The great, giant insectoid ceased his struggles abruptly, and stared at me with those multi-faceted eyes. He turned his head in a strange bestial way and looked me up and down. “Yes,” he said with a voice as equally strange as mine, “I am Charles Meyer, of Earth. You were the one who spoke at the forum today. You told the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Who are you?”
I sat myself down and my guest followed my lead. “My name is, or at least was, Randolph Carter. I, too, come from Earth.”
In an instant, the Rathk was back on his feet. “Randolph Carter! Surely not Randolph Carter the fantasist? He would be long dead by now.”
“My name is indeed Randolph Carter, and I have taken pen to paper and produced a few modest tales. As for being dead, I regret that the reports of my status are more complicated than simple death. I am a victim of a cosmic joke, cast back through time and across space to dwell in an alien body, on an alien world, and to never see the green and rolling hills of my home ever again.” I paused, for I realized I had grown melancholy in my speech. “But who are you Mr. Meyer, tell me how you come to be here?”
Over the next few hours, I learned the tale of Mr. Charles Meyer, of Toledo, Ohio, in the last quarter of the Twentieth Century, and in the Twenty-First Century a graduate of that city’s university. Meyer described himself as a master in a field of technology I did not understand. In the future, he described how men had given control of much of the world, and the civilizations that covered it, to a kind of machine proto-intelligence, one that existed not only in circuits of copper and steel, but also in the sub-aether virtual world that men had built up to ease their lives and entertain themselves. When he spoke of these things, my suspicions were raised, but when he spoke of the cat he had recently adopted, and his concerns over its care, I knew that he was a kindred spirit. He spoke the truth, even though I grew despondent as I learned of how war had so filled the world, and that whole cities had been wiped out of existence in seconds by weapons I could not even imagine my species possessing. Even the map had changed. The British Empire had never recovered from the Great War, and as its grip on China and India relaxed, these great cultures had risen up to fill the void. Likewise, Imperial Russia had fallen and been replaced by a collective of the people that had itself, eventually succumbed to corruption and internal strife. Africa was still dark, South America still mysterious, and the polar wastes still mostly unexplored. I ached to find out about home, about Arkham, Massachusetts, about New England, and the country she was part of. He told me of the trials and tribulations that had beset my beloved homeland, of race wars and women’s rights, of the rise and fall of a president, of a landing on the moon, and the men who walked there. He told me that men had sent machines to Mars. His voice wavered when he spoke of men who used religion and superstition to prey on the young and the old alike. He told me all this, and from it I drew a single, undeniable conclusion.
The Republic still stands.
The exact manner in which Charles Meyer’s mind had been extracted from his body, and cast through time and across space to dwell in the body of a Rathk, was unclear. What he did know was that the Rathk were no longer what they seemed. Just as Meyer’s mind had been displaced, so had thousands upon thousands of those belonging to the Imperial Rathk. A strange invasion had occurred, and overnight the ruling members had been supplanted. Even so, it had taken time for the invaders to consolidate their power, though this was helped by recalling forces, and abandoning vast stellar holdings. In the end, it took only a few years for the invaders to completely infiltrate and parasitize the Rathk society to meet their own needs. After that, there was no need for pretense and the invaders revealed themselves for what they were, a species that had long ago abandoned the physical in favor of the mental, a race so powerful, so great, that they could travel through time and space simply by amplifying their own disembodied minds. A race that called themselves by the name of the world they had last occupied before abandoning their bodies. They were the Great Race, a race of historians, of archivists, of researchers, of students and of masters. They were the Yith, and no race could stand against them. Still, they were not fools, and while they were confident in their superiority, they used their powers to not only explore the universe of the present and the past, but also of the future. These expeditions in time had led them to believe that one day they would have to migrate again, for they would face an enemy that they did not and could not understand. That migration, the date of which Meyer did not know, would take the Yith to Earth, a world the disembodied minds found strangely attractive. Whether the Yith would occupy men, the coned and tentacled things that came before them, or the giant coleopterans that came after, was also a mystery. Presumably, that was the whole motive behind the transfer of Meyer’s mind with one of the Great Race, to allow their agent to explore the world of men and determine when and where to strike.
