“Yes, because Nyarlathotep, as powerful as it is, does not have the ability to fully exist twice at the same time! Otto Zann in the German asylum and Nadia here tonight!
“You can't imagine how powerful Nyarlathotep is! You killed the Nadia/Nyarlathotep Symbiot tonight only because It was considerably weakened from Its duo-existence. The Otto/Nyarlathotep-symbiot was rendered completely powerless... but now that Nadia is dead...” Lorne began to choke. He had difficulty breathing.
“Lorne?” asked Veronica, “Are you okay?”
He had wanted to answer, No, to get help, that the symbiot-facet had not done enough repairs on Juan Emilio's damaged heart; that he was having another heart attack, but the pain was too great. He could only gag and clutch at his chest.
“Lorne?!” Howard grew very concerned. “Good Lord! Veronica, he's going into cardiac arrest!”
Veronica's eyes widened with fear and panic.
“Quickly!” Yelled Neilson, “Call an ambulance! Get Michael and Tim. Now Girl! Run!”
That was all Lorne heard as he fell into a black oblivion. Juan Emilio Sanchez-Vasquez's heart had stopped beating again. But this time there was more than one life leaving the body.
Chapter X: Otto Zann
June 26th, '92
The Heidelberg Asylum
West Germany, 4:40pm:
From two glaciers in the Swiss Alps begins the mighty Rhine River. Its transparent green waters flow through Austria, the state of Liechtenstein at Schaffhausen and rushes and winds through Switzerland, across the borders of France and Germany, through West Germany and the Netherlands and eventually empties itself into the black Northern Sea.
The Rhine. A symbol of German national history and strength. The Rhine with all of its mythological charms and fables. With one particularity important fairy tale: Nibelungenlied.
The poem tells of the King of Nibelungs, Siegfried. King Siegfried possessed the German Mythological Dwarf Cursed Golden Treasures of Nibelungs, as well as a cloak which endowed its wearer with invisibility!
King Siegfried had done battle with and killed a great dragon. He afterwards bathed in the dragon's blood. This supernatural bath thickened and hardened the King's skin, making his body invulnerable to wounds! But unbeknownst to the King, a single leaf was blown from a nearby linden tree and had fallen between his shoulders as he bathed, leaving one single unprotected and vulnerable spot on his back.
As the story progresses, Siegfried wishes to marry King Gunther's sister Kriemhild. But in order for Siegfried to gain Kriemhild's hand in marriage he must perform a favour for King Gunther.
Queen Brunhild of Iceland will only marry the man who can defeat her in combat! King Gunther wishes to marry Brunhild and wants Siegfreid - being near invincible – to disguise himself as King Gunther, defeat Brunhild, and thus allow Gunther to wed Brunhild.
Siegfried accomplishes this task and himself is rewarded with King Gunther's sister Kriemhild's hand in marriage.
King Gunther is happily wed to Queen Brunhild and likewise with Siegfried and Kriemhild. And they lived happily ever after... not so.
Years afterwards Kriemhild tells Queen Brunhild that it was Siegfried who defeated her in combat and not Gunther at all!
Queen Brunhild orders one of Gunther's vassals, Hagen, to murder Siegfried for his act of deception.
Hagen assassinates Siegfried with a carefully aimed arrow in the one vulnerable spot; the one spot where the linden leaf had fallen while he bathed in the dragon's blood so many years ago.
Many years later Kriemhild, Siegfried's widow, marries the King of the Huns, Etzel. She invites the people of King Gunther and Queen Brunhild to visit and has them slaughtered in revenge for Brunhild's murder of her beloved Siegfried.
In this massacre only Hagen, Siegfried's murderer, survives. Kriemhild demands Hagen to reveal the location of the Dwarf Cursed Treasure of Nibelungs. When Hagen refuses she has him killed.
The story ends with Hildebrand, a warrior at the court of Etzel, discovering Kriemhild's treachery and kills her himself.
This story is generally associated with the Rhine River by the Germans.
Between the years 1854-1874, the great German composer, Richard Wagner, wrote a series of operas about Nibelungenlied. These include Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold), Die Walkure (The Valkyrie), and Siegfried, Acts 1, 2, and 3, and Die Gotterdammerung (The Twilight of the Gods).
In Wagner's Nibelungenlied there is a magical ring made of Rhine gold which gives whoever possesses it power over the entire world!
On old emaciated man sat impotently. His faded green eyes started out the window blankly. He had a deathly gray complexion. This sickly colour was uniform except across his bald head where livid liver spots dominated. The left corner of his mouth hung open and drool ran down his soft fleshed chin. His hands lay limply on his lap. They turned in, the bones beginning to twist from the years of uselessness. The old invalid had sat, comatose, for over five decades. His limbs were shrivelled and bent. The 96 year old man was reduced to nothing more than a gray-skinned skeleton.
