run underwater city when she hits the age of sixty. The younger girl will fall in love with a prostitute named Mavis and they will live a life of violent crime together. Life will happen to them, John.”

  I looked down at Jessica’s still frame. “I don’t suppose—”

  “No,” Nyarlathotep said.

  “Just no?” I asked.

  “No,” Nyarlathotep said, curling his lip. “I favor you above most other beings, John, which I know you find a mixed blessing. If I were to hold your hand throughout this, you would cease to be of interest to me and that, I can assure you, would be a fate worse than death.”

  “Or result in one. Even immortals may die. You are not the top of this universe’s food chain, despite your protestation.”

  Nyarlathotep smiled, his teeth made of living steel sharpened to blades. Strangely, he closed his mouth and showed an all-too-human face. “Jessica O’Reilly is with her offspring and mate now, either in Elysium or restful oblivion. Do not disturb them in this or deny her the only blessing of mortality. Perhaps, given enough time, you will meet her again when the Great Wheel turns.”

  “No,” I said, knowing there was no possibility to persuade Nyarlathotep of anything he didn’t want to do. There were spells in the Necronomicon for binding and controlling him, but I was of the mind they only worked because he willed them to (and there would be no one to say they didn’t if he desired).

  Nyarlathotep smiled. “Now, see, that’s what I was hoping you’d say. Anyway, they’re going to all die horribly in a few days. I’ll leave you to determine which is the lie. Goodbye, John. We won’t meet again in this lifetime.”

  He vanished. Unless I want us to.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I spent another hour wandering around the ruins of Insmaw, looking for some sign of my comrades. With the exception of Thom and Jessica, there was no sign of them. More for modesty’s sake than any real need, I found myself a set of undergarments, pants, and a gray button-down cotton shirt. I retrieved a bit of fruit and bread from one of the remaining houses and ate it. My transformation had left me ravenous.

  Until well past morning, I spent my time preparing pyres for the dead. I took care of Thom’s and Jessica’s bodies first, using a soldering iron to put their names on the wooden crosses I prepared for them. I was no priest and I doubted Thom had a religion, yet I wished him well by the gentler gods of the universe and hoped he was reunited with his brother.

  For Jessica, I had no words, only grief. I’d loved her as a brother might a sister, as a friend, and had times been different perhaps as a man might love a woman. If there was any justice, man-made or otherwise, in the universe, then I hoped she found peace. If there wasn’t, I still hoped the same. I might restore her or I might not, but that awaited the completion of the mission. I decided that had to be my focus now.

  From there, I attempted to attend to the throngs of dead as best I could, separating the Insmaw folk from the orthodox Deep Ones. I found the half-burned remnants of the Insmaw folk’s holy canon, The Litany of Earth, and read from it for them. There were times when I broke down and blubbered like a child handling the corpses of the young, but I continued with my grim undertaker’s duty, determined to give witness to the passage of these people.

  I could have left the Dagonite Deep Ones to rot, food for carrion feeders and wandering ghouls, but I chose not to. I did not believe that people were defined by their worst acts, but by the sum of their lives. They had come here to murder the innocent and did so in great numbers. Yet I imagined them to be fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters as well. I, too, had committed unspeakable deeds and still held out hope for redemption.

  Perhaps it would just be redemption in my own eyes, for every god I had met so far cared so little for morality, I might as well have been discussing physics with an amoeba. Yet from my perspective, that was the place it mattered most. I regretted killing the attacking army and wished there was some way to turn back the clock so this entire ordeal could be undone. To save both sides so that peace might somehow be achieved.

  My newfound monstrous state and secret knowledge did not yield such an easy answer, however. With a century or two of practice, I might be able to navigate casualty, but I suspected the past was set. I could stop the massacre in some universe or timeline, not here. Knowing this, I had to focus on what was before me. That was what was important.

  Rewiring a battered truck, I drove the bodies by the dozen and dumped them into one of the Insmaw lakes. The underground caverns beneath the city were connected to the ocean and would drag them back out to sea with time. This act took less time than I expected because the freed shoggoths had consumed most of the armies’ corpses before retreating back to the sea. I wished them well. When it was all done, I rested in the town square on a shovel buried in the ground. My body was covered in sweat, the heat of the sun blazing down on me.

  That was when I saw Mercury.

  I blinked my eyes several times, trying to drive away the seemingly hallucinatory vision, but to my surprise she didn’t vanish. She was covered in blood, but aside from this distressing fact, seemed otherwise all right.

  “Hi,” I said, breaking the bubble of shock between us. “Where have you been?”

  Mercury stared at me before letting out a gallow’s laugh. “Oh God, Re’Kithnid, Buddha, and Santa Claus.”

  I knew it had to be bad since she was an atheist. “No, just John.”

  Mercury said, “I saw you … and …”

  “Yeah,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “You did.”

  “Are you … you?”