As Meyer spoke, a thought crept up on me. It wormed its way into my head, wrapped claws around my mind and shouted at my prosaic human psyche. The Yith could help me, if I could persuade them. They could use their power to move minds through time and send me home to Earth. I would have to displace another poor soul and, proving who I was to friends and family, proving that I wasn’t simply a madman impersonating Randolph Carter, would be difficult, but it could be done. Surely my friends, surely Manton and de Marginy would recognize me no matter what face I wore. Yet as these nefarious thoughts permeated my brain, I made an observation that brought me crashing back to how horrific such an act would be. Charles Meyer hated the Yith. He hated what they had done to him, hated how they had ripped him from friends and family and his life, and hated what certainly must have been a trauma to those who cared about him. His hate on this matter was almost palpable, and in seeing this, I realized I could have no party to doing the same to another. The Yith may have had the ability to send me back to where I belonged, but the price was simply too high.
Then, without any warning at all, my communications array chimed on and began transmitting a horrific and terrifying sound. The claxon of the city, put in place to warn residents and visitors of potential natural disasters had been triggered, and an order to evacuate had been issued. Meyer and I looked at each other and wordlessly agreed that we were more interested in learning what was happening than fleeing for our lives. We emerged into the teeming metropolis and were immediately enveloped by the chaos of a populace in panic. From a distance we could see that the science gallery was embellished by a glow of black light, a glow that was slowly expanding, and enveloping the area around it.
My first instinct was to flee but, encouraged by Meyer, we drove forward instead, battering through the crowds. All around us representatives of other worlds were evacuating, while the Vhoorl’kth and the Vhoorl’hst seemed to be unable to do anything but panic and scream. There was reason to panic. The black hemisphere was more than just a light; it was spewing out tentacles of energy and enveloping the natives, drawing them into itself like an octopus or spider. It was a slow process, methodical and thorough, and nothing the Vhoorl did seemed to be able to stop it.
Above the noise, I heard a voice yelling my name. It was Scilda, the proctor from the Vhoorl’hst, she was running toward me and behind her, a great arm of black energy was bearing down on her. “Help me Zkauba, please help me!” she pleaded.
I had left my weapons inside my ship, but that did not mean I was defenseless. I sprinted forward, grabbed the trisymmetrical artist, and spun her behind myself and Meyer. My hands, all four of them, traced sigils and signs in the air and drew energy out of the very fabric of space. I molded it, shaped that energy into familiar patterns, weaved it into a shield and placed it between myself and the inky, dark rope that was grabbing for my sudden charge. It hit my armor hard and drove me back on my heels. I pushed back and the attacker suddenly recoiled and then turned away, searching for easier prey.
With the respite, Meyer and I helped Scilda to stand, and then, together, we began to make our way back to
my light ship. Yet as we approached the entryway, Scilda suddenly pulled away from us and looked at me in scorn. “Ghat opened the containment field. He heard your story and he understood what you were trying to say.”
I shook my head. “What I was trying to say? That story is about being cautious when encountering new things, and not being malicious with things that don’t belong to you!” I was suddenly screaming; the noise of the siren and the people of Vhoorl screaming had become overwhelming. Meyer fell to the ground trying to cover his ears.
There came over Scilda’s form an attitude, a position, a stance that seemed to imply that I had said something wrong, something that she rejected. “Was that your intent?” Her three tentacles were trembling. “We didn’t see it that way.”
“No we did not.” The voice booming the air was unearthly, echoing like thunder in the sky. There was a horrific quality to it, as if it was not one person speaking but thousands. Yet even though it had such an alien quality, I recognized the source and the floating figure that accompanied it. The Vedic Ghat was surrounded by the black energy, and in his hand he held the crystalline Seed of Azathoth. “We must thank you Zkauba of the Nug Soth,” but as he said those words his head twisted in an odd way. “But you aren’t Zkauba, at least not entirely. How interesting. I can see inside your mind, Randolph Carter, and inside that of Charles Meyer. Earth seems like such a lovely place; I must be sure to visit it someday.”
