The room was cylindrical and stretched higher than my eyes could faithfully see. The diameter of the cylinder was between five and six hundred feet. There were entrances exactly like the one that we came in every ten feet or so. The walls weren’t walls at all, but receptacles. Each receptacle held a translucent bubble was large enough to hold at least three people and was filled with some sort of fluid. They covered the walls entirely, leaving just enough space for the doorways. They stretched all the way up the entirety of the room.
“What is this?” I asked with wonder and excitement in my voice.
“Oh, no.” Nancy was whimpering the words at that point and it pulled my attention back to them.
I looked to Leo and his face was paler than his blood loss would have made it.
“Leo, what is it?” I demanded.
He wasn’t looking at me, only the pods, as he answered. “Andrew, the proto-shoggoths were the weapons and this is the armory.”
It finally clicked in my mind what had them all so terrified, and just as suddenly my wonder and excitement was replaced with just as much terror as my companions had. “This is where the shoggoth sleep.” I said.
Nancy’s whimpering had lost any resemblance to words and she began to back through the doorway.
“Nancy, wait,” I said. She hesitated long enough for me to ask, “The journal said that this is where we would find the means to destroy the city?”
“My father said that,” Nancy answered. “He said that the armory would hold the means of destroying the whole continent if we wanted.”
“And this is the armory?” I pressed.
Nancy tossed me the journal. “Yes, but he can’t be right.”
Leo touched her shoulder and she flinched, but recovered enough not to push his hand away.
“Your father was never wrong about these things,” Leo said. “He led us here, it must be the right place.”
“Stop talking about my father like you knew him!” Nancy shouted it, and the sheer increase in volume startled Leo and me.
...and the armory.
We could see it, but we felt the sudden presence of...something in there with us.
Nancy shoved Leo in the chest. “See what you did!”
The door slid shut behind us and Nancy spun to me. “Open it!”
I tried to twice, but nothing happened. “No good. We’re stuck in here.”
She resorted to whimpering again and I didn’t blame her.
Leo brought up the machine gun that he had been carrying and readied himself for a battle that I knew we couldn’t win.
“What the hell is that?” Nancy asked, and I noticed that the fear in her voice had only ratcheted up.
I looked at where she was pointing. In between two of the pods closer to the floor was a stack of something that was a mix of colors. Browns, reds, yellows, and shades of white were in a heap about as high as my waist.
Leo started to move toward the pile, but I stopped him by grabbing his arm. “Ready your weapon.” I said to him.
He readied his machine gun and I drew my pistol choosing to leave the sword inside of its scabbard. Nancy held back behind us but close enough to reach. As we inched closer, I think Leo understood what he was looking at before I did. With a smirk he lowered his gun, but continued to walk with me.
Finally, I was close enough to make out what it was.
The browns were Nazi uniforms while the reds, whites, and yellows were the Nazis remains.
Nancy threw up, and Leo just continued to smirk.
“It isn’t enough,” I said.
“Enough of what?” Leo asked.
“Enough bodies. That’s not the entire army.”
“It wouldn’t be,” Nancy returned, wiping her mouth. “This will only be the most nonhuman Germans. The soldiers who could have survived the trip.”
I looked around for what might have piled them up.
As I spun, my pistol raised, clapping began.
I aimed my gun at the sound as soon as I registered it.
Command Leader Erich Strobel was walking slowly toward us with his hands slowly slapping together. “Dr. Andrew Doran! I assumed that it all had to be you.” He continued walking toward me, ignoring my raised pistol. “Welcome to my tomb.”
“How did you get in here?” Nancy asked from behind Leo and myself.
Strobel stopped clapping and crossed his arms. As he did so, I noticed that he looked disheveled, his coat was unbuttoned halfway down and his stringy white hair was going in every direction.
“My girl, I’ve been in here for days.” He waved his hands around indicating the entirety of the armory. “Haven’t you noticed that this place is...different?”
I took my eyes from the German, knowing that Leo was less curious and more murderous than I was, and examined my surroundings.
I started at the ceiling that was miles above my head and looked for the nearest place that I could see. Pods and light. I moved my sight down the walls slowly, looking at every detail of the organic pods growing from the walls. Behind the pods was more of the glass-like stone that had made up the rest of the facility. More and more pods. Some of them were translucent, while the others were murky and filled with a milky purple substance. When my eyes came to the floor, I wasn’t surprised by what I found. More smooth, black stone.
Leo, who hadn’t taken his eyes from Strobel, said, “It’s all new.”
“What?” I asked. Nancy kept looking at everything and then began nodding.
“None of it is weathered or damaged.” She stopped eyeing the walls and turned to face me. “This room hasn’t aged.”
“Good,” said Strobel. “Very good. I am impressed by your companions, Doctor.” He smirked and I noticed his teeth were a dingy shade of yellow. “If your gift is for surviving, than your companions have a gift of observation.”
I looked at all of the doors that were evenly spaced across the cylindrical wall and noticed that they not only looked the same, they were the same. I counted them and that there were twenty-four of the identical doors.
“This room is removed from time,” I said.