Otto Zann stared out the Heidelberg Asylum's window at the waters of the Neckar River. One of many of the Rhine's tributaries. As he watched its flowing he heard Das Rheingold in his memory. Lethargy set in. The music made him cry. Not real tears for he had absolutely no control of his physical body – or for that matter, even his own mind. Because now he was a multiminded creature. He was the Symbiot, joined forever with the insane blasphemous Nyarlathotep.
For over a half century he had shared this invalid's body with the monster. Or more correctly, the monster had lived within and assimilated Otto. But never-the-less, they were both trapped in this aging, decaying body.
The Otto-facet of the symbiot was small. Indeed, nearly non-existent, for Nyarlathotep was a god! But right now the Nyarlathotep-facet was... asleep? Had receded in any case. Otto didn't know. He didn't care. He currently had control of his senses – for all the good it did. For although his other, more powerful facet was not present, it had a vice-like grip on the body, which it never let go of. All the Otto-facet could do was see through his own eyes, smell through his own nose, and hear sounds through his own ears and to him this was something to treasure.
He watched the sparkling Neckar River and listened to Wagner's opera from memory.
What he smelled was awful. The scent of the room was filthy. His aged, crippled body sat on a special chair which carried a transparent plastic fecal-bag on the chair's underbelly. He sat there because he had no control of his bowels and from the smell, the bag must now be full. But more overpowering was the odour of the aged. That musty, dry time-riddled scent of the decayed and dying.
There was a fly in the room, he heard it buzz past his ear. It came from beneath the chair, from the fecal-bag he suspected. The fly buzzed by again, circled his head and landed on the bridge of his nose. Again, Otto wanted to cry, for he could not brush the fly away. He couldn't even move his eyes to see the fly directly.
He heard footsteps in the hallway. The nurse. She would brush the fly away, surely. She would change the fecal-bag. The nurse was a young brunette Fraulein. She was very pretty with large dark eyes and she was kind to the old man. The Otto-facet had always liked her for that reason.
He helplessly watched the Neckar River and thought of Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold opera; about the magic ring made of Rhine gold. He was so close to the Rhine River. He dreamed of having that magic ring which gave its possessor power over the entire world. Then he could end this living Hell.
He heard the door open.
Nurse Adelaide entered the room. Otto Zann was her favourite. The other inmates of the Heidelberg Asylum were usually hostile, or quite terrifying. Not Otto. She had grown fond of the old man since she started her job five years ago. He never was any trouble – of course not. He had been comatose for over five decades.
She often wondered why he was placed in an asylum, especially this one. He wasn't insane, was he? No, she didn't t
hink so.
"Guten morgen, Herr Zann!" she greeted with a beautiful smile. She immediately smelled and noticed the fecal-bag.
She went to the storage closet in the room and got a replacement. She wondered what the old man was thinking of, if he were thinking about anything at all. Little did she know that she would very shortly know exactly what Otto Zann was thinking.
She knelt to remove the full bag from the chair when she noticed the fly. The old man stared blankly out the window apparently completely unaware of the fly on his face.
Nurse Adelaide stood up.
At that same moment the digital clock in the room switched to 4:50pm – 10:50pm in Arkham, Massachusetts where, unbeknown to either Otto or Adelaide, the Nadia/Nyarlathotep Symbiot was just shot dead.
Otto Zann's pale green eyes became sentient and animated as they crossed to stare at the fly.
Nurse Adelaide gasped sharply as it frightened her. "Mien Got!" she whispered. Otto was no longer comatose! She began to feel joy but only momentarily.
The old man's sunken face twisted into a visage of decades suppressed rage. The Nyarlathotep-facet of the Symbiot billowed forth, burying the Otto-facet in profound obscurity deep within the multimind's unconsciousness.
The fly on the Symbiot's face snapped out of existence with a spark. Fraulein Adelaide somehow instinctively recognized a horrifying alien presence and attempted to flee, but too late!
The Symbiot's pale green eyes locked on the young woman and her thought of flight became immediately apparent. The room's door slammed shut by unseen forces and the handle and lock melted and fused shut!
The Symbiot stood up out of its imprisoning chair, excrement trailing out of its anus. Its arms were twisted and clung up against its chest, its hands grotesquely contorted into skeletal claws.
The Symbiot became aware of its host's physical needs. Its faded eyes stared at the screaming nurse. It saw her atoms and molecules. It saw the raw materials necessary to reconstruct its handicapped body.
"Mien Got! Hilfe! Nein, nein!" howled Nurse Adelaide in boundless horror. The 96 year old Otto seemed to pulsate; becoming bloated one moment, then shrivelled and emaciated the next. With every pulse its withered arms and legs grew less frail! Otto's wrinkled sunken face seemed to fill out, ironing out the wrinkles! His bones straightened with gut-wrenching cracking sounds. His collapsed muscles replenished themselves, expanded, strengthened. And all the while the once young and beautiful brunette, dark eyed Fraulein collapsed onto the floor still screaming "Nein! Nein!" Her beautiful full dark hair turning gray and falling out. Her porcelain-smooth face withering and clinging onto her skull. Her child-like pink pouting lips drying and cracking, turning red with blood. Her once sensual and shapely hips and legs shrivelling to bony sticks. Her firm and full breasts becoming flaccid gray nippled things.