“Ghat, what have you done?!”
He roared back at me like an angry god. “I did what you suggested, Randolph Carter, or at least what your story suggested. Oh yes, I know what you think your little story was about, but I saw the truth. Your little parable about Amber and the Faetch may have seemed to you a simple tale to educate children about the dangers of straying off the path and not stealing, but I could see the truer meaning.”
“Which is?” I stammered.
“The universe is a dangerous place. To be small and powerless in it is a precarious position. If we are to survive, we must stop being so small; we mustn’t be Amber, we must be something else, otherwise we too shall find ourselves mad and too afraid to go out into the forest. The Vhoorl’kth and the Vhoorl’hst will not be children any more, we shall be a force in this universe, a force to be respected and feared.”
“You’re mad!” countered Scilda.
She meant to say more, but Ghat wouldn’t allow it. “We aren’t mad, Scilda we will become more! We will no longer be Vhoorl’kth and Vhoorl’hst. We will move beyond Hlu, and beyond Tru.” Ghat waved his hand and great tendrils of black energy smashed through my shields as if they weren’t even there. “We shall be Vhoorl’Lon!” Then the tentacles swallowed up Scilda and she was gone, as if she had never existed.
I braced myself, prepared for the tendrils to move on myself and Meyer. I cast what protective cantrips I could, knowing they were likely useless. Thankfully, the great spouts of power at Ghat’s command didn’t attack, but rather withdrew.
“Leave us, Randolph Carter and Charles Meyer.” Ghat moaned in a thousand hollow voices. “Take your ship and leave, before it is too late. Before our transformation proceeds to the point at which we no longer care that you aren’t of the Vhoorl.”
I took a step back in retreat, and as I did, helped Meyer rise to his feet. Before I could usher him back, my fellow man spoke his mind, screaming at the horrific thing that Ghat had become.
“You monster,” he cursed. “You aren’t a man any more; you are a thing, a nightmare, the living embodiment of all that is wrong in this universe. I may hate the Yith, despise what they have done to me, but you – what you’ve done here is inhuman.”
Ghat turned and a bolt of inky darkness shot across the space between us. It hit Meyer faster than either of us could react. He stood there for a moment, but only a moment, and then his body fell to the ground, still and lifeless. His head was gone. Whatever Ghat had become, he had casually reached out and plucked Meyer’s head off of his body like a ripe tomato. Ghat had eaten Meyer’s head with no more than a casual thought.
The monster smiled, wickedly. “I was never human to begin with Charles Meyer, why does it surprise you that I behave in an inhuman manner? Are my motives so foreign to you, so alien, so unfathomable? Are you so bewildered by us? Perhaps by being one of us, by being absorbed into our collective consciousness, you will one day understand.” And then he laughed, and the city shook as he bellowed.
I ran. I ran past the screaming, dissolving hordes of the Vhoorl. I ran to my ship, and as the very fabric of the planet began to shudder and fail and then collapse, I sped into space. I was not alone.
Around me, a fleet of ships sped away from Vhoorl. There were Whamphyri, Xiclotl, X’han, t’Sathqq, L’gy’hx, Yekub, and even the weird saucers that the Mi-Go used to transport their young. And of course there were a few ships of the Vhoorl, desperate refugees trying to flee the destruction of their home. As we sped away, the planet of Vhoorl, once a verdant green world of vast oceans, was dissolving, being swallowed up by the inky blackness that spread out of the Seed of Azathoth. It was like watching a balloon deflate on a cosmic scale, a balloon with cosmic tendrils that reached out and very carefully picked out those ships carrying Vhoorl and drew them back into itself.
