by Lee Isserow
As soon as they found the first of the beasts, Tali ordered them to rain down carved concrete lances again. Just as before, many were buffed, but it could not guard against them all, and a few ripped into its flesh, tearing the fiend to shreds.
*
As they moved on to the next, and applied the same strategy. It too seemed to work, but Tali couldn't help notice that as she replayed the assault in her mind's eye, fewer of the spears made their way through its hide.
She checked back in with the news feeds to track down the third of the creatures, as the last team were having trouble finding it. The helicopters had lost it too, at some point it had slunk into the Tarpon River.
All of the Circle operatives on the ground were directed to the last place it had been seen. These things were aquatic by nature, water was their home. . . there was no telling how fast it could swim, let alone how far it could have gone. She checked the map to remind herself of where the river went. It might well have just swum back out to the Atlantic, in which case she didn't have to worry about it, a retreat at this point could be considered a win. But the river's forks and tributaries went deep into the state, deeper still into the Everglades. If it had decided to venture there, they might never track it down again. . .
“Everyone converge on the river,” she said, sending the destination to their mind's eye.
“Hell of a bloody walk,” Faith grunted. He was twenty blocks away from the location she needed them to get to.
“Fine, she sighed. “Three, can you give the lazy bastards a hand?”
She felt three nods in her periphery, and in another flash across the news feeds, all of her operatives vanished, and reappeared on either side of the banks of the Tarpon, where the beast had last been seen.
It took a moment for her mind's eye to clear from the glare of the teleportation, but Tali could already hear the screams in her head, coming from every angle.
She watched in horror as the thing launched itself from the river, along with another three of its kin. Their tentacles were hardened, slimmed down to points and sharp edges. They had turned their appendages into blades to act alongside their glimmering teeth.
There were too many operatives in the fray, there was no safe way to pull concrete from the ground and turn it into spears and―not without risking their friends and comrades.
“Just put them down!” she ordered. “Any way you can!”
Fire and light shot across the river, it was joined by water erupting from the surface and lashing out. The earth burst from the riverbed and cut through the damn things. But before they were put down for good, they dealt many casualties to those on the scene.
“They changed their strategy. . .” Faith gasped, as one of the others glyphed his wounds.
“I know sir. . .” Tali said, as she checked in with the others and took count of all the injuries. There were still so many of these damn things left. . . and each of them was becoming smarter and stronger as they attacked them. But there were things they wouldn't know, things they couldn't know. And she forced herself to remain confident. “Just means we're going to have to amend our strategy too. . .” And as she looked up the next location, she realised she knew exactly how she was going to change the plan to suit their environment.
28
The battle to come
Shaman Kahgo was in agony.
Drowning and losing consciousness proved themselves to be only the initial side effects of entry to the watery gate between the realms. The cost of admission. In comparison to them, he would have gladly drowned and passed out a thousand times over. The pain that was beset upon him was excruciating to start with, then somehow it managed to get even worse.
It had begun with his skin, as if every layer was torn off one by one, and salt massaged into the wounds. Then his muscle fibres felt as thought they were being unstitched, his flesh ribboning out from his core. He could feel each and every one of his blood vessels, and each and every one of them was being grated from the inside, as if his blood was no longer liquid, and had been replaced by sand.
The worst thing about the pain was not even the pain itself. It was the duration. It was so slow, so tormentous, that it seemed to him there might be no end in sight. His own personal hell, an eternal agony that would last until the final stars blinked out of existence, and the universe died a cold and unceremonious death.
This, he decided, was his punishment.
The passage between the Outer Realms and the Natural World was not truly meant to be traversed by any living being. . . If he had the bulk of one of the Old Ones, if he was the size of a moon and had a greater surface area over which the pain could be dispersed, perhaps it might not have been so torturous. . .
But at his size, his true form being a few metres square, every single iota of pain was compressed, and the saturation and concentration of agony was greater than any he had experienced in his long life. A thousand infinitesimal spears tearing through every part of his body. And they tore through him not just the once, they rat-a-tatted in and out of his flesh, pounding through, ripping the very fibre of his being apart.
In all his years he had never experienced such torture. And it did not appear to be coming to an end. . . The journey back to the Natural World was neither a short nor an easy one. . . and the suffering was not going to end any time soon.
All he could do was grit his teeth, and try with all his might―what little might he had left―to bear through the infinite and eternal living nightmare. . . and pray. . . that when he made it through the other side, whenever that might be, he was in a fit state to be able to make a difference at the battle to come.
29
Another way
JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA
The creatures that had made their way into Onslow County had kept themselves to the beaches. Unlike the other sites Tali had sent the operatives, they did not come from the sewers, but directly from the sea.