  “Yeah.” I glanced up at the sky before dropping my gaze back to hers. “For what that’s worth.”

  Mercury stared at the ground. “I don’t know how to deal with this.”

  “The fact that I’m a giant centaur-worm thing, or the fact I’m a giant centaur-worm thing that can assume human form?”

  “Both,” Mercury said.

  “Anything from panic to horror to acceptance would be fine,” I said, sighing. “God knows I’ve been feeling the same.”

  “I’m fine thanking him or her this once.” Mercury stared down, then sighed. “I’m happy you’re you. I really am.”

  “I sense a but coming.”

  “It’s just too much,” Mercury said, taking several deep breaths.

  “I understand.”

  I did, truly. It still felt like being kicked in the gut. The fact that she was alive, though, still brought me joy. “How did you survive?”

  “I ran,” Mercury admitted, l
ooking over shoulder. “August used his shield to protect us and I bolted with him. We met up with Bobbie and the surviving Insmaw folk about two miles outside the city.”

  “Are there many survivors?”

  Mercury looked down. “No. A couple of hundred.”

  That was more than I expected. “Do you intend to continue the mission?”

  “Don’t you?”

  I gave a bitter smile. “It’s about the only thing I can think to do with my life now.”

  “John, I can’t even begin to fathom what’s happened to you, but looking at you, I know you’re still you.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment,” I asked, wondering if she could truly suffer being married to a monster and deciding I didn’t care. I would work to win her over, man or creature. “How about you? What are your plans?”

  “Whateley sent a Deep One army after us. I’m going to kill the fucker.”

  “I don’t think it was Whateley.”

  “Why?” Mercury frowned.

  “He told us to leave.”

  “Reverse psychology!” Mercury said.

  “Which would work if he thought we were five years old,” I said. “Marcus is trying to save the world, regardless of future Yith takeover, and this is the work of the Unimaginable Horror’s cult. They manipulated the Deep Ones by informing them of Insmaw’s people and hoped we’d be swept into it. I don’t think Marcus would do that.” He had warned us to get away, though he hadn’t bothered to do the same for the Insmaw.

  “Marcus Whateley wants to release the Unimaginable Horror, though.”

  “I think it’s more complicated than that.” We didn’t have enough information to know for sure. “I don’t think Armitage and the Great One were telling the truth, though. I think they expect us to fail and are prepared for what comes next.”

  “So, there’s no chance of us getting our rewards, is there?” Mercury asked.

  “No.”

  “And they have Jackie.”

  “I pity them if they think they can keep her from us.”

  Mercury smiled. “All right. So, what’s our next move?”

  I paused. “Jessica is gone, Mercury.”

  Mercury paused. “I see. Did she suffer?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was with her at the end, though.”

  Mercury closed her eyes. “We’ll mourn her after we’ve put down the Unimaginable Horror. Then we’ll deal with Armitage and the Great One.”

  “Good plan.”

  “Yeah, but what do we do now?”

  “Jessica suggested there was an oracle near the ruins of Boston in one of the ghoul cities. Lacking any better location to look for Whateley, I suggest we go there.”

  “Yes, but Jessica is dead.”

  “We’ll figure something out.” I looked at the ruins of Insmaw. “They’d built a home here. This was a place where people had hope for the future. It’s why everything was new and not rundown like everywhere else in the Wasteland.”

  “That was their mistake.”

  “Was it?” I had no answers. “Do you think August and Bobbie will be willing to work with me?”

  “Because you’re an alien demigod who thinks he’s a human being?” August said, popping out of nowhere with Bobbie. “You’d be surprised, but I find that rather reassuring. You’re not the first even. I should tell you about some of the files the University recovered when we visited Jolly Old—”

  “Thank you,” Bobbie said, interrupting him.

  “For what?” I said, perplexed. I was also inclined to ignore August.

  “If you could not save the people here, at least you avenged them.” Bobbie looked down at the disaster. “I never expected to be thanking a member of the Remnant, but I suppose you’re not a typical member.”

  “No,” I said simply. “Not anymore.”

  “I loved it when you ate those three shamans as they ran away.” August clapped his hands. “Hilarious!”

  I felt sick, not remembering that. “Ate them?”

  “Don’t worry, they’re white meat,” August said, smiling.

  Bobbie then backhanded him in the stomach, causing him to crumple to his knees. “Please don’t say that.”

  “Do you have any idea who I am, witch?”

  “A man making jokes on the ruins of a massacre,” I said, looking down at him. “That’s in poor taste.”

  August started to make another quip, looked around, and shrugged before getting up. “Fair enough. Perhaps it was too soon.”

  “Just a bit,” Bobbie replied, shaking her head.

  “Does anyone have any objections to us traveling to the ghoul city?”

  “Shak’ta’hadron,” August said, dusting himself off.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s the name of the city,” August said, sighing. “Or am I the only one who bothered to ask Jessica where we planned to go?”