The Symbiot's body filled out. Its once pale eyes taking on the luster of youth. Still Adelaide screamed "Nein! Nein! Bitte, nein!" with unplummeted horror until she gagged as her teeth began to fall out of reddening gums. Her screams turned into a gurgle as her lungs barely had the strength even to breathe.
All that lay on the floor was a hideously shrunken old hag. The only semblance of beauty left was her large dark eyes and even the light of her soul was flickering within. She struggled to raise her head and look up before she died. She saw the most blasphemous sight!
Standing there was a nude man with the body of Michelangelo's David, indeed, with his gray complexion he appeared to be made of stone. Even as the Fraulein took her last breath she could not help but admire his beautifully masculine physique. But the face was the horror. It was a strong young handsome Germanic face with long flowing white hair, but still bald and gray skinned on top. More terrifying was the soft silk-like texture of the man's lips and the toothless cavern of his mouth! Countless invisible telepathic tentacles poured from the Symbiot as it opened its mouth and roared. They raced down halls, through offices, down corridors. They smashed through tiny plate-glass windows, pulled doors off their hinges, and ripped reinforced metal cell doors clean out of their concrete moorings in their desperate race to their goals - the asylum's inmates. The last sound Nurse Adelaide heard was one of pure insanity.
Every one of the asylum's violently insane inmates let loose a blood-curdling howl in unison with the demon Nyarlathotep! Then, all fell into a pregnant silence as one.
The nurse's husk of a body exploded like sand caught in the wind and her lifeforce collapsed into a brightly lit sphere and was absorbed by the Symbiot. As she was consumed she realized her fate and momentarily shared the Otto-facet's thoughts before being overpowered by the alien Nyarlathotep-facet. Now she knew exactly what the old man - Herr Zann was thinking. Namely, of the golden magic ring from Das Rheingold opera and how one who possessed it had power over the entire world. Then she briefly heard the old man's whisper, "...i'm so sorry..." before she was confined to the multimind's dark memory forever.
The now young and muscled Otto's silhouette shimmered and broke into a heavy mist or fog and quickly vanished from the asylum.
* * *
June 27th, '92. Oceanic Point of Inaccessibility: South Latitude 47 °, 9', West Longitude 126°, 43'. 12:51 am:
A thick mist suddenly appeared over the nighted ocean. It thickened into a heavy fog and condensed into a well proportioned man-silhouette. The next moment there hovered the gray-skinned, green-eyed Otto/Nyarlathotep.
The Symbiot was surprised. It had not expected water, let alone an endless oceanscape as far as the eye could see. It had expect to find land; to find the great alien city of R'lyeh. To find Great Cthulhu itself. How much time had passed? contemplated the alien-mind. It reached out telepathically and caught a faint glimmer of dead and dreaming Cthulhu but it was quickly blinded by a Great Green Five-pointed Star – the Imprisoning Elder Sign!
The Symbiot quickly retrieved its mind probe and teleported away.
* * *
June 26th, '92. Verkhoyansk Range
East Siberian Uplands. 7:52 am:
The Symbiot materialized over the mountain range. A freezing, gray rain fell. Straight and windless. It was as the Symbiot expected: Nothing.
The Symbiot expanded its consciousness, stretched out telepathic limbs and... found the ever so faint thoughts and dreams of Tsathoggua. But the glimpse was only momentary as he was blinded by yet another Elder Sign!
Nyarlathotep's mind probe recoiled in pain.
Uncertain, the Symbiot scanned the morning sky... found what it searched for. It sent out a single powerful telepathic probe. Light-years through the endless void of space to lost Carcosa, to the Lake of Hali... and found the One Who Shall Not Be Named, dead and dreaming... and again searing pain and fear of the five-pointed Elder Sign.
The telepathic probe snapped back across the limitless void like some cosmic elastic band, crashing into the Symbiot's mind, leaving it momentarily stunned and senseless.
Again Nyarlathotep expanded its mind in all directions – in no direction – expanded it outside and beyond the confines of time and space. Stretching out across the entire universe, searching...
He cried out to Azothoth, the mindless daemon-sultan at the centre of the universe and found... nothing. Banished. Nyarlathotep sought out Yog-Sothoth and found, again nothing. Again, banished, but he could sense IT. It lurked at the threshold just within perception! On the other side, waiting. For It knows where the Star-spawned Old Ones will break through.
When Nyarlathotep calmed himself down and silenced his mind and emotions, he could just barely see. The image of a heaping horde of disorderly iridescent bubbles frothed into his mind's eye. The chromatic bubbles were madly silent; dead silent. They were hypnotizing in their private and secret life. They hid the true horror of Yog-Sothoth.
It was then that the Symbiot understood. It was the Crawling Chaos. It was the Messenger of the Gods. The time had come for the reclamation of the universe-
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