She tried not to get distracted by wondering why exactly that might be―for it was all to easy to start wondering whether there was something specific with the sewer system of Jacksonville that made it different to the other locations they had been hiding. Even if there was something unique about the sewage treatment, or the kind of brickwork, it likely wouldn't help with the fact that the creatures were so efficient at adapting to attacks.
On this assault, she made sure to have the operatives teleported to the land that lay beyond the sand. It was a good fifty to seventy metres from where the beasts were, and they likely couldn't make it that far to attack by the time the light had fled and the operatives had arrived. Contrary to her expectation, they didn't even try to leap across the beach to attack those that were being teleported. Instead, their tentacles whipped beneath them, frantically digging down into the sands. By the time the flash of the teleport had dissipated from her eyes, they had completely vanished.
“Tali, what the bloody hell? Beach is bloody empty!” Faith growled in her periphery.
“They dug down. . . They're in the sand!”
Her warning came too late. Two operatives were pulled into the ground, their screams muffled as the sand filled their mouths and noses.
Tentacles wrapped around the legs of three more operatives. Two were cut free, thanks to quick work by others who had swords―but one was pulled beneath the sands to join his departed colleagues.
Tali couldn't bare the thought of losing any more of her comrades. She sent the message across to all those on the beach, and at her command, the sands erupted into flames, and with the combined intent of all the magickians present, the fire burned white hot. The temperature of the blaze increased with every passing second, sweat poured from the brows of all those that fuelled it, but they wouldn't stop. It got to five hundred degrees, then a thousand, and still they continued to force it to burn. It got to fifteen hundred, then two thousand.
Tali could feel the silicon dioxide and quartz as it changed form. . . it was melting. The entire beach was becoming a lake
of vitrified sand. . . and the creatures were being boiled alive deep inside it. She sent out the word, and the intent changed, from hot to cold. The molten glass became solid once again. And deep in the centre of it, caught like bugs in amber, were the beasts that had killed their friends.
“Quick thinking,” Faith growled.
“Thanks,” she said. But she didn't truly feel like she deserved any kind of congratulations. . . three people were dead, two more were injured, and there were still thousands of the damn things out there.
“Where we going next?” Faith asked.
In his periphery, he could feel her glance to the map to find the next location, when shouts started to sound out all around him. Tali plugged back in to Faith's point of view and felt his stomach drop just as hers did the same.
The glass was cracking. The creatures were moving under the surface. And in an explosion of glittering shards, they emerged once again upon the land.
Faith took command, as Tali stared in horror at the bloodshed. They threw everything they had at the beasts and tore them asunder. But they lost another four in the process. . .
“We can't keep doing this,” he huffed.
She couldn't form words with which to agree.
“We need another way. . .”
He was right, and she knew he was right, but still, the words would not come.
“You know I don't want to risk it. . . not after. . . The Knowledge. . . But we can't keep on like this.”
Tali swallowed over a lump, and gasped for breath, forcing words out over a raw throat. “You're right. . . “ she conceded. “We need to un-write the bastards from reality. . .”
30
A last-ditch effort
THE CIRCLE
Deep under the earth, through passageways of ancient stone, The Circle convened. Each of the magickians assembled sat in the ritual, creating a loop around the world. Their eyes were closed, their breath in and out in unison. Their focus singular in purpose.
Their first intent was a selfish one, and each of them knew it. But that would not dissuade them from doing what needed to be done. They brought each of their colleagues back from the dead―but unlike rebirthings of the past, this time they agreed that after the events in the Atlantic, it served the greater good to wipe all memories of their demise.
Once that was done, some suggested that they should fix the physical damage that had been done to the world, others adding that it was time for them to erase memories of the mundane population, as they always did.
Faith overruled their requests. He had their loyalty, now that he had proven himself to them once again, and they obeyed his decree. Repairs and erasing memories could wait until after the scourge was dealt with. . . If they did not attend do it first, there would only be more destruction in the interim, and more to undo.
He aligned their focus, with Tali's memories of the map as their guide. Together, the full strength of the Circle was put towards a single endeavour. They searched far and wide within the realm, confirmed that there was no caveat to the creatures that might put them in a similar situation to that with the Knowledge, where they had inadvertently aided its quest by attempting to remove its presence. As far as they could tell, there was no such caveat written into reality.
And so, together, they sought out each of the creatures, and began the strategy they had agreed upon as a collective. They reached into the ether, took hold of the magick that bound the beasts, and tugged them apart with all their might.
