It confounded the mind's view of Animate versus Inanimate, our understanding crippled by our intelligence's severe limitations. It defied our clean-cut definitions of Life and Death. It was something other. Dead yet somehow dreaming, awakening. It was a Thing eternally dead, yet beyond death. Its alienness was absolute. Ancient beyond measure. It preempted Life itself!
An eons-old god, Great Cthulhu was beyond a harbinger of doom. It would be humanity's extinction event.
Great Cthulhu's mass arose in its slumber; stood to its mountainous height! The Amber-symbiot, levitating thousands of feet above the corpse-city of R'lyeh, watched as Cthulhu's dead eyes rose level with her.
* * *
Amber's love for her child Dante. Dante's affinity for his child friend, Tamara. Lorne's love for his daughter. Tamara became a focal point for the Gestalt-mind. His/Her/Its/Their love for Tamara became symbolic of Earth's Life. In their Gestalt-mind, Tamara became a manifestation of all Life.
The Gestalt-mind reached out to all. They all heard its call.
Tamara looked up from Leaman's Island in Veronica's embrace. Moshe stood in the lifeboat as he heard their message.
All the surviving soldiers and sailors stared in awe.
“Stop It.”
* * *
Moshe knew! Moshe knew exactly what Cthulhu was. It wasn't a monster. It wasn't an obstacle to be surmounted. It itself was the end of days. Should it get free of R'lyeh the battle was already lost.
“Tamara,” his telepathic voice tore through the psychic ether, drowning out all other thoughts, fears, and prayers. “Close the Rupture! Close the city! Drown R'lyeh!”
* * *
Both Tamara and Veronica stumbled and staggered away from the beach, horrified by the titan that rose before them, desperately and hopelessly holding one another.
Although Tamara heard Moshe's call, her mind was overwhelmed with horror and panic!
“No! I – I can't. I'm sorry. I – I'm, I'm scared...”
* * *
The Dante-facet of the Gestalt-mind allowed itself to unfurl, expand at explosive speed, racing around the planet's surface, touching the minds of thousands – millions – billions! Dante was no longer frightened nor overwhelmed by the Storm of Humanity as he once was. He stood firm, embraced by his lost mother.
This was her son, her children, the Amber-facet was absolute in her conviction, her world!
Humanity was of one mind as it sang out its message to Dante. Dante became that voice, their spoken avatar as he relayed their overwhelming message to Tamara:
“You are not alone.”
* * *
At the oceanic point of inaccessibility, Tamara could not have been more isolated or more alone. But it was a harmonious dichotomy. She could not have been less alone. The voices and hopes and prayers of billions sang out to her!
The corpse-city of R'lyeh sprawled out before her, bent and warped. To her right and left, the edges of the oceanic horizon stretched away, ringing the toxic city.
She reached out her left hand, blinding iridescent energy pounded into the ocean and raced away.
The towering Cthulhu began to turn, seemingly in slow motion in its herculean size, its dead eyes, sleeping yet turning towards the girl. Its colossal foot slamming into the USS John S. McCain, the warship simply vanishing beneath it!
* * *
Moshe watched the energy wave race around the Event's perimeter. It was fast, but the Event's circumference was hundreds of miles! There wasn't enough time!
Great Cthulhu's pseudo-foot pounded the warship beneath the waves! The displaced water a tidal wave, racing towards the lifeboat. The men aboard shouted and tried to grab anything to secure themselves.
He had to buy Tamara more time! Moshe teleported to R'lyeh.
* * *
One foot in the warped ocean, Cthulhu began to shift its great bulk off the alien city.
Tamara craned her head nearly straight up to gawk in horror at the leviathan that loomed before her!
She lashed out her right hand, a second bolt of energy slashed and hammered its way across the water, thundering away towards the nearest neighbouring island dozens of miles away. She was no longer afraid as she freely siphoned power out of the psychic battery R'lyeh was!
An energy field roared and raged around her, dust devils of the beach's sand baked and solidifying into intricate glass fractal patterns.
Veronica screamed as the heat became too intense! Tamara's mind was beyond limit now. In an ever so brief lull of power, she teleported Veronica away from the intense blistering heat to the safety of the USS Antietam.
Tamara's body was luminescent, her eyes blinding beacons of energy. Restraint was gone as the energy she drank in was limitless.
The ocean water was instantly vaporized as the arcing energy blasted and raced around the Event's perimeter. Like a hundreds mile fishing net, it would act like the warp-bubble's draw-string.