Strobel nodded. “Not only time, but also space. I was chasing you and came in here three days ago, but you just now entered.” He stepped closer and Leo jabbed the machine gun in his direction. Strobel got the idea and stopped moving. “You also came in from a different door than I did.”
“Why haven’t you left?” Nancy asked.
All mirth left Strobel’s face. “I was waiting for you.”
“What happened to your men?” Leo asked.
Strobel kept staring at Nancy as he answered. “I needed parts.”
“Parts?” I asked.
“This room is...” Strobel’s face took on an intense look. It was like pain, but he was smiling through it. “...amazing.” He grunted the last word.
Strobel’s size doubled almost instantly. He didn’t move aside from growing, but he really didn’t need to. His jaw extended larger than twice the size that it had been, giving him a ridiculous looking underbite that would have been funny if the teeth in his jaw didn’t suddenly turn sharper than glass.
“The chamber is for the storage and modification of shoggoths.” The mouth on his head hadn’t moved, but one had opened up on his neck and was chatting away as he continued to grow. It was only a mouth in that it was a moving slit in his through that talked, it lacked all other features that would have defined it.
“It was difficult, convincing the Fuhrer that I should be allowed to come along. He wanted to use the alien artifacts, but he didn’t like trusting one.”
“Alien...?” Nancy was shaking with fear. “You’re a...a...” She raised her gun and started firing. Leo joined suit.
Before I could pull the trigger on my magical .38, Strobel-beast smacked me aside while finishing Nancy’s statement.
“I am a Shoggoth!”
He was less man than monster at that point. He stood twelve feet tall, but he wasn’t actually standing. Te
ntacles had shot from his body and he flowed across the floor with a speed that was unmatchable. Strobel’s skin had darkened to the same shade of purple that the pods among the walls contained. His body had sprouted mouths and eyes along each of the tentacles. His clothes had completely vanished except for the swastika armband that he seemed to have decided to keep on one of his tentacles.
I hit one of the pods and bounced off of it, my pistol sliding well out of my grasp.
Strobel had grown such in size that and tentacles that he was able to reach me from the distance that he had thrown me and still combat Nancy and Leo, whose guns had no visible effect on the monster’s girth.
I jumped to my feet and ran at the shoggoth, reaching for my sword as I did. Before I could pull the sword from my scabbard, I was hit by another tentacle and this time I was bitten by one of its many mouths.
I hit the ground on my wounded shoulder and let out a howl. As the pain subsided, I checked the damage to my wrist where the tentacle’s teeth and attempted to gain purchase. It was only a graze on my arm and wasn’t worth further attention.
Leo landed beside me suddenly and got to his feet much slower than I had. His death was still coming and he was starting to feel it. “I have seen shoggoths. He is much bigger than a shoggoth.”
“The parts,” I answered waving my hand in the direction of the German corpses. “This place allowed him to change his genetic structure to that of a proto-shoggoth. He probably knew how to configure one of the pods and used the body parts for fuel for the transformation.”
“Really?” Leo asked.
I shrugged. “I have no idea. It makes sense though.”
Strobel was suddenly in front of us and still ignoring Nancy who had already emptied her gun, collected one from the corpses and was still firing.
One of his tentacles swung at me, but I finally managed to pull my sword before he could hit me. I swung down and the tentacle fell away. He howled as the appendage sizzled with the pain from my magic weapon, but hit both Leo and I with another tentacle before we could prepare for a follow up attack.
We both hit the same pod and spun off toward one of the doors.
I helped Leo to his feet and he grabbed my sword from where it had landed and returned it for me.
“It is too bad,” he said through strained breaths, “that we did not know of his agenda before we came here.”
“Agreed.” I said, and something in his words made a thought begin to form in the back of my mind.
I ignored it and we rushed the Nazi Proto-Shoggoth as it finally began to take notice of Nancy. Leo filled the beast with bullets while I hacked away at it with my sword. While the monster never stopped howling at the pain my sword was causing him, he didn’t even feel the bullets from Leo or Nancy’s guns.
For all of my cutting and slicing, the Strobel-Shoggoth was healing quicker than my magical sword could damage it. I had never met anything that could stand up to my sword like he was. We were in trouble.
A quick spin of its body and the tentacles launched us all in different directions. I hit the ground and slid into something that jabbed into my back.
I rolled over to find that it was my .38. I was hopeful that my luck had changed.
Back on my feet, I ran at the Strobel-Shoggoth firing until I got close enough to use the sword.
His howling in the physical world echoed deep in my mind, but he was still healing too quickly. He was also getting tired of playing with his food. He smacked me again, but this time I was able to hold onto my weapons.
I landed after bouncing from another pod. As I stood, Nancy grabbed my arm.
“We aren’t hurting him!” She was pleading with me.
“We are,” I returned. “There just aren’t enough of us.”
She began whimpering and the idea that Leo had stirred took a slightly more solid shape.
“Nancy, don’t focus on that thing anymore. I want you to focus on the doors. Figure out how to get one open.”
She began nodding, figuring that I meant we should escape.
I grabbed Nancy by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “You tell me the moment that you figure it out!”
Nancy nodded again, but just stood there.
