I stepped out of the garbage pit into which the Faceless Ones had thrown my corpse. I was in the middle of their camp, and there wasn’t much left of it. It seemed the entirety of the remaining organization had ascended the Tower of Zhaal and were even now performing the next phase of the ritual that would bring about the end of the world.
There were a few enslaved shoggoths tending to the camp, cleaning up the remains and refuse from our brief battle, but none of them paid me any heed. A few of them created faces that showed their sympathy or confusion for my situation. I wished I could stay and ask them what was happening with the army I’d left behind, but that wasn’t an option.
Looking up, I tried and failed to see the summit of the tower. I then attempted to figure out a way to climb an infinite location. If this were the Dreamlands, it would be a simple matter because the laws of physics amounted to “Dream it and such will occur.” Unfortunately, we were in the physical world, and as much as the laws of physics were breaking down, they weren’t collapsed enough to mean I could just teleport up there.
“I may be able to help with that,” Marcus said beside me. He was holding Doctor Ward’s journal, having retrieved it from the contraption. “You’ll need this if you’re to have any hope of summoning Cthulhu. Neither August, you, Mercury, nor I are capable of bringing forth the Lord of R’lyeh and ending this struggle. All of us together, however, have a chance.”
“How much of a chance?”
“A slim one.”
Of course. I took the book from his hands. “What sort of resistance can I expect from the Faceless Ones and the Reanimated?”
“Extreme,” Marcus said, looking up the tower. He, unlike me, seemed to be able to see the top. “We may know their plan will result in nothing but the destruction of this world and many others, but to them, it is the salvation of their race.”
“They deserve to die for what they’ve done.” I thought of Insmaw and Shak’ta’hadron.
“‘Deserve to die’ is a very loaded term, John,” Marcus said. “They may need to die, need to be killed for us to survive, but evil does not exist. Nature is amoral and sentient beings are a part of it. Even Oroarchan has a purpose, sending out its millions of offshoots to feed so it might survive forever.”
I was sick of debating philosophy with him. “I’m still going to stop it. Kill it. Somehow.”
“As is your right. Every being in the world has the right to kill another in order to defend itself or the future of its offspring.”
I gave a half-chuckle. “Death is rarely meaningful. More often, especially with violence, it’s a senseless waste.”
“Death can be both meaningful and a senseless waste.”
I contemplated that, then shook my head. “Take me to the top.”
“I need to preserve my strength for the summoning,” Marcus said, patting me on the back. “I can, however, make it so you’ll be able to go up there yourself.”
“All right.”
Marcus paused. “This will destroy John Henry Booth. From this day on, you will no longer be a man but a monster. It’s the only way to proceed, though.”
“Will I still care about Mercury?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t mind.”
“So be it.”
With that, he pushed his hand into my skull and I felt its icy grip pass through my brain. The pain was mild, all things considered. Over in a second. The consequences for the action, though, would resound through the rest of my life. Marcus Whateley opened my eyes. One moment I was John Henry Booth. The next I was R’thugh’cruan. The next I was Captain John Henry Booth during World War One, my own ancestor. The next I was a Crusader bringing Muslim secrets to the Knights Templar, which would eventually morph into The Black Keys of Solomon. I was a metis in the Pre-Revolution Americas, fighting cultists for people who would kill me for harming white men regardless of their wrongs.
I was a Hyperborean wizard banished for his heinous practices, a Stygian Yiggian-Human hybrid, a Texas ranger, a cattle-rustler, a Sioux chieftain, and a five-headed hydra-like beast slithering across the surface of a volcano world. The whole sum of my consciousness throughout countless incarnations of time and space became one in my mind. I had access to all of their memories, thoughts, and values. Linked to Yog-Sothoth as all of his Eyes were, a million different minds were linked, and I could spend a thousand years just trying to sort through them. Then I was John again. Perhaps a hybrid of John and R’thugh’cruan since I felt a loyalty to both humanity as well as the long-dead Kastro’vaal race. The other lives’ memories became a distant flash as only the barest outline remained. Still, I would never be entirely human again in mindset as I saw, for a single moment, how everything was connected.
“You have the greatest library in the history of the universe in your head right now. You have the skills to manipulate your body as R’thugh’cruan could. Likewise, the knowledge to be able to summon Cthulhu. In the future, you will be able to consult with your other selves, too, with meditation and dream-walking. All of that matters less now than your ability to go after the ones above. Can you do that?”
I made a pact with R’thugh’cruan in my head. The two of us merged our minds and consciousness to hold back the tide of the others. Between us, we were so similar that there was little change. Well, one small change. I now felt the Eyes of Yog-Sothoth were my family every bit as much as humanity and vowed to find them a homeworld where they could escape the eternal madness of Yog-Sothoth’s realm, be it Earth or otherwise. I also possessed an all-consuming need to mate, which made me wonder if the Kastro’vaal had ever heard of restraint.
“Yes,” I answered him. “I am.”
“Then go,” Marcus said, pointing up to the sky.
I transformed into the shape of a byakhee and found myself carried up by unnatural winds through the air, through countless worlds. Doctor Ward’s journal entered a secondary stomach I conjured until the time I needed it again. My insect-meets-chiropteran form felt as natural as my human one as I flew higher and higher toward the tower’s apex.