* * *
Moshe appeared in the strange boulevards of the corpse-city of R'lyeh. He had but a moment to clear his mind of the confusion its non-Euclidean angles instilled. The stone megaliths were alien to any culture or architecture Moshe had ever been familiar with. Buildings, monuments, edifices of worship, silent tombs; he knew not what purpose these strange Cyclopean stone structures many have once served their alien masters. It didn't matter.
They'll break all the same, he thought to himself. Although Moshe knew the fabric of reality had been thin, he exercised no more restraint. The damage had already been done. He drew and pooled enormous power onto himself. His staff blackened and smoked where his hands clasped it as he raised it above his head.
His ancient robes smoldered as his body became luminescent with the contained power. And with a simple motion, Moshe slammed his staff to the ground, releasing his entire energy reserve into a single massive gravity pulse.
The ground of R'lyeh cracked and splintered; the shock-wave causing its colossal menhirs to shatter and collapse, their surfaces sloughing off in massive domino landslides of shattered shale-like debris.
The immense gravity-pulse caught the alien god in its pulverizing embrace. Great Cthulhu staggered and dropped to what could only have been its knee, its titanic bulk crushing the ancient masonry, its slime-like flesh being torn off!
Moshe siphoned and poured energy into the gravity-field, maintaining its devastating pull.
The squid-headed titan's form morphed, its ancient fossilized bones cracking as it shifted into some sort of quadruped form. Its powerful trunk-like limbs picking itself up off the crushing gravity. Its jelly-like liquid flesh reabsorbing and rippling across its body. It raised its tentacled head, consciousness, sentience, and awakening beginning to spark in its dead eyes.
Moshe had hoped to pin down the Monster, but it wasn't enough and he knew it. He could only slow it down.
Moshe, struggling, reached out with his telepathy, “Close the city,” his mind screamed out into the psychic ether. “Sink R'lyeh!”
Chapter 18: The Music of the Spheres in The Hollow Mosque
Donita kicked and struggled against the infant skeletons as more and more became animated within the confines of the Gatesphere. They filled the pit of bones and crowded around the ancient altar stone. But what horrified Donita beyond the undead children was the gaping hole, portal, gateway opening above her!
Sentient telekinetic tentacles snaked their way into this Pocket-Universe, tentatively feeling and groping, their alien amorphous entity searching for a host.
Donita screamed in terror as Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, began squeezing its metaphysical form through the Gateway.
The undead skeletal children wailed in her head, crying for their countless lost mothers they would never reunite with; calling out to Donita's unborn child to join them! The baby kicked and squirmed in her belly!
“Otto!!”
* * *
Siad saw the conflict below. Otto and Ezra combated, battling through the bone pit. Otto was
at a severe disadvantage once Ezra drew his knife!
The Sikh gently cradled Alia's head in his arms as he gingerly withdrew his iron dagger from her chest. Siad paused for a moment, brushing the hair from Alia's beautiful face. He placed his fingers on her throat, knowing he wouldn't find what he hoped for.
His lips quivered as he felt no pulse.
He kissed her forehead, gently laying her down as he stood and called out to Otto.
The Music was thundering.
“Otto!” he shouted again, trying to get Otto's attention. Donita was screaming as the undead rose in the bone pit surrounding the trio.
“Otto!!” Siad's voice roared, and for a brief second Otto made eye-contact, but it was enough. The Sikh lobbed his dagger to Otto.
* * *
Otto could see the Thing droop from the dimensional Gateway above the altar. It would only be seconds until it freed itself.
Ezra lunged, his Bowie knife splitting Otto's shoulder. Otto's cry was drowned out by the roaring Music. He could barely hear his beloved Donita screaming out his name in horror. But then he heard another voice calling him. It was the Sikh, Siad. The second he caught Otto's attention was enough. Siad tossed his dagger to him. Although Siad's intention was to help Otto combat Ezra, the half-breed was the least of Otto's concerns.
Otto caught the dagger as he back kicked Ezra away.
The amorphous Nyarlathotep freed itself from the portal and dropped! There was no more time!
In his frantic panic, Otto half charged, half lunged, smashing through the brittle children's skeletons. His body struck Donita as he put his full weight behind his shoulder, pushing her off the altar and out of harm's way. Otto began to skid across the altar until his momentum was abruptly stopped as Ezra plunged his knife through Otto's calf, pinning him! Otto howled in pain, dropping Siad's dagger, but as Donita tumbled off the other side of the altar, with lightning-like reflexes, she snatched up the dagger.
The alien Nyarlathotep churned and gurgled into itself in its infective madness; its incorporeal form landing directly on the altar-top – directly on Otto.