But not one of the creatures was torn asunder by their attempt. Not one of them was destroyed. None of them were even injured in the slightest. They could feel a few of them wince, but that was not the intent that they had laid out. . .
Faith redirected their focus. They would try going from one to the other, pulling them apart one at a damn time instead of all at once. Together, they grabbed one of the squirming creatures, holding it in place with thousands of ethereal hands. The fiend seemed almost bemused by their attempts. It seemed to cackle great bellows of laughter, and its eyes shot from one operative to the next, staring with some kind of mocking glee.
It was all for naught, and the entire Circle was beginning to be overcome by a sense of failure, a sense that there was nothing they could do, that this was an impossible task, an impossible enemy, that the prophecy was correct. . . that the world of man was doomed to fall.
Faith shot out a wave of optimism to the collective, to try to put them back on track. There was still one action they could take, one that he did not consider lightly. A last-ditch effort, which would require them transcending space and time to act upon their intent. But if it was possible, if it worked, the damn things would have never been born. . .
A breath was taken by the collective, deep and long, held in their core. Their lungs began to ache, but still they held the breath, and continued to hold it until the magick in their blood heeded their request.
The first beat was asymmetrical for all assembled. Their hearts either catching up with the others, or delaying, so as to allow them to beat in unison. The second beat was synchronised, as was the third. They were acting as one organism, not just with their intent, but with their physical beings.
Together, they reached back into the past. They could not witness the creature being conceived, but they could see it whilst it was gestating.
There was a ripple of concern amongst the Circle, some of them did not believe that aborting a life was morally correct. And yet their concern did not last long, when presented with the alternative. There were thousands upon thousands of these things, and each of them was a vicious and increasingly smart and strong killer. . . The only way to make sure that they could not take over the Natural World was to terminate them in-utero.
Reluctantly, consensus was given, and together they reached into the womb and took hold of the foetus.
But they could not grab hold of it.
There was something that forbade them from acting upon the creature in the manner they desired―the same thing that was making it impossible for them to tear the thing apart at the molecular level.
Its blood.
The realisation rocketed around those convened. It had pure 'thulu blood in its system, purer and stronger than the blood that they―even as a collective―had at their command.
Panic began to make its way through the Circle. They had never been unable to put their intent into being, they had never failed, certainly not on this scale. . . Every other time they had convened they had been able to manipulate whatever they wished in reality. But they had never needed to unmake something that contained the blood of their makers. . . In all their years, the millennia of the Circle, it was looking like they had finally met a force that they could not contend with.
Faith grunted, and the entire collective felt his disapproval. He would not allow his legacy to be that of failure, let alone be the last man to stand at the centre of the Circle whilst the Natural World falls.
He sent out his intent. A physical assault was their only option.
Unless, Shana suggested, from far in the reaches of his periphery, we are able to find the prime that controls them, the force that binds them. . .
That was something they had not conceived of. The creatures were bound together by some unseen force, a morphic field that transferred knowledge and experience in a fraction of a second. And it had been birthed from a womb. . . so it had a mother somewhere out there, in the world or beyond.
They reached out with their unified mind to search for the mother of the monsters. Its mind was out there, they could feel it, a binding light to all of those that had come forth from her loins. . . but her actual location, let alone her physical manifestation, was warded.
Faith applauded the suggestion, but reiterated that a frontal assault is their only remaining option. And as before, he reminded them that he would never ask this of them if he was not wiling to sacrifice himself. He would once again lead the charge. He was as much as part of them as they were of him.
And although the mood was more sombre than it had been when they first assembled, the Circle disbanded and returned to the Epicentre to ready themselves for the battle ahead.
But just as the magickians had come together to look for the creatures and that which birthed them, the creatures and their maker had been doing the same.
Their magick was older, it was more advanced and innate to their beings, and the Circle had no notion that their internal discussion was being monitored. But the master of the deep had heard every word that the guardians of mankind had laid out in their intent. And now, they were ready for the assault that was to come.
31
A state of emergency
WASHINGTON, DC
A state of emergency had been declared. Attacks from hideous octopus-monsters in other states could be ignored, considered isolated incidents―even if there were many of them. . . But an attack on the capital, however, was inconceivable.
Tanks rolled along Pennsylvania Avenue, special forces troops filled the grounds of the White House. They were prepared for attack from every angle, from any conceivable threat that enemy nations might launch against them. But the rulers of the Natural World were in no way ready for a threat of this nature.
The beasts sauntered towards the White House, not because they had any particular interest in the country's seat of power in any fashion. A collective decision had been made, that they would take great amusement from causing panic in the mundane population, and to be seen assaulting the man proclaimed by their media as 'the most powerful in the world' would certainly cause panic.