Along the way, I felt the presence of the Unimaginable Horror peeking in. Denied its daily diet of souls, the Tower of Zhaal was no longer holding Oroarchan back. The Great Old One devoured spell after spell of the Yithians, growing stronger and more “real” with each passing second.
As a byakhee, I was telepathic; I could sense the consciousness of the being. I’d imagined the Great Old Ones to be deific beings far removed from the mortal concerns of men. The thoughts they pondered were, in my head, the kind of questions that took all of human civilization ages to answer.
The Unimaginable Horror thought about feeding.
Its awesome mind, capable of calculating the mathematical foundations of the universe, directed its incredible intellect solely to the question of hunger. It thought about killing, feasting, devouring, rending, tearing, hurting, and growing larger so it could kill more.
There was nothing but corpulent NEED driving its actions. The Unimaginable Horror wanted to consume the whole of the universe and when it was done, it would move on to other realities so it might devour their populations. It might merely eat a few galaxies here and there before doing so, having no further desire to engage the Great Old Ones in territorial fights for dominance.
It was a scavenger.
Fuck it.
I reached the top of the Tower of Zhaal and saw a gathering of hundreds. Faceless Ones, Reanimated, humans, ghouls, Deep Ones, and other cultists were gathered there. Marcus Whateley had been underplaying the cosmopolitan nature of our foes, as the Faceless Ones merely comprised a solid majority.
The Matriarch led the ritual from the middle of an infinite-pointed star at the north end of the tower’s top. She was chanting in Ancient Stygian with a dual-serpent- headed staff around a black sun. I saw that much of her magic came from this staff and the iron ring on her finger, both items having once belonged to powerful wizards of ancient times.
Mercury, August, and several other prisoners were in the center of the tower’s top, bound in rope inside a mystical circle. Most of the prisoners had already been killed by Faceless Ones wielding knives, letting their blood drain out onto the tower. Given how much magical energy I felt being channeled through the Matriarch, it was a ridiculous extravagance and a pointless waste of life.
Then again, so was what I was about to do.
Landing on the edge of the tower’s summit, I transformed back into John Henry Booth. I was not him anymore, though, or at least not him alone. Transforming my arms into whip-like tendrils that could heat themselves to the temperature of the surface of the sun, I screamed in an alien language before swinging them around. Bodies were bisected, decapitated, and incinerated as they danced around the prisoners.
The Faceless Ones screamed and went for weapons, but I deformed my mouth to something hideous and breathed out white-hot flames that caught sixteen of them on fire. A few died instantly, but most of them ran around screaming, falling off the edge or to the ground where they perished in agony.
The Faceless One Matriarch, to her credit, did not attempt to gloat or intimidate me. Instead, she just turned the awesome power of her mystical artifacts against me. She drained the mystical circle imprisoning August and Mercury for extra energy before blasting me with a fiery spell designed to kill me.
Oh the agony!
I fell to my knees, my flesh incinerated only to regenerate and be burned again. The Matriarch killed prisoner after prisoner via her mystical draining, and would have killed August as well as Mercury if not for the fact that they’d somehow freed themselves in the meantime. Both erected a shield around themselves to prevent their deaths.
“Go to the hell that awaits you!” I snarled, my voice guttural and inhuman.
“There is no hell but this world!” the Matriarch cried out, intensifying the spell. The pain became so great, I felt like I was dying.
Which I was.
Mercury then chanted an invocation to Great Cthulhu and summoned power that was like a supernova to witness. The Faceless One Matriarch’s star-like shield vanished in an instant, causing her to stumble backward. Mercury grabbed a Desert Eagle from the holster of a Reanimated corpse on the ground, aimed, and shot the Matriarch three times in the face.
The Matriarch fell backward to her doom, her body disappearing over the tower’s edge. Given the Tower of Zhaal’s peculiar physics, it was quite possible her body would fall forever. Either that or it would be eventually scoured by winds into nothingness.
“Good job,” I said, never more proud of Mercury.
There were about thirty remaining cultists, terrified and cowering individuals unwilling to fight for their lives. I was spared from having to deal with them by August stretching out his hands and tearing their lives from their bodies, drinking their power to feed his own.
I was glad he was on our side.
“Clever, girl,” August said, staring. “I never would have been able to dispel her barrier.”
“It turns out my magic works better when I’m pissed off,” Mercury said, looking over the tower’s edge. “John, you’re alive.”
“Yes,” I said, turning around to claw out Doctor Ward’s book from my chest. The wound sealed over completely and I returned to a completely human form. My clothes were also there, false creations of my body’s ability to mimic fabric through shed skin. It was sickening as well as amazing.
The book was undamaged by the stomach acid or whatever was inside a byakhee, perhaps because of spells woven into the lining. This was going to be a hard sell. Turning around, hoping I looked human, I said, “We have to summon Cthulhu.”
Mercury and August just looked at me.
The tower shook. Oroarchan was about to escape.
Mercury said, “Shit.”
August reached out his hand. “What the hell. I always wanted to go out with a bang.”
Huh, that was easier than I expected.