Without a host body, Nyarlathotep was an evanescent ghost, an incorporeal spirit. It didn't collide with Otto, but simply fell into him; inserted itself as Otto's body absorbed the alien entity. Otto stopped his screams of pain as countless millennia of information from both past and future, from countless incarnations flooded through his mind.
The privacy and sanctity of his mind was invaded by the Crawling Chaos, his mind's corridors flooding with the wicked alien intelligence!
Otto saw and became aware of truths and facts that were too horrible to know – crippling in their terrible revelation.
Like a broken dam, the flood-waters that were Nyarlathotep raced through his mind, overwhelming all resistance. It was too much! Far too much! Otto became aware of Nyarlathotep's near countless incarnations! He became aware of Nyarlathotep's plural existences! He saw glimpses of his as yet unborn child as yet another incarnation of the monster! He witnessed her future death and demise! It was too much! His will was crushed! His spirit broken. His mind, far too fragile for this soul searing knowledge, began to become unhinged. It began to mercifully shut down.
And as Nyarlathotep raged and cavorted through its new host with ambitions of freedom and domination, it too shockingly became aware of its own multiple duo-existences!
Their consciousness faltered and slipped. The merciful darkness of coma began to flood the peripheral edges of their consciousness.
Rage as Nyarlathotep would, there was nothing it could do but sink into the oblivion of coma with Otto, their minds permanently one.
* * *
Donita wasted no time as she plowed through the infantile skeletons, their tiny bones disintegrating to dust.
Ezra tore his knife out of the comatose Otto's leg and raised it high, his beady eyes shining with blood-lust and gleeful madness, his mouth a horrifying grimace of teeth. And as he chanted out in orgasmic ecstasy to his alien gods, his ululation was cut short, “Iä! Iä! Cthulhu -”
Donita violently grabbed the half-breed by his greasy black hair and cranked his head back, driving the dagger down his throat!
Ezra gurgled as his arms weakly flailed, his knife dropping from numb fingers.
Donita wrenched the dagger out through the side of his mouth, dislocating his jaw and opening Ezra's throat.
Ezra Stanton tumbled to the bone pit, desperately trying to hold his throat together, his gushing blood making sucking sounds as he drowned, and spraying as he choked.
The tiny infant skeletons began gravitating around the floundering Ezra, slowly at first, then rushing as their bodies overwhelmed and buried him!
Donita crawled atop the altar and rolled Otto over. His green eyes were open. Blank. Expressionless. Donita could see the sentience wavering and finally go out.
She had no time for tears. “Siad!” she screamed over the deafening Music. “Help me!”
The roaring other worldly Music suddenly fell silent. The arcing blue lightning of the purple Gateway snapped out of existence as the Gatesphere collapsed. The toxic purple light of the Gateway was replaced with the warmer healthy candle-like glow of the electric torches that surrounded the cavern.
The sudden sound of silence was buzzing in their ears. Only the soft sound of sifting bone dust could be heard as the tiny infant skeletons collapsed and disintegrated, their animated power lost with the Gatesphere.
Siad tore a piece of his robe off to bind Otto's leg in a tourniquet. Donita fearfully peered at her older sister's body, inert and lifeless. Her chin wrinkled as her lips quivered. “Oh Alia,” she whispered through her silent tears.
“My lady,” Siad whispered gently to Donita. “We must leave this place. We must get you to safety and Otto to the university's infirmary.”
“Yes, I know,” Donita wept the words as she covered her mouth with a shaking hand.
Chapter 19: The Last Incarnation
From the Amber-symbiot's great height, the Gestalt-mind could see all. The entire Event, the concave ocean covering thousands of square miles, expanded around her, around the central alien city.
Tamara's ring of energy was blasting, burning, and racing around the great perimeter of the Event, but it wouldn't encircle in time.
A gargantuan dragon-winged, squid-headed behemoth lumbering into the warped ocean, laboriously battling against a crushing gravity-field.
Moshe's desperate attempt had slowed the alien god-monster, but still the Great dead but dreaming Cthulhu rose from R'lyeh.
The titan of horror reared its great octopoid head through the low passing clouds. Its dead eyes, like those of a fish, passed the levitating Amber-symbiot, blind to her presence, their cataract pupils staring at nothing.
As she stared at those dead eyes, the words stuck in their mind.
“Dead but Dreaming.”
“Dead but Dreaming.”
“...Dead...”
* * *
The curvature of the Earth rolled quietly beneath Sentinel. The silent hemisphere was entirely blue, the whole of the Pacific Ocean sprawling before the orbiting A.I.. The sky behind Sentinel was black as pitch, the stars like sharp shards of ice.
Necropolis: Book 5: R'lyeh Page 13