“Go!” I shouted it more roughly that I probably should have, but I was fairly sure that we were going to all die and all niceties had flown out of the window at that point.
Nancy took off toward the nearest door and I reloaded my pistol. Instead of firing it, because I was hoping that the Plan B I was having Nancy work on would pan out, I holstered it and ran at the Strobel-Shoggoth with my sword raised.
Each time a tentacle came at me, I managed to get the blade in the way. I wasn’t hacking any more limbs off because he could grow them back too quickly, but the blade hurt him enough to keep make his tentacles back off every time he touched it.
Leo had scooped up two more Nazi machine guns and was firing a continuous stream at the monster. Even with this non-stop pummel of bullets entering his hide, the Strobel-Shoggoth only had eyes for me.
That was why I was taken completely by surprise when Leo let out a gasp of pain.
I looked to my friend and saw a horrific sight. As I had blocked the tentacles that threatened to toss or maim me, Leo had been open to being speared by one directly through his previous gun wounds.
A large black tentacle, with mouths gnawing at his insides, was completely through him, its tip protruding from his back by about three feet.
I screamed in defiance for my friend and hacked two limbs out of my way as I ran to his side. I could hear a throbbing noise echoing from the Strobel-Shoggoth and through my mind.
He was laughing.
I cut his laughter off by literally cutting off the tentacle that was in my friend.
It withered and fell from him. Leo collapsed.
Leo kept firing at the beast as I lowered him to the smooth floor and into a puddle of his own blood.
“I am surprised by the lack of pain,” Leo said.
I shook my head. “That’s the spell from earlier.” I looked at the growing puddle as Leo continued to fire at the Strobel-Shoggoth. It was easy to see that he was trying to keep it off of me while I was distracted. “The spell won’t be able to hold in your blood any more.” I looked at the hole. It was about three inches wide and despite what I had just said, his blood was only trickling out of it.
“I cannot watch your back with only guns,” Leo said. “Fight it.”
My friend was right and I tightened my grip on my sword and turned to face it.
Leo grabbed my arm, letting one of the guns fall.
“Fight it and win.”
I nodded and gathered my will.
Reaching to the void, I blocked each of the incoming tentacles with the magic that I had access to and came in low with my blade. I tried to carve off pieces of the creature, but he was simply too fast.
Keeping the tentacles at bay with my mind, I tried different tactics with my magic. I tried to hold it still, but it was too strong. I tried to pull it towards me, but it was quick enough to slide by me.
At one point, I even tried pulling the pods from the wall to hurl at it, but once again he was fast enough to avoid the popping sac of slime and membrane.
Forcing myself to fall into and out of the void, I tried to disappear and reappear in different places to surprise it with different attacks. I managed to keep the Strobel-Shoggoth surprised, but he was once again healing too quickly for me to destroy.
Finally, as if waiting for me to run out of ideas, Nancy shouted, “I’ve got it!”
I put all of my power into throwing the monster back and away from myself and my path to Nancy. Sending a quick glance to Leo, I noted that he was alive, although fading fast, before sprinting to Nancy’s side.
“It’s incredibly simple.” she said while watching over my shoulder as the beast sped toward us. “Um,” she was terrified, but kept going. “It is still a mental trigger. You were pushing when you came in
here, so now you have to pull.” Nancy looked at me with tears streaming down her face. “Does that make sense?”
I was already touching my magic, so I sent a wave out to the door in the manner that I thought the young Dyer girl meant, and it slid open silently. “Bingo!” I shouted.
I turned to Nancy and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Don’t stop moving, keep it behind you and try to stay ahead of it. Use your gun.” I looked back at the creature almost on top of us. “I’ll kill it, but you have to keep it busy.”
Terror, more than I had seen her express up to that point, filled her eyes. “Wait! You’re leaving? Why? Where?”
I ran through the door and shouted, “To get reinforcements!”
Before Nancy could follow, I sent another pulse of my will at the door and it slid shut.
I stopped as soon as the door shut, and I turned back toward it, hoping this would work. I pushed my will at the door again and stepped through.
The view had changed completely.
Instead of Nancy standing beside the door and the Strobel-Shoggoth speeding at me, the Strobel-Shoggoth was speeding away from me. I was on the opposite side of the chamber from where I had left.
On the far side of the armory, I saw Nancy crying and talking to another me. As she spoke the door directly behind that me slid open. He said another few words and then ran through the door. It slid closed behind him and Nancy began pounding on it, not listening to the words I had just said to her.
“Dammit, Nancy!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “When I tell you to run,” I drew my pistol and fired into the back of the Strobel-Shoggoth as quickly as my trigger finger could pump, “I mean ‘Run’!”
Nancy and the monster both spun in confusion. Nancy’s face was priceless. She had absolutely no idea what I had just done. Even better was the monster’s face. While shoggoth expressions weren’t easy to read by human standards, I had lots of experience and he looked shocked.
I kept firing until I was out of bullets. Then I stopped and took my time reloading. The monster began sliding at me with his incredible speed. Before he got within striking distance to me, another bullet from another magical .38 hit it in the side of the bulbous mass that had once been Erich Strobel’s face.
The Adventures of Andrew Doran: Box Set Page 42