  I looked to the side. “It’s been a long week. I forgot.”

  “Of course,” August said, sighing. “Well, I suppose it’s a good thing you have me then.”

  I didn’t bother to correct him. “You’ve been an immense amount of help during this mission and we’d be dead several times over if not for you. You are the Most Valuable Player. Would you like a cookie?”

  “I’d love a cookie, but I’m sensing sarcasm.”

  “You think?” Mercury asked.

  “We need to get the Hummer back into order and move on toward the city. We’re running out of time and I’m sure it was a mistake, in retrospect, not to use the teleportation techniques of the University.”

  “It’s not teleportation, but I think you’re just using shorthand,” August said, still unable (or unwilling) to shut up.

  “Yes,” I said, sighing.

  “Follow me,” August said, gesturing with his right arm.

  I raised an eyebrow. “I do not doubt you can take us where we need to go, but can you do it without ever having visited the location? I do not want to end up stuck inside a wall or something similar.”

  “That’s not how it works,” August said. “We will simply ‘skip’ the greater part of our trip.”

  I furrowed my brow. “That makes no sense.”

  August snorted. “Neither does most of reality.”

  “Lead the way.”

  August nodded and our group proceeded to follow him. One second we were in the middle of Insmaw’s ruins and the next we were underground. The sights that surrounded me were disorienting, beautiful, and confusing all at once.

  The cavern we were in was in a mountain at least three stadiums tall, with a gigantic shining white crystal at its top. It was as bright as daytime, and the surrounding buildings visible for miles around. The buildings were of no human manufacture. They looked like a combination of stalactites and sea coral, but had a pleasant artistry that was absent from more alien species’ construction. Gigantic gemstones as big as windows decorated the city around us and reflected the light above in stunning ways.

  Shak’ta’hadron.

  There were gas-powered street lamps, antique in design but newly constructed cars, power lines, and a glass train moving across crystalline railing throughout the city. There were hints of human culture hiding in the shadows, probably the work of ghouls, adding their own flourishes. There were also the ghouls themselves, who paid our sudden arrival little heed.

  Ghouls all looked like Richard. They all had dog-like heads similar enough to man to invoke the so-called “uncanny valley” effect. Their bodies, however, were simian. I believed them to be responsible for the legends of werewolves. They were also responsible for the stories of the changelings, taking young human infants into their care and replacing them with their own so they could reinvigorate their bloodlines as well as create agents who could interact with human settlements. While most of them walked naked, more than a few wore scraps or fragments of Pre-Rising attire. These included top hats, coats, dresses, and even jewelry.

  I did not see many humans among them, but ther
e were enough that I didn’t feel out of place. The humans weren’t enslaved either, walking among ghouls as if they were members of their species. This was a little disconcerting, as the majority of the humans, like the ghouls, didn’t bother with clothes, or if they did, wore a similar amount as their counterparts. Seeing a Model-T-esque vehicle with an advanced electrical engine in front honk its horn at us, I realized we were standing in the middle of the street and stepped to the side. Mercury and the others followed suit.

  “I must confess, August, I am impressed,” I said, staring at the amazing city around me.

  “Just don’t try the local cuisine,” August said, frowning. “They’ve learned how to artificially grow human meat, at least according to Jessica, but we’re still considered a delicacy. Only after we’re dead, though.”

  “What about me?” Bobbie said.

  “Oh no, they hate Deep Ones,” August said, smiling. “They consider you repulsive.”

  Bobbie frowned, unsure how to respond.

  That was when I saw a shoggoth slither out from behind an alleyway, then another, and another still.

  Dozens of them were approaching us. Two at Insmaw had been terrifying. This was a nightmare.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I will say it now: Shoggoths are the most terrifying creatures in the Post-Rising world. They predate humanity and are as native to Earth as the apes we evolved from (so they’re not a Post-Rising species). The shoggoth is, simply, the world’s most perfect predator. They can live underwater, underground, the frigid cold of the Arctic, in the airless void of space, in the jungle, or on a grassy hill. They can digest anything from moon rocks to raw sewage and derive just as much nutrition from either since they alter whatever they eat into what they require.

  Shoggoths can shape-shift every bit as effectively as an Eye of Yog-Sothoth and are capable of regenerating any wound since they’re a liquid organism that can alter itself on the molecular level. They’re an immortal species, regenerating so they don’t age, and they possess a hive-minded gestalt linking them all on a subconscious level.

  Each shoggoth knew everything every other shoggoth knew, back to the first of their race. This made them fantastically intelligent and capable of speaking about any subject at great length, were they so inclined (most were not). Shoggoths had some vulnerabilities—certain forms of radiation, magic, extra-dimensional weapons, flame (despite being able to survive extraordinary temperatures), and electricity—but these were minor ones compared to their many advantages. They were also a race of slaves.