I’D BEEN TORN from the outskirts of space and flung to the ground like a bird plucked from the sky by the hand of God. Tumbling across the ash-covered ground of the nightmare future, I rolled to a stop. I couldn’t breathe. Fine gray soot filled my nose, coating the inside of my throat, closing it down so air couldn’t squeeze through.
This is the ash of everything I love.
I scrambled to my feet, coughing and choking.
Swallowing over and over again, gulping air, I finally managed to catch my breath. I held my chest, trying to keep my heart from pounding out of it.
Blinking through streaming tears, my eyes found Cthulhu in his human guise.
He’d fallen to his knees, the Crawling Chaos looming around him with deadly spikes of ebon energy. His face turned toward me, eyes filled with saltwater. He spoke into my mind as the first stabbing talon reached him.
YOU MUST STOP HIM. I AM TOO WEAK AFTER MY CAPTIVITY.
“I can’t.” The words hurt coming out.
YOU MUST.
His voice pitched up an octave, smoothing out, soothing against my ears.
THREE TO BREAK THE SEAL.
THREE TO TURN THE WHEEL.
THREE TO LOOSE AZATHOTH.
THREE AND ALL HOPE IS LOST.
The words meant nothing to me. Azathoth. Azathoth was bad. I knew that, and the fact that he was tied to the Man in Black. Before I could ask what Cthulhu meant, the Crawling Chaos surged, swallowing him into the darkness of his coat. The dark god’s back was to me, the soot-and-ink blackness of the coat struggling to consume the body of Cthulhu. Shapes moved on the surface of the coat, bulging here and there in misshapen forms, the sea god trying to punch his way free. Nyarlathotep’s distorted face loomed above the collar, his hands, red and dark-skinned, both clutching the coat together as it screamed and screamed and screamed in my mind, its voice joining the voice of Cthulhu himself, a duet of glass-edged pain as one drove to consume and one fought to keep from being consumed. The clarion skrill of their agony crushed me to the ground.
I screamed, joining them.
Slowly, at a bone-grinding pace, the cries of Cthulhu faded, drifting into oblivion, and the coat fell to a whimpering that I echoed as the Man in Black shuddered and shifted, sliding back into his human skin.
One last shiver and he snapped back into place.
Slowly he turned, his dead white chaotic gaze falling on me.