In mere moments, nothing of the Vhoorl’kth or the Vhoorl’hst remained; perhaps on far away planets there remained a few researchers and poets and diplomats who had escaped, but as I watched I felt a great loss for the destruction of two great species, and their home. Nothing was left of them or their art or their science, save that strange black mass that occupied the place where once the planet Vhoorl had been. We hung there in space, we survivors in our ships some; in shock, some in awe, all of us in silence, save for a weird interstellar hum. They say that in space, no one can hear you, that there isn’t enough of an atmosphere to carry sound. They are wrong. If you make a sound loud enough, you don’t need an atmosphere, the sub-aether itself will carry that sound, and you can sense it with your very soul, like when you feel vibrations in your teeth.
I didn’t have any teeth, but I still had a soul, and I could hear the universe screaming. We all could.
From the darkness a shape took form. It was in a way, beautiful; a thing of light and harmony, massive, larger than any life form had a right to be. It was a fusion of the ‘kth and the ’hst but it was also neither. There was something primal about it, perhaps even celestial. In shape, it was not unlike a squid or octopus, though it was not limited to eight or even ten tentacles, but instead had innumerable such manipulators and tendrils. It was no longer black, but instead was a kind of green streaked with yellow. It pulsated, and over the hours that we sat there watching it, seemed to consolidate itself into something that the cosmos itself had never seen before. I think that was why the universe was screaming, because this thing that had come into being, no matter how beautiful it was, hurt it. The very fabric of existence was wounded by its presence, and in that perhaps, we should have known that this new thing was a cosmic abomination. Perhaps it was akin to the thing from which they had stolen the seed from, that floating nuclear chaos, perhaps a kind of child or even cousin to that unfathomable madness that was known as Azathoth.
For a moment that stretched into infinity, the thing seem to coalesce into a corporeal entity; one that with a single thought, replaced the screaming of the universe with that of its own name, a sound that echoed through my very soul, and chilled me to the core. That name, that sound was “VHOORL’LON!”
Then, as if the use of its name was anathema to its very existence, the great monstrosity that had named itself Vhoorl’Lon shuddered and filled the aether with a new sound, one that made the screaming of the universe pale in comparison. The cacophony drove me from my feet and I held my head, screaming in agony, rocking back and forth on the floor of my ship. Even there, writhing on the floor, I could see in my mind what was happening.
For some reason, the thing that was Vhoorl’Lon was unstable. Its existence was at odds wit
h itself and it was taking measures to rectify the situation. Vhoorl’Lon was tearing itself apart. Like some sort of galactic amoeba, the mass that was once the Vhoorl began to divide. Where once a mass the size of a planet had been, there were now two moon-sized formations with great streamers of matter gushing between them. Founts of plasma flowed between these two gargantuan entities. Arcs of energy, enough to power a thousand worlds forever lit up the void.
Most of the observers retreated as the local chaos intensified. But where the ships that moved under their own power could flee, those who took advantage of the latent forces of the cosmos weren’t so lucky. A brace of Mi-Go became caught in a random vortex of dark matter, swallowed up by one of the two things that were coalescing in the endless night of space. These things that the Vhoorl had spawned were less than what they had been. The god-thing that they had been was gone, and in its place were two titans.
Not that it mattered; the universe still screamed at their presence.
They were no longer the glowing thing of harmony. They were still gods, but they were monsters as well. One was not unlike the Vhoorl’kth in that it had a bulbous head with a crown of tentacles atop of a pulpy body, with two great wing-like gills spreading out from its back. Likewise, the second was reminiscent of the Vhoorl’hst in that it was possessed of three, great yellow tentacles around a central hub of eyes and mouths. They screamed at each other and lesser ships fell, collapsed at the sound of their rage. I thought at first they would attack one another; their enmity was obvious, but instead they turned and departed from each other’s presence. One stalked off between the stars, using its wings and powerful leg-like tentacles to walk away as if space was simply another surface to walk across. The other seemed to crawl away, sliding through space, pulling itself across the emptiness with those three tentacles, almost spiraling forward.
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